Islam and Women

I could not remain a Muslim because Islam hates women.  I think I always knew this, but as I got older that knowledge became more acute, Islam wants women to cover themselves, to stay indoors, to obey men, however stupid those men are.  Islam says that women are inferior in every way.  Islam distorted my father’s feelings.  He did not want us, his own daughters, to be happy or fulfilled.  He only wanted us to be good Muslims and for daughters this means to be suffering Muslims.  What sort of religion forces fathers to make their daughters suffer?  What sort of father thinks that his daughter’s hair is shameful?  What sort of father tells her she cannot sing and dance when she is happy?  A Muslim father.

This is why I am not a Muslim.  My children, boys and girls, will be able to feel the wind in their hair.  They will not be ashamed.  They can sing and dance as much as they like.  Nothing they do will shame me, as long as it is done with life and joy.  Islam has no joy.  Islam is a cult of tears and death.

Testimony submitted to the web site of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society

A man is never alone with a woman without Satan also being present.
Hadith Al-Albani, Sahih al-Jami, vol. 1, p. 234.]

 

Western Muslim's Racist Race Spree (frontpagemag.com 12/27/05)

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property,
 either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery
until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, Vol. II, pp. 248-50, London: Longman, Green & Co., 1899)

 

Movie about the Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

Wafa Sultan about The Life of Women Under Islam

 

    The Muslims who raped the Swedish victim probably believed they were carrying out their Islamic duty.  Kasem in an interview with Frontpage Magazine explained:

According to Islam, Muslims are at perpetual war with the non-Muslims. Wherever, there is even a shred of Islam (even a single Muslim) it is incumbent upon him to enforce Islam in whatever capacity. This means, as per Islamic law (Sharia), infidel women, who do not comply with the Islamic dress codes, are captives of the Muslims living in the infidel territory. In Hedaya, the Hanafi law manual, we find that a Muslim living in an infidel land is allowed to have unlimited sex with the non-Muslim women without having the need to marry them. This should explain why, many Islamic men in the infidel world are caught for raping the ‘slutty’ ‘bitchy’, ‘whores’; of the western countries. They deserve to be purified by Islamic rape, as many such Muslim will say.

The Islamic hatred for western women who do not cover their bodies with Islamic ‘tents’ knows no bound. In 2006, the Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Hilali considered these western women as the ‘cat’s’ meat, that is: these western women deserve to be eaten (sexually) by Muslim men who chance upon them. We might not like what Mufti Hilali said, but he is absolutely correct. Islam allows Muslim men to have forced sex upon non-Muslim women who do not cover their ‘meat’. Here is the proof:

In verse 33:59. Allah says: O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies (i.e. screen themselves completely except the eyes or one eye to see the way). That will be better, that they should be known (as free respectable women) so as not to be annoyed. And Allah is Ever of Forgiving, Most Merciful...

In Islam, Muslim men are allowed to have unlimited sexual intercourse with maidservants and/or sexual slaves. A Muslim man commits rape if and only if he has sex with a Muslim woman out of wedlock. Having forced sex with an infidel, uncovered woman does not at all constitute rape, Islamically speaking.

The natural conclusion is that Muslim men are completely free to Islamically rape these infidel women, if these whores fall in Muslim men's hands...

Gutmann is of the opinion that hijabisation of Muslim women living in western countries is to prevent the infidel men from touching/being intimate with them. This is a good observation. I would go one step forward and state that this attitude is more prevalent among the male of middle-eastern/Arab origin. Please note that these men have no qualm sleeping/having sex with infidel women, but they will never tolerate infidel men being intimate with Arab/middle-east women. There are instances when Arab men have murdered infidel western men for having sex with hijabised/Arab women. The message is very clear: hijabisation is to prevent the Muslim women from mixing/ being intimate with infidel men. Thus, besides strictly repressing the sexuality of a Muslim woman, hijab/niqab is also meant to establish a permanent barrier between a Muslim woman and an infidel man. Mentioned before, note again the double-standard: Muslim men are free to have unfettered sex with infidel women, but the Muslim women cannot have the same privilege.

Earlier I mentioned that Muhammad’s last instruction to Muslim men was to beat women and treat them as domestic animals. A Muslim woman’s hijab/niqab truly reflects this servitude of women to Muhammad’s command. A hijab/niqab is a leash on a woman, much like a domesticated dog. A hijabised Muslim woman is no better than a domestic dog.

    The most senior judge in England declared that Islamic legal principles in Shariah law may be used within Muslim communities in Britain to settle marital arguments as long as it was consistent with English law.  Shariah is not consistent with English law.  If a Shariah court ruled in a certain way and it was in violation of British law I doubt the victim of a Shariah ruling would risk doing anything about it and British judges would be afraid to rule against the Shariah ruling.  If a Muslim woman appealed to British law to challenge a Shariah ruling she'd be seen as an infidel who betrayed Islam and Islamic law requires that those who leave Islam be killed.  Cal Thomas in an article in the Washington Times wrote:

Here are just some of the "benefits" British Muslim women can look forward to if Shariah law replaces English law: The Muslim woman cannot marry without parental approval, worsening the problem of forced marriage; marriages can be conducted without the presence of a bride, as long as the guardian consents, creating a climate for underage and early marriage; Muslim women may only marry Muslim men.

It gets worse. A Muslim man can divorce his wife by repudiating her; he has no obligation to support a former wife, or her children after the divorce; women are prohibited from divorcing a husband without his consent; abuse is not grounds for a woman to end a marriage; in matters of inheritance, sons are entitled to twice as much of an estate as daughters.

Divorced women must remain single. If they remarry, they can lose custody of their children. There is no similar requirement for a man. Child custody often reverts to the father at a preset age, even if the father has been abusive.

