The recent sexual assault in Cologne of women on New Year’s Eve has shocked the nation. As many as 1000 men, allegedly set upon women and made them run a gauntlet as they were grabbed, their clothes ripped, and their bodies groped. Police sources and witnesses have said that many were refugees — triggering renewed objections over a spate of rapes and assaults of women in the country attributed to recent immigrants. To make matters worse for the government, newspapers are reporting that one man told police “I am Syrian. You have to treat me kindly. Mrs Merkel invited me.” The result has been a rising tide of criticism of Merkel for her open-door policy. Yet, that criticism may now be muted by a move by the government to crackdown on anti-immigration comments as a form of “hate speech.” As we discussed today with the effort to ban Donald Trump, free speech is being rolled back in Europe under hate crime and anti-discrimination laws as an alarming rate. It is particularly worrisome when the government is under attack on an issue like immigration and responds by prosecuting people for such criticism. News reports indicate that 18 of the 31 known suspects from Cologne were asylum seekers, including “nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, an Iraqi, a Serbian, an American and two German nationals.
We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have seen comedians targeted with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here).
Prosecutors are charging people who are “inciting hatred” in Germany by speaking out against immigrants and their impact on German society. Prosecutors and judges are determining what criticism will be allowed and what will be treated as criminal. In the meantime, the government has reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to crackdown on Internet speech. It is an effort to create the artificial appearance of agreement and tolerance by denying free speech to critics.
While it is still not clear how many of the Cologne attackers were immigrants (as many as 22 have been identified as refugees), the incident has been a flashpoint as numerous stories of women and girls being harassed about their clothing or assaulted by immigrants. For example, a 26-year-old Berlin man’s home was raided by police, who confiscated his computer and phones after he had posted the image of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach and wrote “We are not mourning, we are celebrating!” A disgusting comment and one that is worthy public condemnation. However, it is also an act of free speech.
Nevertheless, many citizens are celebrating the denial of their own free speech rights. So long as they disagree with the speakers, there appears little concern over the rising tide of censorship and criminalization of speech. People are now unsure what they can say about immigration, which is precisely the chilling effect that governments seek in such measure. The result is a forced silence . . . which is golden for governments like Merkel’s that do not like what they are hearing.
I’m guessing a lot of people here won’t like the tone of this video. I’m not rally crazy about it myself but the information is so important. Ever hear of a company called Uranium One? Check out their Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/Uranium-One-1683613478585571/timeline Why would they be so concerned about what’s happening in Oregaon?
Oregon: Harney County the secret they don’t want you to know
Oh God here we go…. Now with the Po and Bam Bam endless diatribes.
@Ken Rogers
“The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy.”
It is my opinion that that is simply not true. Turkey and the U.S. have exactly the same policy and the same goal. Simply put they’re on the same team with different uniforms.
“There are apparently some very slow studies in the Obama Administration, who seem to have learned little from the tragedies of the illegal and immoral US-engineered regime changes in Iraq and Libya…”
I beg to differ. Slow studies? They’ve learned EVERYTHING from the ‘tragedies’ of Iraq and Libya. These ‘tragedies’ are their victories.
“…as they seem intent on creating the same kind of fundamentalist chaos in Syria.”
Yes, it is intentionally created chaos and intent is 9/10th of the law.
“Or, perhaps it’s the case that the influential neocons in his administration see important money to be made by their friends in the Military-Industrial Complex from continual war in the Middle East, regardless of the identities of the temporary winners and losers.”
Why single out the so-called neocons? Money and power and power and money; there is no separation of so-called conservative and liberal in this game. None whatsoever. We’ve had it drilled into our naive little heads for so long that it matters which ‘party’ we support.
It’s about control, creating ‘order’ out of chaos which is nothing more than suppression and oppression. If enough chaos is created, people will beg for ‘order’ and ‘security’, but who’s order? Do you understand why this chaos is being intentionally created? Look at the aftermath of the Boston bombing. Read the Rand report; http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG819.pdf Count how many times it’s mentioned that we must do away with Posse Comitatus. The Rand report refers to the U.S. but the same agenda is being played out all over Europe and the Mideast .
“Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by PUBLIC INCREDULITY” – Marshall McLuhan
Sorry, I KNOW I get pissy about these things, but I’m just getting so anxious with the speed with which this agenda is being played out and the number of people who just don’t get it….who just don’t get the big picture.
OOps, here is your link: http://www.islamweb.net/en/article/20069/jewish-american-converts-to-islam
And, forgive me, another one, this one written for you obviously 🙂
———————-
Jeremy Greenberg (I now, not Daniel Greenberg but a Greenberg nonetheless)
Author, Comedian, Soothsayer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-greenberg/jew-converted-to-islam_b_1097776.html
The Observations of a Jew Who Converted to Islam
Have you ever wondered exactly what it is to be an American Muslim? Are they human? How exactly to do they plan on killing us all and turning the United States into a Muslim nation ruled by a galactic caliphate? And how have they learned to pretend to enjoy living here in the United States even though we all know they consider this country to be the great Satan?
