"Allahu Akbar" Indeed

SCROLL DOWN FOR IMPORTANT UPDATE ON THE MURDER OF ATWAR BAHJAT

Friday evening, time to party. Parents are delighted as boys and girls stay separated; no worrying there. Except, some sons and daughters have not returned home on time. Initial phone calls to friends fail to shed any further light on their whereabouts.

Then comes the phone call from the AVP. You wonder what AVP stands for? Anti Vice Police. "We have arrested your daughter. She was caught attending a mixed-sex party." Anxiously you ask to speak to her. "Not possible, she's still unconscious."

Unconscious? Why unconscious. What happened to her. But then the full extent of the offense begins to dawn on you. Of course, you think, she would have been flogged inside the offices of the Ministry of Justice. They don't wait to carry out the punishment. It's instant. After all, there is no need for a hearing of sorts, no possibility or denial. She was attending a mixed-sex party, that's an unassailable fact.

You picture her back covered in deep lacerations. The pain would have been too much for her to bear. Her beautiful soft and blemish-free skin; she was always so proud of her lovely complexion. And the shame, you begin to feel her utter shame and horrendous humiliation when they forced her to strip off her shirt and bra in front of all these men. No doubt they were cracking jokes and being rude. After all, in their eyes she was practically a prostitute, and as such fair game.

By now your agony is unbearable. You know that this night will forever change her life for the worse. You collapse onto your knees and sob uncontrollably. The shame, the shame she has brought onto your family. What will her father say....

Tehran, Iran, May 05 – Iranian authorities flogged 54 people for attending a mixed-sex party in the northern province of Mazandaran, a state-run daily reported.

The men and women were arrested by the “anti-vice police” in a park in the suburbs of the town of Babol as they were partying during the night, the daily Iran wrote on Thursday.

The report said that all 54 men and women were flogged inside the offices of the Ministry of Justice in Babol.

Co-ed parties are banned in Islamic Iran. Thousands of teenage boys and girls were arrested last year for taking part in similar parties. Some were flogged in public.

These are real people, somebody's real sons and daughters. It's hard not fall into the trap laid out for us by the dry rhetoric of the laconic reporting, if indeed there is any.

Every time this happens, we must allow the enormity of these barbaric actions carried out routinely by the Iranian government to take full effect. We must each time contrast them with our values and beliefs and with our liberties we so treasure.

Every time Iranian youths are subjected to the barbarism of 100 lashes, every time their backs are left covered in huge bloody welts, we need to repeat out loud the words of OutRage!

"This is a further example of the violent homophobia of the Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist regime," said Brett Lock of OutRage!

OutRage! is appalled that large sections of liberal and left opinion in the West shows little concern regarding the murderous brutality of the clerical fascist regime in Tehran.  [...]

"Similar gullibility has been shown by some left-wingers. They have long swallowed Iran's homophobic propaganda. "Believing the stories in Iran’s state-sanctioned media is like accepting the news as reported by the press in Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile.  "Where are the left-wing campaigns in western countries to support the freedom struggles of Iranian LGBTs, women, democrats, socialists and workers?

Sensitivity for religious beliefs and self-imposed censorship for cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad, my foot, this is sheer barbarity from the middle ages. Which brings me to the next, more brutal and beyond understanding of any civilized human being.

The ghastly story of the violent torture and murder of the brave journalist Atwar Bahjat, who you would most definitely have noticed on your television screens, as the pretty thirty year old speaking in her native language, who always prominently wore her trademark golden locket in the shape of a united Iraq, representing her relentless belief in the peace between the Shi'ites and Sunnis.

She was brutally murdered back in late February, but we now have news via the Sunday Times who have obtained a devastatingly cruel video taken by a cellphone camera, showing the Islamofascist terrorist death squad in action:

First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.

By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.

It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.[...]

A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.

Her cries — “Ah, ah, ah” — can be heard above the “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone. [...]

Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.

Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.

The voice of one of the Arab world’s most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

"She had nine drill holes in her right arm and 10 in her left when the body was found. The drill had also been applied to her legs, her navel and her right eye. One can only hope that these mutilations were made after her death." In my short experience of reading the gruesome details of Islamofascist execution squads, they have no use to drill a dead body, she would have been drilled alive.