    On this web page, I discuss the Islamic attitude toward women.  This attitude can be divided into the Islamic attitude toward infidel women and the Islamic attitude toward Islamic women.  I start with what Islamic sources say and then give examples of how this is being put into practice in modern times.  It is important to keep in mind that not all Muslims think alike, and that there are Muslims who are respectful of both infidel and Moslem women.

Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy wrote in the Yemen Times an article titled There Must be Violence Against Women.  Maged complained that:

"Some human rights organizations recently have attacked violent acts against women, standing against any type of violence – even that between a father and daughter – and citing the cases of some women as examples."

In a frontpagemagazine symposium (Gender Apartheid and Islam, 12/30/04) Ali Sina argued with two apologists for Islam's teachings on women, Ms. Julia Roach and Mohammad El Mallah.  Mr. Sina said:

Let us see what the Quran says about women. It says  “men have a degree (of advantage) over them” 2:228 ; that the witness of woman is worth half of that of man 2:282; that women inherit half of their male siblings, 4:11-12; that a man can marry two or three or four women 4:3; that if a women becomes captive in a war, her Muslim master is allowed to rape her 33:50; that if a woman is not totally submissive to her husband she will enter Hell 66:10;   that women are “tilth” for their husbands (to cultivate them)  2:223; that men are in charge of women, as if women were imbeciles or minors who could not take care of themselves; that they must be obedient to their husbands or be admonished (verbally abused), banished from the bed (psychologically abused) and beaten (physically abused) 4:34.  

These verses define the station of women in Islam...

Ms. Roach laments that Islam is not practiced in all parts of the world by all Muslims to the standard prescribed by Allah in the Qur’an.  

For that we should give thanks to God. Imagine if all Muslims were to stone or hang victims of rape or flog women for minor offenses such as exposing a flock of hair. In fact, the countries that practice Islam to its fullest are truly barbaric. Just think of the suffering of the women in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. Women were not allowed to go out of their homes or work. Male doctors were not allowed to visit female patients. So, when women became sick, there was no one to take care of them and they died. The more a country becomes Islamic the more hellish it gets.  

Ms. Roach comforts herself by thinking that after women die they can expect to be treated equally and says “Women's souls have equal value to those of Men's”. In other words, what she is saying is that while women live a life of slavery, abuse and deprivation in this world they can rejoice because after they die they will be treated equally. Although I find this a vacuous bargain, the truth is that even this promise is not true. Women in Islam are not treated equally even in death.  

Men are promised many virgins after they die. What do women get? They get their old lousy husband to share with 72 voluptuous celestial virgins. With that many high-bosomed houries why would any man want to spend a night with an old wife? Do women get also young celestial studs to have orgies with? No they don’t. They have to maintain their “modesty” even after their death. The truth is that in Islam men and women are not treated equally even after their death.  

In fact, according to Muhammad few women ever make it to Paradise . The majority of them end up in Hell. Let us see what the Prophet says in this regards. This is where he describes his hallucinatory visit to hell and paradise:  

"Then I saw the (Hell) Fire, and I have never before, seen such a horrible sight as that, and I saw that the majority of its dwellers were women." The people asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is the reason for that?" He replied, "Because of their ungratefulness." It was said. "Do they disbelieve in Allah (are they ungrateful to Allah)?" He replied, "They are not thankful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors done to them. Even if you do good to one of them all your life, when she seems some harshness from you, she will say, "I have never seen any good from you.' " Bukhari 7.62.125...

She [Ms. Roach] also claims that a Muslim woman has the right to sexual satisfaction within her marriage and clarified that “if a woman is unsatisfied she can obtain a divorce”. Is that true? Under the Sharia women are not allowed to divorce even if their husband beats them. The decision to divorce rest only on man's whims. Now imagine a women going to a Judge demanding divorce accusing her husband of impotency. How can you humiliate the gigantic ego of a Muslim man and expect to live after that? She will be a dead woman the next day. If she survives and manages to divorce, she will be seen as a whore by everyone. A divorced woman has nowhere to go in the Islamic world. I do not know whether Ms. Roach has ever lived in an Islamic country. Muslim women are not allowed to have any libido. It is not pious for women to have sexual feelings. In fact the genital mutilation is designed to take away any sexual pleasure from them. Women are not supposed to enjoy sex. If they have any libido, there is a risk that they may fornicate and commit sin. Women must only provide satisfaction to their husbands and deny all their own sexual needs. According to a tradition: 

Allah's Apostle said, "If a husband calls his wife to his bed (i.e. to have sexual relation) and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till  morning." Bukhari 4.54.450 

It is hilarious to think that the angels have nothing better to do than sit around and curse the poor woman all the night for depriving them from watching the live porno show.  If Allah must punish woman for not satisfying the sexual needs of their husbands why does he needs angels to lobby him for it? Isn’t it a waste of angel’s resources?  

In one sense this is all truly very funny. But in another, much larger sense, it is a tragedy...

I think it is worth mentioning that in Saudi Arabia if a person has been killed or caused to die by another, the latter has to pay blood money or compensation, as follows:

100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man

50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman

50,000 riyals if a Christian man

25,000 riyals if a Christian woman

6,666 riyals if a Hindu man

3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman

Source: The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2002

So as you see people's worth are not the same in Islam. It depends on their gender and their religion.

    The phenomenon of Muslim women defending Islam is strange, Robert Spencer wrote an article about this titled Covering Up the Plight of Muslim Women.  After listing quotes in the Koran that demonstrate Islam's negative attitude toward women Mr. Spencer wrote:

None of that is cultural; nor is it an historical artifact. To take the case of wife-beating, for example, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic...the situation of women in Islam will not improve until Muslim women are willing to dare to speak about their plight, rather than to gloss over it and hope no one will notice. Perhaps in this they can follow the example of Muhammad’s wife Aisha, who once admonished him: “I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women.”

That’s the first step toward ending that suffering.