Hello. My name is Jeremy Greenberg, and I am here to help you better understand the truth about American Muslims. Although my opening questions are clearly sarcastic, I, like many Americans was largely ignorant about what it’s like to be Muslim in America. That is, until last March when this Jew walked into a mosque in Louisville, Kentucky, a city in which I was performing for the week, and converted to Islam. I am now alternatively known as Assad Ibrahim, or “Lion of Abraham.”
Why did I convert? Simple. I wanted to better understand the life of Muslims in America, and what their growing presence means for the rest of us. I didn’t trust how politicians and the media were playing the issue, and I didn’t want any second-hand information. The only way I truly felt I could know American Muslims was to become one.
Oddly enough, converting to Islam is one of the most Jewish things I’ve ever done. We clearly have an Islamophobia problem in this country. Mosques across this nation are repeatedly being vandalized, and women wearing traditional Muslim clothing are being thrown off of airplanes for no good reason. The craziest part is that most of us don’t care. But Jews should care a lot! The last time a western nation was complicit in the demonization of an entire group of people was during the Nazi regime in Germany. Every person who values freedom and tolerance should be doing their best to make sure Muslims are not unfairly demonized. I know some of my Jewish brethren will see my conversion as traitorous. But the truth is, my becoming a Muslim so as to better understand and explain them to those who will listen is actually a mitzvah, or blessing. I’m no more of a traitor than Oskar Schindler. And if your immediate feeling upon learning that I became a Muslim is repulsion, then you are for whom I’m writing this the most.
Alright,alright, last one bamie! I hope you are sitting down, I would not wish this to my worse enemy, a Jew who becomes a Hamas supporter and an enemy of Israel!!!! who woulda thunk it????!!!!!
——————-
“”Jewish American Converts to Islam
Joseph Cohen moved from the United States to Israel as a devout Jew in 1998, but within three years he had converted to Islam and become Yosef Mohammed Khatib, a supporter of the militant Hamas, according to a report broadcast Thursday on Israel TV.
Now he refuses to say the word Israel, choosing instead to call the area “Palestine.” His four children study the Quran, the Muslim holy book, instead of the Torah, its Jewish counterpart.
It was while living in the desert town of Netivot that Khatib met a sheik from the United Arab Emirates through an Internet chat about Israel. Khatib said he spent hours corresponding with the sheik, discussing theology. Gradually he began to see Judaism as racist and turned toward Islam after reading the Quran, he told Channel 10 TV. The report did not say where he lived in the United States or give his age.
Last year he told his wife, Luna, also a devout Jew from the United States, that he wanted to convert to Islam.
“I said, `Listen, I love you very much … and I have to be honest with you,'” Khatib said in the TV interview. “I read the Quran and I agree with everything it says in the Quran, and if I continue saying that I’m a religious Jew, I would be a liar.”
The family converted together and moved from Netivot to an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem. The children went from being top in their classes on Judaism studies to being well-versed in Islam, he said.
Instead of supporting the Israeli Orthodox Jewish political party Shas, Khatib now supports the radical Islamic Hamas and believes an Islamic state should be set up where Israel and the Palestinian areas are now located.
He praised Hamas for setting up social services for Palestinians but dodged questions about the other side of the Islamic group – suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis. The United States has declared Hamas a terror group.
Khatib differed from most Israelis and Americans in his views about Osama bin Laden, the top suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.
“I think that he’s number one, Muslim number one,” Khatib said with a strong New York accent about bin Laden. “But I don’t think that he’s responsible for the World Trade Center (attacks).”
Wearing the white skullcap and robes of a religious Muslim, Khatib denied his Jewish past, insisting that he is 100 percent Muslim. He made a parody of a blessing that observant Jews say every morning, in which they thank God for not making them gentiles.
“Blessed are Thou, Lord Our God,” Khatib began in the traditional Jewish blessing, but ended it with, “for not making me a Jew.”
There is no hope for the rabid ignorant, bambam, no hope…none!
According to your illogic, all of these people of different hue and origins are all inbred imbeciles???? Only an imbecile might think so 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Islam#/media/File:Converts_to_Islam.png
This is a list of notable converts to Islam from Judaism.
