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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Frank Crimi</title>
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		<title>Rimsha Masih’s Unending Nightmare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/rimsha-masihs-unending-nightmare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rimsha-masihs-unending-nightmare</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:18:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acquitted]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rimsha Masih]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Pakistan high court renews the witch-hunt against a mentally handicapped Christian "blasphemer." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/rimsha-masihs-unending-nightmare/rimsha-masih/" rel="attachment wp-att-184085"><img class=" wp-image-184085 alignleft" title="rimsha-masih" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/rimsha-masih-450x348.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="209" /></a>After being acquitted in January 2013 of blasphemy charges, Pakistan’s Supreme Court has now <a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/27330-breaking-news-pakistan-blasphemy-girl-facing-prison-mother-death-sentence">reopened</a> the case against Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl believed to suffer from mental disabilities.</p>
<p>Rimsha’s case had drawn international attention as well as corresponding outrage after the young girl was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19311098">arrested </a> at her home in August 2012 and charged with blasphemy upon being accused by a Muslim neighbor of allegedly burning pages from a Koran.</p>
<p>It should be noted that running afoul of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws can earn sentences of death or life in prison for those convicted of desecrating Islam’s holy book or insulting its Prophet Muhammad.</p>
<p>For her part, Rimsha, who worked as a maid at the time, denied through her attorney any blasphemous wrongdoing, claiming she was simply burning garbage and “did not know a Koranic book was among the papers because she cannot read.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Pakistan’s Minister for National Harmony, Paul Bhatti, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19311098">said</a> that given Rimsha’s mental disorder, it was unlikely the young girl had “purposefully desecrated the Koran.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Rimsha’s illiteracy and mental impairment were not persuasive enough arguments in which to prevent Pakistani police from incarcerating the young girl for the alleged heretical act.</p>
<p>Yet, in September 2012, Rimsha’s case seemingly took a turn for the better when Pakistani police <a href="http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/188930/reftab/69/Default.aspx">arrested</a> a local Muslim cleric, Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti, and charged him with planting the burned Koranic pages in an effort to frame Rimsha.</p>
<p>According to a police official Chishti “put pages into the ashes, showed them to the people of the area, and gathered them to attack the girl’s house.”</p>
<p>Those charges were corroborated by three officials from Chishti’s mosque who told a judge that Chishti’s attempt to incriminate Rimsha was part of a broader plan by the cleric to oust Christians living in the poor Mehrabad neighborhood of Islamabad where Rimsha and her family lived.</p>
<p>Of course, that revelation most likely raised few eyebrows given that Pakistan’s blasphemy statutes are often used and abused to either settle personal scores or as weapons in which persecute religious minorities, such as Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis.</p>
<p>Still, the officials testified that they had urged Chishti to not go through with his plan, efforts which apparently had little effect on the Imam who reportedly replied, “You know, this is the only way to expel the Christians from this area.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Chishti’s plan almost worked to perfection.  Soon after the accusations were levied against Rimsha, an angry Muslim mob numbering in the thousands gathered outside Rimsha’s house, where they threatened to burn down Christian homes in the neighborhood if police did not arrest the young girl.</p>
<p>To that end, over a thousand Christians in the area were forced to flee their homes, seeking shelter in church compounds or sleeping outdoors, a move which at the time, <a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/22918-breaking-news-thousands-flee-as-pakistan-jails-girl-for-burning-koranic-book">according</a> to the head of a Pakistan-based human rights group, was “the largest reallocation of Christians from any area of Pakistan.”</p>
<p>To this day, many of those same Christian families have yet to return to their homes, fearful of Muslim reprisals. Included in that exiled group is Rimsha, her parents and relatives, all of whom have been in hiding since Rimsha was released on bail in September 2012.</p>
<p>Rimsha’s flee to safer confines was certainly understandable given that in Pakistan, those accused of blasphemy, more often than not, never see their cases settled by a Pakistani court but instead are forced into hiding or killed by mobs before they even stand trial.</p>
<p>Since 1990 at least 60 Christians accused of blasphemy have been killed extra-judiciously by enraged Muslim mobs or individuals.</p>
<p>For his part, Chishti, who has been out on bail since October 2012, has denied the allegations levied against him. Moreover, the prospect of Chishti paying any judicial price for his misdeeds seem fairly remote given that the witnesses who testified against him have since <a href="http://www.christiantoday.com/article/setback.in.rimsha.masih.case/30744.htm">recanted</a> their statements.</p>
<p>Despite that, the case against Rimsha appeared to have been settled in November 2012 when the Islamabad High Court (IHC) <a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-76252-IHC-dismisses-FIR-against-Rimsha-Masih">dismissed</a> the blasphemy charges against her, finding that there was no evidence that she had been seen burning the Koranic pages.</p>
<p>Rimsha, however, was still not out of the Pakistani judicial woods as shortly after the IHC ruling, the neighbor who had initially accused Rimsha of blasphemy, Malik Ammad, filed an appeal to Pakistan’s Supreme Court, claiming that “the police had shown bias in investigating the charges against Rimsha.”</p>
<p>Yet, in January 2013 Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld the IHC decision when it voted to <a href="http://www.christiantoday.com/article/closure.for.blasphemy.accused.rimsha.masih/31473.htm">acquit </a>Rimsha of all charges of blasphemy, a decision which presumably ended all further legal challenges in her case. As Rimsha’s attorney, Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, said at the time, “The SC’s decision has put an end to future contentions on the case.”</p>
<p>As for the fate of Rimsha and her family, Chaudhry <a href="http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/english/country/pakistan/article_2016163.html/">said</a> “we will now seriously consider relocating them to some other city so that they can resume their normal lives now that the case has reached its logical end.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that pronouncement has been proven woefully premature as the Pakistani Supreme Court voted at the end of March to reopen the case after receiving an <a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/27330-breaking-news-pakistan-blasphemy-girl-facing-prison-mother-death-sentence">appeal</a> from a police investigator who claims he “was pressured by the government to drop charges against her after an international outcry.”</p>
<p>So now Rimsha Masih once again faces the prospect of life in prison for a crime she clearly did not commit, a fate that perhaps only a deafening international outcry can prevent from happening.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Saudi Arabia to Give Public Beheadings the Axe?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/saudi-arabia-to-give-public-beheadings-the-axe/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saudi-arabia-to-give-public-beheadings-the-axe</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:04:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beheading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[execution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[swordsmen]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A swordsman scarcity rattles the Sharia prison-state. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/saudi-arabia-to-give-public-beheadings-the-axe/sorcery-saudi-woman-beheaded-for-sorcery-284x300/" rel="attachment wp-att-182467"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-182467" title="Sorcery-Saudi-Woman-beheaded-for-sorcery-284x300" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Sorcery-Saudi-Woman-beheaded-for-sorcery-284x300.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="229" /></a>A lack of qualified swordsmen may relegate the barbaric Saudi practice of public beheadings to the historical ash heap, although such a change is unlikely to slow down the swelling numbers of people being put to death in the Saudi Kingdom.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia’s Sharia-based judicial system has long considered public beheadings, along with the occasional crucifixion and stoning, to be acceptable Islamic forms of capital punishment.</p>
<p>While those punishments come to those convicted of murder, rape, sodomy, drug trafficking, and armed robbery, other offenses, such as apostasy, adultery, drug use, and witchcraft can also earn a date with the swordsman.</p>
<p>However, a Saudi government committee has found that an alarming “scarcity of swordsmen and their unavailability in a number of regions” cannot keep pace with the several thousand people estimated to be on death row throughout Saudi Arabia’s 13 administrative regions.</p>
<p>As a result, the committee <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/saudi-arabia-runs-short-of-swordwielding-executioners-20130312-2fwz8.html">recommended</a> that firing squads be used as an acceptable method of execution for capital sentences, one which would not only be cost effective but limit the unprofessional specter of executioners either running late for their appointed rounds or showing up at the wrong venue.</p>
<p>That latter problem was specifically highlighted in the committee report, which found that swordsmen delayed by excess travel requirements “causes security confusion” an issue exacerbated by “the resulting spreading of rumors through modern technology.”</p>
<p>While some Saudis may have feared that firing squads would not be Sharia compliant, those concerns were allayed by the committee which found the practice “does not constitute a religious violation.”</p>
<p>That viewpoint was <a href="http://www.arabianbusiness.com/death-by-firing-squad-acceptable-by-sharia-says-saudi-cleric-492888.html">reaffirmed</a> by a senior Saudi cleric, Sheikh Ali Al-Hakami, who said, “Beheading by sword is the best way to achieve the purpose of punishment in Islam because it does not cause any torture.”</p>