    The Islamic historian Tabari wrote that Muhammad in his last speech said:

“Now then, O people, you have a right over your wives and they have a right over you. You have [the right] that they should not cause anyone of whom you dislike to tread your beds, and that they should not commit any open indecency (fahishah). If they do, then God permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain from [evil], they have the right to their food and clothing in accordance with custom (bi’l-maruf). Treat women well, for they are [like] domestic animals (‘awan) with you and do not possess anything for themselves. You have taken them only as a trust from God, and you have made the enjoyment of their persons lawful by the word of God, so understand and listen to my words, O people. I have conveyed the Message, and have left you with something which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray:

     Abul Kasem listed the following ahadith about women for Frontpage Magazine.

Aisha complained that Muhammad’s followers made women like dogs and asses…Sahih Muslim, 4.1039

If there is a bad luck in anything then it is horse, the abode and the woman… Sahih Muslim, 26.5528, 5529


A prayer is annulled by a passing woman, a dog and a monkey...Sahih Bukhari, 1.9.490, 493,498

Women, houses and horses are evil omens...Sahih Bukhari, 7.62.30, 31, 32


An ass, a woman and a black dog annuls a prayer…Sunaan Nasai, 1.753


A menstruating woman and a dog cuts off a prayer...Sunaan Abu Dawud, 2.0703

Either a dog, an ass, a pig, a Jew, a Magian and a woman cuts off a prayer...Sunaan Abu Dawud, 2.0704

Women, slaves and camels are the same; must seek Allah's refuge from all these...Sunaan Abu Dawud, 11.2155

A house, a horse and a woman is an evil omen; a mat in a house is better than a barren woman…Sunaan Abu Dawud, 3.29.3911

A black dog is satan; a black dog or a donkey or a woman cancels a prayer…Sunaan ibn Majah, 2.952

Beat your wives if they commit sinful acts; women are captives of their husbands…Sunaan ibn Majah, 3.1851

A woman is a property; a righteous woman is the best property…Sunaan ibn Majah, 3.1855 (Please note: a pregnant camel during Muhammad’s time was the best property)

Seek refuge from a woman, a servant and cattle—they are evils…Sunaan ibn Majah , 3.1918

Muhammad’s final sermon—beat women…Sunaan ibn Majah , 4.3074

Women are your prisoners, treat them well, if necessary beat them but not severely…Tirmidhi, 104

Raba Khaja is a woman from Kuwait told her story of trying to divorce her husband to Jamie Glazov of Frontpage Magazine.  She said:

  On the advice of friends and relatives, including my lawyer (they said that so long as my husband does not want to divorce, I do not have a case with Shari'a courts), I did not file a case against him until recently, and resorted to solve the problem peacefully. But he refused and insisted that he'd never divorce me. He mocked me when I told him that I was going to sue him for divorce, saying that Shari'a is a "man". And he was right.

Only three years back, when I lost all hope, I filed a case against him. And guess what? I got convicted with Ta'a.

FP: What is Ta'a exactly?

Khaja: To understand Ta'a, you have to know that in the Islamic Shari'a, (theoretically speaking), the wife has to be obedient to her husband; she should not leave the marital house without his permission. If she does not abide to those rules, the husband could get a court order to imprison her within the confinement of the marital house. And Ta'a is that court order.

Even without the court order of Ta'a, husbands have the right to place their wives' names at the borders, forbidding them from leaving the country. Sometimes it's done officially, other times through the corrupted system that is depleted with connections.

In the Koran (4.34) it is written:

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart; and scourge (beat) them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.

   In addition to the Koran, Mohammed's teachings are included in the Hadith.  Next to the Koran, is is the most important part of Islamic law, its teachings are just as binding.  The following quotes from the Hadith are from the "Sahih Al-Bukhari".  In volume 3:826 of Sahih Al-Bukhari Muhammed is quoted as explaining why a witness of a woman is equal to half that of a man.  He said

This is because of the deficiency of the woman's mind.

    This argument was caught on tape in Birmingham’s Green Lane Mosque. 

“Allah has created the woman – even if she gets a Ph.D. – deficient. Her intellect is incomplete, deficient. She may be suffering from hormones that will make her emotional. It takes two witnesses of a woman to equal the one witness of the man.”

Pakistan’s President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) implemented the Hudood Ordinances in 1979. Hudood crimes are those considered most serious in Islamic law. These laws returned the crime of rape to the realm of Islamic law, making a rape victim liable to being prosecuted for adultery if she could not produce four male Muslim witnesses who would testify that they had actually witnessed the rape.

Robert Spencer explained in an interview with frontpage magazine how these laws originate from the Koran.

This law comes from the Qur’an. Accusations of adultery against Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, and Muhammad’s desire to exonerate her brought about the requirement that four male Muslim witnesses must be produced in order to establish a crime of adultery or other sexual indiscretions: “Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah” (Qur’an 24:13; see also 24:4 and Bukhari, vol. 3, book 52, no. 2661).

Aisha’s own word counted for nothing to establish the falsity of the accusations against her -- so to this day Islamic law restricts the validity of a woman’s testimony, particularly in cases involving sexual immorality. Says the Qur’an: “Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error, the other will remember” (2:282). And Islamic legal theorists have restricted women’s testimony even farther, limiting it to, in the words of one Muslim legal manual, “cases involving property, or transactions dealing with property, such as sales” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o24.8). Otherwise only men can testify.

Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow these Sharia provisions. As long as men deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman cannot produce four male witnesses, she may end up incriminating herself simply by making the charge: she has by charging a man with rape made an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that, according to the Muslim feminist group Sisters in Islam, as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.

Mohammed also quoted as saying that:

I was shown the Hell-fire and the majority of its dwellers are women 1:28,301;2:161,7:124

and that:

I have not left any affliction more harmful to men than women 7:33

  The Koran commands men to beat women who are disobedient.

Sura 4:34 of the Koran says,

“Men are the managers of the affairs of women . . . Those women who are rebellious — admonish them, banish them to their couches, and beat them.” 