Hibat Allah Abu’l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi – influential 12th-century physicist, philosopher, and scientist who wrote a critique of Aristotelian philosophy and Aristotelian physics.[1]
Ibn Yahyā al-Maghribī al-Samaw’al – 12th-century mathematician and astronomer.[2][3]
Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss) – Viennese journalist, author, and translator who visited the Hijaz in the 1930s, and became Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations.[4]
Sultan Rafi Sharif Bey (Yale Singer) – 20th-century pioneer in the development of Islamic culture in the United States.[5]
Youssef Darwish – a labour lawyer and activist[6] who was one of the few from the Karaite Jewish community to remain in Egypt after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Tali Fahima – Israeli left-wing activist, convicted of aiding Palestinian fighters. Converted to Islam in Umm al-Fahm in June 2010.[7]
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani – 13th-century Persian physician[8]
Yaqub ibn Killis – 10th-century Egyptian vizier under the Fatimids.[9]
Leila Mourad – Egyptian singer and actress of the 1940s and 1950s.[10]
Lev Nussimbaum – 20th-century writer, journalist and orientalist.[11]
Jacob Querido – 17th-century successor of the self-proclaimed Jewish Messiah Sabbatai Zevi.[12]
Abdullah ibn Salam – 7th-century sahabi said to have been a rabbi of aristocratic stock.[13]
Ibn Sahl of Seville – 13th-century Andalusian poet.[14]
Harun ibn Musa – 8th-century scholar of Hadith and Qira’at, and the first compiler of the different styles of Qur’anic recitation.[15]
Al-Ru’asi – 8th-century scholar of Arabic grammar and the founder of the Kufan school of grammar.[16]
And then this :
Killing you deep down, poor bambam…
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A Holocaust survivor by the name of Helen Brashatsky (Leila Jabarin) who arrived in mandate Palestine in 1948, married a Palestinian and converted to Islam.(h/t:MasterQ)
Quite a fascinating story, AlJazeera Arabic has an interesting article in Arabic about her being denied the payments that Holocaust survivors received because she converted to Islam: Survivor From the Holocaust, Converted to Islam and Married a Palestinian.(h/t: ArabAtheist)
She likely would be an excellent individual to educate children on the consequences of hate and genocide. Her story would also help dispel Holocaust denial:
http://www.loonwatch.com/2012/04/survivor-from-the-holocaust-converted-to-islam-and-married-a-palestinian/
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And here is he dagger, sorry: Jews for Allah
“”TESTIMONIES OF JEWISH CONVERTS TO ISLAM
These are True Stories of Jewish People who followed Judaism and became Muslim, despite the Israeli Arab political conflict, more and more Jews are realizing
that Judaism and Christianity are light houses leading to Islam, whether you were a Messianic Jew, a Jew for Jesus, or an Orthodox Jew, any Jew can be for Allah. Because Everyone is born a Muslim (in Submission to Allah) Everyday Jews are Returning (Reverting) to their Religion of Birth and the Religion of Abraham, Moses, and all the past Prophets, Islam.
Michael David Shapiro
Yiddishe Muslimah
Yousef al Khatab
Qamar al Khattab (Luna “Melul” Cohen)
Abdel Rahman al Khattab (Rahamim Cohen)
Hesibeh al Khattab (Hesibeh Cohen)
Abdel Aziz al Khattab (Ezra Cohen)
Abdullah al Khattab (Ovadia Cohen)
Mohammed Ben Zerroda
Josh Hasan
Adam Wolfer
Ali ibn Sahl
Aisha
Samau’al al-Maghribi
Prof. Abdullah Shleifer
Abd al-Haqq Islami
Ka`b al-Ahbar
Rashid al-Din
Ibn Kammuna
Sayed Udeen
Mohammed Yusuf
Sind b. ‘Ali
Muhammad (Abu Abdullah) Samuels
Hudhayfa b. al-Yaman
`Ammar b. Yasir
Abu Malik `Abdallah b. Sam of Kinda
Michelle
Isa Adam Naziri
Moshe
Founder of Al Azhar
Muhammad Daniel
Hasan from Yard Al Mukaddasa
Reform Jew convert to Islam
Former Rabbi convert to Islam from Morocco
Fouad
Odyssey to Islam by Dr. Moustafa Mould
Rachel Singer
Rabbi of Makhachkala
Hajj Mustafa Ali
Suleyman Ahmad
Jemima Goldsmith
Maryam Jameelah
Kari Ann Owen
Emad ud Deen
Michael Wolfe
Muhammad Asad
From Messiah to Muslim (Shabbetai Zevi)
Abdullah Ibn Sailam, the first Rabbi convert
video testimony
Former French Jew Now Muslim Video (in French)
Are you a Jewish Convert to Islam ? please send us your life story, we would love to hear from you, our e-mail is
How convenient that po, whenever he wants to make some outlandish claims, will simply post long, rambling, incomprehensible, bizarre articles, purposely devoid of any source, citation or name, hoping to convince the dimwitted on this blog that what transpires in the Islamic world, on a daily basis, is somehow common throughout various religions. Truth, for po, is never an obstacle. Perhaps he is just frustrated that he didn’t beat his wife, sufficiently, today, and has some pent up hostility. After all, Islam also condones beating women, among other atrocities. He hopes, of course, that the strange and weird claims that he posts will be taken at face value, since no sources are mentioned to purposely prevent the reader from attempting to verify the statements. Hoping to smear all societies with the same brush, in some desperate attempt to normalize the insanity that is Islam, the fact is that in Israel, his favorite country of derision, it is illegal to treat children in the manner that is condoned, encouraged and legalized throughout the Muslim world, which honors the pedophile, Mohammed, and legalizes that which he did, in his life–namely, child rape. Major fail, po.
bam, here is your source, in the New york time no less.
