Muslim mother set free... CNN breaking.

[Flubadubya]

Just in, the Nigerian woman, sentenced to death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock, has been set free by the Sharia court there. Details to come.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Alhumdulilah!(Hallilujah)

God is Mercy and Compassion. It is humans who often forget their humanity. Thanks to the many who signed the petitions to free her. I know many of my Sufi brothers and sisters were among the signers.

[regnaD kciN]

47. Well put!

God is Mercy and Compassion. It is humans who often forget their humanity.

Truer words were never spoken, for any of the monotheistic religions (and probably several of the polytheistic ones as well, although I'm not as up on them). Not only do we often forget our humanity, but then (to paraphrase Genesis) we "create god in our own image."

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thank you.

Hope she can find a safe haven somewhere.

[rocktivity]

14. And thank US!!!!

I'm sure the global (new) media attention this case got didn't hurt.


rocknation

[emad]

3. Here's the thread:

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/09/25/nigeria.stoning/index.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. From your link:

(snip) Lawal's defense team told CNN that had it not been for the efforts of human rights groups, who sent around mass e-mails about the case and sent representatives to her hearings, their client would have been stoned a long time ago. (snip/...)

Thank god a ton of people found out in time.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Solidarity!

It really works sometimes.

[emad]

6. Maybe this will be the start of a general overhaul of Sharia Law,

probably the most barbaric, backward and disgusting form of legal system that also sanctions and protects the perpetrators of female genital mutilation

[IndianaGreen]

7. Islamic law does not call for stoning for adultery

it does call for repentance.

What we got here is a Nigerian tribalist aberration of Islamic law, much like the way the Wahabbis do in Saudi Arabia, that was condemned by reputable Islamic scholars throughout the world.

As Lenin said, religion should be a private matter as far as the state is concerned!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. No, it doesn't

female genital mutilation is practiced in Africa, and predates Islam. It is also practiced by non-Muslims there. Nothing in Sharia about it.

[emad]

10. There have been a spate of cases in Sudan where Sharia judges

have exonerated female practitioners of fgm, who claimed that as Muslims they were doing 'god's work' and thus were exempt from any legal sanction

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. Still doesn't make it Islamic

Again, fgm is a cultural thing. NOTHING in Sharia about it. Many people use Islam to justify cultural prejudices. Doesn't make it Islam. Many many things have been done in the name of religion that have nothing to do with the teachings of that religion. The keeping of slaves was justified because of one line in the New Testament, where Paul says for slaves to obey their masters. The keeping of Western women as second class citizens was justified because of Genesis 3:16. I know there is NOTHING in Qu'ran about fgm or mutilation of anyone. This, again, is an instance of man manipulating and misinterpreting or simply making up excuses to do what they want to do.

[emad]

12. True. But what do you do about it if Islam is being manipulated

by Sharia hardliners who want to keep the issues blurred and block any reformation of their religion, same as christianity had some centuries ago?

Stonings, floggings and amputations are a massive breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but still practised in places where Sharia reigns supreme. FMG is only being seriously tackled in Kenya, where privately funded lawsuit have banned parents forcing their daughters to undergo this ritual, on pain of imprisonment. The families are mainly Muslim, and the distinction between official religious behaviour/extreme Sharia-style behaviour and non-specifically Islamic behaviour such as ritual fgm are never clearly defined.

If it took a massive worldwide response to stop Amina's stoning to death, just what is it going to take to stop the FMG ritual, which is mainly covert and silenced by years of repression and taboo?

[Enraged_Ape]

8. Finally, some good news to read in the morning for a change

I think it's wonderful what all those people did to help her. I can't think of a more Jesus-like action than that. I hope she finds some sort of safe haven now.

[noonwitch]

13. I've never read Sharia law, but the Old Testament...

The OT/Torah states to stone adulterers, along with children who talk back to their parents and a whole host of other sinners.

I'm glad that she is free and hope that she finds a better life somewhere outside of Nigeria.

