The Superiority of Western Values in Eight Minutes
By: Ibn Warraq
In a public debate in London against Tariq Ramadan, Ibn Warraq was given eight minutes to argue the superiority of Western values. Here is his defense of the West, which forms the basis for his new book,
Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy.
The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, human rights, liberal democracy—together constitute quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization. This set of principles remains the best and perhaps the only means for all people, no matter what race or creed, to live in freedom and reach their full potential.[1] Western values—the basis of the West’s self-evident economic, social, political, scientific and cultural success—are clearly superior to any other set of values devised by mankind. When Western values have been adopted by other societies, such as Japan or South Korea, their citizens have reaped benefits.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: this triptych succinctly defines the attractiveness and superiority of Western civilization.
In the West we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live as we choose. Liberty is codified in human rights, a magnificent Western creation but also, I believe, a universal good. Human Rights transcend local or ethnocentric values, conferring equal dignity and value on all humanity, regardless of sex, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. At the same time, it is in the West that human rights are most respected.
It is the West that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians, recognizing their rights. The notions of freedom and human rights were present at the dawn of Western civilization, as ideals at least, but have gradually come to fruition through supreme acts of self-criticism. Because of its exceptional capacity for self-criticism, the West took the initiative in abolishing slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in black Africa, where rival African tribes took black prisoners to be sold as slaves in the West.
Today, many non-Western cultures follow customs and practices that are clear violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). In many countries, especially Islamic ones, you are not free to read what you want. Under sharia, or Islamic law, women are not free to marry whom they wish, and their rights of inheritance are circumscribed. Sharia, derived from the Koran and the practice and sayings of Muhammad, prescribes barbaric punishments such as stoning to death for adultery. It calls for homosexuals and apostates to be executed. In Saudi Arabia, among other countries, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith. The Koran is not a rights-respecting document.
Under Islam, life is a closed book. Everything has been decided for you, the dictates of sharia and the whims of Allah set strict limits on the possible agenda of your life. In the West, we have the choice to pursue our desires and ambitions. We are free as individuals to set the goals and determine the contents of our own lives, and to decide what meaning to give to our lives. As Roger Scruton remarks, “The glory of the West is that life is an open book.”[2] The West has given us the liberal miracle of individual rights and responsibility and merit. Rather than the chains of inherited status, Western societies offer unparalleled social mobility. The West, Alan Kors writes, “is a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives.”[3]
Instead of the mind-numbing certainties and dictates of Islam, Western civilization offers what Bertrand Russell called liberating doubt.[4] Even the process of politics in the West involves trial and error, open discussion, criticism, and self-correction.[5] This quest for knowledge, no matter where it leads, a desire inherited from the Greeks, has produced an institution that is rarely equaled outside the West: the university. And the outside world recognizes this superiority of Western universities. Easterners come to the West to learn not only about the sciences developed in the last five hundred years, but also about their own cultures, about Eastern civilizations and languages. They come to Oxford and Cambridge, to Harvard and Yale, to Heidelberg and the Sorbonne to acquire their doctorates because these degrees confer prestige unrivalled by similar credentials from Third World countries.
Western universities, research institutes, and libraries are created to be independent institutions where the pursuit of truth is conducted in a spirit of disinterested inquiry, free from political pressures. The basic difference between the West and the Rest might be summed up as a difference in epistemological principles. Behind the success of modern Western societies, with their science and technology, and their open institutions, lies a distinct way of looking at the world, interpreting it, and rectifying problems: by lifting them out of the religious sphere and treating them empirically, finding solutions in rational procedures. The whole edifice of modern science is one of Western man’s greatest gifts to the world.[6] The West is responsible for almost every major scientific discovery of the last 500 hundred years, from heliocentrism and the telescope, to electricity, to computers.
The West has given the world the symphony and the novel. A culture that engendered the spiritual creations of Mozart and Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, of Raphael and Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Rembrandt does not need lessons in spirituality from societies whose vision of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel stocked with virgins for men’s pleasure.
The West gave us the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and many other manifestations of the humanitarian impulse. It is the West that provides the bulk of the aid to beleaguered Darfur, while Islamic countries are conspicuous by their absence.