By the way, why are you replying here to a post I put in another thread? Confused by your hatred eh?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/world/europe/in-new-years-melee-in-cologne-a-migrant-was-one-womans-savior.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
Confused by your never ending supply of insanity, po. I attribute much of it to centuries of inbreeding in Islam, where it is extremely common, sanctioned and encouraged to marry first cousins. Centuries of it have left you and your Muslim brethren quite touched, to say the least. No wonder the adherents to Islam are so mad. Generations and generations, marrying first cousins, have created a population of imbeciles.
Hahahaha…tell that to my Jewish buddy Marcus who…. hold on…he converted to Islam so…is he still Jew…? an Arab…?a Muslim…?a Judeo-Muslim?
Considering he is now among a population of imbeciles, he is subject to the same causal factors, generations and generations of inbreeding… all the way up his bloodline…wait, did you just call Jews a population of imbeciles? Pretty rude I say! What else to expect from a self-hating Jew?
HHAHAHAHAHHA, bam, unhinged…as usual….
Okay, I’ll bite! These guys were forced to convert too?
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Japanese youth increasingly convert to Islam, NU Indonesia http://themuslimtimes.info/2012/12/25/japanese-youth-increasingly-convert-to-islam-nu-indonesia/
Tired of the material life, Japanese youth are increasingly converting to Islam, setting a new balance between their life and religious beliefs.
“That was nothing but a divine revelation,” Masashi Nagano, a 28-year-old Japanese Muslim, told The Japan Times on Monday (17/12).
Born and brought up in a society with predominantly Shinto and Buddhist undertone, Nagano hated religion as a child.
He was appalled by the atrocities perpetrated by Japanese terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo, including the 1995 poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed a dozen people and sickened thousands of commuters.
This fact, however, changed in 2008 when he was in graduate school.
Reading the Noble Qur’an as part of his anthropology studies, he started to mingle with Muslims living in Japan.
Now, he praises himself as a devout Muslim.
“I owe what I am to the Quran,” Nagano added.
————————————————
And then these :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-9DwDzCaU0
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And then…and then…tada!
“”Why So Many Latinos Are Becoming Muslims
By TIM PADGETT • OCT 9, 2013
Most Latinos know the country is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month right now. What far fewer Latinos know is that next week marks Eid al-Adha, one of Islam’s most sacred holidays.
And yet the two observances are more related now than most Latinos realize.
Just as the U.S. Latino population is on the rise – Hispanics are now the nation’s largest minority – so is the number of Latino Muslims. And it’s not just a result of Arab Latin Americans emigrating to the United States.
According to organizations like WhyIslam.org, Latinos are one of the fastest growing segments of the Muslim community. About six percent of U.S. Muslims are now Latino – and as many as a fifth of new converts to Islam nationwide are Latino.
The American Muslim Association of North America, based in North Miami, says heavily Hispanic South Florida in particular is home to a rising number of Latino Muslims.
Not that conversion to Islam is easy in Latino society, as Marina Gonzalez knows. A Nicaraguan-American nurse in Miami, Gonzalez converted five years ago and wears the hijab, the Muslim women’s head garb. At first her family stopped talking to her.
“They [were] calling me Talibana,” Gonzalez recalls. “My mother, she didn’t like to go [out] with me because I wear the hijab.”
But now her mother “understands. When I go to my parents’ house they turn off the TV when I have to pray. I’m so happy.”
Najib Sowma’s first name was Dario before he converted six years ago. Today he’s a leading member of the Al-Ihsaan mosque in South Miami-Dade. But his Cuban mother was initially shocked.
“Now her views have changed,” says Sowma. “Prior to me being Muslim to who I am now, she sees a big difference in my character.”
Spain’s Islamic Past
If it’s a surprise that many Latinos are moving from a predominantly Roman Catholic culture to an originally Arab faith, perhaps it shouldn’t be. For one thing, like African-Americans in the 1960s, Latinos are discovering their own historical and cultural ties to Islam and the Arab world. And that starts with what most defines Latinos: Spanish.
“Our language is nurtured by more than 4,000 words that come from Arabic,” says Wilfredo Ruiz, a Puerto Rican-born Muslim who converted a decade ago and is a lawyer for the South Florida chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations. “Every word in Spanish that starts with ‘al,’ for example, like alcalde, alcantarilla, almohada.”
That’s because Arab Muslims ruled Spain for some 800 years during the Middle Ages – and made the Iberian Peninsula one of the most advanced civilizations of its time. A millennium later, Ruiz says that past is an inescapable part of the Hispanic DNA.
The American Muslim Association of North America, based in North Miami, says heavily Hispanic South Florida in particular is home to a rising number of Latino Muslims.
“What most Latinos who have embraced Islam find most amazing is their cultural affinity to the Muslim culture,” says Ruiz. “It’s like rediscovering your past. That area of our past has been hidden from us.”
Ruiz points out that both Latinos and Arabs highly value the extended family and traditions like offering hospitality to strangers. In religious terms, Latinos like Gonzalez say Islam provides a simpler, more direct form of worship than Catholicism does. They also feel more structure than they see in the evangelical churches so many Latinos join today.
“The connection I have with God now is better than before,” says Gonzalez.
Yet many take comfort in the overlap between Catholicism and Islam. Muslims, for example, venerate the Virgin Mary as well as Jesus, at least as a prophet.
