Maid Faces Beheading in Saudi Arabia for Murdering the Boss She Said Tried to Rape Her
MAIL ONLINE: An Indonesian maid faces being beheaded in Saudi Arabia after murdering the employer she claimed had tried to rape her.

Darsem binti Dawud Tawar had pleaded self-defence when she went on trial accused of the fatal attack on her Yemeni boss.

Camapaigners are now desperately trying to raise half a million dollars in blood money to save her life.

They are asking for donations on TV and social networking sites like Facebook. >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Thursday, March 03, 2011

Douglas Murray on BBC Newsnight

An Event to End Violence Against Women

Islamic TV Channel Rapped for Advocating Marital Rape
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A TV channel aimed at Muslims has been censured by the media watchdog Ofcom for allowing its presenters to encourage violence against women and advocate marital rape.

In one programme on the Islam Channel, which broadcasts on Sky and Freesat, the presenter of a discussion of sex within marriage said that "it shouldn't be such a big problem where the man feels he has to force himself upon the woman".

During another programme, a woman phoned in to ask if she had the right to hit a violent husband back. The presenter responded: "In Islam we have no right to hit the woman in a way that damages her eye or damages her tooth or damages her face or makes her ugly. Maximum what you can do, you can see the pen over here, in my hand, this kind of a stick can be used just to make her feel that you are not happy with her."

In March this year, the channel was the subject of a report by the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based organisation that describes itself as "the world’s first counter-extremism think tank". >>> Neil Midgley, Assistant Editor (Media) | Montag, November 08, 2010

Saudi 'Sorcerer' Who Raped 100 Sentenced to Death
THE TELEGRAPH: A Saudi man who reportedly raped more than 100 women after posing as a spell-caster to lure them into his clutches has been sentenced to death, Saudi media reported on Wednesday.

The "Qatif sorcerer" was originally sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, but after more victims came forth the sentence was changed to execution, Al-Riyadh newspaper reported.

The man, whose name was not given, terrified women around the eastern city of Qatif for several years.

He first drew them in by saying he could cast love spells, but then surreptitiously filmed their meeting and used his work for extortion and to rape them, according to Arab News.

Authorities found hidden cameras and some 200 videotapes and 180 computer disks with footage of his victims in his home, Arab News reported.

He may have tricked as many as 350 women, according to Al-Riyadh. >>> | Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Qatif Rapist Sentenced to Death
ARABS NEWS: QATIF: A man dubbed the Qatif rapist has been sentenced to death for raping over 100 women and blackmailing many of his victims by recording the attacks on video.

The Qatif General Court passed the death sentence on the man who is accused of luring women saying he could perform black magic. The ruling has been passed to the Supreme Court for ratification.

The court originally sentenced the man to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes one year ago. The ruling was, however, appealed by the prosecution, Al-Yaum newspaper reported. It added that the crimes took place four years ago.

The man’s family has objected to the sentence, saying the victims are anonymous and that their names have not been mentioned in the case filed against him. The family says this is not in accordance with the law and that the victims should not be given anonymity. >>> | Wednesday, January 20, 2010

British Woman 'Arrested in Dubai after Being Raped'
THE TELEGRAPH: A 23-year-old British woman on holiday in Dubai told police she had been raped, only to be arrested herself for having illegal sexual intercourse.

The woman, a Muslim of Pakistani descent, was celebrating her engagement to her 44-year-old boyfriend, and was allegedly attacked when she passed out in a hotel lavatory.

Despite approaching police about the attack, she was arrested after admitting to "illegal drinking" outside licensed premises as well as having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Her fiancé was also charged with the same offences.

The couple from London are now reportedly on bail and understood to be awaiting trial after having their passports confiscated. Should they be found guilty, they could face up to six years in jail.

The woman, who is said to have accepted her boyfriend's marriage proposal during a three-day break, admitted drinking too much alcohol as they celebrated at Dubai Marina's Address Hotel. The waiter, believed to be Syrian, is then said to have followed her into the toilets and raped her while she was in a state of semi-consciousness.

