OVO

BBC, Somali woman stoned for adultery:

A 20-year-old woman divorcee accused of committing adultery in Somalia has been stoned to death by Islamists in front of a crowd of about 200 people. A judge working for the militant group al-Shabab said she had had an affair with an unmarried 29-year-old man. He said she gave birth to a still-born baby and was found guilty of adultery. Her boyfriend was given 100 lashes. [...] According to reports from a small village near the town of Wajid, 250 miles (400km) north-west of the capital, Mogadishu, the woman was taken to the public grounds where she was buried up to her waist. She was then stoned to death in front of the crowds on Tuesday afternoon.

BBC, Aceh passes adultery stoning law:

Indonesia’s province of Aceh has passed a new law making adultery punishable by stoning to death, a member of the province’s parliament has said. The law also imposes severe sentences for rape, homosexuality, alcohol consumption and gambling.

Ottawa Sun, Taxi boss jailed for threats against daughter:

Mr. Al Mezel has threatened his daughter with serious violence and has caused her to fear for her safety in the name of honour,” Judge Lynn Ratushny wrote. “He has committed the crime of harassment against her in the name of honour.”

Ibn Warraq, Statement in Response to Fort Hood Tragedy:

In the wake of the murder of 13 and the wounding of 38 soldiers at Fort Hood on November 5, media analysts, politicians, and other sundry experts scrambled to present the accused perpetrator of the acts, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, as a victim. In so doing they served, knowingly or otherwise, as apologists for radical Islam. From CNN to the New York Times, NPR to the Washington Post, the killings were presented as a result of racism. They were attributed to fear of deployment in Afghanistan and harassment from other soldiers. Cited were Major Hasan’s supposed maladjustment to his life and his sense of not belonging, pre-traumatic stress disorder, and various personal and mental problems. All these explanations are variations on what I have called “the Root Cause Fallacy,” which has been committed time and again since the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. The Root Cause Fallacy was designed to deflect attention away from Islam, in effect to exonerate Islam, which, we are told, is never to blame for acts of violence. On this view we must not hold a great world religion of peace responsible when individuals of that faith resort to force. We must dig deeper: the real cause is poverty, U.S. foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Western colonialism and exploitation, marital problems of individuals, and so on. The present “psychological” interpretations in the case of Major Hasan are just the latest example of the Root Cause Fallacy at work. [...]

Fortunately, not all in the media were hamstrung by political correctness. Here is Ralph Peters in the New York Post (Nov. 6): “On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim U.S. Army officer shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam. What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting. This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.”

There was a laudable concern among Americans about a possible “backlash” against all American Muslims. What backlash? Even following the September 11 attacks with their 2,976 victims, Americans behaved with exemplary restraint. They behaved in a civilized manner in the face of barbarism.

It is time to abandon apologetics, and political correctness. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all Muslims are implicated in the horrendous events of September 11, 2001 — or of November 5, 2009. However, to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with 9/11 or the Fort Hood massacre is willfully to ignore the obvious. To leave Islam out of the equation means to forever misinterpret events. Without Islam, the long-term strategy and individual acts of violence by Osama bin Laden and his followers make little sense. Without Islam, the West will go on being incapable of understanding our terrorist enemies, and hence will be incapable to deal with them. Without Islam, neither is it possible to comprehend the barbarism of the Taliban, the position of women and non-Muslims in Islamic countries, or — now– the murders attributed to Major Hasan. [...]

In the wake of the Fort Hood Massacre, America’s armed forces, the F.B.I., C.I.A., Department of Homeland Security and other counter-terrorist bodies face some difficult decisions about Muslims employed in their services. After all, the view Major Hasan expressed – that Muslims in the U.S. Armed Forces should not serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anyplace where they might have to kill fellow Muslims – is precisely in keeping with fatwas issued by such Muslim leaders as Ali Gum’a, the mufti of Egypt, which forbade Muslim soldiers to take part in the so-called War on Terror.

When Muslim soldiers or agents or operatives feel that their primary allegiance is to Islam and not the United States, can we safely allow their service to continue? It is an agonizing question, but one we must confront; however, we cannot properly confront this question while we struggle to pretend that Islam itself is not part of the dispute.

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and etc.