The West does not need lectures on the superior virtue of societies where women are kept in subjection, endure genital mutilation, are married off against their will at the age of nine, have acid thrown on their faces or are stoned to death for alleged adultery, or where human rights are denied to those regarded as belonging to lower castes.[7] The West does not need sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems for their populations, that cannot educate their citizens, but leave 40-50 percent of them illiterate, that make no provisions for the handicapped, that have no sense of the common good or civic responsibility, that are riddled with corruption.
No Western politician would be able to get away with the kind of racist remarks that are tolerated in the Third World, such as the anti-Semitic diatribes of the Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad. Instead, there would be calls for resignation, both from Third World leaders and from Western media and intellectuals. Double standards? Yes, but also a tacit acknowledgement that we expect higher ethical standards from the West.
The Ayatollah Khomeini once famously said there are no jokes in Islam. The West is able to look at its own foibles and laugh, even make fun of its own fundamental principles. There is no Islamic equivalent to Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Can we look forward to seeing The Life of Mo anytime in the future?
The rest of the world recognizes the virtues of the West in concrete ways. As Arthur Schlesinger remarked, “When Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square, they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty.”[8] Millions of people risk their lives trying to get to the West—not to Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan. They flee from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes to find tolerance and freedom in the West, where life is an open book.
[1]Bruce Thornton. “Golden Threads: Former Muslim Ibn Warraq Stands Up for the West,” City Journal, August 17, 2007.
[2] Roger Scruton. “The Glory of the West is that Life is an Open Book,” Sunday Times, May 27, 2007.
[3] Alan Charles Kors, Can There be an ‘After Socialism’? in Social Philosophy and Policy, 2003; 20 (1) pp.1-17 .
[4] Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, London: Williams & Norgate, [Ist edn.1912] Chapter XV.
[5] Roger Scruton, “The Defense of the West,” A Lecture given at the Columbia Political Union, New York, Thursday, April 14th, 2005.
[6] Caroline Cox & John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is Ideological Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy? (London: Civitas, 2003) pp.12-13.
[7] A.M.Schlesinger, Jr. The Disuniting of America. Reflections on a Multicultural Society ( New York: Norton, 1992) p.128.
[8] Ibid., p.129.
Buy Ibn Warraq’s book, Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy at Amazon.com
It is a no-brainer except to the brainless sycophants of relativism.
ReplyDeleteRelativism is not a new belief. It is as ancient as the human race. It is not the wisdom of the mind but the error of the soul.
Although relativism may appear to be sensible on the surface, it could only be maintained at the expense of reason.
Relativism is an illusionary belief. Its view is internally incoherent and logically inconsistent.
Alexander Solzhenitsvn was insightful when he said, “It is a terrible thing to be in a society where there is no law; it is equally terrible to live in a society where there are only lawyers.” Relativism is not only the enemy of truth but the enemy of the good.
There is good and there is evil.
ReplyDeleteThe first flaw of relativism is that it begs the question. The relativist does not prove that relativism is true but merely assumes that it is true.
This is arbitrary and invalid. One must demonstrate the soundness of one’s views before one invites others to embrace it. Relativism is presupposed to be true, presumed as a proven premise and used as an established truth in the process.
What is the basis or the ground for relativism?
ReplyDeleteTo believe relativism is true one must accept the absolute laws of logic and rationality to qualify as a true belief but such laws are questioned under relativism, therefore relativism can never be regarded as true.
Why should anyone accept relativism?
As a theory relativism is not intellectually respectable or rational. It provides no logical criteria. In the light of relativism, no person (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Judas) ever does anything wrong and therefore they could never be condemned.
Consider the relativist’s dilemma: A mystical pantheist told a British officer in India, “My conscience tells me to burn a widow with the corpse of her husband.” The officer replied, “My conscience tells me to hang you if you do.” As evangelical philosopher Stuart C. Hackett notes, “If values are wholly relative to an individual valuer, there is no way of explaining how two persons can differ concerning an ethical question, or any other question, for that matter.” An unproved assumption is not worthy of belief. Seven hundred years before Christ the prophet Isaiah understood the error of relativism and pronounced judgment on those who regard evil as good and good as evil (Isaiah 5:20).
https://thinkwhy.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/the-flaws-of-relativism/
DeleteHow could an argument that ends with good is the same as evil, be anything other than nonsense?
