Israellycool

I’m not sure what is going on in England, but surely there’s something dodgy about their drinking water.

How else can you explain a number of unbelievable statements emanating from subjects of the Queen.

Take former British Prime Minister-cum-Quartet’s Mideast Envoy Tony Blair, who says the palestinians are starting to carry out their part in the “road map” peace plan.

The Quartet’s Middle East envoy Tony Blair said Thursday that Palestinian security forces had significantly improved and were starting to carry out their part in the long-stalled “road map” peace plan.

The former British prime minister, now the envoy for the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators which include the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations, urged Israel to respond by easing travel and trade restrictions imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The U.S. government will assess and judge whether Israel and the Palestinians are meeting their obligations under the 2003 road map as part of a push for a Palestinian statehood agreement before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office next January.

Statehood could hinge on those assessments because Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed not to implement any future peace agreements until Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets his road map obligation to crack down on militants.

“I think it is important to recognize that what has happened here in Nablus over these past few months is, of course, precisely what phase one of the ‘road map’ asks for,” Blair said during a visit to the West Bank city.

Earlier Thursday, during a visit south of Ramallah, he said: “The Palestinian side has improved significantly their security capability.”

The only kind of road map the palestinians are following is the kind that helps them get to Israeli cities - like Dimona - for terrorist attacks.

I do agree with Blair on one point, though. The palestinian side has improved significantly their security capability.

Then we have the Archbishop of Canterbury, who says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK seems unavoidable.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK “seems unavoidable.”

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty.”

A few days ago, I posted the tragic tale of a Muslim woman who’s family invited men to the family home to rape her.

Today, I post this tragic tale of a Muslim woman whose family did nothing while her husband battered her to death.

A family who stood by as a husband systematically battered to death his young bride through an arranged marriage have been found guilty of failing to help her in the weeks before she died.

Sabia Rani, 19, suffered horrendous injuries at the hands of new husband Shazad Khan, 25, but her plight was ignored by his other relatives who shared their home in Leeds.

Khan was convicted for the teenager’s murder a year ago after she was discovered with bruising to 90 per cent of her body and up to 15 broken ribs.

Khan’s mother Phullan Bibi, 52, his two sisters Uzma Khan, 23, and 28-year-old Nazia Naureen, and Naureen’s husband Majid Hussain, also 28, lived with the couple in Oakwood Grange, Roundhay.

Leeds Crown Court was told during their three-week trial for allowing the death of a vulnerable adult that they had tried to blame her injuries on evil spirits and curses.

It took the jury nine hours of deliberation to come back with four unanimous guilty verdicts.

As they were read out in court, the group screamed and thumped the dock. Khan’s sisters started wailing and hugging each other before screaming: “Not guilty, not guilty.”

His mother stood up and started crying and had to be restrained by officers after repeatedly banging both hands down on the dock.

Ms Rani only arrived in England five months before her death. She had been brought up in rural Pakistan and did not speak English.

The jury was told she had not been allowed out of the house she shared with her husband and his family without a chaperone.

They also heard that the teenager would have been in severe pain and very ill in the weeks up to her death in May 2006.

After her death, pathologist Christopher Milroy described her injuries as being similar to those suffered by someone in a serious road accident.

Prosecutor Simon Myerson QC said the defendants tried to blame them on evil spirits and curses.

Mr Myerson told the court that each defendant must have known Ms Rani was in pain and that Khan was the cause of it.

Professor Archibald Malcolm, a leading expert on bone fractures, who gave evidence during the trial, attributed the injuries her ribs to “hard kicks, stamps or very hard punches”.

The pathologist deduced there were three “episodes” of fracturing, one around three weeks before her dath, one about two weeks before and the other around 12 hours of less.

At the time of Khan’s murder conviction last year, West Yorkshire Police had already taken the first steps towards charging the family members.