In Tirmzi P439 we find:

If a woman's conduct is mischievous or immodest, the husband has the right to beat her up (Tirmzi P439)

   These religious commands of Islam help us understand why Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, A prominent Muslim preacher from Italy authored a book Women in Islam, in which he wrote that verbal warnings followed by a period of sexual inactivity can be used to discipline a disobedient wife.   If that failed he said that according to Islamic law, beatings could be then judiciously administered.  "The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body."

     These commands also help us understand a Muslim web site titled How To Beat A Wife (5/1/05).

    More Islamic commands in regard to women are listed below.

It is forbidden for a woman to be seen by any man except her husband when she is made up or well-dressed. (Tirmzi P 430)

A woman is not a believer if she undertakes a journey which may last three days or longer, unless she is accompanied by her husband, son, father

A woman must veil herself even in the presence of her husband's father, brother and other male relations. (Tirmzi P 432)

She is forbidden to spend any money without the permission of her husband, and it includes giving food to the needy or feast to friends. (Tirmzi P 265)

A wife is forbidden to perform extra prayers (NAFAL) or observe fasting (other than RAMADAN) without the permission of her husband. (Tirmzi P 300)

If prostration were a legitimate act other than to God, woman should have prostrated to her husband. (Tirmzi P 42

If a man is in a mood to have sexual intercourse the woman must come immediately even if she is baking bread at a communal oven. (Tirmzi P 42

A woman who seeks KHULA i.e. divorce from her man, without a just cause, shall not enter paradise. (Tirmzi P 440) A husband can divorce his wife at will.

Majority of women would go to hell. (Muslim P 1431)

If a woman refuses to come to bed when invited by her husband, she becomes the target of the curses of angels. Exactly the same happens if she deserts her husband's bed. (Bukhari P 93)

A woman in many ways is deprived of the possession of her own body. Even her milk belongs to her husband. (Bukhari P 27) She is not allowed to practise birth control either.

      In verse 33:59. Allah says:

O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies (i.e. screen themselves completely except the eyes or one eye to see the way). That will be better, that they should be known (as free respectable women) so as not to be annoyed. And Allah is Ever of Forgiving, Most Merciful.

    If you don't wear a veil in Iraq you could lose your life.  Terri Judd in an article titled Women Are Being Beheaded for Taking Their Veil Off (Independent 4/20/08) wrote:

In Basra alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure.

   Ibn Masud reported, "We were fighting with the Messenger of Allah, and our wives were not with us. We asked the Messenger of Allah, 'Should we castrate ourselves?' The Holy Prophet forbade us from that, and then he allowed us Muta (temporary) marriage. So, we all married wives for a fixed time (usually three days) for the dowry of a piece of cloth." (Al Hadis, Vol. 2, p. 686)

   Here Mohammed clearly tells the Muslims to forget about the prostitutes they had purchased for a handful of dates back home and to have fun with these new victims who come even cheaper. They can be bought and violated for only a piece of cloth. Allah is truly merciful! Praise be to Allah!

   For more quotes about women and other aspects of Islam see The Incredible Teachings of Muhammed.

   The reasons that the beauty of women needs to be suppressed are explained in  A book [Document No. 47] published by the Institute of Islamic and

Arabic Sciences in America, formerly an outpost of the state-financed and controlled

Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, copies of which were collected

from Al-Islam Mosque in Washington, D.C., which states (Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques):

“Among the more significant illustrations of imitating (the unbelievers), and the most dangerous for Muslims, is the enchantment of women. And this is among the traits of the unbelievers. The intent of this is to bring (them) out of their nature, veil, and modesty so that they could use it to tempt men…. Because women desire the glamour of the materialistic life, they are inclined to imitate, accommodate, and exaggerate in all of this, because women were built to seduce and beautify themselves for men. And men were built to desire a woman when she exposes (herself), and not to desire her when she is modest and covering.” [Document No. 47] The book adds that, if Muslim women unveil themselves, the whole Muslim community will be in peril:

“If they (Muslim women) leave the principle of modesty and cover, this will be the road and the way to discord (fitna), and in most cases if the Muslim nation falls into this trend it will lose its religion and worldly life.” [Document No. 47]

    Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric, Sheik Hilali in a religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney said:

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem.  If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)."

A lot of Australian Muslims were outraged by his remarks.  (The Australian 10/26/06).  Robert Spencer wrote in Frontpagemagazine that: 

 It was also somewhat surprising that Al-Hilali’s remarks generated any uproar at all. After all, the idea that a woman is responsible if she is raped did not originate with him, and this was not the first time it has been enunciated in the West. One notorious example occurred in September 2004 in Denmark, when the mufti Shahid Mehdi of the Islamic Cultural Center in Copenhagen said on the Danish television program Talk to Gode that women who venture outside without a hijab are “asking for rape.”

Saudi columnist Fatima Al-Faqih examined the question of discrimination against women. She wrote in the Saudi daily Al-Watan:

"Are Saudi women actually deprived [of their rights]? [They] are forbidden to drive, forbidden to travel without permission, forbidden to stay alone at a hotel without permission, forbidden to name their own children without [a man's] consent... forbidden to take out a passport without permission... forbidden to leave their homes without permission... forbidden to take a job without permission... forbidden to change the color of their abayas, forbidden to go to school or to the university without permission... forbidden to purchase shares or to open to a [bank] account in their children's name without permission.

"[A woman] is not allowed to expose her face in some cities of the kingdom... [She] is not allowed to marry without permission... not allowed to stay married if [one of] her male relatives decides that her husband's [tribal] lineage is inferior to hers... not allowed to sue for divorce without apologizing and paying a fine, not allowed to keep her children after the divorce, unless she gets permission... not allowed to hold a senior position in the private or public sectors, not allowed to vote or run for office... not allowed to travel alone with a chauffeur... not allowed to annoy her husband, and finally, a woman's voice is considered [a form of] defilement, and she is forbidden to speak in public, so that her affairs will remain shrouded in secrecy.