<p>Of course, that opinion may be clearly up for debate for those facing a public beheading, a form of execution that usually takes place in town squares, such as the one in the capital of Riyadh, known menacingly as “Chop Chop Square.”</p>
<p>There the condemned, usually dressed in white, kneels handcuffed and blindfolded facing in the direction of Mecca. If the public facility is not equipped with a drain in the center, a plastic tarp is spread around the prisoner to make cleaning up easier.</p>
<p>As the prisoner kneels, the executioner will pray with him or her before lightly jabbing their neck with the blade of the sword, an act which serves to make the prisoner stiffen upwards. Then, with a quick stroke, the head is cleaved from the body, whereupon both the body and head are placed on a stretcher and removed to a waiting van.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many instances have been recorded in which the executioner misjudged his target, such as hitting the shoulder blade, or cutting only halfway through the neck, necessitating several swings to finish the job. In some cases, the head is stuck on a pole separately from the crucified torso and publicly displayed for several days.</p>
<p>While some truly unfortunate few will be crucified alive, dying a slow and painful death with hands and feet nailed with steel spikes to a wooden cross, beheadings remain by far the most popular Saudi form of execution.</p>
<p>In fact, Saudi Arabia, which has the highest execution rate per capita in the world, has reportedly beheaded 18 people so far in 2013 and over 80 people in each of the past two years.</p>
<p>Trying to keep up with that dizzying pace are Saudi government swordsmen, whose duties were graphically and chilling expressed by a Saudi executioner, Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, in an <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/06/saudiarabia.features11">interview</a> back in 2003.</p>
<p>Al-Beshi, who said at the time he beheads up to 10 people a day, began his career as a prison guard handcuffing and blindfolding condemned prisoners, a task in which he “developed a desire to be an executioner.” Recalling his first execution, al-Beshi said, “The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled meters away.”</p>
<p>Al-Beshi maintained that since he is doing God’s will, his work does not upset him, although he can’t say the same thing for those who watch him perform his deadly task.</p>
<p>According to al-Beshi, “There are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don’t know why they come and watch if they don’t have the stomach for it. Me? I sleep very well.”</p>
<p>In addition to the four foot scimitar he uses to lop heads from shoulders, al-Beshi’s other tools of trade include a “special sharp knife” he utilizes to carry out amputations of convicted criminals, such as severing hands, feet and even tongues. According to al-Beshi, “When I cut off a hand, I cut it from the joint. If it is a leg, the authorities specify where it is to be taken off, so I follow that.”</p>
<p>While the Saudi committee’s recommendation to consider firing squads has not yet been government approved, it was recently taken out for a test run when the Saudi government <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/03/201331221118103218.html">executed</a> seven young men by firing squad.</p>
<p>The men, who were arrested in 2006 and convicted of theft and armed robbery, had been sentenced to death in 2009, their bodies to be beheaded before their headless torsos then crucified.</p>
<p>While the barbarity of the sentence sparked international outrage, so did the fact that many of the men were not only juveniles at the time they were arrested but that they had also been reportedly tortured into confessing their crimes.</p>
<p>While the Saudi government still carried out the death sentence, it did change the method of execution, opting for a firing squad instead of a group beheading and crucifixion, a nod more toward assuaging international concerns than an acknowledgement of the barbarity of its Sharia-based justice system.</p>
<p>To that end, before carrying out the execution, the Saudi Ministry of the Interior released a statement which <a href="http://www.latinospost.com/articles/14372/20130313/seven-men-executed-saudi-arabia.htm">read</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter.</p></blockquote>
<p>That said, it’s difficult to fathom that any punishment in the afterlife will match the barbarity inflicted by the rulers of Saudi Arabia in the here and now. That is the true disgrace in this world.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Torching Christians in Pakistan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/torching-christians-in-pakistan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=torching-christians-in-pakistan</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:05:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blasphemy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muhammed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A Muslim mob burns down over 150 Christian homes and two churches.   ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/torching-christians-in-pakistan/pakistan-house-burning/" rel="attachment wp-att-181308"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-181308" title="pakistan-house-burning" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pakistan-house-burning.jpg" alt="" width="259" height="194" /></a>In the latest act of bruising intolerance being perpetrated by Muslims against Pakistan’s besieged Christian community, a Muslim <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQve5zyY7wWan6fZX-9hbfosuDmw?docId=1510d7c7fbd340fc88b93ba87807d8b3">mob</a> recently burned down over 150 Christian homes and two churches over allegations that a Christian man had committed blasphemy.</p>
<p>The rioting, which occurred in the Pakistani city of Lahore, began after a Muslim man accused Sawan Masih, a Pakistani Christian, of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, an allegation punishable by death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.</p>
<p>Even though Pakistani police had swiftly arrested Masih, Christian families nevertheless hurriedly fled the area in fear of Muslim reprisals, an exodus which proved fortuitous given the ensuing Muslim rampage.</p>
<p>Once the mob’s fury had been spent, Christians slowly made their way back to their burned-out homes, leaving one Christian surveying the destruction to lament, “Nothing is left here. I don’t know why this happened.”</p>
<p>The answer to that question, unfortunately, is exceedingly clear given the type of barbaric treatment routinely meted out by Muslims to those Christians and other religious minorities unfortunate enough to run afoul of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws.</p>
<p>Those statutes, first introduced in 1986 by Pakistani military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, can earn sentences of death or life in prison for those found guilty of insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad or desecrating its holy book, the Koran.</p>
<p>To that end, 20 Pakistanis convicted of blasphemy are currently serving life sentences while another 16 are sitting on death row awaiting their appointed date with the executioner.</p>
<p>Among those currently slated to die is Younis Masih, a Christian father of four who has been on death row since 2007 and Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five, who in 2010 was the first Pakistani woman convicted for blasphemy and sentenced to death by hanging.</p>
<p>Younis Masih’s heretical act occurred in September 2005 when he was <a href="http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2013/s13010125.htm">arrested</a> after he had reportedly asked a group of Muslims who were holding a religious service one evening in a nearby house to turn their music down.</p>
<p>Bibi’s transgression against Islam came in 2009 after a verbal disagreement with some Muslim women in her village led Bibi to claim that Christians and Muslims are equal before God, an affront apparently stinging enough to lead to her being <a href="http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2013/s13010125.htm">accused</a> of having blasphemed against Mohammad.</p>
<p>It should be noted, that while Muslim nations throughout Africa, the Mideast and Asia &#8212; such as Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Iran &#8212; have similar blasphemy laws, few enforce those laws with the zeal of Pakistanis.</p>
<p>Perhaps that fervor stems from the fact that under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws the burden of proof required to convict someone is exceedingly weak given there are no guidelines as to what constitutes blasphemy, no evidentiary standards, and no requirement to prove intent.</p>
<p>Moreover, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws also contain no provisions to punish a false accuser or false witness. As a result, the laws are often used to settle personal scores rather than to defend against perceived slights to Islamic piety</p>
<p>In fact, the Muslim rampage in Lahore reportedly had less to do with offending Islamic sensibilities than it had to do with personal score settling. <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQve5zyY7wWan6fZX-9hbfosuDmw?docId=1510d7c7fbd340fc88b93ba87807d8b3">According</a> to a bishop in Lahore, Masih’s Muslim accuser had levied the blasphemy charge against Masih the day after the two men had gotten into a fight while drinking.</p>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, those accused of blasphemy, more often than not, never see their cases settled by a Pakistani court but instead are forced into hiding or killed by mobs before they even stand trial.</p>
<p>Since 1990 at least 60 Christians accused of blasphemy have been killed by enraged mobs or individuals, extra-judicial justice perhaps best explained by the fact many Pakistani Muslims believe killing a blasphemous person earns a heavenly reward.</p>
<p>While Pakistan’s religious minorities, such as Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis, have been the disproportionate targets of blasphemy allegations, Muslims who violate the blasphemy laws aren’t immune to mob reprisal.</p>
<p>For example, in December 2012 several hundred Muslims in the Pakistani province of Sindh dragged a man suspected of burning pages of the Koran from police custody, where they summarily beat him before then <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Pakistan,-not-just-Asia-Bibi:-Muslim-lynched-and-burned-alive-for-blasphemy-26700.html">burning</a> him alive.</p>
<p>That display of Islamic tolerance was preceded in July 2012 when Ghulam Abbas, a 40-year-old mentally impaired Muslim man, was accused of burning a copy of the Koran in the Pakistani city of Bahawalpur.</p>
<p>Incited by local Muslim clerics, a mob numbering in the thousands stormed the police station where Abbas was being held, whereupon they dragged Abbas to the spot where he purportedly desecrated the Koran, poured gasoline over him, and then <a href="http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2012/08/vigilante-justice-in-pakistan.html">burned</a> him to death as he screamed for help.</p>
<p>So given all that it’s not terribly surprising that Pakistan’s religious minorities, as well as some Muslims, are attempting to amend the blasphemy laws, efforts which can carry some deadly consequences.</p>
