Couple shot dead for eloping - police

RELATIVES of a Pakistani teenager who eloped and married without parental consent shot her dead in a raid on her new home which also killed her husband and in-laws, police said.

Dressed in police uniforms, dozens of relatives attacked the bridegroom's house in the district of Charsadda, in North West Frontier Province.

"The assailants took the bridegroom out while some of the attackers climbed the wall and entered the house. They killed the bride, the mother and sister of the bridegroom,'' said Charsadda district police official Saleem Jan.

"They beat them first and then shot them dead,'' he told AFP.

The groom's father was also killed, another police official told AFP from Sardheri village in Charsadda.

The bride was aged 18 to 19 and the groom 29 to 30.Police said the teenager, from the deeply conservative Mardan district next to Charsadda, had run away and recently married without telling her parents.

"Both the girl and man married some weeks ago,'' the bridegroom's uncle Misal Khan told reporters at the scene.

"The attackers were headed by the (paternal) uncle, cousin and maternal uncle of the girl. One of the attackers left his police uniform at the site. They also left one mobile phone in a pocket of the uniform,'' he added.

Police said the main suspects were two uncles and a cousin.

"We have registered a case against three relatives of the girl and their unknown accomplices,'' police official Saleem Jan tsaid.

Human rights groups have strongly condemned the practice of honour killings in Pakistan, which claim the lives of hundreds of women each year.

Amnesty International says many killings are unreported and in almost all cases the perpetrators, who are often close family members, go unpunished. In 2005, Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf introduced the death penalty for honour killings.

Ahh, muslim family values. It is amazing that they just kill their own family members and think nothing of this. See how civilized muslims are?

Father exchanges eight-year-old for a second bride

KARACHI: Police have detained a middle aged man alleged to have married his under age daughter in ‘Watta Satta’, along with the Qazi (cleric) who performed the nikah ceremony and the ‘husband’.

Zahida, 8, a minor belonging to a low-income Siraiki family that hails from Liaquat Pur, Punjab and is presently living in Azam Basti within the limits of Mehmoodabad police station (Jamshed Town). Her father, Abdul Rasool, 50, is a mason by profession and wanted to marry Haseena, 19. Haseena is a married woman, the mother of two children and happens to be related to him. Zahida is the eldest among Rasool’s three daughters. Rasool married his daughter to Haseena’s younger brother Dilshad, 17. Her nikah was performed on June 25 by Qari Naqeeb Ali Shah and her rukhsati was supposed to take place on July 1.

The police took action after her mother informed Union Council (UC) 3 Naib Nazim Aurangzaib about the incident. At first, the police detained Zahida’s father and then conducted a raid on a mosque from where they were able to detain Shah. The police also took Dilshad into the custody and is looking for the arrests of witnesses who were present at the nikah till the time this report was filed.

According to Zahida’s mother Perveen, her husband married Zahida in exchange for his marriage to Dilshad’s sister Haseena. The girl’s mother further said that her husband also played a role in breaking Haseena’s marriage and her divorce case is pending in court.

Naqeeb Shah, who is not a registered ‘nikah khawan’ has denied his involved with the case. “I did not see the girl while performing the nikkh. Before the nikah, the witnesses told me that the girl’s age is 16,” Shah said. He confirmed the presence of three witnesses and also the girl’s father at the time when the nikkah was performed.

“They had covered the girl with her ‘dupatta’. I did have a doubt when I saw her hands when she was placing her thumb impression on the nikkah nama but her father assured me that she was old enough,” Shah added.

Zahida says that she had no idea what a nikkah means, adding that she was instructed to say yes. “I was told to say ‘yes’ three times and asked to give my thumb impression,” she said.
However, she defended her father and said that he was innocent.

“My father did not know what he was doing and he committed the act after he was made to drink something. At the time of my nikah, my father was not present,” she said.

Meanwhile, Rasool has also denied his involvement in the case and said that he was given a drink laced with some medicine. “I was not present during the nikah ceremony and I have no recollection of it,” he added.

The police have detained all the arrested men under section 9 of Child Marriage Restrain Act (1925) and they would be produced in front of the magistrate today (Monday). Jamshed Town SP Javed Akbar Riaz said that the magistrate has the authority to take any decision in this regard. It is possible that Dilshad’s father would also be detained.

Why is it that you never hear of christians and hindus marrying children? She was basically sold.

Creeping Sharia = Civitas Finds 85 Sharia Courts Operating in Britain

Is anyone really surprised that the numbers of Sharia Courts - operating in Great Britain - was/is grossly underestimated?

Note the muslim reponse to this report (or any type of criticism) is to use their typical, vociferous accusation of (the Myth of) Islamophobia.

If you think that these courts only deal with "domestic, marital and business disputes" - I have a bridge to sell you in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, USA.

It will be interesting to see if Civitas will actually be able to stop this latest example of the Islamisation of Great Britain ----- I'm not optimistic.

At least 85 separate sharia "courts" are now openly functioning in Britain, almost 20 times as many as previously believed, a report by Civitas claims.