[Gimel]

41. Also witches

and blasphemers. So why aren't we all dead?

She was freed because the law was imposed after she had already become pregnant. A case of retroactive judgment.

Actually, everyone has an opportunity to repent, in Judaic history. Judaism is not a literal application of the laws found in the Torah.

[liberalmuse]

15. Yessss!

I'm glad to finally hear this!

[supernova]

16. Thank God!

This is the best news I've heard so far today! I hope now this woman and her child will be allowed to go somewhere where she and her child can find peace.

[dusty64]

17. Thank Goodness!

This story was VERY disturbing to me. A sneak peek at our country after the American Taliban consolidates power perhaps.

[Flubadubya]

25. Especially disturbing if you've ever seen a stoning...

Not that I have in person, but Oprah Winfrey showed some footage of an actual stoning of a woman on one of her shows when the issue with this woman first came to light. It is most definitely a horrible sight. I had to turn away, it was so awful. I just cannot imagine anyone having within them whatever it is that can allow them to pick up stones and hurl them at a defenseless human being. It is sad and very, very sick.

[The Stranger]

18. Fascinating that our press focuses on this case, when there are hundreds

if not thousands languishing in our own Gulag in Guantanamo, and the press doesn't even seem to mind being excluded from any information as to goings on there.

This is not to condone this woman's ordeal and injustice -- only to point out how the media focuses the population on the enemy without rather than the enemy within.

Subtext: Holy War.

[The Magistrate]

20. Also Fascinating, Mr. Stranger

To realize that, to a man, those persons you refer to would agree that this woman ought to have been stoned dead for the crime of being raped.

It is long past time for persons of proggressive and left sentiments to accept the fact that the civilization and values of the West are not the font of all human evil. A system which would not only condone but view as sacred such a proceeding as this is as near an absolute enemy to human liberty and progressive ideals as can be found in existance.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. I'm with you on that one

"Proggressive and left sentiments" ORIGINATE from the "civilization and values of the West", for fuxake! How did the Enlightenment come about again?

[Aidoneus]

23. short answer?

A part owed of course to the creative expression of rebellion against the repressive and reactionary European-Christian establishment, however the roots of it was in the previous works and accomplishments of various Muslim intellectuals and philosophers, such the Mutazalite school and caliphs (al-Kindi in particular as an influence on Aquinas), the Andalusian "heretics", Ibn Hazm, Ibn Sinan, Ibn Rushd, al-Farabi, etc.., as well as the preservation and expanded study of the ancient texts and sciences by sections of Islamic culture in general, previously destroyed by German conquerors, neglect, and Christianity in the "West".

[The Magistrate]

24. A Lot Of That, Though, My Friend

Boils down to texts derived from Rome and Greece, acquired in conquest of the Syriac and North African portions of the old empire.

It is also true that the flouresence of Islamic Enlightenment coincident with Europe's High Medieval period rather withered away as a social and political force in the following centuries.

It is harsh, perhaps, but in consideration of contribution to the further developments of human liberty, the old ward-heeler's squawk, "So what has he done for me lately?" does not seem inappropriate.

[Cheswick2.0]

32. you have not grounds to make that claim

You don't know if all or most of the people imprisoned in GITMO would think that woman should be stoned. Also, "two wrongs don't make a right". We don't treat people inhumanely because they are inhumane. Where would that get the world?

[The Magistrate]

33. If You Wish, Sir

You might want to look into the general mores of rural Afghanistan, and to the particular doctrines and practice of the Taliban: my statement is a damned safe wager, though it is possible some might prefer shooting or beheading as the penalty.

As for the rest, Sir, you may see a more extended discussion below: here it will suffice to say the "two wrongs" nostrum has not much impressed me since my eye-level cleared the world of knees.

[Violet_Crumble]

54. No, it's not a damned safe wager...

There's quite a few foreign nationals at Guatanamo including two Australians, one who was arrested in Pakistan and had no connection with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and the other who was a mercenary type who'd go anywhere to get in a fight. If you want to sit there and say you know with certainty what they'd think, you know a hell of a lot more than everyone else does...