<p>In 2011, two Pakistani Christian politicians attempting to repeal the blasphemy laws were assassinated: Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, the only Christian minister in Pakistan’s Cabinet, was shot and killed by one of his own guards; two months later Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minority Affairs, was gunned down by Islamists.</p>
<p>Yet, there are those in Pakistan who contend that tentative signs are emerging that signal a weakening of support for the blasphemy laws, change prompted in part by the international outrage generated by the case of Rimsha Masih.</p>
<p>Rimsha, a 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl afflicted with Down syndrome, was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19311098">arrested</a> in August 2012 after she had been accused by a local cleric of burning 10 pages of the Koran.</p>
<p>Rimsha, who worked as a maid, denied any blasphemous wrongdoing, claiming through her attorney that she was simply burning garbage and “did not know a Koranic book was among the papers because she cannot read.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Pakistani police quickly brought Rimsha into custody, persuaded less by her illiteracy and mental impairment and more by a swelling Muslim mob gathered outside her home bent on torching the entire Christian community if the young girl was not immediately arrested.</p>
<p>Yet, while imprisoned, the cleric who accused Rimsha was himself arrested and charged with planting the burned pages, the result of which led Pakistan’s Supreme Court in January 2013 to <a href="http://www.christiantoday.com/article/closure.for.blasphemy.accused.rimsha.masih/31473.htm">acquit</a> Rimsha of all charges of blasphemy.</p>
<p>Then, shortly after Rimsha’s acquittal, Barkat Masih, a Hindu who had converted to Christianity and spent 18 months in prison after he was accused of blasphemy in 2011, was acquitted in February 2013 by Pakistan’s Supreme Court and <a href="http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2013/02/renewed-hope-for-asia-bibi-as-pakistan-acquits-second-christian-of-blasphemy.html">released</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, in March, Karma Patras, a 55-year-old Christian pastor charged in October 2012 with blasphemy, was released on <a href="http://global.christianpost.com/news/pastor-in-pakistan-released-on-bail-after-blasphemy-accuser-admits-to-mistake-90975/">bail</a> as he was awaiting his trial because his accuser had acknowledged that he had mistakenly accused Patras of committing blasphemy</p>
<p>Still, while that decision was a stunning rarity given that victims of false accusations of blasphemy are usually denied bail, Patras is still mired deep in the Pakistani judicial woods.</p>
<p>Specifically, an accuser cannot drop the charges once they have been filed, so Patras will still have to stand trial, where if convicted he will face up to ten years in prison.</p>
<p>Moreover, being granted bail may not be the act of judicial mercy it appears to be on the surface given that after his arrest, Muslims in his village tried wrest Patras from police custody. Failing that, the mob settled instead on forcing his five married sons and their families to leave the area by threatening to burn them alive.</p>
<p>Tragically, for Pakistan’s Christian and other religious minorities, that Muslim bellicosity is more than a menacing threat but a terrifying reality come to fruition.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The Kidnapping of Coptic Girls</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-kidnapping-of-coptic-girls/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-kidnapping-of-coptic-girls</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:10:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abduction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conversion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Coptic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[forced]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=180374</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Christian women and girls continue to be abducted on a near daily basis and forced to convert to Islam. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-kidnapping-of-coptic-girls/mideast-egypt-church-attack-1241276643_v2-grid-6x2/" rel="attachment wp-att-180508"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-180508" title="mideast egypt church attack--1241276643_v2.grid-6x2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/mideast-egypt-church-attack-1241276643_v2.grid-6x2.jpg" alt="" width="253" height="205" /></a>When a rumor circulated last week that a Muslim woman in the southern Egyptian city of Kom Ombo had been forcibly converted to Christianity, a mob of Muslims felt compelled to riot, attacking and firebombing the city’s local Coptic Christian church.</p>
<p>The rioting in Kom Ombo had begun when local Muslim residents believed a missing 36-year-old Muslim woman had been forced to convert to Christianity and was being held against her will in the Church of Mar Girgis, Kom Ombo’s largest Coptic Church.</p>
<p>That transgression was apparently egregious enough to induce hundreds of local Muslims to surround the church for three days hurling Molotov Cocktails and rocks, a melee that caused injury to over two dozen Christians and Egyptian police.</p>
<p>Of course, it should be noted that Copts, who make up 10 percent of Egypt’s populace, are used to being on the receiving end of Muslim ire, having seen over the past several years scores of their churches routinely attacked and burned.</p>
<p>In fact, Muslim rage at Coptic churches and their parishioners extends beyond Egyptian borders, fury evidenced by the recent <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/66064/World/Region/Gunmen-attack-Egyptian-Coptic-church-in-Libyas-Ben.aspx">attack</a> by gunmen of an Egyptian Coptic church in the Libyan city of Benghazi that injured two priests.</p>
<p>That assault had been preceded by the arrest of nearly 50 Egyptian Christians in Benghazi on suspicion of proselytizing, detention which included the Christians reportedly being tortured by, among other things, having their tattooed crosses burned off with acid.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the mob fury in Kom Ombo began to dissipate somewhat when the missing woman reappeared to her family, where <a href="http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/03/2497287/egypt-missing-muslim-woman-found.html">according</a> to an Egyptian police official, it was found that she was not the victim of a forced conversion but rather had disappeared for “family and social reasons.”</p>
<p>Yet, while the rumor of the forced conversion was revealed to be a fake, what is all too real is the ongoing and escalating abduction and forced conversion to Islam of Coptic Christian women and girls by Egyptian Muslims.</p>
<p>While this distressing practice has been plaguing Egypt’s Coptic community for decades, the number of these abduction cases, perhaps not surprisingly, has dramatically grown since the January 2011 ouster of Egyptian President Hosnai Mubarak.</p>
<p>In a 2012 <a href="http://www.csi-usa.org/TellMyMotherIMissHer.pdf">report</a> commissioned by Christian Solidarity International titled <em>Tell My Mother I Miss Her </em>and written by George Washington University professor Michele Clark and Coptic human rights activist Nadia Ghaly<em>, </em>500 cases were reported of Coptic females having been kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam.</p>
<p>For those young women and girls fortunate enough to escape their captors, their horrors were chillingly expressed by one of the authors of the CSI report before a US congressional committee in July 2012:</p>
<blockquote><p>Many who return home indicate that they were raped and told they could not go home because their families would never accept them back. Many are beaten; others are forced into domestic servitude. They are not allowed to leave where they are held without a member of their captor’s family keeping watch. They eventually are brainwashed into thinking the only way to be safe is to convert. Their families, who have been searching frantically for their daughters, sisters and wives — without any help from the police — often never discover their fate.</p></blockquote>
<p>Equally disturbing is that while the number of abduction cases has dramatically grown, the age of its victims has dramatically shrunk, with the typical age of abductees, according to an official with a Christian NGO, to now be 13-14 years of age.</p>
<p>One of those young girls is Sarah Ishaq Abdelmalek, a 14-year-old Coptic girl who <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20130201192615.htm">disappeared</a> in September 2012 after stopping at a bookstore on her way to school.</p>
<p>Sarah’s kidnapper was believed to be the 27-year-old Muslim bookstore owner, Mahmoud Abu Zied Abdel Gawwad, a married man and father who reportedly smuggled Sarah across the border into Libya. Despite an Egyptian prosecutor ordering Gawwad’s arrest in October 2012, the police have yet to arrest him.</p>
<p>Yet, that governmental inaction should come as little surprise to those who believe Sarah and girls like her to be the victims of a well-orchestrated plan to kidnap Coptic females, an operation run by Egyptian Salafist groups, Muslim businessmen and Egypt’s governing authorities.</p>
<p>Elements of that plan were detailed in a May 2008 <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20090718111414.htm">report</a> by the Egyptian newspaper, Al Fagr, which told of Muslim businessmen funding an operation “carried out with the collusion of State Security and Mosque sheikhs” to buy Christian females for conversion to Islam, prices which depended on the “girls’ ages, looks and social standing.”</p>
<p>Moreover, <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20130202195322.htm">according</a> to Ebram Louis of the Association of Victims of Abduction and Enforced Disappearance, a Christian NGO, “In every Egyptian province there is a Salafist association which handles the kidnapping of Christian girls. They have homes everywhere where they keep them.”</p>
<p>Still, even if a girl’s location is reported to Egyptian authorities, Louis said those officials will simply “inform the Salafists, who then move her away to another home and then we lose all trace of her.”</p>
<p>The sad reality, however, is that the abduction and forced conversion of Christian women and girls has not only found fertile soil in Egypt but in Muslim countries scattered throughout Africa, the Mideast and Asia.</p>
<p>In Pakistan, for example, it is estimated that every year over 700 Christian girls are kidnapped, forced to marry their Muslim abductors and convert to Islam.</p>
<p>In many instances, these forced marriages and conversions are carried out by powerful and influential Muslim families who threaten and severely beat the young girls into verifying their compliance if questioned by local authorities.</p>
<p>However, as in Egypt, these abductors have little need to take the added step of forcing compliance from their victims, given Pakistan’s legal entities either have no moral qualms about the practice or are themselves bribed to turn a blind eye to the situation.</p>
<p>In Egypt, one of those blind eyes belongs to Egyptian President Mohamad Morsi who has publicly denied that the practice of forced Islamization of Coptic women and girls even exists in his country.</p>