A study by the thinktank found that scores of unofficial tribunals and councils regularly apply Islamic law to resolve domestic, marital and business disputes, many operating in mosques.

It led to claims of a "creeping" acceptance of sharia principles in British law, but the Muslim Council of Britain dismissed the report as "scaremongering".

The study follows the outcry over remarks by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, last year that the adoption of aspects of Muslim law in Britain, such as in divorce proceedings, "seems inevitable".

Lord Phillips, who was then the Lord Chief Justice, attracted controversy by saying that there was "no reason why" sharia principles could not form the basis of mediation in disputes.

Some decisions of Islamic tribunals are already considered legally binding and could theoretically be enforced in civil courts in England and Wales.

Other officially recognised bodies can agree to grant Muslim "divorces" as part of a parallel system of religious law in Britain.

"This whole business is creeping up on us without anyone really noticing," said Dr David Green, director of Civitas.

Read it all: http://theopinionator.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/06/creeping-sharia-civitas-finds-85-sharia-courts-operating-in-britain.html

Bangladesh: Widow whipped 202 times, man whipped 101 following cleric's fatwa against them for "anti-social activity"

Sharia Alert. And yet another cleric "misunderstands" the vaunted compassion and mercy of Islamic law. "Fatwa: Bangladeshi woman brutally whipped," from Indo-Asian News Service, June 29 (thanks to Twostellas):

DHAKA: A widow was whipped 202 times and a man 101 times following a fatwa by a religious leader for their alleged involvement in "anti-social activity" in a village in southeastern Bangladesh, prompting local protests and action by the police.

Piara Begum, a widow of 40, and Mamun Miah, 25, were whipped before hundreds of people at Khaiyar in Comilla district Saturday night.

The woman fell unconscious and was rushed to hospital. Doctors said she was critically injured and needed to be given intensive treatment.

Miah was whipped 101 times, The Daily Star newspaper said Monday.

Punishment under a fatwa is held illegal as per a high court ruling of 2001 in Bangladesh that has a predominant Sunni Muslim population.

The police arrested six people, including Moulana Mohammed Manirul Islam, a religious leader working in the local madrassa.

Piara Begum filed a case with the Debidwar police station under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act.

I wonder if she passed out before they were done with the 202 lashings? If she did, when she gets better, they will be finishing the punishment.

UN rights mission hears of Gaza children's suffering

GAZA CITY : A UN human rights mission listened to testimony about the suffering of children in the Gaza Strip on Monday before wrapping up two days of public hearings into alleged Israeli war crimes.

Around 20 percent of children in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on by witnessing violent acts, child psychologist Dr Iyad Sarraj told the panel.

"The amount of killing and blood that they have seen or that their relatives have suffered from... it's a huge amount, and this leads to negative psychological feelings, to radicalism and a cycle of violence," he said.

More than half of Gaza's population of 1.5 million is under 18 years of age.

The public hearings are part of the UN Human Rights Council's investigation of the 22-day Israeli offensive launched in late December that killed about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

The Red Cross meanwhile said in a new report that six months after the devastating offensive Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory are "unable to rebuild their lives and are sliding ever deeper into despair."

Israeli and Egyptian sanctions imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized power in June 2007 have crippled reconstruction efforts and caused widespread misery, according to the study by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"The poorest residents in particular have exhausted their coping mechanisms and often have to sell off their belongings to be able to buy enough to eat," said Antoine Grand, head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza.

"Worst affected are the children, who make up more than half of Gaza's population," he added.

The UN mission in Gaza is headed by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who previously served as chief prosecutor for international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

On Sunday, the mission heard a wheelchair-bound man describe how an Israeli shell slammed into his home, killing 11 of his relatives and cutting off his legs. Another man described a strike on a mosque that killed 17 people.

The group was expected to look into several allegations of human rights violations that emerged in the aftermath of the assault, which Israel said was aimed at stemming Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Israeli authorities have so far refused to allow the investigators into the country and have accused the mission of bias against the Jewish state.

"The mandate is so one-sided, no fair, thinking person could see it as objective," government spokesman Mark Regev said on Sunday.

"The UN Human Rights Council has over the last months and years totally discredited itself as a serious vehicle for advancing human rights."

The 47-member council voted by a large majority in January to probe accusations of "grave" human rights violations by Israel, but the team was later given a broader mandate to deal with "all violations" during the war.

Israel has insisted it made every effort to spare civilians, including dropping thousands of fliers warning residents to flee ahead of strikes.

It has also said that Palestinian fighters and rocket launchers operated in crowded residential areas, a charge also lodged by human rights groups against the Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza.

The group plans to hold similar hearings in Geneva in which they will interview witnesses and experts on alleged violations in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and to issue a final report by September 12.

The international community has pledged billions of dollars in aid to rebuild the territory, but reconstruction efforts remain paralysed by the closures, which prevent the import of virtually all building materials.

You have to admit that the muslims are masters of propoganda. Does anyone not see a staged picture? I do.