Fausta’s Blog

No end to the depravity,
Saudi girl, 13, sentenced to 90 lashes after she took a mobile phone to school

A 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to 90 lashes and two months’ prison in Saudi Arabia after she took a mobile phone to school.

A court ordered the girl to be flogged in front of her classmates following an assault on the school principal, according to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan.

Take a look at what a flogging looks like:

Sentencing a 13-yr old child to endure 90 lashes and two months’ prison is the equivalent of a death sentence.

But we’re talking about a pathological mindset that believes that girls should be mutilated in order to save them from themselves and subjugate them to men. I was in a waiting room the other day when I came across this article, Waris Dirie Fights Female Genital Mutilation

Though female circumcision is often thought of as a foreign issue, according to experts at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an estimated 228,000 women in the U.S. have undergone the procedure or are at risk. “Violence against woman does not know borders,” notes Dirie, “whether it is FGM, forced marriage, honor killings, or domestic violence.” She is pushing hard for a U.S. release of Desert Flower and notes, “There are an estimated 40,000 FGM victims in New York City alone.”

It’s a practice Dirie can speak about firsthand. Her mother held her down when she was cut without anesthesia by a gypsy woman when she was a tiny girl. Dirie’s vaginal opening was stitched closed with thorns. The pain was horrific. “Can you imagine anything worse than hearing the screams of pain of your own child?” she asks.

“I consider FGM the worst type of torture that can be done to a woman. It’s impossible to describe the pain,” she continues. One of Dirie’s older sisters bled to death after the procedure, while a six-year-old cousin perished from a resulting infection. In her book, Dirie makes it clear that FGM is blatant butchering, writing, “It’s like someone is slicing through the meat of your thigh or cutting off your arm, except this is the most sensitive part of your body.” In many African communities, she goes on to explain, “the prevailing wisdom is that there are bad things between a girl’s legs.”

Dirie has come a long way to find herself in this well-appointed Paris room. At around 13, her father sold her to a much older man to be his next wife. The plan was that he would cut open her stitched vagina with a knife or break it open by penetrating her. So she ran away.

Like Aayan Hirsi Ali, she ran away. The article on Waris Dire does not mention a religious affiliation, but Islam definitely was the factor behind Hirsi Ali’s mutilation. Both Dire and Hirsi Ali have survived; as you may recall, Katoucha died under suspicious circumstances.

In another case involving a child, Phyllis Chesler asks Can Counseling Prevent a Potential Honor Killing?

Don’t bet your life on it.

Prior posts on fgm here and here.

Danish police shoot intruder at cartoonist’s home

Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked an international row.

Mr Westergaard scrambled into a panic room at his home in Aarhus after a man wielding an axe and a knife broke in.

The BBC had first reported that the intruder was wielding a hammer, not an axe.

Danish officials said the intruder was a 28-year-old Somali, who they did not name, but said was linked to the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia.

The cartoon, printed in 2005, prompted violent protests the following year.

The intruder was able to get in, in spite of the existing security measures:

His house has been heavily fortified and is under close police protection.

Police said the man had entered Mr Westergaard’s house armed with a knife and axe and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him.

Mr Westergaard ran to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.

Too bad the Danes don’t issue gun permits.

These are the cartoons, which, by the way, Yale University Press didn’t have the courage to publish in a book about them:

The Telegraph says,

Mr Westergaard’s cartoon was seen at the time as the most controversial, as it depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban.

Mark Steyn:

“Controversial” but entirely vindicated by events since. To return to the theme of my post a couple of days back, a significant percentage of Muslims in the west do not understand concepts such as pluralism and freedom of expression. A further percentage understand them very well but reject them as loser fetishes incompatible with the requirements of Islamic supremacism – and have a shrewd sense that when, push comes to shove, a lot of these fine liberal concepts crumble to nothing. Is the percentage of Muslims who support Mr Westergaard’s right to free expression and the broader principles of intellectual liberty sufficient to make the importation of legions of “27-year old Somalians” a net benefit to Denmark?

The answer to that seems obvious. But Mr Westergaard is 74, and I’ll bet his half-century-younger attacker grasps however crudely the demographic symbolism, in Scandinavia and beyond.

UPDATE
Noticias 24 reports that Westergaard was at home with his five year old grandson granddaughter. Noticias 24 also has a photo of the police standing in front of Westergaard’s house after the incident:

More photos of the location at Noticias 24.