After her fiancé found out about the attack, they contacted police, but they were questioned about breaking the country's strict rules, which contain elements of Sharia law. >>> Chris Irvine | Friday, January 08, 2010

Afghanistan Passes 'Barbaric' Law Diminishing Women's Rights
THE GUARDIAN: Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands

Women wearing the burka in Baharak town, Afghanistan. Photo: The Guardian
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.

In early April, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the Guardian revealed that the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage, according to the UN.

Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains repressive measures and contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country.

Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women's rights groups remain, including this one: "Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient."

The law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some of the country's Shias, which make up around 20% of the population. Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday's election, which is likely to be a close run thing, according to a poll released yesterday.

Human Rights Watch, which has obtained a copy of the final law, called on all candidates to pledge to repeal the law, which it says contradicts Afghanistan's own constitution.

The group said that Karzai had "made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election". >>> Jon Boone in Kandahar | Friday, August 14, 2009

Rape, Beatings and Bribery: Iraqi Police Out of Control
Photo courtesy of TimesOnline
TIMESONLINE: The brief film is deeply disturbing, even in a country famed for its al-Qaeda beheading videos and sniper snuff movies. The young woman, evidently drugged, vomiting and occasionally calling for her mother, tries weakly to stop the grinning man in a white T-shirt and boxer shorts from pulling off her underwear.

She fails. The man, instructing the cameraman to shoot the scene with his mobile phone from various angles, rapes her.

That is not the only shocking aspect of the film, according to Jassim al-Bidawi, former Mayor of Fallujah and now a human rights activist. He has identified the rapist as an Iraqi police officer, and says that the cameraman is one, too. They are thought to have drugged the woman as she visited her husband in a detention centre in Ramadi. Since the rapist's uncle is a senior policeman in the city the attacker is all but untouchable, Mr al-Bidawi says.

In the desperate rush to drag Iraq back from civil war, sweeping powers were granted to its new security forces. Human rights workers, MPs and American officials now believe that they are all too often a law unto themselves: admired when they defeat terrorists but also feared for their widespread abuse of power.

In this vast and largely unaccountable security apparatus, with almost a million people in uniform, corruption is rife. One of the most common ploys is to arrest innocent people and then charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars for them to be released. >>> James Hider in Fallujah | Friday, April 24, 2009

Two Saudi Police Officers Beheaded for Rape
THE AUSTRALIAN: TWO Saudi police officers were beheaded by the sword after being convicted of raping an expatriate woman.

Corporal Shaalan bin Nasser al-Qahtani and Lance Corporal Fahd bin Hassan al-Sebeyi were convicted of attacking an expatriate and raping his niece at a checkpoint they were manning in the capital.

They had stopped them late in the night, beat the man up and locked him in a police car and then raped the woman.

The two men were arrested shortly after the victims reported them at the nearest police station.

Their executions bring to 11 the number of beheadings announced by the Saudi authorities since the beginning of the year. A total of 102 people were executed last year.

In 2007, a record 153 people were executed in the country, which applies a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law. That figure compared with 37 in 2006 and the previous record of 113 in 2000.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking can all carry the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, where executions are usually carried out in public. [Source: The Australian] Agence France-Presse| Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Australia) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback – Australia) >>>

New Dark Age Alert! Islamic Cleric Advises Worshippers to Rape and Beat Wives
THE TELEGRAPH: An Australian cleric has provoked outrage by telling worshippers it is acceptable for men to rape and beat their wives.

Self-styled cleric Samir Abu Hamza, who runs the Islamic Information and Services Network of Australasia in Melbourne, advised a male audience in Sydney in 2003 that they could force their wives to have sex and beat them if they were "disobedient".

In a lecture titled "The Keys to a Successful Marriage", which has since been posted on the internet and viewed thousands of times, Mr Hamza said men could beat their wives, "to shape them up", but should try not to draw blood or bruise them.

He also said women "must respond" if their husbands wanted to have sex, and ridiculed laws that prohibit rape within marriage.