<p>While Morsi may be willfully ignorant, others see the situation all too clearly, such as Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II. He has <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20130201192615.htm">called</a> the kidnapping and forced conversion of Christian girls a “disgrace for the whole of Egypt,” while also asking, “Can any family accept the kidnapping of their daughter and her forced conversion?”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, while many Christian families may not be accepting of this horrendous practice, it may be safe to assume that the Obama administration is, given its recent decision to send over $200 million to Egypt in financial assistance.</p>
<p>That money, which is part of more than $1 billion in US financial aid promised to Egypt by President Obama in 2012, was reportedly contingent upon the Egyptian government’s promises of economic and political reforms, a benchmark that the Obama administration apparently believes has been met.</p>
<p>While many may disagree with that assessment, perhaps some of that US-taxpayer funded money can be earmarked to help save the Coptic women and girls of Egypt from their Muslim abductors.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Al Jazeera Star: Death to Apostates</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/al-jazeera-star-death-to-apostates/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-jazeera-star-death-to-apostates</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:40:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al gore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al jazeera tv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apostasy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Current TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yusef Al-Qaradawy]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[While Glenn Beck's views scared Al Gore, Sheikh al-Qaradawi's jihadist vision rings just right. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/al-jazeera-star-death-to-apostates/yusuf-al-qaradawi-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-178281"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-178281" title="Yusuf-al-Qaradawi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Yusuf-al-Qaradawi.jpg" alt="" width="265" height="220" /></a>Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, host of a popular Al Jazeera television show and a highly influential Islamic cleric with a long history of poisonous views toward women, homosexuals and Jews, has now sanctioned the killing of those who leave Islam.</p>
<p>The 86-year-old Egyptian-born cleric, who has been called the spiritual and intellectual leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, aired his enlightened views on the deadly Islamic punishment for apostates on a recent <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=917pAS-Ccjs&amp;list=UUsgTzOZfsyosq4j9qVi3YWg&amp;index=3">broadcast</a> of <em>Shariah and Life</em> &#8212; his long-running program that enjoys an estimated worldwide audience of 60 million viewers.</p>
<p>Qaradawi addressed his Al Jazeera viewers, quoting from a series of Koranic verses and hadiths, which read in part, “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle is that they should be murdered or crucified…Kill whomever changes his faith [from Islam]…”</p>
<p>Moreover, according to Qaradawi, Islam’s diligent use of executing apostates had served to ensure Islam’s survival since the 15th century, telling viewers that “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment Islam wouldn’t exist today.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Qaradawi’s on-air fatwa carries some considerable weight given his standing as one of the most influential Sunni Muslim clerics in the world, prominence gained as host of <em>Shariah and Life</em>, founder of the popular website IslamOnline and author of over 100 books on Islam.</p>
<p>Yet, while Qaradawi has studiously over the years tried to posit himself as the tolerant face of Islam, his efforts have been belied by his long-standing endorsement of, among other things, wife beating, Palestinian suicide bombers, and the killing of homosexuals and Jews.</p>
<p>For starters Qaradawi believes it acceptable under Islam to punish disobedient wives by using them as human speed bags, having once <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1091.htm">said</a> that while beating a wife is “neither obligatory nor desirable” it is “acceptable as a method of last resort – though only lightly.”</p>
<p>For those who may be unclear as to what Qaradawi defines as “lightly,” one can reference his 1984 book, <em>The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam</em>, in which he <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1091.htm">wrote</a> “a husband may beat his wife lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive areas.”</p>
<p>While Qaradawi sees being cuffed around as the Islamic price a woman pays for being disobedient to her spouse, he also believes being raped is the Islamic price a woman pays for being immodestly dressed.</p>
<p>That enlightened view was offered by Qaradaw in 2004 when he was asked if raped women were punished under Islam, to which he <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1466715/For-her-to-be-absolved-from-guilt-a-raped-woman-must-have-shown-good-conduct.html">opined</a>:</p>
<p>“To be absolved from guilt, the raped woman must have shown some sort of good conduct,&#8221; adding, “Since Islam addresses women to maintain their modesty, as not to open the door for evil… for a rape victim to be absolved from guilt, she must not be the one that opens&#8230; her dignity for deflowering.”</p>
<p>While Qaradawi may eye beatings and rape as acceptable Islamic consequences for improper feminine behavior, his views on the consequences for being a homosexual or a Jew are far more deadly.</p>
<p>In 2004 Qaradawi <a href="http://www.meforum.org/646/the-qaradawi-fatwas">wrote</a> a fatwa on IslamOnline that offered burning or stoning as an acceptable punishment for those who practice homosexuality, adding, “While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, Qaradawi holds Jews in the same esteem, views he clearly expressed on Al-Jazeera in 2009 during the Gaza when he <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/print3006.htm">said</a>: “Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them…Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”</p>
<p>If Allah isn’t available to kill the Jews, Qaradawi has endorsed utilizing suicide bombers to accomplish the task, a position he expressed in a 2005 BBC interview in which he <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2011/February/Sunni-Cleric-Prays-for-Conquest-of-al-Aksa-/">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have, and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs, as Palestinians do…I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an evidence of God’s justice.</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, Qaradawi’s fondness for suicide bombing includes utilizing women as human projectiles, a position he articulated in a 2004 <a href="http://www.meforum.org/646/the-qaradawi-fatwas">fatwa</a> posted on his IslamOnline website, in which he wrote: “The committed Muslim women in Palestine have the right to participate and have their own role in jihad and to attain martyrdom.”</p>
<p>Though Qaradawi’s theological viewpoints may be par for the Islamic course, his disturbing message offers a small glimpse into the type of hate-filled programming that may become standard viewing fare for Americans when Al Jazeera America begins broadcasting into the United States this summer.</p>
<p>That unnerving prospect became a looming reality in January when Current TV co-founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt engineered the sale of the leftist American news channel to the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera news channel for a reported $500 million.</p>
<p>For their part, Gore and Hyatt had rejected earlier offers from conservative Glenn Beck to buy Current TV because <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578218043102095584.html">reportedly</a> they felt who “the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”</p>
<p>Of course, that should come as little surprise to those few who have watched the rogue’s gallery of leftist ideologues, crackpot entertainers and ex-Democratic politicians who have populated the airwaves of Current TV, luminaries such as Keith Olbermann, Joy Behar, Eliot Spitzer, and Jennifer Granholm.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Hyatt and Gore did manage to find an ideological soul mate in the Al Jazeera news channel, an attraction, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578218043102095584.html">according</a> to Hyatt, which rested on the fact that “Al-Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current.”</p>
<p>That compatibility aside, for now it remains unclear if Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi will be accepted as part Al Jazeera America’s future on-air talent pool. What is far more certain, however, is that his hate-filled message would be more than welcome.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Afghan Woman Forced to Marry Her Rapist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/afghan-woman-forced-to-marry-her-rapist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=afghan-woman-forced-to-marry-her-rapist</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:15:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[forced marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gulnaz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rape]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A day in the life of a Sharia slave.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/afghan-woman-forced-to-marry-her-rapist/634305-gulnaz/" rel="attachment wp-att-176645"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-176645" title="634305-gulnaz" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/634305-gulnaz.jpg" alt="" width="287" height="218" /></a>A year after she was pardoned from prison on the condition she agree to marry her rapist, a young Afghan woman, faced with distressingly few options, has now reluctantly wed her attacker.</p>
<p>In 2009, Gulnaz, then 16 years old, gained international attention after she was raped by her cousin’s husband and sentenced to 12 years in an Afghan prison for “forced adultery,” during which time she gave birth to a daughter fathered by her defiler.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, being imprisoned for having the temerity to be a victim of rape is not unusual in Afghanistan, evidenced by the fact that more than 50 percent of Afghanistan’s female prison population has been <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8934132/Afghanistans-women-languishing-in-prisons-10-years-after-fall-of-Taliban.html">jailed</a> for moral crimes, such as “forced adultery” or “zina” (extramarital sex).</p>
<p>Yet, nevertheless, after spending two and a half years in jail, Gulnaz was offered a <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106328">pardon</a> in December 2011 by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, albeit on the condition Gulnaz marry her rapist.</p>
<p>Karzai’s decision, however, wasn’t particularly surprising given that the Afghan police and judicial response to violence inflicted upon women &#8212; deeply rooted in Afghan custom and Islamic law &#8212; is to either ignore the crimes or, in most cases, send the women back to their abusers.</p>