“At the beginning when I was reading the Koran I said, “Oh, [Muslims] believe in the hereafter, in angels,’” says Liliana Parodi, a Peruvian-American surgical technician in Miami who converted 24 years ago. “You know, it’s not so much difference.”
Appeal To Women
More Latina women convert to Islam than Latino men do. Islam is admittedly questioned for its segregation of women. But Latinas like Parodi say it’s hypocritical for a male-dominated Catholic Church – which forbids women priests, birth control and divorce – and an ultra-macho Latino society – whose Spanish-language television networks still portray women as spitfire sexpots – to criticize their new faith in that regard.
“I tell them, ‘Look at yourself,’” says Parodi. “The sad part is [when they] see women as objects.”
bam, how does it feel to be you? To be so illogical and so hateful…and so wrong, so wrong?
Your logic is that since child marriage is illegal in IsraelIs Child Marriage a Muslim Problem?
by Ilisha on May 6, 2012 in Feature
Loons often attribute child marriages exclusively to Muslims, but a Unicef report says 47 percent of married women in India wed before age 18. Unicef also says 40 percent of the world’s child marriages take place in secular, Hindu-majority India.
As this map clearly shows, the practice is widespread in many parts of the world, most notably in parts of Africa:
Disregarding anthropology (the comparative study of human societies) and eager to pin every social ill on Islam, anti-Muslim activists portray child marriage as unique to Muslim communities, and cite Islamic Law as a major obstacle to ending the practice.In fact, most Muslim-majority countries have legal age limits for marriage comparable to Western countries. According to the United Nations, in Algeria, Bangladesh, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, and Morocco, the legal age a female can marry is 18, and in Tunisia, it’s 20. Most of the remaining Muslim-majority countries have ages set for females ranging from 15-17, and in all of these countries, the age for boys is either the same or slightly higher. India has also set the legal limit to age 18, but as is the case in many countries, the law is difficult to enforce, especially in rural areas, where historical, cultural, and economic factors often outweigh legal restrictions.
Akha Teej is considered an auspicious day, when one does not have to consult any astrologer. This is the best time for marriages … Even our epics mention about child marriages. There is no harm in performing it, as the children do not live together and stay together only after attaining adulthood. ~ Priest in Rajasthan, Al Jazeera
Recently police and administration officials were injured when they were attacked by a group of villagers conducting child marriages in Rajasthan on the holy day of Akshaya Tritiya. Now a young Indian woman has won a landmark case that challenges the culture of child weddings. (h/t: Zangia)
theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/child-marriage-map/387214/
America’s Child-Marriage Problem
By FRAIDY REISSOCT.
IN the United States today, thousands of children under 18 have recently taken marital vows — mostly girls married to adult men, often with approval from local judges. In at least one case, a 10-year-old boy was legally married.
How is this possible? The minimum marriage age in most states is 18, but every state allows exceptions under which children under age 18 can wed.
The first common exception is for children marrying with “parental consent.” Most states allow children age 16 or 17 to marry if their parents sign the marriage license application.
Of course, one person’s “parental consent” can be another’s “parental coercion,” but state laws typically do not call for anyone to investigate whether a child is marrying willingly. Even in the case of a girl’s sobbing openly while her parents sign the application and force her into marriage, the clerk usually has no authority to intervene. In fact, in most states there are no laws that specifically forbid forced marriage.
The second common marriage-age exception is for children marrying with judicial approval. This exception lowers the marriage age below 16 in many states, and many states do not specify a minimum age. Judges in those states can allow the marriage even of an elementary school student.
But judges would never do that, right?
Unchained at Last, a nonprofit I founded to help women escape from arranged, forced marriages, recently retrieved health department data on the ages of people married in New Jersey, where 16- and 17-year-olds may wed with parental consent, and children under 15 may marry with judicial approval.
Unfortunately, the available records do not include any identifying details about marriages beyond the ages of the participants. Nevertheless, the data show that 3,499 children were married in New Jersey between 1995 and 2012. Most were age 16 or 17 and married with parental consent, but 178 were between ages 10 and 15, meaning a judge approved their marriages.
Shockingly, 91 percent of the children were married to adults, often at ages or with age differences that could have triggered statutory-rape charges, not a marriage license. A judge in 2006 approved the marriage of a 10-year-old boy to an 18-year-old woman. A judge in 1996 allowed a 12-year-old girl to marry a 25-year-old man.
Based on my own experience working with forced-marriage victims across the United States, I am sure many of these children had to marry against their will. Forced marriage is a widespread but often ignored problem in the United States. A survey by the Tahirih Justice Center, an NGO that provides services to immigrant women and girls, identified as many as 3,000 known or suspected forced-marriage cases just between 2009 and 2011, many involving girls under age 18. Tactics used against the victims included threats of ostracism, beatings or death.
Forced and child marriages happen almost everywhere, yet only 10 states or jurisdictions have specific laws that can be used to prevent or punish forced marriage. The Tahirih survey focused on immigrants, and it identified child marriages or forced marriages, or both, in immigrant communities from 56 countries of origin in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, but it also identified such marriage in so-called American families.