After today’s verdicts, the Crown Prosecution Service revealed that the defendants were some of the first people in the country to be convicted of allowing the death of a vulnerable adult.

Malcolm Taylor, of CPS West Yorkshire’s Complex Casework Unit, said: “Sabia Rani was the victim of horrific violence at the hands of her husband whilst her family, as the jury found, chose to do nothing to help her.

“This is the first case in West Yorkshire and one of the very first cases in the whole of England and Wales where the provisions of the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act 2004 have been used after the death of a ‘vulnerable adult’.”

He added: “The message must be that if families or other people with a duty to look after those who need protection deliberately choose not to do so, their neglect will not be ignored by the law enforcement agencies, and prosecution will follow.”

By the way, notice how both of these stories took place in England.

I hope the English are paying attention, because this might just be a prelude to their future.

Yara, a mother of three and a financial consultant from Jeddah, visited the new headquarters of her company in Riyadh. The electricity was temporarily out so she decided to go with a colleague to a Starbucks on the ground floor of the building to wait. They sat in the “family section” of the coffee shop.

But her colleague was - gasp! - a man.

Immediately, our heroes from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice sprang into action and arrested Yara and her male colleague for being in a state of “khulwa”, meaning in seclusion with an unrelated member of the opposite sex. Starbucks in Saudi Arabia are secluded enough for violating the law, but not secluded enough for our heroes to be able to see what everyone is doing.

The Vice Commission wasted no time. They forced Yara into a cab, took away her cell phone when she tried to call her husband, and then placed her in a Chevrolet Suburban, the Commission’s favored means of transporting immoral criminals.

The whore Yara explains what happened next:

“I told (the commission member) that I am a good Muslim, a mother of three, and a God-fearing person who would never do shameful things,” she told Arab News in tears.

Last year, the Interior Ministry issued a ruling that the commission cannot detain people and must pass them on to the police.

Yara said that she was handed a confession.

“He told me I needed to fingerprint this paper stating that I got my mobile phone and bag back,” she said. “When I told him my phone was still confiscated, he threatened me: ‘Just do it!’”

She said that she fingerprinted the paper under duress.

“I had no other choice … I was scared for my life … I was afraid that they would abuse me or do something to me,” she said, as she broke down in tears again.

Then another person got into the GMC and switched on the engine.

As the Commission knows well, it is far better for a woman to be alone in a car with two male commission members than in a Starbucks with any other man.

“The next thing I saw from the window was that we were approaching a place with a sign written on the outside: Malaz Prison,” she said.

Inside the prison, Yara recounts being taken to a cell with a one-way mirror. On the other side was a sheikh.

“I could not see him because there was a dark window,” she said, adding that each time she paused he would reprimand her, telling her what she did was wrong. “He kept on telling me this is not allowed.”

Yara told the sheikh that her husband knew where she was and what she was doing. He then started writing a report. Another pre-written confession was fingerprinted, she said. She pleaded with prison authorities to contact her husband.

“They would not let me contact my husband,” she said. “I told them… please… my husband will have a heart attack if he does not know what has happened to me.”

She was not given a phone to call her husband. She was not given access to a lawyer. “They stripped me,” she said. “They checked that I had nothing with me and threw me in the cell with all the others.”

The disgusting, immoral man is still in detention.The brave men of the Commission managed to keep the streets of Riyadh free from vice for another day.

And we can all breathe easier that the “family section” of Starbucks in Riyadh is a safe place where the virtue and honor of women are respected.

Earlier episodes:

Episode 6: Protecting Saudi Women
Episode 5: What’s ummah, Doc?
Episode 4: The car washer
Episode 3: Holy Shi’ite
Episode 2: Alone with a strange, sick woman
Episode 1: Introduction, plus A Gang of Magicians

The Sunday Times of London reports:

A girl of 15 was tricked into a “telephone marriage” ceremony to a Sheffield man with a mental age of five in a ceremony recognised by sharia (Islamic law).

