I've only started reading Tech Central Station on a regular basis recently, but today has two reasons why I will continue.
First, because Douglas Kern owes me a new keyboard and monitor (and maybe a new set of ribs) due to Toy Soldiers. I'm sorry, but this sort of thing needs to come with a cautionary label: "Please remove all liquid items from your mouth and the general vicinity of your computer before reading this article. Also recommended: firmly apply Ace bandages to torso to avoid any spillage of guts on the floor."
The first two paragraphs:
The Slinky betrayed us. I should have known. I never trusted him. He was an unstable character, always going back and forth, back and forth, never showing a shred of backbone. "Come, senor, I know the way to the insurgents' headquarters," he rasped. The fact that he was an Arab toy speaking with a stereotypical Spanish accent should have tipped me off. But hindsight is always 20/20. Literally. I can turn my head 360 degrees.
I only knew my men by their code names, but even in that short space of time we shared a bond that only six-inch plastic combatants can truly understand. They were my family, my brothers in petroleum-based products. One night we all melted the tips of our fingers and became plastic brothers.
The second article, Honor Thy Father -- Or Else, by Val MacQueen, brought tears to my eyes and rage to my heart.
I will be frank: Christians are not perfect, and we often don't interpret God's Word properly. Too many of us like to twist the Bible to say what it doesn't, or to use it to excuse our failures. That's wrong, and heinous, and solid Biblical application does refute and condemn sinful behavior.
However, the more I hear of items like this about Islam, the more I wonder how anyone can call it a "religion of peace." The cruelty with which Islam treats women - and I'm not saying all Muslims treat their women this way - without any widespread outrage from the Islamic community is obscene.
Which brings us to "honor killings", or, if you insist on clarity, the tolerance of the murder of girls and women for stepping out of line.
This is so routine in many Muslim societies, the perversity of it is seldom questioned within those societies. We know there is even provision for it in some countries, such as Jordan, which gives lesser penalties to men who commit "honor killings" to "remove a stain from the tribe" than for other murders. They also give a free pass to a man who kills his wife because he suspects she might have committed adultery, and a rapist has his sentence reduced if the woman he raped wasn't a virgin. (By contrast, Pakistan has re-introduced the death penalty specifically for this crime, with accomplices being handed an automatic life imprisonment. According to Pacific News writer Muddassir Rizvi, in 1999-2001, there are estimated to have been 1,100 "honor killings" there.)
And just as genital mutilation takes place in Britain, with British doctors turning a blind eye in the name of "multiculturalism", so the murder of disobedient girls and women is countenanced, or at least not reported by the neighbors.
Infractions meriting the death penalty by dad are: being caught with make-up in one's purse, wearing "revealing" attire -- in other words, anything except a black serge curtain and a black pillowcase, refusing to marry the husband the family has chosen and made a deal with and, the worst capital crime in the book, going out with an indigenous British boy or a Lebanese Christian boy.
These are viewed as bringing "shame" on the family. Like murder doesn't.
In the cases in Britain in which a girl refuses to go to Pakistan and meet her new "husband", she is often bundled off to Pakistan anyway, but never comes back. When teachers become concerned and make enquiries, the parents claim she's "staying with relatives" in some remote village. Most often, she is dead. Exporting Muslim girls to murder them in the comfort of their own culture is not uncommon among Muslims in Britain and saves a lot of bother with the police.
If this were happening in Catholic or Protestent communities, there would be a firestorm of wrath from the whole world, and rightly so. Why, then, are these atrocities and abominations ignored by the media, the UN, the EU, and most importantly, the "moderate" Islamic community?
This is beyond obscene, and I would suggest you read the whole article because it states the case far better than I could.
