Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Huffington Post headline: "Taliban Insurgents Behead 17 Afghans As Punishment For Attending Party, Dancing"

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Islamists controlling northern Mali amputate an accused robber's hand:

“[A cutlass-wielding thug] held up the man’s hand for the people, like a sort of trophy,” [a] witness, a local teacher, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Ansongo. “He said, ‘God is great.’ It was barbaric.”

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Adam Nossiter reports in the New York Times:

Islamists in control of a town in northern Mali stoned a couple to death after accusing them of having children outside of marriage, a local official who was one of several hundred witnesses to the killings said Monday.

The official said the bearded Islamists, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, brought the couple into the center of the town of Aguelhok from about 12 miles away in the countryside. The young man and woman were forced into holes about four feet deep, with their heads protruding, and then stoned to death at about 5 a.m. Sunday, the official said.

“They put them into the holes, and then they started throwing big rocks, until they were dead,” the official said, speaking by satellite phone from the remote desert town near the Algerian border.

“It was horrible,” he said, noting that the woman had moaned and cried out and that her partner had yelled something indistinct during the attack. “It was inhuman. They killed them like they were animals.”

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

What is this, the Middle Ages? Evidently:

Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian pastor who in 2010 was found guilty of apostasy and sentenced to death for refusing to recant Christianity, may have received a final execution order, according to the American Center for Law and Justice and Fox News.

Neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty International could verify the information for The Huffington Post, but the White House on Thursday afternoon issued a statement condemning the reports and calling on Iran to release Pastor Nadarkhani.

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

The Washington Post covers the reopening of the national museum in the Maldives (an island nation 250 miles southwest of India) after a mob of radical Islamists destroyed almost all of the museum's pre-12 century non-Islamic exhibits:

The items had been preserved since the museum opened in 1952. [museum director Ali] Waheed said the the attackers did not understand that the museum exhibits were not promoting other religions in this Muslim country.

Practicing or preaching any religion other than Islam is prohibited by the Maldives constitution, and there have been increasing demands for conservative Muslim policies to be implemented.

Last year, a mob destroyed a monument given by Pakistan marking a South Asian summit with an engraved image of the Buddha in it. Pakistan is an Islamic republic that also has a Buddhist history.

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

After 22-year-old Storai (her only name) is murdered by her mother and husband in northern Afghanistan for not giving birth to a boy, experts reflect on the status of women:

Manizha Naderi, executive director of Women for Afghan Women, which runs shelters for abused women, said that while she had seen cases in which women were bullied by their husbands through pregnancy, and that sometimes a husband even took a second or third wife if the first wife continued to have girls, murder was unusual.

“Girls are looked down upon in Afghanistan,” Ms. Naderi said. “I have heard of many cases where the wife is threatened with violence and beaten up, but I have never heard of a woman being killed for having a girl.”

Heather Barr, an Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that there was a cultural tolerance for violence against women and impunity for men who committed it, and that recent efforts to protect women had had scant effect.

“What is most disappointing,” Ms. Barr said, “is that the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women Law was supposed to change this, and it has had very little impact so far.”

She said rules in the penal code specified that a husband could kill his wife for having had sex outside of marriage. Even the civil code has rules allowing a husband to take a second wife if the first one is not procreating satisfactorily, Ms. Barr said.

Officer? Non-Islamic Blow-Dry On Chair Three!

Journalist Carina Kamel compares this Christmas in Cairo to last year's and worries about what may be in store for Egypt's women and non-Muslims:

Perhaps one of the biggest changes this Christmas was that the perceived threat of Islamism shared by liberals and Christians is now all the more real as the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood are poised to control parliament.

This makes secular parties, liberal groups, activists and Christians very nervous. They are concerned about religious intrusion in private life and restrictions on civil liberties. Already, there have been local media reports of a self-appointed "religious police" barging into places like ladies' hairdressers and ordering patrons to cease what they describe as un-Islamic practices like getting a blow dry. That incident didn't go down well with Egypt's well groomed women, who, according to reports, beat up the extremists and kicked them out of the beauty parlor.

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Discouraged by the lack of progress for human rights as the optimism of the Arab spring recedes? Let's hear it for the Saudi labor ministry:

Saudi women, tired of having to deal with men when buying undergarments, have boycotted lingerie stores to pressure them to employ women. The government's decision to enforce the law requiring that goes into effect Thursday.

I'm SO Interested In Their Foreign Policy Advice

More news from the "Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?" desk:

In Saudi Arabia, no woman can travel, gain admittance to a public hospital or live independently without a "mahram," or guardian. Men can beat women who don't obey, with special instructions not to pop the eye, break an arm or leave a mark on their bodies.

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

A Swiss couple is cruelly mocked by extremist Muslims during their wedding in the Maldives.

Another Shariah Snuff Film

From the "Clash of Civilizations? What Civilization?" desk, another report from the frontiers of primitive savagery:

Al Aan, a Dubai-based pan-Arab television channel that focuses on women's issues, said it had obtained cellphone footage that it says shows a woman being executed because she was seen out with a man. The killing reportedly took place two months ago and was smuggled out by a Taliban member who attended the stoning...

"Who attended the stoning"? Sounds like he bought a ticket. Maybe he did. I'd have called him "a Taliban member who was an accessory to first-degree murder."

While the video was reportedly shot in Pakistan, ABC's Brian Ross said these murders of women also occur in Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, with two of which we hare cordial diplomatic relations. If they were murdering not women but...Oh, never mind.

Watch where you click. While ABC only shows a brief excerpt, it's gruesome enough.

Call House. He Might Actually Be Into This.

Via the AP, news from our staunch ally in the Middle East:

A Saudi Arabian judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man’s spinal cord as punishment for his attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him, the brother of the victim said Thursday.

Clash of civilizations? Depends on what you mean by civilization.

Follow The Burqa

Phyllis Chesler:

Follow the burqa. Where she goes, you will probably find normalized wife-battering, serious child abuse, including honor killings too—as well as polygamy, and a pathological hatred of Jews, Israelis, Hindus, Americans, and all other infidels. There you may also find terrorist cells or supporters of terrorism.