In the wild, wild East, in the tribal “badlands” between Pakistan and Muslim India, few girls or women willingly risk being honor killed for refusing an arranged marriage or for wanting to leave an exceptionally violent husband.
The National Iranian American Council organized the letter signed by seventy-three “international scholars” who favor the treaty—no, the deal—no, the deal with secret asides—no, the run-around Congress—no, President Obama’s cynical fait accompli—between Iran and America.
Even as the Western intelligentsia continue to focus upon the fake and inflated refugee crisis among Palestinians, the world’s real refugee crisis– Christians and Yezidis persecuted by ISIS– has become both overwhelming and hidden in plain sight.
The summer is known as the “cutting season.” This means that infants as young as two or three months old are being taken out of the UK to be genitally mutilated in their countries of origin, such as Malaysia, whose customs, like those of Iran, have become increasingly Arabized.
The Yezidis are holding worldwide rallies and Memorial Services tomorrow in Oldenberg, Germany; on August 2nd in Lalish, Iraq (the Yezidi spiritual heartland), and in France; and on August 3rd in Geneva, Armenia, Berlin, and in cities in Sweden, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and the United States (Lincoln, Nebraska; Houston, Texas; and perhaps Buffalo, New York).
A great soul has just gone on to his Creator: Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 mainly Jewish children from Prague in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, died today. He was 106 years old.
The Yezidis are now on the move. This has been secretly planned for months. What we now have is a potentially mass exodus from ISIS-controlled Iraq. They have reason to believe that Bulgaria will grant them asylum. However, Turkey, which they must enter and exit on their way to Bulgaria, is giving them trouble.
Just as another “Freedom Flotilla” is sailing to Gaza, veteran filmmaker Pierre Rehov’s latest film War Crimes in Gaza will be shown next week to the European Parliament under the auspices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The Spanish government is offering citizenship to the descendants of formerly exiled Spanish Jews. No longer will such Jews actually have to travel to Spain; they need only “hire a Spanish notary and pass tests on the Spanish language and history.”
Oh, how the feminist movement has lost its way. And the deafening silence over ISIS’s latest brutal crimes makes that all too clear.
The Pakistani courtroom proceedings were secret. Despite what reporters were previously told this past April (that ten men had been convicted), Pakistani authorities secretly acquitted eight of the men charged with conspiracy and attempted murder in the case of teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted because she wanted girls to receive an education.
On June 1st, the Supreme Court “reversed and remanded” Samantha Elauf’s high profile lawsuit concerning her right to wear a hijab at work back to the Tenth Circuit’s appeals court for further proceedings. Elauf, represented by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had been awarded $20,000 by a jury at the trial level; that award was vacated by the appeals court. Now, when the appeals court revisits the case, they may reinstate that jury award.
According to Kurdish media network Rudaw, seventeen-year-old “Suzan,” a Kurdish Yezidi girl was kidnapped, gang-raped, enslaved, and impregnated by ISIS warriors. Incredibly, she managed to escape and has told her story to Delal Sindy, a Swedish-Kurdish activist living in a Kurdish region.
On Saturday evening, November 8, 2003, I addressed a free-standing feminist “networking” conference of mainly African-American and Hispanic-American women at Barnard College. The conference was sponsored by WERISE (Women Empowered through Revolutionary Ideas Supporting Enterprise), which was described as a grassroots, multi-cultural, multi-generational, and multi-disciplinary organization for women in the arts. The women ranged in age from 20 to 65 and were dressed in corporate business suits, colorful African and ethnic attire, and youthful jeans.
Earlier this week, an Indian man, Jairam Manjhi, aged either 36 or 25, and Parvati Kumari, a 16-year-old girl related to her lover’s wife, were kidnapped by the girl’s family and brutally beaten to death; the girls’ family publicly burned their corpses while 100 villagers stood by and watched the entire grisly episode.
The long arm of American justice has reached right into Pakistan, where a heinous overseas revenge-for-honor killing was perpetrated—one that was orchestrated by cell phone from the front seat of a taxi in Brooklyn, New York.
We are living in infamous times. Reality outpaces fiction, and the worst case scenarios keep unfolding in our daily headlines.
The PEN award to the survivors of the Charlie Hebdo massacre has drawn some very distinguished fire.
