It's all about you Spider.

Religious fanaticism of any kind is just wrong.

"Religious fanaticism of any kind is just wrong. "

The Amish are religious fanatics, I haven't heard about them slaughtering and mutilating their women. Gross generalizations like the ones you are so fond of are not valid in intellectual debates. There is a HUGE difference between members of a religion who do terrible things to their women, against the teachings of their religion and members of a religion who do terrible things to their women, because their religions tells them its right. This isn't about Islam, it's about radical Islam, whose behavior is opposed by most Muslims.

Spider - yes this is an important issue.

Thanks Jess - I was looking at those sites too.

I have always felt that being born a woman in Canada is like winning the lottery...it is not this way for women in MANY parts of the world ... who do they turn to when there is nowhere to turn...when the ones who should be protecting are the abusers ... when it is family and police and culture that accepts or perpetuates the abuse ... who do they turn to when they are though of as chatel ... as less than human ... when there is no recourse or punishment for the abuser? The statistics are staggering.

Yes abuse happens everywhere ... all of it is completely unacceptable to me. As a people ... as a humanity ... we are only as strong as the weakest of us

........
Excepts from Broken Bodies, Shattered Mind: Torture and Ill-Treatment of Women ...from Anmesty International.

Kajal Khidr, who was pregnant at the time, was detained by her husband’s relatives in 1996 in Iraqi Kurdistan. The accused her of extramarital sex, cut off her nose, and said they would kill her after her child was born. She escaped following hospital treatment and found protection in a women’s refuge in the city of Sulaimaniya. With the help of human rights activists, Kajal Khidr escaped abroad and was granted asylum.

Bina, from Bangladesh, hold a picture of herself before she had acid thrown in her face. She is now in the USA, runs for her college athletics team and is awaiting plastic surgery. Some 200 cases of acid-throwing are believed to occur every year in Bangladesh, mostly committed by jilted suitors and abusive husbands. The disfigurement caused is permanent and extremely painful. Many women lose their eyesight and the acid often permanently joins chin to chest or lips to nose. The pain and distress are compounded by the (often justified) fear of rejection by husband, family and community.

Nasiroh, an Indonesian national working in Saudi Arabia, was abused by both her employer and the police. She was unaware that she had been convicted of any offence, but spent five years in prison in Saudi Arabia.

“We, the women, work in the fields all day long, bear the heat and sun, sweat and toil and tremble all day long, not knowing who may cast a look upon us. We stand accused and condemned to be declared a kari (literally a black woman, suspected of illicit sexual relations) and murdered”….testimony of a young Pakistani girl.

Women in Pakistan who have been raped, but cannot provide FOUR witnesses to prove that they did not give consent, have themselves been jailed for illicit sexual intercourse… Lock-up Karachi Central Court, Pakistan

Saudi Arabia: Karsini Binti Sandi, an Indonesian domestic worker, was abused by her employers and threatened by the police when she sought their help.

Lucia Paiva de Almeida has been unable to leave her home in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for four years. Lucia and her husband were arrested without warrant in 1996 by members of the civil police. Lucia was physically and sexually tortured in a small roon in the police station as police tried to force her to implicate her husband in a number of thefts. She was then put out onto the street in the early hours of the morning. No one has been charged in connection with her torture….

“They put a wet sponge under my neck and laid me on an electric stall. They repeatedly exposed me to electric shocks over several hours…Afterwards they put me on another table…And they brought a truncheon. They told me ‘Kneel down’. And they slowly insterted the truncheon into my anus. Suddenly, they pushed me and forced me to sit on the truncheon. I started to bleed … one of them came, climbed on me and raped me.” The Turkish police officers alleged to have tortured Zeynep Avci in late 1996 were not prosecuted.

When she was 15, Ms G’s parents traded her to a neighbour as a wife, in exchange for his assistance in paying off the mortgage on their farm. Her husband routinely raped and beat her, resulting in injuries which required hospitalization. Ms. G went to the police twice for protection, but was told they could do nothing because the problem was personal. When she was 20, she ran away with her two children, but her parents and husband found her, and her mother held her down while her husband beat her with a stick. He took the children, whom she has not seen since. Ms G fled to the USA and applied for asylum. An immigration judge told Ms G’s attorney in 2000 that he intended to order her to be deported back to El Salvador.

.......


We are all one ... what is done to one of us affects us all ... yes, we are only as strong as the weakest of us.

I was invited to be part of an art exhibition on domestic violence a few years ago. I wondered at that time ...

If we have eyes that see nothing
If we have ears that hear nothing
If we have voices that make no sound
If we have arms that hold nothing
How ever will things change?


We are all one people ... one humanity ... why can't that be enough?

ArtGurl,

Thank you.