"Allahu akbar" indeed. The Allah of the Qur'an has absolutely nothing to do with the God of the Bible, but everything to do with a human leader who made it all up to condone his barbaric life. Anyone who for a moment thinks that God's greatness is established by such cruelty, needs to look to Muhammad the man for answers.

But there is no evidence the Iranian-backed Badr militia was responsible. Indeed, there are conflicting indications. The drill is said to be a popular tool of torture with the Badr Brigade. But beheading is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the Sunni Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

According to a report that was circulating after Bahjat’s murder, she had enraged the Shi’ite militias during her coverage of the bombing of the Samarra shrine by filming the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, ordering police to release two Iranians they had arrested.

There is no confirmation of this and the Badr Brigade, with which she maintained good relations, protected her family after her funeral came under attack in Baghdad from a bomber and then from a gunman. Three people died that day.

Bahjat’s reporting of terrorist attacks and denunciations of violence to a wide audience across the Middle East made her plenty of enemies among both Shi’ite and Sunni gunmen. Death threats from Sunnis drove her away to Qatar for a spell but she believed her place was in Iraq and she returned to frontline reporting despite the risks.

We may never know who killed Bahjat or why. But the manner of her death testifies to the breakdown of law, order and justice that she so bravely highlighted and illustrates the importance of a cause she espoused with passion.

I remember that during the US/Iraqi 'Operation Swarmer', the six men believed to be responsible, were arrested, and Iraq's Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi announced that they were to be put on public display. This story was ceremoniously withdrawn shortly thereafter by the Defence Minister who said he was misquoted, and the men arrested were apparently responsible for the murder of the editor and the driver. But in any event, what lesson would have been learned from that, if these people have become less than wild animals depraved and devoid of any human emotion for centuries now, and this form of butchery has become a part of every day life in the name of Allah, who has become more and more alien to me as the time has gone on. I am sick and tired of rational explanations some try to offer as poor compensation for sheer heartless nihilistic barbarity.

My friend Jeff Goldstein agrees with me:

What one is left with, after reading the piece, is twofold, I think:  first, the unquestionable brutality and arrogant ideological certainty of our enemies, whose mindset is borne in some cases of odious fundamentalist religious “convictions”, but in other cases is simply content to use those convictions perfunctorily to justify their nihilistic barbarism and sadism.  Second, that barbarism and sadism—and the nihilism that drips from it—will, if we’re not careful, find us trying to make sense of something that is designed to trouble rational comprehension, the result being that we assign “reasons” to fill the vacuum left by the inhumanity we have “witnessed”.

More on this @ Michelle Malkin, Captain's Quarters,  lgf, Mudville Gazette, Power Line, Pajamas Media, Wizbang, Ace, Dr. Sanity, The Jawa Report, Atlas Shrugs, Neo-neocon, Moderate Voice, Riehl World View, The Heretik, Flopping Aces, California Conservative, Don Singleton, Elephants in Academia, Tammy Bruce, Cold Fury, Poli Pundit, The Sundries Shack, Blue Crab Boulevard.

UPDATE: Apparently the video given to the Sunday Times is not of the murder of Atwar Bahjat, who indeed was brutally murdered but not beheaded (courtesy Getty Images). The video in question of the infidel being beheaded by Islamic terrorists comes courtesy of Rusty Shackleford and is extremely gruesome so please take care watching it. I must note that this is the video circulating round the net and on Jihadi sites, and we have no proof that this is the same video the Sunday Times was delivered, although the descriptions match up to a point
 

The Times reported that the film was delivered to them by Sunni insurgents and said that it had been found on the mobile phone of a dead Shia militant. The article erroneously tries to blame Bahjat's murder on Shia militias, and uses the false video as evidence of growing civil strife in Iraq.

The video, in fact, actually shows an "infidel" being murdered by a Sunni Salaafist terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda.