As to the rest, I've read that amongst the captives are Afghans who also had no connection to those groups. If yr trying to argue that average Afghans supported the Taliban and had the same mind-set as them, then yr constructing a very flimsy argument based on stereotyping, and I would have expected more from you than that...

Violet...

[Aidoneus]

43. perhaps so, but that wasn't the question

Q:--..."Proggressive and left sentiments" ORIGINATE from the "civilization and values of the West", for fuxake! How did the Enlightenment come about again?...

[The Magistrate]

44. Fair Enough, Sir

But you will be aware of my inclination to track things back as far as can be managed. In this case, Islamic and Christian thinkers alike built on a foundation of pagan Mediterranean thought foreign to both.

To my own view, probably the most important root of the course which issued in the Enlightenment of Europe was the Black Death, a thing which so shook the settled beliefs of Christendom that, like Humpty-Dumpty, it never could quite be put back together again. The texts were useful tools in this ferment, but they do not contain much that could not occur to any person bending a mind to the predicaments of existence.

[The Stranger]

26. You seem to illustrate my point, although possibly you have missed it

entirely.

To realize that, to a man, those persons you refer to would agree that this woman ought to have been stoned dead for the crime of being raped.

You seem to have forgotten the Western axiom that accused persons are innocent until proven guilty, but, then again, free peoples are not even allowed to find out what persons are there being held or of what they are accused. Such flagrant omisisons present quite a problem for someone claiming to be a "magistrate." But it does, again, keep the audience focused on the "Other," another phenomenon although not exclusively attributed to the West, often exhibiting itself there.

A system which would not only condone but view as sacred such a proceeding as this is as near an absolute enemy to human liberty and progressive ideals as can be found in existance.

Again, such "systems" exist in this country, although until the present Administration they had been thankfully kept in check. But those who aspire to human liberty and progressive ideals should not participate in the excoriation of the "Other," lest they become complicit in the baffling circumscription of human liberty and progressive ideals that is being accomplished today.

[The Magistrate]

28. If That Is The Way You Like It, Dear

You seem unable to comment on a system of law that would kill a woman by hail of fist-sized stones for the crime of being raped, and call it a sacred act, a duty for all good men and true to join in and uphold. Why you prefer to look away fron that is your own concern, but clearly, it does not bother you too much. Though the thing was averted in this case, you may rest assured many more women died like that in Afghanistan over the last decade than the number of men currently held in durance vile at Guantanamo Bay. Those women suffered far more, and indeed, engage more deeply my sympathies.

You may hyperventilate all you wish concerning the prison at Guantanamo, and it is certainly a cruel one, fully as bad as any maximum security penitentiary anywhere in the United States, though perhaps its inmates suffer less from abuse by their fellows. It is also true that, while there may certainly be some persons fetched up there by pure mischance, the overwhelming preponerance of them were taken in arms, fighting in fact in defense of the stoning of women for adultery as a religious duty, among other tenets of the fundamentalist Islamic regime of which they were the armed force. Their fate does not much concern me; as the Sage wrote long ago: "What others teach, I teach also. 'A violent man will die a violent death!'" There is a certain rough justice in the thing, to my view of this unhappy world.

Finally, dear, you will have to present to me an actual case of a court in the modern West condemning a woman to torturous death for adulterous fornication, if you are to seriously maintain to my face some similar "system" to that of Shiara law exists, too, here. The criminal acts of a husband, or of some other individual offender committing murder, even an occassional acquittal, will hardly suffice as an equivalent. One contributing factor to the failure of progressive ideas to make further political gains in this country is precisely the self-evident hypocrisy displayed when people of progressive views stoop to defend such outrages as this, which even a reactionary can see are clearly contrary to anything progressives claim to stand for. People decide your progressive views are really just a sham, to express a distaste for your own society and country, and not principles you wish to see implemented everywhere, for all peoples.