In my opinion to try to segregate or allow that one is worse than the other is ludicrous. Remember that not too long ago here in America a wife was a possession to be done with as a man felt. Women have been second rate citizens for a long time all over the world. Until men look at a woman as an equal to him this will continue. That is a simple as it gets. There are men on this site who think of women as less than them. They may be only acting as they were taught without thought but it happens here and now.

Dragoness,

Watch the video and see if you still think they are equal. Look at the pretty woman who had her nose, eyes and ears cut off, because her husband was unhappy with her. Tell her that it's the same.

And I think it's interesting that you point out the treatment of women hundreds of years ago in the US to the treatment of women today by radical Islam. Comparing apples to apples would completely destroy your argument. Women here are protected by laws. At no time in US history, would FGM or honor killings have been supported.

Do you know the things that happen to women here in the states daily? Rape, murder, disfigurement, etc..... They are not in the spotlight as Islam is right now but it happens here daily. There are women criminalized all the time here. Go to a woman's shelter sometime, ask them what they suffered to get them there.

But that is spiders point, don't you see it?
He wants to point and single out Islam, the rest of the women don't seem to really matter to him.
And that's the point of all posters here.
You have to sweep your own front steps before you point at a neighbours house and declare it dirty.

Dragoness,

The differences that I keep pointing out is this: (please don't ignore this!!!!)

1) The abuse detailed in the video is legal.
2) The abuse detailed in the video is fully supported by radical Islam.
3) The women under radical Islam have no legal recourse for being raped, murdered or mutilated.

I'm not denying that crimes happen outside of radical Islam, but radical Islam is a religous and legal movement that APPROVES of the abuse of women. That's the difference. In the US, you have random a-holes beating their wives, but in Pakistan it's legal to rape a woman who isn't wearing a Hibjab. Surely you can see the vast difference. If a woman in the US presses charges against a rapist, he is tried. In Iran, if a woman admits to being raped, she is inprisoned or executed and her rapist goes unpunished.

invisible,

Liar liar, pants on fire. You know full well what my point is, so why you are lying about my motives?

I told you once before what I think of people calling others liar, and I have told you before what I think of your anti Islam propaganda.
I will have no problem saying it all over again.
The greatest liar here is you, spider, you even lie to yourself about your motives.
I'm no lying about them, but I strongly question them because I know you for too long now, and obviously I'm not the only one.
So will you call us all liars?

You should start thinking before you put your fingers on a keyboard to insult people.

I know you want to be hated because it suits your belief that it makes you better, but it still doesn't work, I still pity you because you are not worth any of my energy.

Spider, listen, I understand you are hooked on Islam, but the recourse women have here is not so peachy either. Rape trials are hard on women and it is their burden of proof, not only to prove they are "moral" women who did not deserve to be raped and/or mutilated but then they have to suffer through the public humiliation and still lose the case and the raper is set free. You are obsessed man. They are just a little behind the times there that is all. Women are second rate citizens as I said before. Time will catch up there hopefully soon. Your point is all about Islam, not the suffering of women, cause if you truly felt it, you would see it everywhere you look.

Invisible,

"I know you want to be hated because it suits your belief that it makes you better, but it still doesn't work, I still pity you because you are not worth any of my energy. "

I love you.

Dragoness,

Watch the video and then tell me how hard women in America have it. Would a woman who had her eyes, nose and ears cut off by her husband have a hard time getting him convicted?

"anti Islam propaganda"

Anti-Radical Islam and it's not propaganda. It's just the facts.

Spider,

together with all your other posts about Islam it's propaganda.
I remember what my granny told me about how it started in the 3.Reich, you know.

invisible,

Nazis lied.

I have posted the truth.

The two are not the same.

God bless.

No, they just blew a few incidents up and generalized them, as you do.

Don't have to watch the video, worked in social services here. I saw first hand the things done to women here, even lost a few clients to death because the wonderful system you think is here failed to protect them. A client had her face burned so badly she did not have facial features, due to the fact she did not see who did it, the husband got away with it ,and then he came back to finish the job. There was no video of this and it did not hit the news. So sad for her, huh? Don't give me your hype. I do know what women suffer all over the world. We are more equal here, granted, but it has a long way to go. As long as man made religions place men in the dominant position in a man woman relationship there will be issues because each man's mind takes that to it's own level.

spider, i read about this years ago and i am as horrified today as i was then. women were stoned for allowing their wrists or ankles to show. and the clitorectomies for young girls specifically so that they will not feel sexual pleasure. i did not see the video, but i understand your point in posting this.

Dragoness,

The story you told is terrible and it's a pity that the system failed this woman, but that's the point: the system failed. Those women in the video...the system worked for them. The system that allows FGM, honor murders, spousal rape, rape in general, wife beatings. That is the system there. In the US, we talk about when the system fails, but this video shows where their system of subjegation and brutality against women succeeds.