Mudville Gazette who originally tipped off Rusty about the possibility of foul play, gives an update:

What’s known at this time: Atwar Bahjat was kidnapped and murdered while covering the Samarra bombing. The author of the London Times’ story has been with the paper for some time, and is self-identified as “a friend of Bahjat who had worked with her on a variety of tough assignments”. According to that Times story, the paper received a video of an execution that concludes with a close-up of the victim’s face. The author has seen the video. The video is “cell phone” quality. The author says the victim is Atwar Bahjat.

More information on this and the death squads @ Jeff Goldstein's who points to Axle Steele laying the blame for her death directly at our feet. Rusty's answer to that:

Ansar al-Sunna (the guys doing the beheading) were once part of an organization called ‘Ansar al-Islam.  These guys were around BEFORE the invasion and were busy fighting the secular Kurds before we bombed them into oblivion.  Oh, and they were funded by ‘friends’ in Afghanistan (OBL).  They also had a truce with Saddam since their main enemies were secular Kurds. They also once had a fellow by the name of
Abu Musab al Zarqawi as one of their operatives before the invasion.

On a PS note—the reason al-Islam is no more is because the Kurds (in my estimation) are ‘big footprint’ people.  al-Sunna operates along the Kurdis periphery, with the occasional sploido bomb of a Kurdish official, because they can’t establish a presence with all the Peshmirga everywhere. IMO, that is.

Make sure you read Jeff's entire post.

Comments

[Phil Julius]

Yes, iran's just as horrid as saudi arabia, which also does honor killings. So then we nuke them both?

[Raimondo]

The scary part for me is not what happens in Iran, albeit it is sad and appaling. The scary part is that we have an entrenched very vocal strong group in the West that blames the inequities and the suffering of the Islamic World on our own policies...or as they love to say..."failed policies".

We have an overwhelming number of people in the West, including important institutions such as various Church groups, the press, etc.. who think that Iranian Clerics or Saudi Vice Squads or the "Arab Forces" in Sudan are legitimate voices, legitimate people who should be given the same opportunity to air their "point of view" as the rest of us and that by reacting naturally to the horror they are perpetrating upon the world we are somehow lowering ourselves to their level or in most cases we are worst than they are.

We are our own worst enemy..and in these blatant cases, we end up being the enemy of those we should in fact be helping.

It would be an interesting experiment to drop a motley number of these naysayers into a mixed sexes party in Iran and have it broken up by the vice squad so they can experience a lashing first hand. Then perhaps some of them may have a change of heart and realize how precious and diametrically different the culture they live in is to the totalitariam cultures that unfortunately dominate a good swath of the Islamic world.

[beth]

This is just an appalling story. I agree that it is a tipping point. I can't imagine how anyone can defend it in any way.

To the commenter who says that you are defining the religion by it's most barbaric adherants - I wonder where the more moderate practitioners are then? Where are they? Why don't they speak out and stop this insanity? If it were just a few muslims - if it were isolated incidents - but it's not, it's global and apparently everyone is AFRAID to speak out. Even our own MSM have shown themselves to be horrible cowards.

Most terrorism experts are saying it's going to take more blood to get the US to do what it has to do. I hate to think it, but I'm afraid they are right. I would have thought 9/11 would have been enough - but as time has gone by, the weak and cowardly have spun the whole thing around until it's hardly recognizable.

We will have to be much crueler than we are to end this. If we walk away, as the liberals would have us do, we lose. That's easier in the immedate sense. But walking away won't make the war go away however much the liberals want to think it will.

[Michael Galien]

(sorry for not posting in a while; computer didn't work)

'Stories' like this always make me extremely sick.

It also makes me, however, more aware that what we are doing, in general, is the right thing to do. We should liberate those who are oppressed by extremist muslims, and fight those who are the oppressors.

It always makes me wonder how the left can call themselves peaceful, when they simply ignore murders like this, or act as if it is not up to them to do something against it.
Ignoring = allowing in my humble opinion.

[slowtrain]

Indeed, Europe's churches and people are in deep trouble. In their Mosques the Muslims are made to believe that Christianity is dead in Europe and that it is only a matter of time before Islam finally conquers Europe. There is no greater conviction to Muslims, that Christianity is dead in Europe than the lack of zeal and the irreverent treatment of Christian sacred places and symbols by those who call themselves Christians, particularly their so-called leaders, in their hypocritical and obsequious acts of ecumenism, their lack of response to the desecration of Christian sacred places by Muslims and others.

Recently, a leading Sheik proclaimed, “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice—once from the South, from Andalusia, and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens.”

Europe has abandoned the Christian God and is about to go into captivity, to be made to serve a pagan god and shall pay tribute and make offerings to the pagan god with the blood of her children on her streets. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth like she has not known, unless she wakes up and returns to God. Those who will perish will heed no signs of danger, as a fool will go athirst in the abundance of water, so are they.

The wicked is all that forget God. Proverbs 14: 11 – 16: The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish. There is a way, which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Even in laughter the heart may be in pain, and the end of joy may be grief. The backslider in heart will have his fill of his own ways, but a good man will be satisfied with his. The naive believes everything, but the sensible man considers his steps. A wise man is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is arrogant and careless.

Jeremiah 23:32: “Behold, I am against those who have prophesied false dreams, declares the LORD, and related them and led my people astray by their falsehoods and reckless boasting; yet I did not send them or command them, nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit, declares the LORD.”

1 Thessalonians 5:3: “While they are saying, Peace and safety, then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.” Ezekiel 13:10: “It is definitely because they have misled my people by saying peace when there is no peace. And when anyone builds a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash.”

[gringoman]

If you think the march of barbarism and Islamism will stop the Dance of the Dhimmis, you may want to check the new report and fotos at Brussels Journal. This shows, vividly, how Belgian Catholics are receiving muslim immigrants in Christian churches. The muslims are not only live-in, tents set up for them, but they are permitted to cover up the Virgin Mary and hang an Allah banner. Oh, and according to one of the commenters, this wonderfully tolerant and compassionate ecumenical spirit has gone even further in Italy. In some churches there the muslims are pissing in baptismal fonts.

[Assistant Village Idiot]

As a Christian who approves of the Crusades and considers the Inquisition an improvement on the secular courts of their time, I nonetheless have to acknowledge that horrors perpetrated by Christians cannot all be considered individual or even local events. We own institutional violence and cruelty as well, even if not to the extent we are sometimes accused of. Wolves seek sheep's clothing to disguise their nature and the sheep are not to blame. But when the sheep offer their own clothing to the wolves, then they share the blame.

I would prefer to believe that the same is true of Islam: that those who would be cruel in order to simultaneously enjoy lust and self-righteousness use that religion as a sheeps clothing. I said I would prefer to believe that - I can't say that I do. There does seem to be some difference in Islam which makes it more compatible with such evils. I am glad that there are believing Muslims who hope for reform and sanity, even if they delude themselves. My fear is that their hope is false, and that the encouragement to evil will always outweigh the encouragement to good. It is a fallen world, and the encouragement to good must be powerful indeed or it will fail utterly. Even the gentlest of Christian upbringings and the wisest teachers does not guarrantee that a child will grow up to seek goodness. Still less can we hope for those who grow up with cruelty and have corrupt teachers to avoid evil, unless God Himself intervenes.

[slowtrain]

Good point, Stefan. People tend to forget that, particularly the spineless Western press which in apparent obsequiousness, are all too eager to raise the issue of the Crusades to rationalize Islamic terrorism in our time. Radical Islamists, on their part, use the Crusades as a sort of psychological tactic of projection (externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense) to justify their barbarism and to lead young impressionable Muslim men into maniacal frenzy that culminates in essentially what I call Zombie missions and suicide quest for death in order kill as many people as possible, regardless of who they kill.

There is no question as to the intent of Islam for Europe. In fact, it is known (in Hadith) that Prophet Muhammad was asked what city will be conquered for Islam first; Heracles or Romiyya? To which his answer was “The city of Heracles”. The city of Heracles which later became Constantinople, was invaded in 1453 by a young Ottoman named Muhammad bin Morad, affectionately known in Islamic history as Muhammad the Conqueror. Of course, Romiyya is Rome of today.

And as you know, the medieval Serbian state revived by your name sake (on first name basis) Stefan Nemanja (Stefan the first) in the 12th century and became an in empire in 1346 under Stefan Dušan, fell to the Muslim Ottoman Turks, after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, and the northern Serbian territories comprised of Smederevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina were also conquered between 1459 and 1482 by the Islamic Ottoman Empire at the height of Islamic expansion. In fact, in the period between 1459 and 1804, Serbia remained under the rule of the Islamic Ottoman Empire which expanded throughout this period and forced or constrained many Serbs to convert to Islam in order to keep their lands to avoid eviction and enslavement; a practice which is still in effect in Islamic countries even today, as we saw recently in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran, Iraq and all of North Africa, all met the same fate. Much later in history, but for the intervention of the British, the entire Africa, as far south as Nigeria, which had already lost its northern territories to Islamic invasion, in the Jihad led by a Muslim clergyman, Shehu Usuman dan Fodio in 1804, would have been overrun by Islamic invaders.

Historian Bernard Lewis, whom you also quoted, wrote in his book Islam and the West, “For almost a thousand years . . . Europe was under constant threat. In the early centuries it was a double threat—not only of invasion and conquest, but also of conversion and assimilation. All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers, and the vast majority of the first Muslims west of Iran and Arabia were converts from Christianity. North Africa, Egypt, Syria, even Persian-ruled Iraq, had been Christian countries, in which Christianity was older and more deeply rooted than in most of Europe. Their loss was sorely felt and heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.”

[Stefan]

Mr. Brenner,

Although Christianity has had some “not so proud” moments its history is in no way equivalent to Islam. I’m sure you have the Crusades in mind but, as Bernard Lewis aptly points out, the Islamic world barely even noticed that they occurred. They had little if any effect on the, essentially, unchecked advance of Islam right in to the heart of Europe; which was only stopped by some very important European defensive victories. The Islamic world only “rediscovered” the history of the Crusades only after Muslims began to seek education in the West. I say “re-discovered” because history in Islamic countries barely even mentioned them. Couldn’t have been too traumatic for the Muslim world I guess. It is also important to note that they were essentially for the purpose of the defense of historically Christian communities which were under threat from the rapidly expanding Islamic Empires.

[igout]

Stalin, who certainly knew something about these matters, used to say that only the grave straightens the hunched back. Islam's back is very, very hunched.

[Deva]

Check out the Jawa report or a thread at LGF, apparently the beheading video is a fake. My comment still stands though. They did kill her and they murdered a Nepalese truck driver in the video clip.

[epaminondas]

The denouement of this horrific act of terror-murder-atrocity in the serial killings atributable to some kind of god (maybe Kali is a better one for these ginstu wielders)..SO WHAT?

Is there surprise?
Shock?

It's the Clash. That's what happens. That's the value set espoused by the KKK of Islam. But who will infiltrate and kill them? Who will arrest, prosecute and jail them for many years?

No one. They are too numerous, and too scary for the rest. Thus in the end we will have to use the bluntest instrument available to save ourselves, our faiths, our freedom and ur way of life.

So sorry, folks, but isn't that yet crystal clear?

In 1861, WT Sherman was insitutionalized, and sent to retirement for saying repeatedly it would take 500,000 men and five years to crush the South.

We will be compelled before this is over to kill a lot of people. Values which make such murders as we have seen documented here clearly indicate that those who believe in, teach, finance, promulgate, and support these values will have to hide under their beds in horror and dread when they hear the name of the USA in order for such ideologies to be destroyed, and for decent people to live and breath.

I am sorry that this is my OBSERVATION. Many will think it harsh, and bloody. Too bad. That's the way it is.

[Deva]

I am so tired of people bringing up Christianity as some sort of moral equivalent of Islamic terrorism.A person who follows Jesus the Christ as he is depicted in the New Testament is not a violent,torturing,child murdering, innocent slaughtering savage. I challenge you to show me any passage in the New Testament where Jesus says the followers of any other religion are pigs, apes or dogs and that they should be lied to or killed.No follower of present day Islam can say the same.The name Christian means a "little Christ" one who walks as Christ did.If you are not doing that or at least attempting to conform your life to His to the best of your ability you aren't being a Christian at all.So when Mohammed the messenger himself ascribes these violent tendencies to the followers of Allah how can you say the text and the attributes of the founder are not important.The fundamental Muslim who follows Muhammed's dictates basically has to do violence. The fundamental Christian would not.I once heard a man who converted from Islam to Christianity say that the deciding factor for him was the character of Christ, and the most overwhelming life changing conception that God was equated with love.There is a fundamental flaw in the Koran and it is that it is not a message from a God anyone should serve.

[slowtrain]

Good people, you are finally catching on, still ever slowly; because mostly, I still hear people asking the same questions over and over again, even when the answers have already been provided time and time again? I guess people are still largely in denial and still waiting and longing for the good news about Islam; for someone to tell them what they want to hear, as has become customary in Western societies, which explains the glib hash that is so frequently tossed around in Western media, as bones tossed to meek poppies. The same falsehood is foolishly and mindlessly repeated by cowardly liberal press and even some Western leaders, as if reading a ransom note, the type kidnappers make their victims read to make the public perceive them in a good light or blame someone else for their dastardly deeds.
The difficulty, perhaps impossibility that lies in reforming Islam is that Islam is fundamentally and completely based on the conducts of the founder, Mohammed of Arabia, hence the Qur'an (revelation) and the hadith (tradition). In essence Islam is really Mohammedanism, hence complete emphasis on taqlid, which means imitation in Arabic. As I have said before, ijtihad, which in Arabic means free play of the intellect and qiyyas, which in Arabic means analogical reasoning, are strictly forbidden. Moreover, there is no concept for compromise in Arabic, in the sense that Arabic has no word for "compromise" in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement; there is taarradhin, but evidently that is untenable when Muslims are dealing with disagreement within or without Islam. Some may argue that Christianity is of similar attributes as Islam, in the sense that it is founded on the teachings and conducts of Jesus Christ. One could say that is a fair comparison, but the essence of Islam which by the way, was inspired by Judaism and Christianity is incontrovertibly contrary to the ideals of Christianity.
It is perhaps impossible to have reform without the key ingredients of truth, rational thinking or free play of the intellect, analogical reasoning, etc. It is perhaps impossible to reform an idea with a flawed or false foundation. The expectation that Islam can be reformed the same way “the values of the 18th-century European Enlightenment for guidance, when rationalism and secularism guided the drive towards cultural, social and political progress”, is highly improbably, because of the element of violence that is key in the foundation, establishment, and continuity of Islam.

Regardless, of mistakes Christians may have made in the name of Christianity over the centuries, such as aspects of the Crusades, the fact remains that what Jesus Christ taught and stood for are clear and infallible. Regardless of errant doctrines, the foundational attributes of Christianity; truth (something that has fidelity to the original), justice, love, forgiveness, peace, charity, restraint, restoration, and goodwill even toward enemies are constant. Jesus Christ never advanced his teachings through violence and the disciples did not establish Christianity through violence means.

Secularism took hold in the West, precisely because Christianity tolerates free play of the intellect and analogical reasoning, after all Christians believe that God endowed man with freewill. Nevertheless, secularism and freedom to choose to reject Christianity or Christian values does not invalidate Christianity or Christian values. And the fact that Christians allow their values to co-exist with secular values, even in societies where they are dominant in number, does not diminish Christian values. Christianity simply allows people to exercise their God given freewill in the choices they make. Of course, such choices have attendant consequences; good or bad.

The only way Islam can be reformed is to abandon the idea altogether, that will not be an easy thing to do, because of the Catch-22 that is at the core of Islam. The only way that can happen is if there is a spontaneous or simultaneous mass awakening that overwhelms the stranglehold of Islamic clerics and the radical leaders who perpetuate such unbelievably warped ideologies that boggle the rational mind.

[Michael Brenner]

I think this is an important story, but you're defining the religion by its most barbaric adherents. It seems to me that you would have to apply the same standard to everyone, particularly if you're going to make historical arguments. Christianity has a past that is just as brutal as current Islamofascism. That it has cleaned up its act in the past few centuries does not change the fact that it too was once a "barbaric" religion. The moral is that the practices of the religion are dependent on the interpretations of leaders and laypeople, not the text of the book or the attributes of the founders.