<p>Still, Karzai’s decision engendered enough international and domestic outrage to prompt the Afghan president to graciously release Gulnaz without the precondition she wed her rapist.</p>
<p>Sadly for Gulnaz, presidential decree notwithstanding, her family was bent on having her marry her attacker, a decision based on the fact Gulnaz’s status as an unwed mother made her a social pariah who had brought shame upon her family.</p>
<p>In fact, reports surfaced that prior to her release Gulnaz’s brothers had threatened to kill her daughter, threats which prompted Gulnaz to seek sanctuary in a women’s shelter. There Gulnaz spent over a year while her family and the rapist’s family haggled over terms of the marriage.</p>
<p>Those marital conditions included a reported demand for the rapist’s family to give a daughter to Gulnaz’s family, part of the traditional Afghan practice known as “baad,” whereupon women are given away to pay family debts or settle disputes.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Gulnaz, the Afghan government was reportedly tag teaming with her family to help persuade the young woman to go ahead with the marriage, persuasion which, <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article3677718.ece">according</a> to Gulnaz’s lawyer, Kimberley Motely, included Gulnaz being “systematically brainwashed” by Afghan officials.</p>
<p>Moreover, Motely <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article3677718.ece">said</a> Afghan officials were “repeatedly denying her documentation for an asylum application” for Gulnaz, making Gulnaz a virtual prisoner in the women’s shelter.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, given the traditional Afghan hostility toward allowing women the freedom to escape abusive male relatives and family members, women&#8217;s shelters in Afghanistan more often than not resemble prisons masquerading as sanctuaries.</p>
<p>To that end, the Afghan government requires that a woman can’t move out of a shelter, most of which are run by NGOs and the United Nations, unless she is going to the home of a male relative.</p>
<p>However, that rule can prove problematic if, as in many cases, those same male relatives have abused or threatened to kill the woman or girl in the first place, a fact which leads many Afghan women afraid to seek help from Afghan police and judicial authorities.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Afghan government has taken extra steps to ensure that women’s shelters are not seen as enticing options for women fleeing abusive homes and marriages. As the head of Afghanistan’s juvenile prisons has said, “People really hate it when girls run away.”</p>
<p>To that end, the Afghanistan Supreme Court in October 2010 ruled that any Afghan woman who fled her home and went anywhere other than to the police or a close relative would be locked up as a precaution against them having illicit sex or engaging in prostitution.</p>
<p>So for Gulnaz, the only unsavory options open to escape her torment entailed either a return to jail or forcible return home, unpalatable choices which led to her decision last week to leave the women’s shelter to go marry her rapist.</p>
<p>While some may question Gulnaz’s decision as one which will leave her still vulnerable to further abuse or worse from her new husband or her family, others are more pragmatic in their opinion.</p>
<p>One such person is filmmaker Clementine Malpas who first brought Gulnaz’s plight to world attention in a documentary she made aimed to shed light on Afghan women jailed for moral crimes.</p>
<p>Malpas <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article3677718.ece">said</a>, “Marrying the man she told us had raped her isn’t what we had hoped for Gulnaz but the current cultural context of Afghanistan leaves very few options, especially for a woman with a child out of wedlock.”</p>
<p>To that end, Gulnaz reportedly made her choice in order to give her daughter hope for a better future. Specifically, Gulnaz’s little girl, having been born in prison, was considered to be illegitimate, a disgrace to her family and, as a consequence, never to be accepted by Afghan society unless her parents marry.</p>
<p>For Gulnaz and her little daughter, as well for as countless other Afghan women and girls mired in similar situations, acceptance back into the good graces of Afghan society can come at a terrible price.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Selling of Syria’s Refugee Child Brides</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-selling-of-syrias-refugee-child-brides/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-selling-of-syrias-refugee-child-brides</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2013 04:15:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child brides]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jordan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Revolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=175724</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islam in action.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-selling-of-syrias-refugee-child-brides/syria-9/" rel="attachment wp-att-175740"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-175740" title="syria" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/syria-450x347.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="208" /></a>A growing legion of Muslim men from the Mideast and Europe are scouring Syrian refugee camps in order to purchase underage girls, some as young as 12, as child brides, many of whom end up being <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9821946/Syrian-girls-sold-into-force-marriages.html">sold</a> for use in temporary “pleasure marriages.”</p>
<p>For most of the Syrian women and girls who have fled the genocidal horrors of Syria’s civil war, rape &#8212; whether by pro-government or rebel forces – has been <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-refugees-rape-20130114,0,7106644.story">identified</a> as one of the primary reasons for their exodus from that war-torn country.</p>
<p>Now, having supposedly escaped that nightmarish reality, Syrian girls are being subjected to a new horror, being auctioned off by their families to unknown Muslim men for use as sexual toys in coerced and forced early marriages.</p>
<p>These pleasure marriages, also known as “misyar” marriages, are legally nonbinding marital contracts which have long been used in Islamic countries to give religiously legitimate cover to a sexual relationship, especially those relationships involving underage girls.</p>
<p>In fact, so popular are temporary misyar marriages among upscale Muslim men that a cottage industry has sprung up in Egypt among Arab sex tourists looking to circumvent Egypt’s ban on pre-marital sex by purchasing underage Egyptian girls for pleasure marriages.</p>
<p>Now that deviant practice is being introduced into Syrian refugee camps. There newly purchased child brides are taken to rented houses outside the camps by their “husbands.” After having their fill of sex, the men will quickly divorce the girls, in many cases often only days and even hours after the nuptials.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9821946/Syrian-girls-sold-into-force-marriages.html">According</a> to an official with a charity that works with Syrian refugees, “Many Syrian girls have been impregnated and abandoned in this way.”</p>
<p>The growing sale of these Syrian girl refugees is being fueled by the crushing poverty and harsh living conditions faced by Syrian families living in refugee camps scattered throughout Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.</p>
<p>That bruising reality has led a growing number of Syrian parents to sell their young daughters into early marriages as a way to alleviate the family’s financial stress as well as to spare their daughters from the brutal dangers of life in refugee camps.</p>
<p>As Um Sarah, a Syrian refugee mother who arranged marriages for her 14 and 15-year old daughters, <a href="http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95902/JORDAN-Early-marriage-a-coping-mechanism-for-Syrian-refugees">said</a>, “As a single mother, I cannot support them. I cannot feed them. I wanted to make sure they are OK.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of Syria’s 650,000 refugees are women and children, making them especially vulnerable to the dangers of trafficking, exploitation, and sexual abuse.</p>
<p>That exploitation has found its form in the booming Muslim male interest in securing the services of young Syrian girls, interest that includes the establishment of agencies offering to <a href="http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/taking-a-syrian-bride-patriotic-duty-or-abuse">arrange</a> marriages for would-be grooms to Arabic <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/online-trafficking-of-syrian-women-shames-all-involved">online</a> forums for men “seeking marriage from Syrian girls.”</p>
<p>Disturbingly, in most all these cases, the younger the girl, the more desirable she is in the eyes of the intended pedophilic groom.</p>
<p>Of course, that underage prerequisite is not surprising given the deep-rooted Islamic attachment to prepubescent marriage, one which allows religious leaders to approve informal marriages for girls 13 and under, thus enabling Muslim men to skirt a country’s minimum age laws for marriage.</p>
<p>Given that, it’s not surprising to hear a number of Muslim religious scholars and clerics heartily <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3339/syrian-refugees">encouraging</a> through fatwas the purchase of these Syrian girls, with some explaining the purchase to be an act of charity that extricates the girls and their families from their misery.</p>
<p>As one Syrian woman refugee with two daughters <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9821946/Syrian-girls-sold-into-force-marriages.html">said</a>, “Men are coming here to take young girls as second wives. It is under the pretext of being charitable, of helping us.”</p>
<p>It should be noted, however, that for Muslim men interested in seeking a child wife, that charitable assistance comes at a bargain price.</p>
<p>Specifically, Syrian girls can now be purchased as temporary child brides for just a few hundred dollars, a reduced price tag that proves an attractive enticement for Muslim men unable to afford the high dowry’s required to marry a girl from their own country.</p>
<p>As one Jordanian man <a href="http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/11993">said</a>, “Marrying a Syrian refugee girl is cheaper than marrying a Jordanian girl,” one with an added prestige factor given “it makes the groom feel like he is somehow a participant in the Syrian revolution, which is very popular in Jordan.”</p>
<p>In fact, Jordan&#8211; where 75 percent of its 150,000 Syrian refugees are women and children &#8212; is home to most of the child bride transactions. That popularity led one Jordanian reporter to write, “People do not talk about anything else these days but about Syrian girls you could marry for one or two hundred dollars.”</p>
<p>Yet, while child marriage may be religiously sanctioned by Islam, for most the arrangement is little more than dressed-up prostitution.</p>