The survey found child marriage or forced marriage, or both, in families of many faiths, including Muslim, Christian (particularly Catholic), Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh. I have seen child and forced marriage in the Orthodox Jewish community, and I know survivors from Mormon and Unification Church backgrounds.
Parents give many reasons for forcing their children into marriage, including controlling the children’s sexuality and behavior and protecting “family honor.” Often families use forced marriage to enhance their status or gain economic security.
The New Jersey data show that 90 percent of the children married were girls, which is consistent with global trends. Across the world, child marriage and forced marriage disproportionately affect girls and women.
Unchained at Last also requested health department data on the ages of people recently married in New York State, where 16- and 17-year-olds may wed with “parental consent” and 14- and 15-year-olds may wed with judicial approval. The data show that 3,853 children were married between 2000 and 2010.
Data after 2010 excludes New York City, where statistics are kept separately. Still, the state data show that in 2011 alone, a 14-year-old married a 26-year-old, a 15-year-old was wed to a 28-year-old, another 15-year-old was wed to a 25-year-old and a 15-year-old married someone age “35 to 39.” All of those marriages were approved by New York judges. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/opinion/americas-child-marriage-problem.html?_r=0
What, Muslims stopped assaults on women? Now way!
Logically then, Islam is chivalrous??!!!
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BERLIN — Caught up in a melee of drunken revelers outside the Cologne train station on New Year’s Eve, Caitlin Duncan, a neuroscience student from Seattle, was terrified. She had somehow gotten separated from her German boyfriend, who had both their cellphones and her wallet. Ms. Duncan, 27, said that she was quickly surrounded and groped by several young men: One snatched her hat from her head, another tried to kiss her face and neck.
Like many of the hundreds of women who later said they had been assaulted in the crowd, Ms. Duncan sought help from the police, but said the officers were too busy trying to clear the square. But unlike other victims, whose complaints of attacks by foreigners of North African and Arab descent have ignited new debate about Germany’s ability to absorb migrants, Ms. Duncan said she was rescued by a group of Syrian asylum seekers.
Amid the swirl of criminal chaos, it seems, there were also acts of chivalry.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
As Germany Welcomes Migrants, Sexual Attacks in Cologne Point to a New RealityJAN. 14, 2016
Sexual Attacks Widen Divisions in European Migrant CrisisJAN. 13, 2016
E.U.’s Open Borders Are In Danger, German Minister WarnsJAN. 15, 2016
As the crowd swelled and grew more unruly, Ms. Duncan said, a stranger came up and asked if she needed help. Both of them spoke broken German, so the stranger summoned a friend who spoke English. He was Hesham Ahmad Mohammad, from Aleppo, Syria, who had met up in Cologne for the holiday with six or seven other Syrian refugees scattered around Germany.
The men offered Ms. Duncan money for a taxi to her boyfriend’s parents’ home: “the only address I knew,” she said. They would happily have called her boyfriend, Sebastian Samer, but Ms. Duncan had relied on speed-dial and could not remember the number. “I know there’s a lot of 7s,” she thought, “but that’s not helping me right now.”
She persuaded the men to form a kind of cordon around her so they could move through the crowd. She described her boyfriend to them, and they eventually found him inside the station. She cried. “I was just so relieved,” she recalled later.
Mr. Ahmad Mohammad, a former primary-school teacher, said he had left Aleppo, a scene of tremendous fighting in the Syrian civil war, in 2014 for Turkey, and had arrived in Germany via the Balkans and Austria in September. He said he had left his wife and two sons in a village near the Syrian-Turkish border and was living in a small town near Cologne with two other Syrians, studying German as he awaited asylum.
He said in a telephone interview on Friday that he and his friends had also felt unsafe on New Year’s, and blamed “bad boys” who were “drinking, and I think taking marijuana or something. They lost their minds.” Now, they worry that Germans and other Europeans are drawing conclusions that will make it harder for new arrivals.
“We keep hearing news about refugees all day: ‘They are bad people, they must go back to their home,’ ” Mr. Ahmad Mohammad, 32, said. “When I hear that in the news, I am sad. Because we know that there were bad boys and bad people. But the good people, nobody speak about them.”
Ms. Duncan’s story started like so many others. In a long telephone conversation from Tübingen, a south German university town where she and Mr. Samer study neuroscience, she recounted the horror.
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“One man grabbed my hat, took it off my head,” she began. “Someone else came around the back of me and grabbed me,” she added, “I guess looking for something in my pockets. I turned around, you know, to push him off me because he’s touching me. I turned to get my hat back, put it on; someone else tried to kiss my face and to kiss my neck. I pushed him away and yelled, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ”
“I thought, ‘This is a bit strange, but it’s New Year’s and people are drinking too much — I’ll just find my boyfriend and leave,’ ” Ms. Duncan said.
But the police brushed her off and alarmed her more, she said, by shoving the crowd from the square.
She asked an American who was filming the scene if it was a political protest, and he speculated that the officers might be trying to thwart some kind of terrorist attack.