Prior posts on the Mohammed cartoons here

Device was on fire in terror suspect’s lap, plane passenger says

The initial impression is that the suspect was acting alone and did not have any formal connections to organized terrorist groups, said the official, who is familiar with the investigation.

Obviously he forgot to wear his al-Qaeda credentials with photo ID with bold lettering saying, “OFFICIAL MEMBER OF AL-QAEDA SINCE 2001″ on a lanyard on his neck.

Security check in Amsterdam? Nope:

He did not undergo secondary security screening in Amsterdam, an administration official said.

Acting alone? Don’t think so:

British counterterrorism police officers were searching houses Saturday in central London in relation to the airline incident, a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman told CNN.

The heroes of Christmas days are the people who stopped him, particularly Jasper Schuringa and the cabin crew”

“Everybody got a little bit startled,” he said. “After a few seconds or so … there was … kind of a flamish light and there was fire” and people around the immediate area began to panic.

Schuringa said he heard a big bang that sounded like a firecracker going off. He told CNN that he was the one who was able to subdue Abdulmutallab. CNN was not able to independently confirm Schuringa’s account.

Schuringa said someone started yelling: “Fire! Fire!”

Then there was smoke. That’s when Schuringa said he knew something was terribly wrong.

When he noticed that Abdulmutallab was not moving, he grew suspect. He jumped over the passenger next to him and lunged over Abdulmutallab’s seat.

Schuringa said he saw that Abdulmutallab had his pants open and he was holding a burning object between his legs.

“I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away,” Schuringa said.

He said he managed to pull an object tucked between Abdulmutallab’s legs.

“Water! Water,” Schuringa screamed. He heard fire extinguishers as he pulled Abdulmutallab out of his seat and dragged him to the front of the plane.

Schuringa said Abdulmutallab seemed dazed. “He was staring into nothing.”

Schuringa said he stripped off Abdulmutallab’s clothes to make sure he did not have other explosives on his body. A crew member helped handcuff him.

He said other passengers applauded as he walked back to his own seat.

“My hands are pretty burned. I am fine,” he said. “I am shaken up. I am happy to be here.”

Thanks to them, 278 people are alive today.

Meet the Northwest flight 253 hero, Jasper Schuringa. Here is his Facebook page.

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It didn’t take long for conspiracy theories to pop up. A commenter at my prior post came up with this beaut:

Something is wrong here..An intelligence officer sitting nearby, a white powder, a black man a muslim name,= a set up! i wonder now whay amerikkka will ask from Nigeria for his release..OIL

Ridiculous.

UPDATE:
the suspect had more than 80 grams of PETN, a compound related to nitro-glycerin used by the military. They were sewn in his underwear.

White House: Failed Airline Bombing Was Attempted Act of Terrorism

U.S. officials say a Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria said he was acting on behalf of Al Qaeda when he tried to blow up a flight Friday as it landed in Detroit.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

Like the shoebomber, he tried to ignite a bomb:

“He appears to have had some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite,” said one of the U.S. officials.

Authorities initially believed the passenger had set off firecrackers that caused some minor injuries.

Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Susan Elliott said the passenger was subdued immediately. She had no details on the injuries. Delta and Northwest have merged.

Again, the passengers rose to halt him:

Passenger Syed Jafri, a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said the incident happened during the plane’s descent. Jafri said he was seated three rows behind the passenger and said he saw a glow, and noticed a smoke smell. Then, he said, “a young man behind me jumped on him.”

“Next thing you know, there was a lot of panic,” he said.

Fox News reports right now that the explosive device was put together with elements that originated in Yemen.

At the WSJ: Midair Bomb Attempt Fails
Man on Flight to Detroit Claims Al Qaeda Ties; Obama Tightens Security

The man, who has not been publicly identified by officials, told investigators that he was given the device by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, where he was also given instructions on how to detonate it, the official said. The Associated Press reported that Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) has identified the man as a Nigerian named Abdul Mudallad.
…
The explosive, which was apparently carried onto the flight from its originating airport in Amsterdam, was originally believed to be a small firecracker, but the U.S. official said the device was “more complicated than gunpowder firecracker” and caught fire as the man tried to set it off.

