Some Things In Common
United StatesNorth Dakota is set to pass into law the most radical anti-abortion legislation within the United States. The State Senate plans to vote on a "personhood bill" declaring a fertilized egg to be a human being. State Representative Dan Ruby, father of ten, is the author of the bill.
Should the bill be passed into law - and it is likely to happen, given the ultra-conservative nature of the state - all criminal laws now on the books, from murder, assault and prohibitions against slavery, will be applicable to an embryo or a foetus. The law, if passed, would in addition, bring an abrupt end to in-vitro fertilization and embryonic stem-cell research in North Dakota.
Pakistan
The Government of Pakistan saw fit to make an agreement on Sharia law in part of the North West Frontier Province, with the tribal Taliban, in the greater interests of achieving 'peace' between government forces and fundamentalist tribal militias. Who had been busy destroying 169 schools, beheading teachers, and throwing acid in the faces of schoolgirls.
To demonstrate the value and the values of Sharia law, Pakistani Taliban publicly flogged a young woman whom they accused of adultery. She was held down by the men while one delivered 34 blows with a whip to her back. This took place in Swat, an hour and a half drive from Islamabad, the capital of the country.
The man who administered the flogging, whom some claim sought revenge after the young woman refused his proposal of marriage, explained: "She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross."
Afghanistan
The government of Hamid Karzai, with an eye to the coming election and forging alliances, is on the cusp of approving a new "family law", one sought by the 15%-population Shia parliamentarians, which, if formalized into law, would affect all Afghan women. This law would effectively formalize conditions under which most women in Afghanistan in the more remote tribal villages live.
The law would make it an offence for a woman to deny connubial relations with her husband; effectively making family rape legal. Women would be denied the right to venture outside the confines of the home unaccompanied by a male relative - conditions seen under the former Taliban rule. Property rights on dissolution of a marriage would solely benefit the husband. Custody of children would be with the husband; typical Islamist fare.
Enactment of the law would effectively overturn the Afghan government's pledge to uphold international human rights obligations. Making it legal for girls from the age of nine to be placed into a marriage contract would most certainly qualify as violating international human rights.
Middle East - West Bank
Roughly one thousand Israelis live in Bat Ayin, a settlement in the Palestinian West bank. In 2002, three of those fundamentalist Jewish settlers were sentenced by an Israeli court to prison terms of between 12 to 15 years for attempting to place a bomb near a Palestinian girls' school in Arab East Jerusalem.
Obviously this represented an ill-advised attempt to persuade Palestinians that the presence of Jews in their midst would pose no problem to them.
Yesterday, a Palestinian wielding an axe and a knife quietly wended his way into the unprotected settlement, encountering there a sixteen year old youth and a seven-year-old boy, both Israelis, members of the settlement community. He set about to teach the two a lesson in mutual respect and good-will, between Jews and Arabs.
He first axed the 16-year-old mortally, then almost succeeded in doing the same to the 7-year-old.
An adult member of the settlement came upon the scene and began to grapple with the murderous intruder, managing to wrest the weapons away from him, but proving incapable of holding on to the man, who managed to escape. "He tried to stab me. I kicked him, he kicked me" the man obligingly explained in an interview.
One of the convicted and incarcerated settlers who had been charged with setting off that bomb in 2002, is the father of the 7-year-old boy. He was given a compassionate leave to attend the hospital where his seriously wounded child is receiving care.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terror group affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack on the two Israeli children. As reason, they cited Israel's "crimes of occupation".
Labels: Political Realities, Religion, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Friday, April 03, 2009
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