Extreme social conservatism

(meme) BBC:

An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law.

[..] It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children.

Welcome to Afghanistan. Please set your clocks back 800 years.

Crazy Islamism watch

(meme) During special Muslim swimming sessions in UK public swimming pools, women must wear "burkinis".

Meanwhile, in Iraq and Pakistan

Update: State Dept.: Reports of Iraqi Gay Executions Completely Bogus:

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department who works at the Iraqi Desk and spent a year in the war-torn country told EDGE that the story has no merit. "Homosexuality is not a crime in Iraq," said John Fleming, the public affairs officer for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

"The individuals condemned to death in Iraq have been convicted of violent crimes, including murder, terrorism, insurgency and kidnapping."

There have been no executions of criminals since 2007, added Fleming, who also noted that any criminals now awaiting possible execution are there for crimes such as "terrorism, insurgency and kidnapping." Their sexual identity is irrelevant to the charges, he said.

[...] "Homosexuality is outlawed by more than 85 countries and is punishable by death in several Islamic states, including Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen," Fleming pointed out. "But Iraq is not one of them."

Phew!

Original reports:

UK Gay News:

More than 100 prisoners in Iraq are facing execution – and some of them are believed to have been convicted of a ‘gay crime’, the UK-based Iraqi-LGBT group revealed this afternoon.

According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week.

Radley:

Good thing we sacrificed a trillion dollars and the lives 4,000+ U.S. troops to create such a shining beacon of Middle Eastern democracy, huh?

Ed Brayton:

I'm sure glad we gave Iraqis the freedom to live in a brutal theocracy.

Ed's quote of the original article says "many of them are believed to have been convicted of the 'crime' of being gay". But the UK Gay News site he links to says "some of".

It sure doesn't seem like all 100+ are being executed for homosexuality, as Radley interpreted it. But even one is an outrage.

Not angry enough yet? Let's move to the Taliban in Pakistan:

The Guardian has posted a grueling video of a young girl being flogged in public by the Taliban in Pakistan. I found it very hard to watch, and I have a strong stomach. The description is rough enough:

Two men hold her arms and feet while a third, a black-turbaned fighter with a flowing beard, whips her repeatedly. "Please stop it," she begs, alternately whimpering or screaming in pain with each blow to the backside. "Either kill me or stop it now." A crowd of men stands by, watching silently. Off camera a voice issues instructions.

"Hold her legs tightly," he says as she squirms and yelps. After 34 lashes the punishment stops and the wailing woman is led into a stone building, trailed by a Kalashnikov-carrying militant. Reached by phone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging. "She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross," he said.

Maher on the marijuana question

As I said a few posts down:

Some people simply can't understand that if drugs were legal, our enemies wouldn't have a monopoly on them and be out of their lucrative business. So when you tell them enemies are financed by opium, they think we need to double down on the task of eradicating drug trade. They have no perspective on how intractable that is, or how badly we've been failing at it for decades.

Salmon Rushdie here is an example of a smart guy who doesn't get it. Good of Hitchens to set things straight.

She wore make-up and talked to a stranger

...so her father and 2 brothers beat her to death:

International human rights organizations have condemned honour killings in Jordan and appealed to King Abdullah to put an end to the practice.

The government urged judges to consider honour killings equal to other homicides, punishable with up to life in prison.

But attempts to introduce harsher sentences have been blocked in Jordan's parliament, where the predominantly conservative Bedouin legislators argue that tougher penalties would lead to adultery.

So this is what passes for social conservatism in Islamic societies... one commentator:

Before i even clicked on the article i knew it was going to be islam related ......seriously islam get out of the dark ages they are what Christianity was like 1000 years ago .....kinda sad

Taste of Iraq

The good:

People were happy with the initial results and it was very clear to everyone that the people have learned from the bitter experiences of the past few years and the previous elections of 2005. They all believe that the religious parties brought nothing to this country but sectarianism, which cost them the lives of hundreds of thousands of their relatives and friends. The secular parties became an alternative for most of the Iraqis.

The heartwarming:

As a journalist stationed in one voting center, I was not able to vote. It made me very sad at heart that I was sitting out these elections (especially after boycotting the last ones).

After work I rushed to my assigned voting center only to find it long closed. I started blaming myself for not voting before heading to duty. At home, I was overjoyed to see my family’s purple forefingers. I hid my hand in my pocket, slipped to my room and dipped my finger in a bottle of ink. Not out of fear but out of a desire to be part of this great experience.

The bad:

We are a displaced family. We were told that we could only vote where our ration card is issued. How do they expect us to go vote in the neighbourhood from which we were displaced? All the world knows that there are millions of Iraqis displaced inside Iraq – couldn't the Elections Commission place a box for the displaced in every centre? We have been issued IDs stating that we are displaced – Is corruption so wide spread that they don't trust their own IDs?

The awful:

A woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.

"We arrested Samira Jassim, known as 'Um al-Mumenin', the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women'', Major General Qassim Atta said.

It was Winston Churchill who said "war is beyond all words horrible."

But then what do you call this orchestrating the rape of women and then telling them they need to kill themselves while blowing up nearby enemies in order to escape the shame?

It too is beyond all words, but even more beyond.

Update: Ladyblog's take: "monsters"

Quote of the day

Decisive military defeat is history's great "moderator". (Just ask the Germans.) --Reuel Gerecht

They hate us for...

our tied-for-eighth-place freedom?

I'm sure cracking down on basic liberties is part of a complete anti-terrorism package...not only is it supposed to protect us from the terrorists, it undercuts their supposed motivation!