ReplyDeleteBOTTOM LINE
If there is a relativity of truth, there is no truth. The conviction implies that no truth is worth defending because all truths are relative to culture and experience. Who believes in that will learn a hard truth. They will lose.
Their comfortable self-satisfaction at their moral superiority will become irrelevant to other men with no such intellectual angst. The relativist will always lose to the deeply convicted.
I'll take a jingoistic Trump over a fretting universalist Obama any day of the week.
Trump made a speech tonight, which to me, defines the side I choose to be on in the existential fight against "third worldism". We do not want to be them. It is not our impossible responsibility to change them. Our responsibilities are to defend what we have. Leave them alone. Get out of their countries and let them stay out of ours.
ReplyDeleteItaly needs more support as it deals with large numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa, the UN's refugee agency has said.
ReplyDelete"What is happening in front of our eyes in Italy is an unfolding tragedy," Filippo Grandi said.
"This cannot be an Italian problem alone," he added.
Italy has threatened to stop vessels of other countries from bringing migrants to its ports, as it warned the EU the situation was unsustainable.
It is only a problem because of US/UK/EU interference in Africa and Asia. These so-called refugees have no right to go wherever and whenever over whatever.
Just say, NO!
Victor Orban the Hungarian Prime Minister, stated in a recent speech, that the migration crisis is able to destabilize governments and countries and the whole European Continent, and a strong clear cut action plan and timetable is needed.
ReplyDeleteHe went on to say it is not a refugee crisis, but a migratory movement composed of economic migrants, refugees and foreign fighters. 70% of migrants are young men who look like an army.
Free choice of a host country is not included in International Law.
There is an unlimited supply of source of people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and now Africa is on the move.
There is an unlimited amount of stupidity in the Leftist bureaucrats running the EU.
This is the sort of situation that comes with Government run health care and why we should all be against such a system -
ReplyDeleteThe Vatican’s Statement On UK Baby Condemned To Die Is Frightening
If this is where the Vatican now makes its stand, then the most vulnerable members of society—which is to say all of us, at some point—are in trouble.
By Daniel Payne
JUNE 30, 2017
The ugliest political battle currently underway in Western society is not between Donald Trump and Mika Brzezinski or the United Kingdom and the European Union but between two parents with a dying baby and the British courts. The baby, Charlie Gard, has been terminally ill since his birth, unable to move his limbs or breathe on his own.
His parents wish to bring him to the United States for a long-shot experimental treatment. The courts object, believing Charlie should be allowed to die “with dignity.” The European Court of Human Rights declined to hear an appeal, effectively sealing the boy’s fate.
Against the backdrop of this barbaric abuse of judicial authority, the Catholic Church—the world’s greatest defender of the right to life, and long a moral bulwark against state intrusion into the rights of the family sphere—has decided that the courts in this case are basically right.
These are difficult times for orthodox Catholics, beset by a pope who often appears inclined to dismiss centuries of church teaching and a fair number of bishops who are apparently determined to follow him. Catechetical esoterica regarding Eucharistic doctrine, of course, can seem hopelessly complex for even the lay Catholic these days.
But the Catholic Church’s position on the sanctity of life is unmistakable to anyone, and has been for several thousand years. Its stance on the authority of the family has also long been clear. We should assume that the Vatican would be more than happy to condemn and rebuke in no uncertain terms an idiot juridical decision that condemns a little baby boy to die rather than allowing his parents to fight for his once chance to survive.
You would be wrong. The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life yesterday released a statement that waffles between limp-wristed equivocations and outright willful ignorance of church teaching. If this is where the Vatican now makes its stand, then the most vulnerable members of society—which is to say all of us, at some point—are in trouble.
This Reasoning Is Unjust and Immoral
The academy attempts to explain away the courts’ decision by citing “the complexity of the situation, the heartrending pain of the parents, and the efforts of so many to determine what is best for Charlie,” acknowledging that “we do, sometimes…have to recognize the limitations of what can be done” in modern medicine.
This is preposterous nonsense, what, growing up, my family called “mental babble.” The situation is not at all “complex”: Charlie’s parents want to attempt to save his life, and the courts have made it illegal for them to do so, in direct contravention of their parental authority. The “heartrending pain of the parents” is now primarily a feature not of their dying child (whom they are trying to save) but of the soft-tyrannical decision of the British courts (which are preventing them from doing so). As for “what is best for Charlie,” the obvious fact is clear: his parents have decided that for him.