When the girl arrived from Pakistan expecting to meet the handsome man she had been shown in a photograph, she found that he was 40 years old, unemployed and disabled.

To make matters worse, her mother-in-law decided to exploit her attractive looks by forcing her into prostitution.

The family invited men to the family home to rape her before she managed to escape to the police by bolting through the front door. She was taken into care and now lives in a refuge.

The case is highlighted in a report by the Centre for Social Cohesion, which has found that policemen, councillors and taxi drivers are turning a blind eye or even conniving in enforcing the Asian community’s strict “moral code” on young women.

The girl’s marriage last April was not recognised by the Home Office but was approved by the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain. She is typical of the runaway brides at risk of an “honour killing”. According to official figures, 10 to 12 women are murdered in Britain in honour killings each year, but the government has been warned by MPs that this is a serious underestimate.

Police often record the deaths as cases of domestic violence, while other girls are driven to suicide or taken away to their family’s country of origin and never seen again. Many Asian parents would rather resort to violence against their children than see their reputation tarnished by the perceived dishonour of allowing them to become “westernised”.

The report, Crimes of the Community, claims the problem is no longer an issue of first-generation migrants importing attitudes from “back home” but is “indigenous and self-perpetuating” because it is sustained by third and fourth-generation immigrants.

The study reveals the case of Saamiya, a 16-year-old girl from Birmingham, whose parents were so angry when they discovered she had a boyfriend that they flew her to Pakistan and told her they had arranged a marriage two hours before the ceremony.

“During the Islamic ceremony my dad was standing behind me with one hand on my shoulder and with his other hand he had a gun which was pointed at my back so that I didn’t say ‘no’,” Saamiya said.

“To everyone else it looked natural — he was just standing there stroking my shoulder — but just before he had told me that he would shoot me if I didn’t go through with it.”

She was rescued from Pakistan by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s forced marriage unit and now lives in a refuge in the Midlands, but has been told that she will be murdered by her brothers. The girl told investigators: “I haven’t been back home since then. My brothers say that they want to take me back to Pakistan so they can kill me basically. They’ll just pay the police there to keep quiet… I don’t want to be killed. I’m only 16. I want to live my life.”

The think-tank’s report comes after Gordon Brown, the prime minister, said last week that he was extremely concerned that too little was being done to prevent honour crimes.

The study criticises the police and schools for failing to take action in a misguided attempt to avoid offending cultural sensibilities.

Karma Nirvana, a support group in Derby, claims it asked local schools last year to display warning posters produced by the forced marriage unit. It said the schools refused.

Derby council last week denied that the group had made the requests, but the prime minister has pledged to investigate reports that the government unit cannot get its advice posters into schools for fear of upsetting local opinion.

According to the report, women who go to the authorities to seek protection have been tracked down through their mobile phones or even by leaks of confidential information from government databases.

Jasvinder Sanghera, director of Karma Nirvana, said that police who find girls who have escaped from their families often simply return them to their parents where they face further abuse, with some Asian officers actually colluding in crimes. Sanghera is taking a case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission of a girl who fled her family but was kidnapped by relatives and held prisoner. She claims that a police officer tipped off the family where the girl was staying.

“Police have a long way to go before they get on top of honour crime. There is a lingering fear among officers of being dubbed racist for probing cultural issues. We’ve got to shake off that myth,” she said.

From the Sun (UK):

SINGER Britney Spears will be ordered to cover her face with a veil and wear a full-length Islamic dress when she weds her British boyfriend, it was revealed last night.

She is planning marriage No3 to Muslim Adnan Ghalib, 35, who she hopes will help keep her on the straight and narrow so she can win back custody of her two sons.

But the only way Brummie cameraman Adnan’s strictly religious family will accept her is if she converts to the Islamic faith.

Astonishingly, party girl Brit, 26, is keen to do it – even though it will mean ditching the booze. The singer, famed for stepping out without her knickers, has even told friends she plans to wear a burka, or even a naqib, which leaves only the eyes visible.