[The Stranger]

36. Let me reiterate.

But those who aspire to human liberty and progressive ideals should not participate in the excoriation of the "Other," lest they become complicit in the baffling circumscription of human liberty and progressive ideals that is being accomplished today.

This is exactly your tact. Now, however, trying to attack me as well -- including misrepresenting positions I have already posted in this very thread -- does not hide this.

I can only offer you my pity.

[Character Assassin]

37. Why reiterate what is clearly incorrect?

But those who aspire to human liberty and progressive ideals should not participate in the excoriation of the "Other," lest they become complicit in the baffling circumscription of human liberty and progressive ideals that is being accomplished today.

A. It sounds lofty, but it really doesn't hold up well to scrutiny or reason. As in, "If you value liberty, don't criticize those who are different from you, or you'll be guilty of supressing liberty."

B. One can either support liberty and its promulgation or not. There is a distinct difference between the two, as there is between the ideals and traditions of the West and the places most, if not all, of the people at GITMO came from. Or Islamic, northern Nigeria, for that matter.

C. It is asinine and childish to maintain that there are systems here in this country that condone stoning a woman to death for having been raped.

You seem to have forgotten the Western axiom that accused persons are innocent until proven guilty...

No, this is primarily British and American. In France, one is guilty until proven innocent.

[Sentath]

52. Point C

Perhaps if you spoke to some of my coworkers here in rural OK...

I'm not saying tthat they'd support it openly, and perhaps even they have progressed beyond that.

But I certainly wouldn't give you odds against it.

[The Magistrate]

55. The Point, Sir

Is not whether private persons feel thus, but whether state institutions decree it.

[mojowork_n]

30. But when they do it themselves

Well, as far as the general thesis goes, what you said,

"...those who aspire to human liberty and progressive ideals should not participate in the excoriation of the "Other," lest they become complicit in the baffling circumscription of human liberty and progressive ideals that is being accomplished today."

...certainly is true. But, on the other hand, this seems to be one of those episodes, like the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl ("I am a Jew, my father was a Jew..." --CHOP--) that defies those sorts of general rules. And that particular episode wasn't an isolated case. There are videotapes out on the Internet showing Muslim 'holy warriors' cutting off the heads of Russian soldiers captured in Chechnya. The same thing was done to Serbs in Bosnia-- to combatants and non-combatants alike.

And the Koran does have some sort of passage that talks about 'cutting off the heads' of unbelievers.

And sure, just as there are many, many kinds of Christians, there are multiple varieties of Muslims, I know. Sufi's, in particular, I'm told are not to be confused under any circumstances with the Wahabbis, among others... Still, you have to admit, it just doesn't do much for inter-faith P.R., or coming to some sort of common understanding.

[The Magistrate]

31. An Old Professor Of Mathematics Once Put The Paradox Well, Sir

"I want you to know, boys and girls, that there are people in this world who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that...."

[No Passaran]

45. you don't know what you're talking about

"The same thing was done to Serbs in Bosnia-- to combatants and non-combatants alike."

[regnaD kciN]

49. Are those the same Serbs...

..whose military practiced "ethnic cleansing" and gang rapes of Musilm girls?

Seems to me like this wasn't quite a case of "the humane West versus the brutal Muslims," if you ask me.

[No Passaran]

56. Don't pay attention to his post..

...it's just 700 club coming out of him. Maybe it's time to turn the channel.

[regnaD kciN]

50. You're on a bit of shaky ground here...

And the Koran does have some sort of passage that talks about 'cutting off the heads' of unbelievers.

...when you go about proof-texting religions based on a line chosen here and there.

