Close on the heels of an American businesswoman in Saudi Arabia being jailed for having coffee with a man who wasn’t her husband, another woman has just been sentenced to 300 lashes and 18 months in jail for appearing in public without a male guardian.

Death reopens debate over ‘honour’ killings in Turkey, which account for half of all the country’s murders

Tragically Sad…

Also here:

The girl, identified by police only by her initials M.M., was said to have a large amount of soil in her stomach and lungs, indicating she had been buried alive.

“The autopsy result is blood-curdling. According to our findings, the girl – who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood – was alive and fully conscious when she was buried,” one anonymous expert said.

The girl had been reported as missing by her family. Police have arrested her father, mother and grandfather.

…The case is expected to bring further attention to the issue of “honor” killings in Turkey. Official figures indicate that more than 200 “honor” killings take place each year – almost half of all murders in Turkey.

GETTING BACK TO MUSLIMS, there are people who would insist that we should distinguish between those who cut off the heads of their innocent victims and those who just want to live and let live. Well, I keep trying, heaven knows, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

For instance, recently I read about a stomach-turning incident that took place in Phoenix, Arizona. It seems that four boys between the ages of nine and 14 lured an eight-year-old girl into a shed and took turns raping her. While that was pretty damn loathsome, what was even more disgusting is what took place afterward. In the little girl’s presence, her father, a Muslim refugee from Liberia, told the police, “Take her. I don’t want her.”

It seems that in what passes for their culture, the child had brought shame on the family.

Burt further notes:

As did the majority of reports of the incident, The Arizona Republic wrote it up as another casualty of the Liberian war. The word “Muslim” does not appear in the report. See
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/07/26/20090726liberia.html.

Yet, the family’s rejection is clearly a response — a mild one at that — to the fact that the family’s honor was violated, which requires that a family cleanse itself of the stain, usually by killing the rape victim

Sad, unbelievably sad – and shocking.