Washington Post: White House: Failed plane attack an attempted act of terrorism

NY Times: Airline Incident Was Terrorism Attempt, White House Says

Richard Fernandez posts,

ABC News now says the suspect was on a “no fly list” and that the powder he was trying to ignite was concealed taped to his leg. A syringe of chemicals was said to have been added to the mixture.

Richard also has a diagram of where the fuel tanks are located in that particular aircraft relative to where the terrorist was sitting.

Islamic terrorism doesn’t give up.

… asks Andrew McCarthy,

It’s been brought to my attention by several reliable sources that the Defense Department has brought Louay Safi to Fort Hood as an instructor, and that he has been lecturing on Islam to our troops in Fort Hood who are about to deploy to Afghanistan. Safi is a top official of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and served as research director at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).

Worse, last evening, Safi was apparently permitted to present a check (evidently on behalf of ISNA) to the families of the victims of last month’s Fort Hood massacre. A military source told the blogger Barbarossa at the Jawa Report: “This is nothing short of blood money. This is criminal and the Ft. Hood base commander should be fired right now.”

Who is Louay Safi?

Safi is a Syrian-born author who advocates Muslim American rights through his directorship of ISNA’s Leadership Development Center. He advocates direct talks between Washington and Iran’s leaders. He has spoken out against various law enforcement raids on Islamic centers.

In a 2003 publication, “Peace and the Limits of War,” Safi wrote, “The war against the apostates [non-believers of Islam] is carried out not to force them to accept Islam, but to enforce the Islamic law and maintain order.

What is ISNA?

ISNA is the Muslim Brotherhood’s umbrella entity for Islamist organizations in the United States. It was established in 1981 to enable Muslims in North America “to adopt Islam as a complete way of life” — i.e., to further the Brotherhood’s strategy of establishing enclaves in the West that are governed by sharia. As I detailed in an essay for the April 20 edition of NR, the Brotherhood’s rally-cry remains, to this day, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who issued a fatwa in 2004 calling for attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, openly declares that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.”

Go read the rest of that post. It turns out the FBI is “partnering” with them.

Semanario Verdad Latinoamericana reports that nurses in a Bolivian hospital are forced to wear a hijab veil at their jobs.

The article, Bolivia: enfermeras son obligadas a llevar velo, says that state newspaper Cambio (link to their website here, but no link to their report on the hospital) reported that following a donation of $1.2 million USdollars by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit Wednesday last week, the nurses at a hospital in El Alto have to wear a veil due to conditions set by Iran.

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The Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean will be up later today.

Christopher Hitchens: Multicultural MasochismThe “war on terrorism” didn’t cause the Fort Hood shootings.

For a start, did Hasan or Muhammad ever say what “killing” of which “Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan” they had in mind? There isn’t a day goes by without the brutal slaughter of Muslims in both countries by al-Qaida or the Taliban. And that’s not just because most (though not all) civilians in both countries happen to be of the Islamic faith. The terrorists do not pause before deliberately blowing up the mosques and religious processions of those whose Muslim beliefs they deem insufficiently devout. Most of those now being tortured and raped and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran are Muslim. All the women being scarred with acid and threatened with murder for the crime of going to school in Pakistan are Muslim. Many of those killed in London, Madrid, and New York were Muslim, and almost all the victims callously destroyed in similar atrocities in Istanbul, Cairo, Casablanca, and Algiers in the recent past were Muslim, too. It takes a true intellectual to survey this appalling picture and to say, as Wright does, that we invite attacks on our off-duty soldiers because “the hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy—a global anti-jihad that creates nonstop imagery of Americans killing Muslims—is so dubious.” Dubious? The only thing dubious here is his command of language. When did the U.S. Army ever do what the jihadists do every day: deliberately murder Muslim civilians and brag on video about the fact? For shame. The slippery slope—actually the slimy slope—is the one down which Wright is skidding.

It is he, who I am taking as representative of a larger mentality here, who uses equally inert lingo to suggest that Maj. Hasan was “pushed over the edge by his perception of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” That’s a nice and shady use of the word “perception.” Might it not be equally true to say that Hasan was all-too-easily pulled over the edge, having already signaled his devout eagerness for the dive, by a cleric who makes a living by justifying murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike?

In many recent reports of this controversy one has seen reporters from respectable papers referring not just to generic, uniform “Muslims” but even to the places where they live as “Muslim lands.” If you would object to seeing the absurd term “Christendom” in your newspaper as a description of Europe, let alone to reading about “Jewish land” on the West Bank, then please have the fortitude to complain next time violent theocracy is smuggled into the discourse under the increasingly feeble disguise of multicultural masochism.