I would point out that the Hebrew Scriptures (the TANAKH -- Torah, Prophets, and Writings, sacred to Jews and Christians alike) contain many, many passages justifying the wholesale slaughter of those who were not of the "chosen people." Check out the Book of Joshua for some of the gory details. Also, Psalm 137 concludes with this directed against the Edomite tribes: "Happy shall he be who takes your little children and crushes them against a rock." It would be quite easy to take those lines, some particularly bloody moments from history, and make a case that Judaism and/or Christianity are brutal and uncivilized, and that their practitioners should be wiped off the face of the earth by "civilized" people.

[regnaD kciN]

48. I think it's more a matter of...

...how the media focuses the population on any news that involves sex. Had the same woman been sentenced to death for, say, drug trafficing (maybe an aquaintance gave her a parcel to deliver to another village, and it turned out to contain coke or heroin), no one would have heard about it from the U.S. media.

[Drifter]

19. But , will she really be free ?

Is it possible that people in the region who disagree with the decision would take this into their own hands, and kill her anyways.

We are not talking about man made laws here. These are the laws of their God.

Cheers
Drifter

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

22. Might be a wise course of action

Thankfully, we won´t be needing Chuck Norris for that anymore.

[bleedingheart]

38. My coworker and I believe that she may have to fear for her life

because those fundamentalists who were disturbed by the pardon may take matters into their own hands..

[playahata1]

27. Good for her!

Praise be to Allah!

[Scairp]

29. What a relief

When I heard about her, I kept thinking "Why can't someone just go in there and grab her and take her someplace safe?" You have to wonder though, if the next "adulterous" woman who gets pregnant will go through the same thing while the "daddy" gets off scott free simply because he denied it. Barbarians.

[kskiska]

34. How wonderful!

I'd been dreading that one.

[Pavlovs DiOgie]

35. Thanks goodness

What a relief! :bounce:

[Jack Rabbit]

39. Excellent news

We raise a glass to justice and compassion tonight.

[regnaD kciN]

40. As I posted on another forum...

> KATSINA, Nigeria (CNN) -- An appeals court has freed a Nigerian
> mother sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.

Yet another shocking example of liberal, secularist, anti-religion judges interfering with the practice of one's faith and the acknowledgment of God as the ultimate source of law and justice.

I await the imminent arrival of some of the Alabama courthouse protesters in Katsina.

;-)

[Gimel]

42. Out of wedlock childbirth

This is not even considered adultry in Judaic or Christian tradition. It is pre-marital, and the child may be a bastard, but it's not adultry.

[regnaD kciN]

46. However...

...Shariah law doesn't follow "Judaic or Christian tradition." As I understand it, while Christianity, say, draws a distinction between adultery (a married person having sex with someone other than their spouse) and fornication (unmarried people having sex with each other), Islam considers all sex outside of marriage to be in the same category.

[The Magistrate]

59. That Is My Understanding As Well, Mr. Walley

[Gimel]

60. Seventh Commandment

Shariah law doesn't follow "Judaic or Christian tradition."

That's why I was bringing this to the attention of the poster who seemed to think that the Alabama protesters would also protest the young woman's freedom.

In the Nigerian cse, the the man the woman claimed was the father, denied it and had three witnesses verify.

This trial is obviously flawed. The man gets off free and the woman is punished.

In the US, the paternity would be verified by a genetic test, and the father would have to pay child support. there was a breach of promise, from the young woman's staatement. Anyway, it looks like she has given the baby lots of love. (TV footage)

In any case, it's not a violation of the 7th Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultry.

[colorado_ufo]

51. A reminder to everyone

that Amnesty International fights for cases just such as this and needs your support!

Please join today and participate when asked to respond to such issues. It takes very little time and can save one life or many - and it can change the world.

http://www.amnesty.org/

[Chovexani]

53. Thank Goddess!

Hopefully she will find some safety somewhere, preferably somewhere far away from these sociopaths. I too fear that they will take matters into their own hands.

Still, it is nice to hear some good news for a change!

[noonwitch]

57. The US should offer her asylum and a free ticket to get here

I've got room, she and the kid can stay at my house.

[samsingh]

58. i am so happy that she can raise her chid