"A researcher [studying the limitations on women] would [probably] stop here, since the list is endless…

    Laurent Murawiec wrote about Saudi women and driving in his book Princes of Darkness as follows:

The unprecedented boldness of forty-seven Saudi women from good families, who took it into their heads, during the period when American troop strength in Saudi Arabia was growing, before the active phase of the 1991 Gulf War, to take the wheel of a car with the ubiquitous guardian in the passenger seat, were appropriately punished.  These sluts, as the Grand Mufti, the priceless Bin Baz, called them, were arrested.  The language used to denounce them was eloquent: “Whores and prostittutes,” “advocates of vice,” “filthy secularists,” said the fundamentalist sheikhs. 

    The Times online (2/7/08) reported how a 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three, Yara, was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh. Her husband used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her and secure her release.  Yara said:

"I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don't have the connections I did,”

    Columnist Dr. Maha Al-Hujailan criticized the norms of Saudi society, where a woman must live in constant fear that her husband may take another wife.

According to frontpagemag.com (8/12/04)

The Arab-Islamic world represses and demonizes women and female sexuality – and myriad other pleasures that come with life... The entire culture is based on subjugating the individual, whereas America represents the exact opposite.

 J.Lo, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears doing what they do on American television is a major threat to this culture. It is freedom, and freedom of the female on every level. The Arab-Islamic world must wage war on the culture that produces this temptation because it cannot allow itself to succumb to the love of life, appreciation of pleasure and the allowance of women doing what they want with their lives -- and with their sexuality. It cannot allow the exercise of free will by individuals engaged in the pursuit of personal happiness.

 

Joel Mobray in an OPED called "Saudi Slavery in America" (New York Post 2/10/03) wrote that:

As part of its massive PR offensive, the House of Saud is trying to convince the world that its treatment of women is improving.  But a first hand witness would see a far different reality: Women locked inside homes, paid little or nothing as domestic servants, worked up to 20 hours per day, and verbally and physically abused.

And that's right here in America - in the homes of Saudis living in the United States...

Notes Keith Roiderick, president of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, who personally helped a woman escape a Saudi home: "When you meet these women and hear their horror stories, it breaks your heart."

Joel Mobray also wrote that:

Tens of thousands of women are abused in Saudi Arabia each year.   The Saudi government admits that some 19,000 domestic servants - almost exclusively foreign women working in the kingdom as maids - escaped from Saudi homes in the 12 momths prior to March 2001. (The real figure is likely far higher...)

  If you are a woman unfortunate enough to have had children with a Saudi Muslim and he decides to leave with the kids to Saudi Arabia, you have no rights when it comes to getting them back.  Pat Roush wrote a book about her experiences trying to bring her children back to America called At Any Price. A movie was made from Betty Mahmoudy's book   both called "Not Without My Daughter" about her struggle to get her children out of Saudi Arabia.

    If a man and woman are alone in a car together and are not married they will both be punished in Saudi Arabia.  Both were sentenced to 90 lashes after committing that terrible crime.

    Chaudhry Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant living in Clayton County, Georgia, strangled his daughter to death.  In an article about that Robert Spencer wrote: (frontpage magazine 7/10/08)

Honor killings” are distressingly common throughout the Muslim world. Phyllis Chesler reports that “in 1997, in Cairo Egypt, twenty-five-year-old Nora Marzouk Ahmed’s honeymoon ended when her father chopped off her head and carried it down the street. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘the family has regained its honor.’ Nora’s crime? She had eloped.” And “in 2002, in Tehran, an Iranian man cut off his seven-year-old daughter’s head after suspecting she had been raped by her uncle. ‘The motive behind the killing was to defend my honor, fame, and dignity.’ Some people called for this man’s death under Islamic law, but ironically, only the father of the victim can demand the death sentence.”

Chesler recounts many such killings. “In 1999, in Lahore, Pakistan, Samia Imran was shot dead in her feminist lawyer’s office by a man whom her parents had hired to kill her. Her crime? Seeking a divorce….In 2001, in Gujar Khan, Pakistan, Zahida Perveen’s husband attacked her, gouged out both her eyes, her nose, and her ears. He wrongly suspected her of adultery. He was arrested, but male relatives shook his hand and men decided she ‘must have deserved it’ and that a ‘husband has to do what a man has to do.’…In 2005, in Gaza, five masked members of Hamas…shot Yusra Azzumi, a twenty-year-old Palestinian woman, to death, brutalized her corpse, and savagely beat both her brother, Rami, and her fiancé, Ziad Zaranda, whom she was to marry within days. This self-appointed Morality Squad wrongly suspected Yusra (herself a Hamas member) of “immoral behavior.”

   Sophia, a twenty two year old Pakistani woman of Muslim origin decided to leave Islam.  In her testimony (printed in Leaving Islam, she wrote:

My first rebellion was against a culture that teaches me to be subservient, to accept social sexual harassment, and even to be killed.  I worked with an organization in Pakistan where I witnessed acid being thrown over women because they married men they chose or they left men they chose to leave.  Women were killed for disobeying, and thus dishonoring the family, beaten because they raised their voice against a man.  Yes, all these things are directly related to religion.  Islamic preachers will tell you all that is cultural and that Islam has played no role in this.  Coincidentally, this culture seems to repeat itself in almost every Muslim country from Asia to Africa.

   Erik Rush wrote that (wnd 8/1/2008)

Over the last few years, the phenomenon of acid attacks upon women by men in Pakistan has gained increasing consideration in the Western press. These attacks involve an individual dashing highly concentrated, corrosive acid into the face of a woman – usually, a young woman – with whom the man is vexed for some reason. Often, it is a spurned suitor, although occasionally it is carried out by a woman's own family member over a point of "honor," such as disobeying her husband. These assaults invariably render the women aesthetic monstrosities.