One of her pals said: “She is really keen to do it.

“It would be a mark of respect to Adnan and his family, and it would give her the anonymity she’s craving.

“Adnan’s Muslim beliefs could be Britney’s saviour.”

Friends believe the couple had planned to tie the knot on a trip to Mexico last week, but put it on hold.

Her relationship with Adnan has stunned his parents, too. His mum Saghar teaches the Koran at home, while his dad Hussain attends the mosque daily.

Now, that would be a great reality show.

(Cross-posted, somewhat embarrassingly, at Elder of Ziyon)

Aussie Dave adds: No more of this, I guess (kissing a Jew-lover is forbidden).

Aussie Dave adds (again): Now I am really confused.

Britney Spears has told family and friends she intends to marry her paparazzo lover Adnan Ghalib in a Scientology marriage ceremony.

The troubled singer, 26, phoned an aide with the news from a beach in Mexico, where she fled by private jet with Ghalib, 35, last week.

She is due to appear before a Los Angeles court tomorrow for the continuing battle over custody of her children.

A friend described her wedding plan as “hare-brained”, adding: “Brit blew a fuse again when she was told it would be an act of insanity to marry. Having a Scientology wedding is her way of giving her family a one-finger salute.”

Scientologists – its celebrity members include Tom Cruise and John Travolta – believe humans are descended from space aliens.

Update (Aussie Dave): More from Alarabiya:

The couple claim to be very much in love and the troubled star’s friends have reportedly said that she is so in love with him that she plans to marry him and convert to Islam, the UK’s News of The World (NOTW) reported.

—-

Spears, who was previously believed to be part of the mystic Jewish faith Kabbalah, is said to be talking about plans to fake her own death and move to Pakistan with her new lover, according to The Sun newspaper.

Update (Aussie Dave): Even more proof that you can’t take any of this news too seriously (via Sandmonkey).

From AFP:

An Egyptian woman is seeking clarification from a court on whether her husband’s declaration of divorce by text message is legally valid, a state-run newspsaper reported on Thursday.After missing a call from her husband on her mobile phone, Iqbal Abul Nasr received a text message from him saying “I divorce you because you didn’t answer your husband,” Al-Akhbar said.

In line with sharia (Islamic law) men do not need to go to court to file for divorce. A unilateral declaration of divorce by a man, repeated three times, formally ends a marriage.

It was the third time Abul Nasr, an engineer from Cairo, received a divorce text message from her husband, prompting her to seek a legal decision from the a family court on the status of her marriage.

If the court declares the couple divorced, it would be the first reported case of divorce by SMS in Egypt.

The subject of divorce by SMS has been highly debated across the Muslim world and some Islamic countries like Malaysia have banned the practice.

According to Egypt’s state-run statistics bureau, a couple files for divorce every six minutes in Egypt.

In case there are any women out there I might have accidentally married the last time I was in Vegas, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.

(cross-posted on Elder of Ziyon. Other Muslim marriage/divorce postings here and here. )

Ma’an (Arabic) has an article about honor killing statistics this year, saying that the number of such killings has gone down this year to only 9 as opposed to somewhat higher numbers in years past.

One very interesting paragraph (autotranslated and cleaned up):

The study revealed that some of the murders, which are committed against women for reasons of honour, in reality are caused for a completely different reason. They are often related to the question of inheritance, in the refusal of many large families granting women their share of inheritance, being careful that the money not go to a strange man in the event of her marriage. As a result, the proportion of “spinsters” are high in wealthy families.

So not only are women’s lives worth less than “family honor,” but they are also worth less than family money as well. And the women who are unfortunate enough to have been born into wealthy families have a hard time getting married, as their families pressure them to remain single to keep the money in the family.

Perhaps some enterprising Islamic lawyer can create a sharia-compliant pre-nuptial agreement?