“So then I thought, ‘This is really not good, I need to get out of here,’ ” Ms. Duncan said.
But with the police again shoving back the crowd, “all of a sudden, I was pushed back into this big group of people, eight or nine men, groping, pulling my hair,” she recalled. “I went into a kind of fighting mode, and kicked and hit and pushed until I got away.”
By now, she said, “I was getting really scared.” At 5-foot-2, she could hardly see in the crowd.
It was then that the stranger approached her, a glimmer of goodness in the grimmest of situations.
It took her some days, she said, to realize that hundreds of women had undergone similar ordeals — mostly without her happy ending.
“I was surprised that there were so many women that reported being groped,” she said. “I really didn’t see that happen to other people; I was really surprised to learn that it was something bigger.”
She and Mr. Samer are in touch with her Syrian rescuer at least every couple of days, she said.
Mr. Ahmad Mohammad said: “My friends and I are very happy because first of all, we help somebody. After that, we have new friends from Germany,” the kind of contacts needed, he said, to start life here.
“In the end,” Ms. Duncan said, “it turned out really well” — even if “that was not how I planned to ring in the new year, definitely.”
UPDATE*
Financial Times is reporting that the number of reported attacks is approaching 700.
Thanks for the timely updates, Phil.
Please let us know when it get to 1000 and then…we’ll…uh…we’ll bomb Syria and North Africa…and Germany!
@Hildegard
1, January 14, 2016 at 2:37 pm
“Ken Rogers ‘For whom is ISIS fighting as a proxy?’
“Bombshell Interview: Sy Hersh Exposes The Obama-ISIS Alliance
I didn’t find Jones’ interview of Hersh particularly enlightening, but Hersh’s “Military to Military” in the London Review of Books, spells out in illuminating detail the funding and material and logistical support provided to ISIS by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, and the US.
“Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.
“The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups.
“By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria.
“The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.” (Emphasis added)
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
There are apparently some very slow studies in the Obama Administration, who seem to have learned little from the tragedies of the illegal and immoral US-engineered regime changes in Iraq and Libya, as they seem intent on creating the same kind of fundamentalist chaos in Syria.
Or, perhaps it’s the case that the influential neocons in his administration see important money to be made by their friends in the Military-Industrial Complex from continual war in the Middle East, regardless of the identities of the temporary winners and losers.
”Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed–and no republic can survive.” JFK
“There is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits
of official censorship and concealment.”
Harney Sheriff THROWS OUT Reporter for Asking about Constitution! – #OregonFront
Ken Rogers “For whom is ISIS fighting as a proxy?”
Bombshell Interview: Sy Hersh Exposes The Obama-ISIS Alliance
PCS,
So what you’re saying is that no further ad hominem attacks will be tolerated and/or occur on this blog site?
The only thing attacked will be the subject of the debate.
OK.
It reminds me of the NFL wherein the aggressor is ignored while the target is penalized.
C’est la vie.
John – I am NOT the censor so I cannot say.
It is kinda ironic that I was censored considering the original topic of this blog post, though. Isn´t it?
Riesling – if you violated the Civility Code you will get censored, regardless of the topic.
Ken, Isl is the proxy for the US.
So, you want to learn German?
To the blog administrator: sorry that I made a feeble-minded attempt at personal insult, which resulted in your having to delete Po´s and my comments. I wasn´t thinking. It won´t happen again.
@po
1, January 14, 2016 at 12:23 am
“It is also essential we accept the idea that even ISl is a proxy fighter between larger forces and larger aims. To focus on 30-000 fighters while losing sight of the generals, the armies, the bases, the missiles and drones, the Russian, American, Israeli, British, German and French, the Iranian, NATO, and the nukes pointed out and the nukes pointed in…”
I don’t follow you here regarding “ISI is a proxy fighter between larger forces and larger aims.”
For whom is ISIS fighting as a proxy?
Ken, based on the consensus about who armed ISL, supports them and who benefits from them, to me they are indeed a proxy army.
ISL is a product of the Bush/Bandar Bush cooperation of US providing funds and weapons while Bandar (the previous Saudi prince US ambassador, national chief of security, special envoy to the king) in charge of setting up various extremist groups in challenging areas in order to target opposite interests (Iran,Syria)
We can say with definite certainty that ISL got their funding, moral and religious legitimacy and start with Saudi Arabia, both unofficially, but also through various individual entities within S. Arabia who funded and encouraged young men to join the “holy war”against shiites.
The same thing happened with Al Nusra Front, which is funded by Qatar, aided by Israel (which treats its injured fighters in Israeli hospitals).
We know, obviously, that ISL could not directly attack Iran, therefore it was directed at Iran biggest ally in the region, Syria, which is the domino to make all others fall. All parties, western, Israeli and Saudi, have an interest in the fall of Syria. The former to satisfy the interest of the oil oligarchs in putting their hands on Syria’s resources; the Israeli to shut off the back window onto Israel for the main ally of their main enemy, Iran, and resolve once for all the subject of the Golan Heights; and the Saudi for same reason as Israel but to also put a halt to shia ideology spread.