     Worldnetdaily 8/14/2008 reported that A Muslim father in Saudi Arabia cut out his daughter's tongue and lit her on fire upon learning that she had become a Christian.

The child became curious about Jesus Christ after she read Christian material online, the Gulf News reported.

Her father read her Internet conversation, detached her tongue and burned her to death "following a heated debate on religion," according to an International Christian Concern report.

   On August 20^th 2006, a Pakistani woman living in Italy was murdered by her Muslim father probably because she had been promised in marriage to a cousin and refused to marry him.  (Murder of Muslim girl rebel by her father shocks all Italy, The Independent, 8/20/2006)

On the evening of Monday 9 October, Kaihana Hussain, the teenage daughter of Muslim immigrants, told her parents that she was converting from Islam to Christianity. (Australia: Girl’s Conversion Results in Mother’s Death, 10/13/2006) Her father responded with unrestrained fury. Neighbours heard "blood curdling" and "terrifying" screams and cries of "Help me, help me, they're trying to kill me", but they were unsure which apartment the screams were coming from, and the voices were unfamiliar.

After a short time, Kaihana came running out of the family's apartment, dressed only in her underwear, her clothes torn off, blood splattered over her severely scratched and cut body.

All that is known at this stage is that after her father began to attack her, Kaihana's mother, Yasmin (41, and a strict and devout Muslim), intervened to aid and protect her daughter.

What police found when they entered the apartment was Yasmin bleeding severely from a fatal knife wound to the chest, and her husband, Kaihana's father, Dr Muhammad Hussain (49) also bleeding from a potentially fatal knife wound to the chest. Blood was splattered on walls, floors and doorways throughout the three-bedroom luxury apartment. Yasmin died at the scene and Dr Hussain is presently hospitalised in an induced coma, in a critical condition. Police have confirmed that Kaihana is not a suspect in their deaths.

A Muslim source said that:

"'From what we understand the daughter decided to tell her father of her radical plan to convert to Christianity which, in the eyes of most Muslims, is totally unacceptable and to be honest, sadly, many would react as he has done,' said the source.

"'It is the Islamic way that if a son or daughter does or plans to do something that is unacceptable or wrong for a Muslim then it is the mother who is automatically at fault and will bear the brunt of the blame."'

  Muslims have brought honor killings to the West.  Banaz Mahmod shown in the picture below:

ran away from home when she was a teenager but returned when her father sent her an audio tape in which he warned he would kill her sisters, her mother and himself if she did not come home, her sister said.

She was later hospitalized after her brother attacked her, the sister told the court. The brother said he had been paid by their father to finish her off but in the end was unable to do it.  Her father and his brother accused the young woman of shaming her family by ending an abusive arranged marriage, becoming too Westernized and falling in love with a man who didn't come from their Iraqi village.  She was found stuffed in a suitcase that was buried in the back garden.  Her death is the latest in an increasing trend of such killings in Britain, home to some 1.8 million Muslims. More than 100 homicides are under investigation as potential "honor killings." (fox news 6/11/07). 

    Pakistani-Canadian Aqsa Parvez, 16, was strangled by her father in an honor murder Monday (12/10/07) in the Toronto-area city of Mississauga. Her brother has also been charged with murdering her.  Refusing to wear the Islamic hijab, Parvez, who was herself born in Pakistan, wanted to live the normal lifestyle of a Canadian teenage girl, but ran into conflict with her strict, religious father. One friend and schoolmate said the Canadian teenager was afraid of her father and often came to school wearing bruises, the result of his violence.

“She was scared of her father; he was always controlling her,” the friend told the National Post, a Canadian national newspaper. “She wasn’t allowed to go out or do anything.”

Nevertheless, the Grade 11 student, according to friends, would leave home wearing the hijab but arrive at school in western-style clothes, having changed on the way. This was part of her courageous desire to live her own life and overcoming the fear in which she lived.

"Aqsa was honestly the brightest girl around," wrote one student inside a memory book. "She had the biggest smile and was the happiest person in school. She loved to dance and take pictures." (CTV.ca)

Aqsa Parvez

Shortly after Aqsa Parvez was killed in Canada Amina and Sarah Said were killed in the United States.  Phyllis Chesler wrote (Intellectual Conservative 3/11/2008):

I am talking to Gail Gartrell, the great-aunt of Amina and Sarah Said, who were honor murdered by their father, Yasser Said, on New Year’s Day, 2008. (I have written about this tragic case before for Pajamas Media.) As of this writing, Yasser Said has not yet been captured.

The girls were murdered in Irving, Texas, an area with a large Muslim population that is also known to some experts as a place where Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood may be active. Gail and the other female relatives with whom I have spoken believe that Yasser Said is “possibly some kind of terrorist. I was only recently told that Yasser always seemed to have a lot of guns, machine guns — they’re illegal here — but handguns too.” Gail tells me:

It’s another face of jihad. These men come here from Egypt, they marry American women in order to become American citizens. The American wives convert to Islam. Then, they have Muslim children who are natural-born American citizens — but who are raised to hate America and to want to live under shari’a law. Then, these men expect their teen-age American daughters to marry much older Muslim men from Egypt in arranged marriages. I know that Yasser wanted Amina to marry someone from Egypt...

Gail is proud that her great-niece Amina refused to accept an arranged marriage, glad that they were both brave enough to run away. Both girls had non-Muslim boyfriends. Neither girl wanted to wear hijab. Clearly, these American-style choices are all capital crimes to someone like Yasser Said.

   Yasser Said has not been caught.

    In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after she uncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor at a friend's wedding. (San Francisco Chronicle 12/15/2000).  In Georgia a Muslim man strangled his daughter (Atlanta Journal Constitution 7/6/08) because she didn't want to marry the man designated for her in an arranged marriage.