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

The Jerusalem Post reports on a worrying - but hardly surprising - trend in England.

The name Mohammed is expected to become the most popular name in England and Wales by 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.

The name, according to the report, was second only to Jack in 2007, which has been top for the last 13 years. 6,772 boys were called Jack and 6,387 were called Mohammed or a variant.

“High birth rate among Muslim families” is the reason cited by the report for how Mohammed will be the most popular boy’s name by next year.

Although Mohammed was ranked 17th, the name’s position would be numbered second if all 14 variant spellings of the name were taken into account.

The Telegraph found that of the 3,009 babies called Mohammed, the most popular spelling was Muhammad (1,595), followed by 903 Mohammads, 429 Muhammeds, 349 Mohameds, 39 Mohamads, 12 Muhameds, 11 Mohammods, nine Mohmmeds, eight Mohamuds, seven Mahammeds, six Muhammeets, five Mohmmads and five Muhammods.

Muhammad Anwar (heh - Aussie Dave), professor of ethnic relations at Warwick University, was quoted by the newspaper as saying: “Muslim parents like to have something that shows a link with their religion or with the Prophet.”

Except teddy bears, I guess.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against a growing Muslim population per se. It’s just that when you factor in the proportion of the growing Muslim population which is acting to reduce the non-Muslim population, there’s real cause for concern.

Update: The Jerusalem Post story includes this picture and caption:

In case you thought the Post had gone to the trouble of finding 4 babies named Mohammed/ Mohammad/ Muhammed/ Mohamed/ Mohamad/ Muhamed/ Mohammod/ Mohmmed/ Mohamud/ Mahammed/ Muhammeet/ Mohmmad/ Muhammod, and lined them up for a photograph.

For the past few weeks, I have been spending time with my parents in my hometown of Perth, Western Australia. And a more relaxed place you will be hard pressed to find. Gorgeous weather, friendly people, and relative quiet - it is very easy to forget about the troubles in the Middle East, and, indeed, other parts of the world.

But reading the local news this morning, I was reminded that no matter where you are, there are signs of the impending threat to the West.

A Muslim school in Kenwick has been raided by police and shut down by WA Education Minister Mark McGowan. The school’s head faces a stealing charge.

Mr McGowan said he had taken the extraordinary step of closing Muslim Ladies’ College in Kenwick because of allegations, including fraud and the use of unregistered teachers who were focusing mainly on religion, rather than the WA curriculum.

The school’s acting director, Zubair Sayed, appeared in East Perth Magistrates Court on Saturday charged with stealing.

The court was told the charge related to an alleged theft offence — of $355,934 — in April, when Mr Sayed, of Sarah Close, Canning Vale, was a company director of Muslim Links Australia Ltd.

It is alleged the school was overclaiming for state and federal government funds for students. Police prosecutor Sgt Scott McCormick told the court that detectives had discovered the money had been sent to Pakistan.

“This is a matter which is of extreme seriousness, whereby Mr Sayed obtained public money from the commonwealth by deceit,” Sgt McCormick said. “The state wishes to put on the record that this is a very serious charge.”

The court was told that Mr Sayed wrote a Commonwealth Bank cheque for money from the Federal Government that was meant for the Muslim Ladies’ College to educate students.

At the time, Mr Sayed’s brother was principal of the college.

Magistrate Vicki Stewart granted Mr Sayed bail, with conditions he surrender his passport, not be within 1km of international sea or air ports, report to Cannington police station each Wednesday and reside at his home address.

He was released on $100,000 bail and a $100,000 surety to reappear in Perth Magistrates Court on January 2 next year.

On Friday, Mr McGowan told The Sunday Times: “I want to make it clear that this decision (to close the school) has not been made because this is a Muslim school.

“This decision has been made because this is a school that is not educating students properly.

“An investigation into the operations of the college by the Department of Educational Services began in December 2006 — following complaints about the conduct of the principal-administrator, staffing of the college and the educational program.”