<p>That feeling has been echoed by Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arab Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, who <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3339/syrian-refugees">said</a>, “Exploiting the conditions of the girls in the refugee camps by marrying them temporarily is a form of rape that must stop immediately. Those responsible for this crime should be brought to trial.”</p>
<p>Syrian journalist Adnan Azrouni has written, “There needs to be a huge outcry from inside and outside the camps: No to clerical interference in the issue of female refugees; No to the crisis-merchants; No to making Syrian women victims twice over.”</p>
<p>Yet sadly, while these temporary marriages may be nothing more than licensed rape, they don’t appear in jeopardy of ending anytime soon. As one Arab man <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/online-trafficking-of-syrian-women-shames-all-involved">wrote</a> on an online forum dedicated to finding Syrian brides, “This is not a question of exploitation. It is a question of supply and demand.”</p>
<p>Tragically, it’s a growing supply that continues to be fed by an insatiable Muslim demand.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Contracted: America’s Secret Warriors</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/contracted-americas-secret-warriors/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=contracted-americas-secret-warriors</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2013 04:10:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contracted]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Warriors]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A look inside the heroic struggles of America's contract forces. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/contracted-americas-secret-warriors/image-contracted_cover1/" rel="attachment wp-att-174546"><img class="size-full wp-image-174546 alignleft" title="Image-contracted_cover1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Image-contracted_cover1.jpg" alt="" width="228" height="349" /></a>If truth is the first casualty of war, author Kerry Patton has ably attempted to correct that dictum in his highly entertaining novel, <em>Contracted: America’s Secret Warriors</em>, a fictionalized account of the heroic but overlooked work performed by civilian contractors in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>As a military veteran and expert in intelligence, security and counter-terrorism who has worked at the highest levels of government, including the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, Patton initially began <em>Contracted</em> as an autobiography.</p>
<p>However, fear of breaching intelligence secrets led Patton to switch gears, writing a fictionalized story instead, one based on true events, but told through the voice of Declan Collins, a former military man recruited out of civilian life by the CIA for intelligence work in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>There, Declan and his civilian partner, Rex Browhart, himself a former military vet, find themselves assigned as military advisors at a Forward Operating Base in eastern Afghanistan.</p>
<p>At the FOB, Collins and Browhart form a working alliance with a varied group of officers and enlisted men on a plan to arm Afghan warlords eager to fight the Taliban, a plan Collins believes will save American lives.</p>
<p>Most of the men aiding Collins in this task are a mixture of Special Forces, including Delta Force, Navy Seals and Army Rangers and Green Berets. To Collins, these men are modern day warriors, part of a dying breed, driven to sacrifice their lives for God, family and country.</p>
<p>It’s a patriotic theme Patton employs throughout his book, one in which money isn’t the primary motivating factor driving these contractors &#8212; most of whom are former military &#8212; but rather a deep love of country further fueled by an abiding loyalty to aid their brothers-in-arms.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the press has helped to paint a picture of civilian contractors as either nothing more than mercenaries in search of a quick paycheck or out-of-control homicidal maniacs, such as those in Blackwater, the private security consulting firm employed by the US government during the Iraq war.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, that negative portrayal tends to overlook the heroism and sacrifices that many contractors have performed and endured once they have left the comfort and safety of the civilian world for life in a combat zone.</p>
<p>In fact, it is to that point that Patton reportedly wrote <em>Contracted</em>, noting it is “truly meant for those unsung heroes who never get recognized yet often get chastised.”</p>
<p>Patton also doesn’t neglect the hardships faced by the family and loved ones left behind, weaving into his book the struggles and fears faced by Collins’ new young wife, Brannagh. As Patton has noted, “This book is not just for them (the contractors) but for their friends and family as well. They too deserve some recognition.”</p>
<p>That recognition comes at the same time as the use of civilian contractors in combat zones by American corporations, defense contractors, and governmental agencies &#8212; including the DOD, State Department and CIA &#8212; is growing in both prominence and danger.</p>
<p>Specifically, in 2012 American civilian contractors constituted 62 percent of the US presence in Afghanistan. These contractors are used in many unarmed roles, including transporting supplies, staffing food services, building homes and commercial facilities and serving as interpreters.</p>
<p>However, they are also employed in armed capacities, jobs which include providing security for State Department and Pentagon officials, guarding US installations, gathering intelligence and training the Afghan army and police.</p>
<p>Still, whether operating in armed or unarmed roles, the risks these civilian contractors face are great. In 2011, 430 American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan &#8212; 386 who worked for the Defense Department &#8212; and 1,777 injured or wounded.</p>
<p>In fact, 2011 marked the first time that deaths among civilian contractors working for American companies in Afghanistan outnumbered the deaths of US military personnel in that country.</p>
<p>Yet in addition to the physical risks they face, civilian contractors can also be subjected to the prospect of financial ruin.</p>
<p>For example, while the federal Defense Base Act requires American contractors to carry insurance that will provide their employees with medical care and compensation, there have been numerous instances in which medical coverage has been cancelled and contractors and their families uncompensated.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, all of this has gone relatively unnoticed by the American public, ignorance perhaps driven in part by journalistic indifference.</p>
<p>Of course, to be fair, it’s not entirely unusual that the full details of war have difficulty coming to light. That view was once expressed decades after the Civil War had ended, when Walt Whitman, in a moment of reflection, wrote, “The real war will never get in the books.”</p>
<p>To his credit, Kerry Patton’s new novel, <em>Contracted: America’s Secret Warriors, </em>has managed to allow us a glimpse into the real war in Afghanistan and the hazardous and heroic role played there by America’s civilian contractors.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Taliban’s Jihad on Polio Vaccines</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-talibans-jihad-on-polio-vaccines/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-talibans-jihad-on-polio-vaccines</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jan 2013 04:20:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Polio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Why 16 health aid workers in Pakistan had to die for trying to administer the life-saving drops to children.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-talibans-jihad-on-polio-vaccines/polio-vaccine-23-oct-2012-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-172897"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-172897" title="polio-vaccine-23-oct-2012" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/polio-vaccine-23-oct-20121.jpg" alt="" width="288" height="202" /></a>The Pakistani Taliban’s unending war on children continues unabated as the Islamist terror group in the past month has shot and killed 16 health aid workers for administering polio vaccines to children.</p>
<p>The execution of the polio workers &#8212; mostly young women in their teens and early 20s &#8212; is the Taliban’s latest effort to forestall a United Nations-backed polio immunization drive in Pakistan, one of three countries (along with Afghanistan and Nigeria) where the disease still remains endemic.</p>
<p>The most recent Taliban <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255970/Seven-Pakistan-aid-workers-murdered-new-polio-revenge-attack-Killings-blamed-Taliban-avenging-Osama-bin-Laden.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">victims</a> were six female health workers and a male doctor in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, all brutally slain when the van they were riding in was sprayed with bullets fired from automatic weapons wielded by Taliban gunmen.</p>
<p>Their gruesome deaths had been preceded in mid-December when over a span of two days, Taliban gunmen in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Karachi <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250457/Taliban-shoot-dead-MORE-polio-aid-workers-revenge-campaign-fake-vaccination-ruse-helped-capture-Osama-bin-Laden.html">killed</a> 9 health workers, seven of whom were women.</p>
<p>Those victims, one who was only 14 years old, were all shot in the head execution-style, including two women who were slain while they were in the process of administering polio drops to children.</p>
<p>Perhaps not to be outdone by its jihadist brethren, as these killings were being committed Taliban in the eastern Afghanistan province of Kapisa <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/afghan-polio-worker-death-new-details/24794669.html">shot</a> and killed a 16-year-old schoolgirl for reportedly working as a volunteer on a local UN-funded polio-immunization program.</p>
<p>While the Pakistani Taliban has denied responsibility for the murderous spree, Pakistan police said culpability for the brutal and well-coordinated attacks led unmistakably to the doorstep of the barbaric Islamist militant group.</p>
<p>That conclusion should come as little surprise given that the Taliban and its Islamist allies in the region have long been threatening violence toward those who dare to participate in efforts to protect vulnerable children from the dreaded viral disease.</p>
<p>Those threats had been openly announced back in July when the Taliban issued an <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9411994/Pakistani-cleric-renounces-support-for-polio-immunisation.html">edict</a> banning UN-backed health workers from administering polio vaccine in its territory, claiming the vaccinators were really US spies in disguise trying to locate new Taliban targets for American drone strikes.</p>
<p>Despite the ludicrousness of that charge, it should be noted that the Taliban developed a skeptical view toward vaccination campaigns of any kind after it learned the United States had used a fake anti-hepatitis immunization campaign to help capture and kill Osama bin Laden in May 2011.</p>