Vasko Kohlmayer told the story of Samaira Nazir who spurned the offer of a pre-arranged marriage to a man chosen for her in Pakistan, and dated another man, a Muslim also.  Kohlmayer wrote (frontpagemag 6/28/07):

Seized upon in her family home, she was violently attacked by her father, brother and cousin. Her screams alerted a neighbor who knocked on the door only to be told that the young woman was "having a fit." Some moments later, Nazir attempted to escape. She ran out of the house but her family members caught up with her on the entrance porch and pulled her back by the hair. As the door was being shut, witnesses outside saw her waving her bloodstained arms desperately. When the police finally arrived, they found her body slumped in a pool of blood with a scarf wound tightly around her neck through which three deep cuts had been made. In addition, Nazir’s body bore eighteen stab wounds inflicted with four different knives. The investigation revealed that she was held down by her own mother as her male kin went about their ghastly task. Nazir’s two cousins – girls aged two and four – were forced to watch to teach them what happens to a woman under Muslim law who refuses to abide by her family’s wishes.

   Stephen Brown wrote in frontpage magazine 7/9/07 that:

It is estimated that 30,000 women among Germany’s 3.2 million Muslim population, of which 2.7 million are of Turkish origin, are subjected to forced marriages every year. Hundreds of young Muslim girls disappear annually from their German elementary and high schools to travel to their native Turkey and other Muslim countries, never to return.  Many are told they are going on holidays and do not realize they are to be married until after their arrival, after which their passports, jeans and freedom are taken away and  replaced with head scarves and confinement. Moreover, it is only on their wedding day that some see their husbands for the first time…

In many cases, the new wives live a slave-like existence for years in their new families, toiling long hours at housework under the rule of an oppressive mother-in-law, while suffering extensive physical and emotional abuse, sometimes from the day after their wedding, at the hands of their husbands. It is estimated that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Muslim women in Germany endure daily such barbaric conditions.

Needless to say, freedom of movement, to come and go as they wish, also does not exist for the female newlyweds. Even Muslim girls who grew up in Germany and had enjoyed this basic right in their outwardly integrated families are now confined to the home of their new husbands and may not leave unless accompanied by a male…  many of the abused wives are threatened with death if they go to the police. And those who do flee are also potential murder victims, since leaving a traditional, patriarchal Muslim home carries a death sentence.

In Germany the problem of domestic violence in Muslim homes is so bad that thirty per cent of the occupants in women’s shelters in German cities are Muslim (frontpage magazine 6/26/07). And even there, these unfortunate women are not safe. Husbands and other male clan members, who can number up to 300, often set up round the clock surveillance of the shelter, in which the woman has sought refuge.

One young Muslim woman, who fled a planned forced marriage and is now living what the police term a ‘submarine existence’ (she is in hiding), said her father told her when she was a child never to play with German girls because they were whores and that he would kill her if he ever caught her playing with boys. This ‘man of honor’, she says, has now threatened to pour gasoline over her and burn her to death if he ever finds her. 

   A non-Muslim man who has sex with a woman can be killed as well.  Nineteen year old Yvan Schneider was beaten to death with baseball bats by Deniz Eroglu for having sex with a Muslim girl who unfortunately for Yvan became Deniz's girlfriend.  In some way Yvan was actually lucky.  Deniz Eroglu told an innmate later that he had only wanted to knock Schneider unconscious and then take him to a warehouse his father was renting and torture him to death there.

  Ibn Warraq author of Why I am not a Muslim has an online article called Islam's Shame, Lifting the Veil of Tears, about the persecution of women under Islam.  Accidental Angel, an article in the March 2001 issue of Vogue magazine tells how in the summer of 2000, the Taliban, the Islamic Fundamentalist Government of Afghanistan arrested Mary MacKakin a 72 year old American Grandmother who was helping the widows of Afghanistan by giving them work.  When the Taliban came to power they forbid women to work.  One result was starving widows who had no man to support them.  When the Taliban came to power they also banned girls from school.   Women were allowed outside the house only to run errands and even then they had to be accompanied by a close male relative.  If a woman's hand was visible she risked a beating.  If a member of the Taliban decided he wanted to marry a woman, he could arrive at her house that day and announce his intention to marry her.  Resistance would not be an option.  Mary criticized the Taliban in the newsletter of her organization PARSA and believes that is why she was arrested.  Anna Mulrine in her article "Unveiled Threat" U.S. News and World Report, Oct 5, 01, writes how:

In the two years between the Taliban's takeover of her hometown of Kabul and the death threat that forced her to flee her country, Laila watched women beaten with bicycle chains for "walking too fast."  She saw female friends sell off cherished possessions item by item until they became beggars and war widows forced into prostitution.  "You can't watch your children starve" she says, "So you leave your honor behind."  A former medical student Laila, 30, was confined to her home by a Taliban edict forbidding women to seek schooling or to walk outside without both a male escort and a burka, a head to toe covering broken only by finely woven netting at the eyes.  She began tutoring her neighbors' daughters, also banned from seeking an education.  It wasn't long before some 45 children a day were knocking on her door-and only a little longer before the Taliban discovered her underground school.  "They beat me in front of the children" she recalls from her new home in the United States," and told me that if I did one more thing against the Taliban, they would kill me."  Then they turned to the girls, cowering in the corners.  "They told them they would be burned alive if they ever returned to school again."