Another entity that plays a huge role supporting ISL is Turkey. In terms of infrastructure, Turkey is the key. Not only does it allow a door into ISL territory for the thousands of people seeking to join ISL, it also allows a door through Turkey and out to the world (Europe and Israel) of all the oil stolen from Syrian fields. Erdogan’s son is the main player in that scheme. The products from those oil sales, money and goods transit through Turkey again. That is why Turkey downed the Russian plane, and that is the US has pretended being unable to find the ISL fighters, trucks and tankers that the Russians have been obliterating.
Politically, Erdogan has been one of the main voices in the call for attacking Syria, this from the start.
That is why populations in the ME widely believe that ISL is a creation of the US/Israelis, for it came out of nowhere, does not spring out of any population base, has logistical support that is obviously beyond the measure of any other extremist group (have we wondered where those brand new toyota trucks come from?)
If we ask ourselves what is the ultimate aim of ISL, the experts are concluding that it is to break up Syria in fiefs. Many in it believe in the Caliphate, but it cannot be the top dogs. Bagdadi is not an islamic scholar, nor are the Baath party generals who are said to provide the upper echelon particularly religious. The ISL religious scholars are lightweights in the world of Islamic scholarship.
Whatever ISL fights for, seems, strangely, to benefit only and hugely these countries:
-Western countries aim to destabilize Syria to placate Iran, and to put a hand on the Syrian resources that Assad has been turning towards Russia for exploitation.
– Turkey’s aim to take out Assad not only to limit Iranian influence at its border, but also and more importantly to further enable its war on the kurds (especially now that the kurds have been the only successful force against ISL and gaining land in the process.)
– Israel’s stop to Iranian influence, remove Iran ally on its border and keep Golan heights (we must ask how come Israel was not targeted by ISL?)
– S. Arabia stops Iranian influence, expands wahabi influence,…
Ken, that is the essential point about the whole issue, that ISL’s stated aim is to do just that, force that false choice between the West and the Caliphate, and as we did with Al Qaeda seeking to draw us into bankrupting ourselves into that war on terror, we are falling right into their trap.
It is also essential we accept the idea that even ISl is a proxy fighter between larger forces and larger aims. To focus on 30-000 fighters while losing sight of the generals, the armies, the bases, the missiles and drones, the Russian, American, Israeli, British, German and French, the Iranian, NATO, and the nukes pointed out and the nukes pointed in…
The good thing is that ISL will be the first to go, at least we won’t worry about them any longer as we scrounge for food 🙂
Hopefully common sense will prevail sooner rather than later, otherwise EVERYONE is doomed.
po,
@12:30am
Either you are totally insane or I am completely cognitively incompetent – the latter being highly likely.
And that pretty much sums up the nature and value of arbitrary and exogenously imposed morality.
John
That is to be meditated upon…
There is always a bit of truth from either side…:)
Here’s some food for thought for reflexively generalizing Islamophobes, assuming they have remaining any dormant capacity for thinking, rather than for simply wallowing in their apparent fear and loathing of Muslims:
“The very same refugees entering Europe are often the very same civilians who face the indiscriminate violence and cruel injustice in lands controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (though, it should be noted, many in Syria are also threatened by the brutal actions of the Syrian government).
“Globally, studies have shown that Muslims tend to make up the largest proportion of terror victims, with countries such as Syria and Iraq registering the highest toll. If Muslim refugees come to Europe and are welcomed, it deeply undercuts the Islamic State’s legitimacy.
“Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has helpfully catalogued some of the Islamic State’s messages on the refugees pouring into Europe from the Middle East. The messages give the impression of deep discomfort and even jealousy that the Muslim population the Islamic State so covets for its self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ would rather live in ‘infidel’ Western lands. (My emphasis)
“ ‘Would You Exchange What Is Better For What Is Less?’ is the title of one video message. It sounds more than a little like a note from a jilted ex.
“Writing in The Post’s opinion pages this weekend, counter-terrorism analyst Harleen Gambhir said the Islamic State had deliberately ‘set a trap’ for Europe with the Paris attacks:
“The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks ‘compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.’
“The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West. (My emphasis)
“Some have suggested that the Islamic State deliberately sent someone along this route to help sow discord. Given the availability of fake Syrian passports in Turkey and other places, it is quite reasonable to presume that the passport found near the body of one of the Paris bombers was planted there to further inflame a tense Europe — an idea strengthened by reports that a different man was found traveling with the same passport in Serbia.
“What seems almost certain is that the Islamic State wants you to equate refugees with terrorists. In turn, it wants refugees to equate the West with prejudice against Muslims and foreigners. (My emphasis)
The reality is that most of these refugees are already receiving a pretty rough welcome in the West. Syrian refugees who arrive in the United States face remarkable scrutiny from multiple government agencies, including the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Counter-terrorism Center and the Defense Department. The screening process can take years, leaving legitimate refugees in limbo. It’s worth remembering that making that welcome worse may be exactly what the Islamic State wants. (My emphasis)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16/the-islamic-state-wants-you-to-hate-refugees/