<p>As a result, the Taliban has fought to disrupt any effort aimed to inoculate the nearly 300,000 children living in the Taliban-controlled region along the Afghan-Pakistan border, an area that represents 75 percent of all polio <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/20/16039942-rumors-of-plot-to-sterilize-muslims-with-polio-vaccine-spark-killings-in-pakistan?lite">cases</a> in Pakistan.</p>
<p>To some, however, the Taliban’s aversion toward the polio immunization campaign is simply just a cover for its broader and more deadly hostility aimed at female health workers.</p>
<p>That animus was brutally on display from 2007 to 2010 when the Taliban controlled the Swat Valley in Pakistan’s Khyber province and instituted a Sharia-based reign of terror which included such niceties as public segregation of the sexes; bans on music, movies, and television; a ban on girls’ education; and public whippings, beatings and stoning meted out to violators of the new rules.</p>
<p>During that time, the Taliban also launched a targeted war against women serving as Lady Health Workers (LHW), a Pakistani government <a href="http://www.pc.gov.pk/downloads/pc1-forms_vertical-health-program/National%20Program%20for%20Family%20Planning.pdf">program</a> where women provide basic community health services in rural and poverty stricken areas, services that include vaccinating infants.</p>
<p>Specifically, the Taliban found it offensive that the LHWs were conducting their door-to-door work unaccompanied by men, a violation of Sharia law that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/pakistan-war-polio-workers">rendered</a> them “prostitutes” and thus, according to Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah, “fit for murder.”</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2093">study</a> done by the British Medical Journal, the LHWs were then subjected to “beheadings, as well as public beatings and firing on their houses and murders of their colleagues’ family members.”</p>
<p>In addition to that barbarity, the Taliban also issued a fatwa against the LHWs that declared it was “a Muslim man’s duty to kidnap the women health workers when they paid home visits, to marry them forcibly even if they were already married women, or to use them as sexual slaves.”</p>
<p>So given that, it shouldn’t surprise then that the Taliban remains perfectly comfortable with subjecting children under its control to an acute viral infection that can lead to permanent paralysis and, in some cases, death.</p>
<p>Yet unfortunately, the Taliban’s hostile view of polio vaccinations has found fertile soil among a disturbingly large percentage of Pakistani Muslims.</p>
<p>In addition to seeing polio immunization as a dastardly CIA plot, these Pakistanis also view immunization as either a violation of Islamic law or an orchestrated Western-led plot to depopulate the Muslim populace through vaccines laced with HIV and sterilization chemicals.</p>
<p>That latter view was perhaps best expressed by a Pakistani lawyer in the city of Peshawar who recently <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/20/16039942-rumors-of-plot-to-sterilize-muslims-with-polio-vaccine-spark-killings-in-pakistan?lite">said</a>, “These vaccines are meant to destroy our nation. The [polio] drops make men less manly, and make women more excited and less bashful. Our enemies want to wipe us out.”</p>
<p>That enlightened viewpoint may also help to explain why a growing number of Pakistani parents are refusing to vaccinate their children, refusal which has sparked an increase in violence being levied against health workers administering polio vaccinations in areas outside of Taliban-control.</p>
<p>Yet, while the Taliban’s deliberate cold-blooded execution of polio vaccinators has ratcheted up the level of violence to new and disturbing levels, it has so far failed to end the anti-polio campaign. After a temporary suspension, the polio immunization drive in Pakistan has <a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pakistan-polio-killings-vaccinations-resume-141722411.html">restarted</a> with vaccination teams being provided extra police and military protection.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for those volunteer polio workers, given recent events, no amount of added protection seems capable of stopping the Taliban’s unrelenting efforts to murder them.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Savage Escalation in the War on Afghan Women</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/savage-escalation-in-the-war-on-afghan-women/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=savage-escalation-in-the-war-on-afghan-women</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:15:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[execution]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168195</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["Is there anything other than death that can help me?”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/savage-escalation-in-the-war-on-afghan-women/2012-03-28-afghanistan-women-khadijapatel-706-410/" rel="attachment wp-att-168204"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168204" title="2012-03-28-afghanistan-women-khadijapatel-706-410" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-03-28-afghanistan-women-khadijapatel-706-410-450x329.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="197" /></a>Violence against Afghan females is rapidly escalating in both frequency and savagery, its latest victim a 14-year-old girl named Gastina who was nearly <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/02/in-afghanistan-a-14-year-old-girl-is-beheaded.html">decapitated</a> with a hunting knife for refusing a marriage proposal from her 25-year-old cousin.</p>
<p>Gastina was walking to her home in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province when she was attacked by her cousin Sadeq and another male relative, both of whom proceeded to break her hands and feet before slitting her throat nearly to the bone.</p>
<p>Gastina’s ghastly death sentence was carried out because her family had reportedly turned down Sadeq’s repeated marriage requests, claiming Gastina was too young for marriage. That rebuff was apparently so stinging that it necessitated Sadeq brutally murder the young teenager.</p>
<p>It should be noted that such horrific acts of violence are unfortunately the norm throughout Afghanistan’s highly patriarchal society, where cultural and religious tenets have long allowed most Muslim men to treat women and girls little better than human chattel.</p>
<p>As such, Afghanistan has been <a href="http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2012/11/12/women-in-afghanistan-a-human-rights-tragedy-a-decade-after-september-11.html">named</a> the “world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman,” a nightmarish hell where nearly 90 percent of women and girls have reportedly experienced some form of “physical, sexual or psychological violence.”</p>
<p>Yet despite that disturbing misogynistic track record, Afghan government officials and human rights activists have found that the violence levied against woman and girls is reaching, even by Afghan standards, terrifying new heights. As an official with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs recently <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/12/violence-against-afghan-women-on-the-rise/">said</a>, “The violence is more severe than in previous years.”</p>
<p>That severity was <a href="http://www.aihrc.org.af/">documented</a> by Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), which recorded over 4,000 cases of violence against women and girls in 2012 &#8212; 550 cases in September alone &#8212; a nearly 25 percent increase from 2011.</p>
<p>These acts of violence include “domestic violence and abuse, torture, beatings, physical mutilation, murder, and rape.” Perhaps most disturbing, AIHRC found that 80 percent of the cases involved girls under 18.</p>
<p>In the past two months, these acts of barbarism include a 20-year-old newlywed in Heart province beheaded by her in-laws for refusing their demands that she become a prostitute; a 16-year-old girl in Ghazni province publicly whipped over 100 times for allegedly having an affair; a woman in Herat stabbed to death by her husband for seeking work outside the home; and a 20-year-old woman in Badakhshan province who was imprisoned for several months in the home of a married couple who sexually abused, beat and tortured her.</p>
<p>Afghanistan, <a href="http://www.aihrc.org.af/">according</a> to AIHRC, has also been plagued by an upsurge in the number of honor killings. These victims include a 30-year-old woman beheaded by her divorced husband in Ghazni province; a 22-year-old woman choked to death by her husband in Kunduz province; a 40-year-old woman beheaded by her husband in Khost province; and a 26-year-old woman in Baghlan province who was first choked to death and then burned up with boiling hot water.</p>
<p>While the cause that sparks these individual acts of brutality may vary, the one common theme that joins them is the involvement of family members in the majority of the cases.</p>
<p>To that end, the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/12/violence-against-afghan-women-on-the-rise/">found</a> that more than 50 percent of the victims in the nearly 500 cases of violence against women the department registered in 2012 were a result of domestic violence.</p>
<p>An offshoot of that familial violence also includes women and girls killing themselves each year to escape failed, and often violent, forced marriages. These marriages more often than not come complete with a torrent of physical and emotional abuse issued from the bride’s husband and family.</p>
<p>As such, these desperate women and girls will flee their matrimonial hell through an assortment of gruesome means, such as taking rat poison or insecticides, hanging themselves, and even self-immolation.</p>
<p>In fact, some girls don’t even wait around for the nuptials to take place. Such was the case in November 2012 when a 17-year-old girl named Farima tried to escape her impending forced marriage by <a href="http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20121129/NEWS0107/211290388/">jumping</a> from her apartment building, a fall in which she survived, but broke her back.</p>
<p>For its part, the Afghan government has said that despite the spike in gender-based violence, it has taken proactive steps, often citing the Elimination of Violence Against Woman law (EVAW). The EVAW, which was enacted in 2009, criminalizes such things as child marriage, forced marriage and domestic abuse.</p>
<p>As Qodsia Niazi, an Afghan prosecutor, <a href="http://iwpr.net/report-news/violence-against-afghan-women-more-extreme">said</a>, “We have dealt with 1,320 cases of violence against women since last year, mostly concerning assault, harassment, coercion to prostitution, sexual abuse and mutilation…Such trials are very effective in reducing violence against women.”</p>
<p>Yet, not everyone agrees with that assessment. For starters, a UN <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40491&amp;Cr=violence&amp;Cr1=women">report </a>in November 2011 found that the EVAW act was rarely enforced, citing as an example the 2,299 crimes reported in 2010, of which only 155 cases, or just 7 percent, were prosecuted.</p>