It is not up to some guys in robes somewhere to determine whether two parents can take their child to another country in a last-ditch attempt to help him survive. It is also an essay in comical cowardice for the Catholic Church to tacitly defer to such expropriated authority.
DeleteThe academy claims that “we must…accept the limits of medicine,” and as evidence they point to paragraph 65 of Pope Saint John Paul II’s “Evangelium Vitae.” But this is a smokescreen: in that particular passage, the Holy Father merely allows that “one can in conscience” refuse treatment which “no longer corresponds to the real situation of the patient” (emphasis added).
Allowing that one can choose something does not, in any sane world, in any language, in any context, allow that one must choose it, much less that one must be forced to choose it by a court system acting in loco parentis as a passive executioner. Either the academy has not read the passage in quotes in its entirety (in which case it should be ashamed of itself) or else it is deliberately misrepresenting it (in which case something beyond shame seems necessary).
If This Is Complex You Aren’t Thinking Clearly
John Paul II was well aware of the ways in which governments can steal the legitimate authority of parents and families: in “Familiaris Consortio” he affirmed that “the church openly and strongly defends the rights of the family against the intolerable usurpations of society and the state.” One would imagine that one such “intolerable usurpation” would be a government denying two parents the right to try to save their baby boy’s life. And one would imagine that an institution entitled “the Pontifical Academy for Life” would recognize that.
It is almost certain at this point that baby Charlie will die. Even if his parents were allowed to bring him to the United States, death would likely be the result. But such a decision, one way or the other, is not the prerogative of the British government, or anyone other than the man and woman who gave Charlie life and wish only to let him keep it. Once upon a time this would have been an uncontroversial proposition, easy for every moral person and institution—including the Catholic Church—to get behind. But the times have changed.
So we must watch as a little boy, not old enough yet to be a toddler, dies “with dignity,” at the hands of a court system with no business making such a decision, and with the meek and tacit approval of a church that, once upon a time, fully understood the stakes of precious human life but now speaks only of “complexity.”
This issue is not complex. Nor is the culture of death that underlines it. We should be afraid of what is to come next.
Daniel Payne is a senior contributor at the Federalist. He is an assistant editor for The College Fix, the news magazine of the Student Free Press Association. Daniel's work has appeared in outlets such as National Review Online, Reason, Front Porch Republic, and elsewhere. His personal blog can be found at Trial of the Century. He lives in Virginia.
Photo 5 News / YouTube
http://thefederalist.com/2017/06/30/vaticans-statement-baby-condemned-die-frightening/
Can we look forward to seeing 'The Life of Mo' anytime in the future?
ReplyDeleteNot without one hell of an uproar.
There is The Satanic Verses -
Muhammd Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that "The Satanic Verses is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. The Satanic Verses is a reflection of the author’s dilemmas." The work is an "albeit surreal, record of its own author's continuing identity crisis."[2] Ally said that the book reveals the author ultimately as "the victim of nineteenth-century British colonialism."[2] Rushdie himself spoke confirming this interpretation of his book, saying that it was not about Islam, "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay."[2] He has also said "It's a novel which happened to contain a castigation of Western materialism. The tone is comic."[2]
After the Satanic Verses controversy developed, some scholars familiar with the book and the whole of Rushdie's work, like M. D. Fletcher, saw the reaction as ironic. Fletcher wrote "It is perhaps a relevant irony that some of the major expressions of hostility toward Rushdie came from those about whom and (in some sense) for whom he wrote."[7] He said the manifestations of the controversy in Britain "embodied an anger arising in part from the frustrations of the migrant experience and generally reflected failures of multicultural integration, both significant Rushdie themes. Clearly, Rushdie's interests centrally include explorations of how migration heightens one's awareness that perceptions of reality are relative and fragile, and of the nature of religious faith and revelation, not to mention the political manipulation of religion. Rushdie's own assumptions about the importance of literature parallel in the literal value accorded the written word in Islamic tradition to some degree. But Rushdie seems to have assumed that diverse communities and cultures share some degree of common moral ground on the basis of which dialogue can be pieced together, and it is perhaps for this reason that he underestimated the implacable nature of the hostility evoked by The Satanic Verses, even though a major theme of that novel is the dangerous nature of closed, absolutist belief systems."[7]
Rushdie's influences have long been a point of interest to scholars examining his work. According to W. J. Weatherby, influences on The Satanic Verses were listed as James Joyce, Italo Calvino, Franz Kafka, Frank Herbert, Thomas Pynchon, Mervyn Peake, Gabriel García Márquez, Jean-Luc Godard, J. G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs.[8] Angela Carter writes that the novel contains "inventions such as the city of Jahilia, 'built entirely of sand,' that gives a nod to Calvino and a wink to Frank Herbert".[9]
Srinivas Aravamudan's analysis of The Satanic Verses stressed the satiric nature of the work and held that while it and Midnight's Children may appear to be more "comic epic", "clearly those works are highly satirical" in a similar vein of postmodern satire pioneered by Joseph Heller in Catch-22.[7]....