Key areas investigated included whether teachers were registered, the appropriateness of qualifications of teachers, inadequate educational leadership and standard of education, and the sufficiency of the school’s resources.

Mr McGowan said other concerns were about the college’s governance structure, the condition of buildings, and facilities and enrolment, and attendance procedures.

He said it was found that teachers were inexperienced in teaching and understanding the curriculum framework, and students weren’t being taught all required subjects.

“The college has employed a number of unregistered teachers and many with limited authority to teach,” he said. “Teachers are not spending 50 per cent of the school day on literacy and numeracy, as required.

“Instead (they) spend a large amount of time on religious studies. This is clearly unacceptable and seriously damaging to the student’s academic well-being.

“The school is not being properly led because the director of the college (Anwar Sayed) is in Afghanistan and has been for most of the year.”

Mr McGowan wrote to the school’s governing body to notify them of his decision, which took effect from Friday.

He said enrolments had declined in the past year, from about 90 students at the beginning of 2007 to about 50 or 60 students currently.

Color me paranoid, but I’m willing to bet that the word “Jihad” came up numerous times during these “religious studies.”

I’m also willing to bet the money sent to Pakistan was not earmarked for an orphanage, and the college’s director was not in Afghanistan sightseeing.

I sure hope I’m wrong, because if I’m right, Australians are in for one hell of a ride. Just like the rest of us.

Jemima Khan, the ex-wife of former cricketer/anti-US politician/pro-terror apologist Imran Khan, on her former husband’s parenting skills (hat tip: Tim Blair):

When my son was four years old I found him playing with a one-armed Action Man. I asked him what had happened to Action Man. He replied, “Aba (Daddy in Urdu) said he’d been stealing.” Imran’s idea of a joke.

When told of this, Cody reportedly responded with “I feel his pain.”

From JTA (and also PalPress):

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States rejected recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.”There are 1.5 million civilians in Israel who do not define themselves as Jewish,” Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the U.S.-convened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis, Md.

“We do not believe states should define themselves according to religion or ethnicity.”

…said the representative of a nation whose official religion is Islam, whose legal system is based on Shari’a, whose king holds the title “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” and whose constitution starts with:

Article 1
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion; God’s Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, are its constitution, Arabic is its language and Riyadh is its capital.

Article 2
The state’s public holidays are Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha. Its calendar is the Hegira calendar.

Article 3
The state’s flag shall be as follows:
(a) It shall be green.
(b) Its width shall be equal to two-thirds of it’s length.
(c) The words “There is but one God and Mohammed is His Prophet” shall be inscribed in the center with a drawn sword under it. The statute shall define the rules pertaining to it.

cross-posted to Elder of Ziyon

Remember a couple of years ago a British ice-cream company had to replace its logo because some Muslims felt that it resembled the Arabic word “Allah”?

Then we heard about the “Allah-fish“, where the same swirls were seen:

Well, there’s a regular Allahpalooza going on, because now Muslims are seeing things in their babies’ ears. In Ramallah, a baby was born a few weeks ago with an ear deformity that makes it appear that the word Allah.

From Palestine Today, in auto-translation:

Often heard about an oddity in the universe and anecdotal talked with the people in their lives, a child born Pracejn or Unsoder twin, or a child born with three legs …The city of Ramallah in the West Bank weeks ago saw the birth of a child wrote Majesty the word “God” in his ear, in Arabic, so that anyone can read easily, and without careful consideration.

The grandmother discovered the child Houcih ordered the Divine in dignity authorized her grandson after five weeks of birth.

Says the father of the child who is an officer in place to sell the clothing city of Ramallah that this label that has characterized the order, and leaves a message from God “, and expressed the hope that the best Fall him and his family.

In the view of the child’s mother that this Mecca addressed by God created is a miracle requires reflection, and increasing closer to God, and from what anger.

cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon