Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, is a mother living in a Sudanese prison with her 20-month old son awaiting for the implementation of the latest example of abuses under Sharia law. Ibrahim is a Christian and a Sharia court judge in Khartoum sentenced her to be hanged for refusing to renounce her religion after she gives birth to her second child and nursed her child for two years. She was given three days to renounce her faith to avoid flogging and hanging. It is that like perverse type of accommodation that has defenders claiming that Sharia law is really more humane and enlightened than Western law. For the rest of humanity, it is an unspeakable atrocity.
Ibrahim was raised by her Ethiopian Christian mother after her Muslim father abandoned her and the rest of her family. She was only six when the father walked away from the family. It is understandable why she considered herself a Christian, but Sharia courts do not care if she was raised a Christian and had only a brief relationship with a unfit Muslim father. She is a Muslim in the eyes of Islamic law and thus, starting at age 6, her adoption of Christianity makes her an apostate. Furthermore, she was sentenced as an adulterer for her relations with her Christian husband and sentenced to 100 lashes after she delivered her child. Since Sharia law does not recognize her marriage to her husband Daniel Wani, she is treated as an adulterous. He is also banned from seeing her. She is now eight months pregnant and is shackled by her feet while being held in a disgusting Sudanese jail. Her husband, who is disabled, is now destitute because he relied on his wife.
She was arrested in August 2013 after her own brother invoked Sharia law and opened a case against her and her husband for alleged adultery. So her own brother is responsible for her sentence to be savagely flogged and then hanged after birth. All in the name of Islam.
Amnesty International and other groups continue to fight for her sentence to be reversed by an appellate court.
Regardless of the outcome of the appeal, the problem is the imposition of religious law on citizens — particularly the 1991 provision making apostasy a crime punishable with death. Apostasy laws should be a deal breaker in our international aid to countries. It represents the combined denial of the freedom of religion, speak, and assembly. It is the violation of the fundamental definition of human rights. However, because we continue to use Sudan in our fight against terrorism, the U.S. government continues to send aid to the country. We also have a good-faith reason for trying to help the impoverished population in a country that has historically had a corrupt and violent government. Yet, to date in FY 14, the U.S. Government has provided more than $146.6 million in humanitarian assistance to Sudan which denies the most basic rights to its citizens and implements an abusive Sharia system that allows for the execution of woman who refused to renounce their faith.
After flogging, of course, because it is important to the court to satisfy the moral dictates of faith-based justice.
Nick:
I admire the courage and frank opinions of Ms Ali. I’ve seen several interviews with her. It’s about time we had open and honest discussions about Sharia Law.
Professor Turley is right. This should be a deal breaker in giving aid. It should be cut off, now.
I want the State Department to negotiate her release, and bring the family to the US under asylum.
We’ve given them hundreds of millions of dollars. I think we should have some pull.
I assume she is living in deplorable circumstances, with her toddler, without prenatal care or prenatal vitamins. And if nothing changes, her children will spend 2 more years in that prison. And who will get custody of them? The brother who is trying to have their mother murdered?
Religious thought even contributed to the American Civil War:
“The Civil war began when eleven Southern states declared secession from the Union and President Lincoln refused to let them to leave. Of course in war, a moral pretext must be found before people are slaughtered. Our side must be in the right and have God’s blessing, and the other side must be in the wrong and be evil. Of course both sides paint each other with the same brush. The North found a rationale in the South’s practice of slavery. The Southern states responded by claiming slavery is biblical — that even the apostle Paul did not demand masters to free slaves (Philemon 1:10-21).
So the battle lines were drawn. Catholics and Protestants divided along the North-South axis. Baptists, Congregationalists, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and others split and then proceeded to slaughter one other. Paul Johnson (p. 438), writes:
It seems these Christians only loved their brothers until their respective governments told them otherwise. And they followed their leaders with patriotic fervor — egged on from the pulpits by their crazed pastors, ministers and priests. One wonders if there would have been a civil war if Christians had insisted on not fighting one.” –Gordon Coulson
Crusades are still ongoing in religious thought, according to one historian, and even 9/11 is part of it.
Mr. Paul Johnson, a Catholic Historian contends various dynamics motivated the Crusades. (Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, A Touchstone Book/Simon & Schuster, 1976; first Touchstone edition 1995.)
He says the crusades were:
A substitute for penance and source of indulgences (page 233): “In 1095, Urban II, propagating the first crusade, laid it down that a crusade to the Holy Land was a substitute for any other penance and entailed complete remission of sin …. Throughout the twelfth century, crusading was the only source of indulgences …”
A migration (page 244): “What really created the crusade … sprang from the vast increase in western population in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequent land hunger … The idea that Europe was a Christian entity, which had acquired certain inherent rights over the rest of the world by virtue of its faith, and its duty to spread it, married perfectly with the need to find some outlet both for its addiction to violence and its surplus population.”
Racial arrogance (page 45): “From the start, then, the crusades were marked by depredations and violence which were as much racial as religious in origin.”
Ecclesiastical control (page 249): “It is, in fact, a misleading over-simplification to see the crusade simply as a confrontation between Christian Europe and the Moslem East. The central problem of the institutional church was always how to control the manifestations of religious enthusiasm, and divert them into orthodox and constructive channels. The problem was enormously intensified when large numbers of people were involved … A crusade was in essence nothing more than a mob of armed and fanatical Christians.” (page 250): “Naturally, when antinomian mobs were liable to sweep away church institutions, established authority was anxious to get them out of Christendom–preferably in the East, whence few would return.”
“History repeats itself, and that’s one of the things that’s wrong with history.” – Clarence Darrow
Well I don’t really know. But Paul if you need me to answer that can you answer why a Portuguese sailor sailed Spanish ships. Could it be because the Turks were like in control of Spain?
keebler – fyi the Reconquesta ended in 1492, hence the available money for ships and the unemployed conquistadors.
Paul,
If you didn’t catch my post, not much has changed in the last 1500 years or so.
keebler – and whose fault is that not much has changed in the last 1500 years?
Bruce,
I’ve got an idea….From the PMO, short, sweet, on time, under budget, and to the point. MOAB.
Going to some NYC Memorial Day activities, Fleet Week, Navy Blue Angels.
Cultural brain circuits last for centuries sometimes:
(Wikipedia, Crusades).
Dredd – what does the Crusades have to do with anything?
Bruce
But you would give them three days to repent before wiping them out, right?
I think the people of the world should wipe out all those who believe in sharia law. In this case two wrongs can make a right.
Barbarism, cruelty and ignorance disguised as religion. The Salem Witch Trials may have been 300 years ago in the US, but today they are being reenacted using Sharia law as the method of judgement..
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
I saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali on television maybe 10 years or so ago. She was promoting her incredible autobiography, Infidel. Ms. Ali is an articulate, intelligent, beautiful, BRAVE, woman. She had a fatwa put on her. Her friend, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered by Muslims after he had a fatwa on him. Ms. Ali lives courageously in fear of being killed. But, this woman has a grace and courage that has inspired many women. One of Ms. Ali’s biggest causes is the genital mutilation of young girls in Africa. Born in Somalia, Ali has lived throughout the Mideast from Saudi Arabia to Kenya.
The brief biography should be enough for anyone to see, particularly in light of this post, that Ms. Ali is a true hero. Well, in my continuing series of the hypocrisy of so called progressive colleges, Brandeis University cancelled giving Ms. Ali an honorary degree earlier this month. You see, she spoke out forcefully about how women are treated by Muslims. And, in the liberal mindset, that is being intolerant. Islam is the religion of peace, and we should NEVER stray from that. Even HuffPo’s Jason Linkins had the gonads to call out liberals on this one.
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
You know, I have read these before, I recall reading about three brothers, one was a Muslim, one was a Christian, one wanted to please both. They were from a wealthy family. One brother got the other one to convert to Christianity. The third would not renounce his conversion, the Muslim brother had him drug through the streets until he died. That was about 600 years ago, not much has changed.
Those religious zealotry circuits are not easy to rewire.
How about tried in absentia for crimes against humanity, sentences for these “Kangaroo Courts” prosecutors and judges?
Sudan is a resource rich country. Transnational investors bribe their way into taking control of the world’s resources. Humanity is irrelevant.
We should cut off all aid immediately. And Europe should too. They don’t deserve a penny from us. They’re evil.
Add to the mix that this woman had a successful business and it is her relatives who turned her in, so they could take over the business.