....Fatwah[edit]
In mid-February 1989, following a violent riot against the book in Pakistan, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers, or to point him out to those who can kill him if they cannot themselves.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses
Salman Rushdie
DeleteFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, FRSL (/sælˈmɑːn ˈrʊʃdi/;[4] Kashmiri: अहमद सलमान रुशदी, احمد سلمان رشدی; born 19 June 1947[5]) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two separate occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He combines magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations.
His epic fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the subject of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. The British government put Rushdie under police protection.
In 1983 Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the UK's senior literary organisation. He was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999.[6] In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature.[7] In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.[8]
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015.[9] Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie was strongly favoured to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature but the Nobel organisers were later quoted as saying that they would have been "too predictable, too popular."[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie
Sir Salman Rushdie is now simply Mr. Rushdie, to us, now that he has found refuge in the good ol' USA.
(The Canadians might have charged him with hate crimes)
DeleteO Canada !
DeleteFree Expression Matters: Hate Speech in Canada & Bill 59
By Pari Rajagopalan | March 4, 2016 at 3:25 pm Blog | Tags: bill 59, free expression, free expression matters, hate speech, Québec
Each year, PEN International prepares a report assessing the state of freedom of expression in the country in which its congress is held. In October 2015, PEN International released a report on free expression in Canada ahead of the 81st congress in Québec City, Québec. Based on this briefing note, PEN Canada presents “Free Expression Matters” a series that breaks down free expression issues in Canada. In this fifth instalment we look at hate speech in Canada, and specifically how Québec’s proposed legislation, Bill 59, could impact free speech.
Click here to see previous “Free Expression Matters” on surveillance, defamation, public servants, and political audits.
What is hate speech in Canada?
Canada has the obligation under international law to legislate against hate speech that “constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”. Canada’s hate speech laws can be found in the Criminal Code at the federal level, and in human rights legislation at the provincial level. Criminal hate speech cases are rarely prosecuted because they have a high burden of proof and a number of admissible defences. However, hate speech laws found in human rights legislation offer fewer defences, a lower burden of proof, and fewer procedural protections. This makes it far more difficult for respondents to fight such complaints.
In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decided that, in part, provincial human rights hate speech laws are a reasonable limit on the freedom of expression guaranteed in section 2b of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the landmark judgment, Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. William Whatcott, the court determined that the key to deciding whether a given expression should be considered hate speech is to consider the effect it had on its audience, while keeping in mind the intention of reducing or eliminating discrimination. The SCC established three directives that establish how to do this:
Determine objectively whether a reasonable person would view the expression as exposing a protected group to hatred.
DeleteThe term must express extreme “detestation” or “vilification.”
Tribunals must focus on whether the expression is likely to expose the targeted person to hatred by others.
Even with these directives, hate speech provisions are difficult to define and are open to varying interpretations. As a result, they can have a chilling effect on open dialogue and undermine free expression.
Each of the provinces and territories in Canada has human rights legislation and commissions that prohibit discrimination and provide an avenue for redress. In Québec, the recently introduced Bill 59 aims to prohibit the dissemination of hate speech and speech inciting violence.
What is Bill 59?