   The above picture is of refugees trying to escape the Northern Alliance  assault on Kunduz on 11/22/01. They were fired on as they fled along the roads and donkey paths - by their former Taliban masters. (New York Post 11/23/01)

   After the fall of the Taliban their remnants burned down or blew up more than a dozen schools for girls between late 2001 and 2003 (Rebuilt Girls School Burned Down Reuters 6/6/03).  On January 4, 2006 they beheaded a teacher, Abdul Habib for educating girls while forcing his wife and children to watch. (Taliban Behead Teacher for Educating Girls, Fox News, 1/4/2006) 

    After the fall of the Taliban the editor of an Afghan women's rights magazine was jailed after a presidential adviser accused him of publishing un-Islamic material.  He wrote that leaving Islam was not a crime and criticized the practice of punishing adultery with 100 lashes. (Afghan Editor Arrested for 'Un-Islamic' Writing, FoxNews.com 10/4/05)

   Rage Against the Veil is a scathing indictment of Islam's oppression of women. It tells the story of Dr. Homa Darabi, the first Iranian ever to be accepted into the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, who committed suicide in a crowded public square in Tehran in 1994 in order to bring awareness to the world of the slave conditions for women living in Iran. 

  A reviewer of the book for Amazon.com wrote:

I just read this book and wanted to write my review. Since I believe in God, I think Dr. Homa Darabi's act was ordained by God to bring the plight of the Muslim women to the world's attention. Growing up as a Muslim girl, my rights were constantly violated by my father, brothers and male cousins. What Parvin Darabi and Romin P. Thomson describe in Rage Against the Veil is a life lived by many women in the Islamic world. I was told that my function in life as a woman is to marry and bear children and to serve my husband and my children all my life with no expectations for mine. This book is any Muslim woman's life. This book is about my life, my female friends and relatives life. I am so pleased that this book is written which tells the world what women like Dr. Homa Darabi and so on have lived through.  I am buying this book and giving it as gifts and I ask others to do the same. Thank you Parvin Darabi and Romin P. Thomson to tell others what we go through.

   Another book The Stoning of Soroya M. describes how in 1986 a woman in a small village in Iran was buried up to her neck at the town square and the men of the village, including her father, husband, and sons, threw stones and rocks at her until she died. In the case of Soraya, a pious wife and mother, her abusive, criminal husband wanted to get rid of her and marry his mistress. Iranian-born French journalist Sahebjam, himself condemned to death by the Khomeini regime, uncovered this horror while reporting undercover on his native land.  A video of an Islamic stoning can be seen here Download Stoning Video.

   Feminists in the Western world who love to view themselves as victims of male oppression are silent in the face of these stonings.  David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Janet Levy wrote an article titled Two Women Stoned: Feminists Mum about the lack of feminist protest to the conviction of two sisters – Zohreh and Azar who received 99 lashes for "illegal relations. and then were tried again for the same crime, and convicted of adultery on the evidence of videotape that showed them in the presence of other men while their husbands were absent. The video does not show either of them engaging in any sexual activity at all. They have been sentenced to be stoned to death. 

   Parvin Darabi wrote a testimony about her experience with Islam titled An Iranian Girlhood and Islamic Barbarism (Leaving Islam, edited by Ibn Warraq).  In her testimony she wrote:

It has been reported that on August 15, 1991, the prosecutor general, Abolfazl Musavi-Tabrizi, said that “anyone who rejects the principle of Hijab is an apostate and the punishment for an apostate under Islamic law is death.”

Girls condemned to death may not undergo the sentence as long as they are virgins.  Thus, they are systematically raped before the sentence is executed:

To rape women prisoners, especially virgin girls, who are accused of being against the regime, is a normal and daily practice in the Islamic Republic’s prisons, and by doing so, the clergies declare that they adhere to the merits of the Islamic principles and laws, preventing a virgin girl to go to Heaven.  Mullahs believe that these are ungodly creatures and they did not deserve it, therefore they are raped to be sure they will be sent to hell.

   Roya Tolouee, 40, a democracy activist, was beaten up by Iranian intelligence agents and subjected to a horrific sexual assault when she refused to sign forced confessions. It was only when they threatened to burn her two children to death in front of her that she agreed to put her name to the documents. (Child Abuse, Mullah Style, frontpagemag.com 5/30/07)

There are as many as 300,000 runaway girls in Iran, some as young as 9. It’s estimated that 86% of the runaways were rejected by their families after they were raped. In Prophet-land, rape is shameful – for the victim. (frontpagemag.com 10/31/06)

   It takes tremendous courage for a woman to speak up against what is being done against them in Arab countries.  To view one who has had the courage to do so click here.

   Donna Hughes in an article titled "Sex Slave Jihad" (Frontpagemag.com 1/27/04) wrote that:

In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the city...

The exposure of sex slave networks in Iran has shown that many mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual exploitation and trade of women and girls...  There are reports of police locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs...Drug addiction is epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children to support their habits. .. following the recent earthquake in Bam, orphaned girls have been kidnapped and taken to a known slave market in Tehran where Iranian and foreign traders meet.

Popular destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. ..

According to an article titled Iran's Sex Slaves (frontpagemag.com 6/11/04)

Many of the girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children to support their habits. High unemployment -- 28 percent for youth 15 to 29 years of age, and 43 percent for women 15 to 20 years of age -- is a serious factor in driving restless youth to accept risky offers for work. Slave traders take advantage of any opportunity in which women and children are vulnerable. For example, following the recent earthquake in Bam, orphaned girls have been kidnapped and taken to a known slave market in Tehran where Iranian and foreign traders meet.

Since Muslims can marry and then divorce just by saying I divorce you three times, this means that Muslims can effectively marry and divorce as many women as they want.  This creates a religiously justified form of prostitution in which old men with money marry teenagers, have sex with them and leave them. (One Minor Girl, Many Arabs, by Mohammed Wajihuddin, frontpagemag.com 9/9/05)

    Stephen Brown in an article titled Child Bride in Yemen Confronts Shariah (4/18/2008) wrote:

Born in the year 2000, Nujood Ali was married two-and-a-half months ago to a man twenty years her senior after she was made to sign a marriage contract, arranged between her father and her “suitor.” The contract, a strictly commercial transaction which usually involves the groom paying a “bride price,” was supposed to allow Nujood to reside with her parents until she was 18. However, only a few days later, those same parents forced their daughter to move in with her new "husband."...