A petition to support Professor Andrew Pessin’s right to free speech—which includes his pro-Israel point of view—now has almost 10,000 signatures. In addition, this morning, Dr. Pessin tells this reporter, “We trust that the administration is willing to work together with
Zainub Priya Dala, a South African Muslim author and psychologist, was “violently attacked for expressing admiration for Salman Rushdie” the day after praising the author. After countless phoned-in threats to recant, Dala was placed under psychiatric care in which she was “drugged until I could not walk” and advised to adopt a proper Muslim lifestyle.
Foreign girls who are lured via the internet to join ISIS are being misled by a glamorized vision of women posing with AK-47s and in martial arts positions—in essence, a vision of women performing forbidden, male-only holy mission tasks.
Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, is the latest casualty in the campus-based culture wars. Dr. Pessin is a well-liked and much published professor, self-described as the “only Jewish professor on campus who openly advocates for Israel.” And now, for remarks made during last summer’s Gaza war, he faces an attack from Palestinian supporters seeking to silence pro-Israel stances on campus.
Yesterday, according to a PassBlue report prominent Indian anti-prostitution activist Ruchira Gupta revealed: “I was surprised that the UN was trying to censor [me and told] me not to speak on prostitution, when my work was with victims of prostitution.”
Polygamy is widely practiced in Gaza—and the women (or “sister wives”) are not happy about it.
At press time, President Obama has not yet congratulated the new Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just warned that Israeli Arab voters are being brought to the polling booth by V15 (Victory 2015) and other NGOS funded from abroad. He said: “We do not have NGOs. We do not have V15.”
Former Madam Secretary, Senator, and First Lady Hillary Clinton has used the issue of women’s rights—and the desire of many Americans to see a woman in the top job—to realize her ambition for more and more power. But what has she actually done for women, locally or globally?
The global allure of a self-designated Caliphate, especially one that insists that its every barbaric action is Qur’an-based and Sharia-true, should not be underestimated.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a passionate, inspiring, thoughtful, and “game changing” speech before the American Congress which lasted for about 45 minutes, during which time he was applauded 43 times, often for 15 seconds at a time. His words elicited many standing ovations.
Yesterday, terrorists threatened to “behead” Tasmanian Senator Jacquie Lambie if she did not help “introduce sharia law in Australia.”
As Islam conquered what was formerly a Christian Middle East; what was formerly a Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Christian Central Asia (India, Persia, Afghanistan, parts of Russia); what was formerly a pagan, animist and Christian Africa; Islam also conquered what was formerly a Hindu and Buddhist Indonesia and Malaysia.
Former film star Brigitte Bardot, France’s iconic blonde bombshell and “sex kitten” who reigned supreme from 1952 – 1973, is currently on trial for the fifth time for insulting Muslims and “inciting racial hatred.” Bardot has been fined four times and has also received suspended jail sentences.
Brookings Institution Center for Middle East Policy Fellow Shadi Hamid recently criticized the West as “illiberal” for refusing to accept the fact that Muslims, both in the West and globally, are different from Westerners.
ISIS fighters are “buying their wives kinky underwear,” demanding Viagra to better their performance, and subjecting their wives, concubines, and sex slaves to sadistic sexual practices, according to Syrian doctors forced to treat jihadists in conquered territories.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has announced an “extensive campaign against violence against women across the country, in the aftermath of the brutal murder of a university student in an attempted rape on a public minibus.”
For centuries, Westerners have been lured by the “mysterious” East. Fortune hunters, explorers, adventurers, businessmen, diplomats, journalists, artists, missionaries, and humanitarian aid workers have all fled the confines of the West for lives of drama and danger.
Sanity has just prevailed in Muslim-majority Indonesia. An attempt to impose virginity tests on female high school students in the city of Jember has failed. A public outcry, led by human rights groups, as well as by Indonesia’s Muslim clerics, has led to the rescinding of a virginity requirement for girls-only in high school. Non-virgins would not have been entitled to their diplomas.
ISIS has released a Manifesto on women and girls. Titled “Women in the Islamic State,” it is far more extreme than even Hitler’s vision of women as belonging in the nursery (Kinder) the kitchen, (Küche) and the Church (Kirche).
The most wanted woman in France may be working with ISIS now!
The King of Jordan has declared vengeance against ISIS and a number of Muslim clerics—and even Al-Qaeda—have condemned the fiery public murder of the Jordanian pilot.