[Jeremayakovka]

This woman's murder seems to be a kind of tipping point - not in the degree of cruelty, but in a certain corner of the blogosphere.

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

Yes, for those who do not believe in demonic possession, please find in the article on page 1, "Prosecution Exhibit A", and B, and C, and ....

[liquid]

Alexandra,
I have come to the conclusion that many muslim men have this embedded trait that is fed by watching violence in such a way that experiencing someone suffering (especially women) gets them excited. I mean not only a giddish fever of optical eye candy that bubbles them up into a chant but it affects them sexually also. It's as if the more one suffers the bigger the orgasm. It has to be the same type of vile fed spirit that was in the day of coliseum when Christians were fed to lions and people enjoyed it as entertainment.

It was no suprise to me to find out that Saddam loved "The Godfather" movies and that his sons which did some horrible things were also into drugs and had been groomed as young boys to witness executions. When we learned more about the dark side of their personal lives just as we learn more about what the muslims in Iran are capable of ....it is like watching the unfolding of some serial killer's case files isn't it? Indeed...they have the mindset and heart of a serial killer. Some spirit exist inside them that is pure evil. Did they torture animals in their youth? Did they torture ever little black puppy out there because they were taught that Muhammed believed that black dogs were demon possessed? Something is deeply seeded in these individuals very early in their lives and when sharia law is dominate with the cult of Islam; it seems to breed a different type of male: men that never bond in real love with their mothers and then are segregated from the female sex until marriage, which puts many of them into the world of homosexuality and on top of this in their tender age of development they are having their hearts molded by the ideology of a pagan god that offers to reward them for murder! This all in a society that never seems to produce old men suicide bombers. I mean, someone can correct me, but how many old saggy men's body parts are flying around in the car bombs or cafes of Israel? Isn't it always younger men? If Allah's commands were really that real, then why do old men look the other way at the call to jihad when it comes to suicide bombing? Could it be that the older men have gotten wise? They see the political recruiting of it?

IMHO, the torture or the watching of the victim suffer and be humiliated prior to death is the fruit of their sacrifice for the cause of Allah. There is a belief in China that the more a dog suffers before his death ...the better tasting the meat when it's cooked. That is why they will literally skin them alive before hanging them on a hook for sale. Dark minds that have been opened to such barbaric thoughts and then choose to carry these thoughts out into actions are full of a dark spirit. It's a spirit that is instructed by pure evil.

[Huan]

There are two problems at hand here. One is with with Islam itself. The other is the adoption of Sharia as legal precendence (i.e. the lack of separation between church and state). What do you think of efforts to reform Islam such as this one by Malek Chebel

Chebel has published some 20 books on Islam, in which he has frequently dealt with sensitive and uncommon subjects, such as love in Islam: He claims that Islam is a sensuous religion and condemns the strict fundamentalist approach to relations between men and women. He has also tackled such taboos as wine and homosexuality in Islam. His publications include a Love Dictionary of Islam (Plon, 2004) and an Encyclopedia of Love in Islam (Payot, 1995). His other main focus is reform of Islam, to which he has dedicated two major books: Islam and Reason: The Struggle of Ideas (Perrin, 2005), and Manifesto for an Enlightened Islam (Hachette, 2004).

In his Manifesto for an Enlightened Islam (Manifeste pour un islam des lumières), Chebel puts forth 27 proposals for extensively reforming Islam. He turns to the values of the 18th-century European Enlightenment for guidance, when rationalism and secularism guided the drive towards cultural, social and political progress. Chebel's first two propositions set the principles of reform: a new interpretation of the Koran, and the preeminence of reason over creed. However, he dismisses atheism, noting that "nothing very important is achieved outside the framework of religion." [1]

Chebel calls for putting an end to violence in the name of Islam; for renouncing Jihad, which is, in his eyes, immoral; for abolishing all fatwas calling for death; and for abolishing Islamic corporal punishment. Chebel stands against female genital mutilation and for banning slavery and trafficking in human beings in the Arab world; for strict punishment of the perpetrators of honor crimes and for promoting the status of women.