In June 2015, the Québec government introduced Bill 59, titled “an Act to enact the Act to prevent and combat hate speech and speech inciting violence and to amend various legislative provisions to better protect individuals.” The primary purpose of the act is to create measures that prevent and combat hate speech and public speech that incites violence against a group of people based on characteristics laid out in the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The Québec charter prohibits discrimination against anyone on the basis of their race, colour, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age, religion, political convictions, language, ethnicity, social condition, or handicap.
How does Bill 59 affect free expression?
Bill 59 poses a significant threat to free expression in Québec. Although this piece of legislation aims to combat hate speech and speech inciting violence specifically, its broad language coupled with restrictive prohibitions and significant penalties will place a chill on the expression of legitimate ideas and debate.....
https://pencanada.ca/blog/free-expression-matters-hate-speech-in-canada-bill-59/
I believe this bill now rules in all of Canada.
Nancy Pelosi
ReplyDeleteNan Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Cartoon
http://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons/
Girl, 13, Honor-Killed by Family — on Order of Judge
ReplyDeleteBy Geller Report Staff - on July 1, 2017
HONOR KILLINGSHonor killings
A teenage girl, age 13, was sentenced to death by a judge in the tribal Khyber Agency community of Pakistan on Friday, for the crime of trying to run away with two young men.
More to point: The judge ruled the girl should be killed to save her family’s honor. So her family killed her.
A woman holds a sign, “There is No Honour in Killing,” during a protest in Pakistan against the horrific and murderous practice.
Welcome to the face of Islamic law, where murder is an act of honor — so much so that even judges in supposed courts of rule and law impose the sentence.
From Dawn:
A teenage girl was reportedly murdered by her relatives allegedly on the orders of a tribal jirga in Khyber Agency on Friday, in what the local political administration said was a case of ‘honour’ killing.
The jirga had issued the orders to kill 13-year-old Naghma after it emerged that she had allegedly attempted to run away with two young men, an official said.
After she allegedly ran away with them, the boys abandoned Naghma during the journey “out of fear”. She was later taken into custody by the security forces and released on bail upon assurance by the girl’s relatives that they would not kill her, Assistant Political Agent Niaz Mohammad told local reporters.
However, despite their assurances, Naghma’s relatives shot her dead three days later inside a house in Landi Kotal tehsil and silently buried her body in a local graveyard.
Local authorities told Dawn the girl’s actual killer has been taken into custody of political authorities. But now, the two young men who ran off with the girl are also in custody, and could face the same fatal fate.
Again, from Dawn:
a journalist belonging to Khyber Agency claimed that the two boys who allegedly ran away with the girl are in the custody of the same jirga. He claimed that the boys’ relatives will make every effort to secure their freedom, but it is possible that they too will be killed on the jirga’s orders.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra has sought a report into the incident from the political agent. He said the teenage girl’s murder was contrary to human rights.
The National Assembly earlier this year passed a bill giving legal and constitutional cover to the centuries old jirga and panchayat systems in the country with a view to ensure speedy resolution of petty civil matters and reduce the burden of litigations on the courts.
Hundreds of women are murdered every year in Pakistan, often by their own relatives, for going against their families’ wishes in matters of love and marriage.
The perpetrators of so-called honour killings often walk free because they can seek forgiveness for the crime from another family member.
The Aurat Foundation’s annual report of 2016 showed 7,852 cases of violence against women.
According to Saima Munir, who works for the Aurat Foundation, there has been a 70 per cent increase in honour killings in the past year.
http://pamelageller.com/2017/07/girl-13-honor-killed-family-order-judge.html/
Geller again!
DeleteWon't you ever learn?
Signed, Qoug
Chicago Theater Critic Shunned for Racial Honesty
ReplyDeleteIn the Windy City, telling unpopular truths will get you ostracized.
In Chicago, where there were more homicides last year than in Los Angeles and New York City combined, expressing any support whatsoever for the police is now considered an outrage. Should you point out that, say, a play seems to suggest cops are evil crackers, you may find yourself denounced as a racist and targeted for abuse and ostracization.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449153/chicago-theater-critic-shunned-racial-honesty
If you're not impressed, you're dead.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk_qLtk0m2c
What a load of crap Deuce - you cherry pick the aspirations of Western culture and assign it to American culture all the while ignoring the bad aspects of American culture while doing the reverse for other cultures.
ReplyDelete