Multicultural masochism, which leads to suicide through political correctness.

Because nothing represents girls’ rights better than this:

It’s Barbie in a burkha: World-famous doll gets a makeover to go under the hammer for 50th anniversary

One of the world’s most famous children’s toys, Barbie, has been given a makeover – wearing a burkha.

Wearing the traditional Islamic dress, the iconic doll is going undercover for a charity auction in connection with Sotheby’s for Save The Children.

More than 500 Barbies went on show yesterday at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy.

Dan wants to know if Barbie also has a removable head.

No Sheeples Here comments,

So, little girls feel that repression and subjugation represents them? Let’s hope the genitals are mutilated in an anatomically and culturally correct depiction of Muslim womanhood.

Phyllis wonders about Ken,

Will clean-cut Ken now come (pun intended, ‘tis mine) with four burqa’ed Barbie doll wives?

Jammie answers Phyllis’s question:

As reported in the Daily Prince, Egyptian activist’s invitation withdrawn

A planned Wednesday talk by controversial Egyptian-American activist Nonie Darwish was cancelled Tuesday evening when both of the event’s sponsors, Tigers for Israel (TFI) and the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, withdrew their sponsorship, citing her criticism of Islam.

Darwish, a writer and the founder of Arabs for Israel and Former Muslims United, was scheduled to give a talk Wednesday afternoon titled “Sharia Law and Perspectives on Israel.” TFI officers rescinded their invitation, however, explaining that they had not been fully aware of Darwish’s views when they invited her to speak.

Though TFI had been planning Darwish’s visit for nearly three weeks and advertised it with posters across campus, TFI president Addie Lerner ’11 said that her organization, which is affiliated with the Center for Jewish Life (CJL), did not wish to be seen as endorsing Darwish by sponsoring her lecture. “We didn’t know in the beginning that [Darwish’s] views were not at all in line with what we believe,” Lerner explained.

They have to have known before they invited her, wouldn’t you think?

Coordinator of Muslim Life Sohaib Sultan and CJL director Rabbi Julie Roth both said they played a role in changing TFI’s opinion of Darwish. Sultan said he contacted Roth on Monday and discussed with her why Darwish’s appearance on campus could offend the Muslim community.

But of course, there is no room in academia for offending anyone, is there? Of course not:

On Wednesday afternoon, Lerner sent an e-mail to the members of the Muslim Students Association apologizing for the initial decision to invite Darwish to campus and explaining that the event had been canceled. “I sincerely apologize for offending any person or group on campus, especially the Muslim community,” she said in the e-mail. “Tigers for Israel deeply regrets the initial sponsorship, and we do not in any way endorse [Darwish’s] views.”

Pamela and Phyllis have more on this recent outbreak of Ivy-League dhimmitude.

At the Washington Times,
Islamic militants boosting role in drug trade

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up “very worrisome reports” of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South Atlantic are wide open to illegal navigation, the official said.

“The South Atlantic has become a no-man’s sea,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity owing to the nature of his work.

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) confirmed the new route.

“The Colombians have shifted their focus from sending cocaine through the Caribbean, and they saw an opportunity to sell cocaine in Europe, transshipping it through the South Atlantic from Venezuela and then to Africa, through Spain and into Europe,” DEA spokesman Michael Sanders told The Washington Times. “That’s what we’re seeing. It’s just a new location. That’s the route they’re taking, for the most part.”

Islamists, the FARC and Venezuela are involved:

Concerns center on groups such as al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which operates primarily in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. North African officials say they worry that AQIM is amassing large sums of money from the drug trade to use in financing attacks, with the object of frightening away tourists, undercutting local economies and, ultimately, secular regimes.

Much of the drug trafficking passes through Venezuela, said Jaime Daremblum, the director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute and a former Costa Rican ambassador to the United States.

“Caracas has become the cathedral of narco-traffickers,” he said.

Colombian and Peruvian drugs pass through Venezuela en route to Africa and then are transshipped to European markets, anti-drug specialists say. The FARC guerrilla movement, which seeks to destabilize the government of Colombia, is involved and has links to the Islamists in North Africa, they say.

These releationships should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog: Background post from three years ago, Caribbean oil, Caribbean drugs, and major players.