"In this country if the husband wants to sleep with his wife and she does not want to and she hasn't got a sickness or whatever, there is nothing wrong with her she just does not feel like it, and he ends up sleeping with her by force ... it is known to be as rape," Mr Hamza said.

"Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?" His comments have been condemned by Islamic women's groups and Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, has called for an immediate public apology.

"Under no circumstances is sexual violence permissible or acceptable in Australia," he said. >>> By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney | Thursday, January 22, 2009

THE AGE.COM.AU: Violence Against Women Row: Rudd Slams Islamic Cleric Over Remarks

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is demanding an immediate repudiation of remarks attributed to a Melbourne Islamic figure allowing for violence against women.

Mr Rudd described the remarks as having no place in modern Australia, and unacceptable to mainstream Muslim teaching.* >>> Andrew Darby | Thursday, January 22, 2009

*No Sir! That’s where you, Mr Rudd, are wrong!

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Australia) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback – Australia) >>>

Film-Trailer: Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin

TIMESONLINE: German War Film A Woman in Berlin Opens Old Wounds over Red Army Rapes

The gruff phrase “Komm Frau!” – Come, woman! – still sends shivers down the spines of elderly Germans. It was the command given by Russian soldiers as they prowled Berlin and other bombed-out postwar German cities, searching for women to rape.

The hidden horror of those months is about to be revealed in a new German film, A Woman in Berlin, that is likely to shock the nation, stir resentment against the Russians and provoke a debate about morality in war.

The film is based on a diary written by the German journalist Marta Hillers. She began to scribble it in a dusty cellar on Friday April 20, 1945 – Hitler’s birthday, the last before his suicide ten days later.

Within days of the occupation she had been raped several times by Red Army soldiers, one of many hundreds of thousands of German women abused in this way. It was the crime that no one talked about. >>> Roger Boyes in Berlin | October 21, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Taschenbuch) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Gebundene Ausgabe) >>>

Where Are the Feminists, Where Are the Civil Rights Groups, Where Is the ACLU? ‘Qatif-Girl’ Treated Savagely by Saudi Government
How our politicians are acquiescing in the face of barbarity!

BBC: Authorities in Saudi Arabia have defended a judicial sentence of 200 lashes for a rape victim.

The justice ministry said in a statement that the sentence was justified because the woman was in a car with an unrelated man.

The case has aroused controversy at home and condemnation abroad.

US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said the sentence was an outrage and urged President Bush to put pressure on Saudi King Abdullah.

The 19-year-old, who has not been named, was travelling in a car with a male friend last year, when the car was attacked by a gang of seven men who raped both of them.

She has become known as the "Qatif girl", a reference to the largely Shia town which she comes from. Saudis back rape victim sentence (more)

Mark Alexander

Saudi Arabia: Rape Victim’s Lawyer Refuses to Give in
Photo of Saudi Lawyer, Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, courtesy of Arab News
ARAB NEWS: JEDDAH, 19 November 2007 — The lawyer representing a Saudi rape victim in Qatif has criticized the second ruling issued by the Kingdom’s Higher Court of Justice doubling the woman’s punishment to 200 lashes and six months in jail, saying that the ruling “sums up the major problems that the Saudi judiciary faces.”

Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, 36, also criticized the General Court in Qatif for confiscating his license to practice law. On Wednesday the Qatif General Court announced the Higher Court of Justice’s verdict. Al-Lahem had previously asked the Ministry of Justice and the Human Rights Commission to review the first ruling issued by the General Court in Qatif, which had ordered the rape victim be given 90 lashes.

“Basic Islamic law states that an appeal shall not harm the person appealing,” said Al-Lahem, adding that lodging an appeal is the right of anyone accused of a crime and something crucial for a just trial. “Once this rule is ignored, then people who appeal verdicts are only left terrorized. From now on people will be apprehensive to appeal fearing they might be punished or have their sentences doubled. That’s exactly what’s happened to the rape victim, who only wanted justice,” he said. Rape Victim’s Lawyer Refuses to Give In (more) By Ebtihal Mubarak

Mark Alexander