<p>That lack of judicial zeal may stem from the fact that when Afghan women do seek help from Afghanistan’s courts and police, they are often pressured by authorities to withdraw their complaints, or failing that, find themselves arrested and jailed for committing “moral crimes.”</p>
<p>As one human rights activist has said, “The government&#8217;s failure to effectively enforce the 2009 law on elimination of violence against women encourages men to believe that they can kill and attack a women with impunity.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, that impunity has given an increasingly large number of women and girls precious little hope that their viscous maltreatment will end anytime soon.</p>
<p>That sentiment was perhaps best expressed by a young woman named Kamela, who was first married off to a 35-year-old man when she was 14. That marriage ended shortly after their wedding when he found out she had been sexually abused by her cousin, a transgression which caused him to terminate the marriage.</p>
<p>Upon returning home, Kamela’s father, his familial honor now “disrespected,” brutally beat Kamela before locking her in a barn, only to free her four months later after he sold her to a 78-year-old man for $30,000.</p>
<p>As Kamala <a href="http://iwpr.net/report-news/violence-against-afghan-women-more-extreme">said</a>, “People are usually aggrieved with other people, but I am aggrieved at God. It would have been better if He hadn’t created me in the first place if I was fated to live with so much suffering. Is there anything other than death that can help me?”</p>
<p>Sadly, it’s a tragic question being asked by an ever increasing number of Afghan women and girls.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Al-Qaeda’s Child Soldiers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/al-qaedas-child-soldiers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-qaedas-child-soldiers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2012 04:30:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A horrifying glimpse into the Islamist predilection for using children as human explosives.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/al-qaedas-child-soldiers/al-qaeda-7/" rel="attachment wp-att-166251"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-166251" title="al-qaeda" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/al-qaeda.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="240" /></a>Al-Qaeda’s longstanding use of children to wage jihad was on display in a recent <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2234840/The-year-old-terrorists-Youngsters-trained-kill-pistols-assault-rifles-shocking-pictures-al-Qaedas-heartland.html">video</a> showing boys as young as five training with assault rifles and handguns at a terrorist training camp.</p>
<p>The video of the gun-toting, prepubescent jihadists was reportedly filmed by the al-Qaeda-linked East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) at one of the terror group’s training camps in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.</p>
<p>Since 1990 the ETIM, which has been fighting to create an independent Islamic state in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, has not only committed more than 200 acts of worldwide terrorism but has trained scores of jihadists to fight alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban.</p>
<p>Like father like son, many of the young boys in the ETIM camp were reportedly orphans of slain al-Qaeda fighters coerced by their malevolent elders into carrying on their families’ jihadi business.</p>
<p>It should be noted that the use of child combatants is a worldwide plague practiced by a wide array of government, militant, insurgent and terrorist forces. In fact, it is <a href="http://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/">estimated</a> that most of the 300,000 boys and girls involved in the over 30 ongoing conflicts worldwide are less than 15 years of age.</p>
<p>Most of these child soldiers are either forcibly recruited &#8212; abducted at school, on the streets or at home &#8212; or have joined “voluntarily,” driven to enlist by a need to escape crushing poverty.</p>
<p>While some end up in government armed forces and civil militia, most find themselves serving in nongovernmental forces, such as terrorist and insurgent groups, with their combatant roles relegated to such activities as armed fighters, messengers, domestic workers and sexual slaves.</p>
<p>Yet, not surprisingly, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and its Islamist allies have taken their use of child combatants to a completely new and ruthless level, disregard that finds its expression in forced indoctrination and training that includes, among other things, using children as suicide bombers.</p>
<p>For example, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have constructed and operated a slew of suicide training facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, death factories that have trained over 5,000 Pakistani children, many as young as eight, as suicide bombers.</p>
<p>The Islamist predilection for using children as human explosives can best be explained by the unfortunate fact that children make particularly good suicide terror candidates given that, according to one US intelligence <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/01/afghan-police-militants-kill-5-2-attacks/">report</a>, “they are more willing to martyr themselves due to their lack of reasoning on taking innocent lives.”</p>
<p>That willingness to die is exploited by the Islamists through a variety of ways, including desensitization and brainwashing. As one Afghan official <a href="http://jafrianews.com/2011/02/09/us-strategy-to-fuel-the-taliban-with-suicide-bombers/">noted</a>, “They are made to watch video films, showing physical torture and killing of Muslims women and children …by what they call infidels.”</p>
<p>Juvenile bombers are also told that great rewards are earned for performing such deadly deeds. As one youthful captured suicide bomber <a href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011%5C04%5C21%5Cstory%2021-4-2011%20pg3%204">said</a>, he was told by his instructors that as a good Muslim he had a duty to defend Islam and that “as soon as I blow myself up, I will be in heaven and will get eternal peace.”</p>
<p>For those who chafe at the idea of self-slaughter, the terrorists rely on the threat and use of violence to ensure compliance. Not surprisingly, the need to resort to violence to guarantee obedience comes from the fact that many child recruits don’t come to the jihad willingly, but are the victims of kidnapping by the terrorists.</p>
<p>That type of forced coercion has been disturbingly demonstrated by al-Shabab, Somalia’s notorious al-Qaeda-linked terror group that has gained a well deserved reputation for brutality in its efforts to remake Somalia into a Sharia-run Islamist state.</p>
<p>Specifically, an al-Shabab child terrorist training school was discovered earlier in 2012 by Somali government forces in the capital of Mogadishu. There, young <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2187374/Al-Qaedas-brutal-new-weapons-Children-kidnapped-kept-chains-taught-suicide-bombers.html">children</a>, all under 10-years-old, were found chained to beds where they were instructed in carrying out suicide bombings and other types of “martyrdom-operations.”</p>
<p>Of course, al-Shabab has found other creative uses for its underage recruits, some of whom are as young as seven years of age. After spending up to three months learning how to use heavy weaponry, including AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, graduates are sent to the frontline to serve as human shields to protect adult fighters.</p>
<p>Like most Islamist terror groups, al-Shabab either abducts its child recruits from their homes and schools or entices them by offers of free food and gifts. In some cases, however, the Islamists take advantage of a child’s grinding poverty by paying for his services.</p>
<p>In northern Mali, for example, Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/islamists-mali-recruit-pay-child-soldiers-130012868.html">paid</a> over 1,000 children up to $30 a day and $400 a month to join their forces.</p>
<p>The use of child combatants is also gaining in popularity in Syria where a <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session21/A-HRC-21-50.doc">report </a>by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found the rebel Free Syrian Army, laden with Islamist and al-Qaeda-linked terror organizations, forcibly recruiting children, some as young as eight-years-old, into their ranks.</p>
<p>Yet, as horrific as life is for a child ensconced inside the ranks of an Islamist terror outfit, children outside their deadly confines can still find themselves unsuspectingly used for lethal operations.</p>
<p>In one such particular case in July 2012, members of al-Qaeda in Yemen asked a 12-year-old boy to deliver a packaged gift to his father, a tribal sheik who was an outspoken opponent of the terrorist group. When the boy entered his house, he was killed instantly when the package <a href="http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?ID=29242">exploded</a>.</p>
<p>Sadly, the appetite by Islamist terror groups for child soldiers doesn’t appear to be satiating anytime soon given the favorable cost-benefit ratio their use entails.</p>
<p>As Abdul Rahman Barman, a Yemeni lawyer and child rights activist, has <a href="http://al-shorfa.com/en_GB/articles/meii/features/main/2011/08/08/feature-01">explained</a>, “Children and adolescents can be managed easily and can be recruited to carry out terrorist acts at a lower cost because it is enough to tell them that they will end up in paradise to encourage them to die while conducting a terrorist operation.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately for these children, the gruesome reality of their violent deaths will most definitely trump the empty promise of the jihadist paradise painted by their heinous guardians.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Al-Qaeda&#8217;s Female Suicide Bomber Death Cult</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/al-qaedas-female-suicide-bomber-death-cult/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-qaedas-female-suicide-bomber-death-cult</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2012 04:30:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=164065</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islamic feminism at its finest. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/al-qaedas-female-suicide-bomber-death-cult/11-al-qaeda-ladies/" rel="attachment wp-att-164142"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-164142" title="11-Al-Qaeda-Ladies" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/11-Al-Qaeda-Ladies.gif" alt="" width="315" height="236" /></a>Islamist terrorists have long used women as suicide bombers, but now their combatant role has expanded with al-Qaeda’s <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/has-the-taliban-created-a-burqa-brigade-of-female-fighters/story-fnbzs1v0-1226505251547">formation</a> of an all-female jihadist fighting unit whose primary mission is purportedly to attack Coalition targets in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The discovery of the all-girl military group, dubbed the “Burkha Brigade,” came to light in a recent online <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd3VZlCFF0E">video</a> that showed a bevy of fully covered women firing off a wide selection of heavy weaponry, including machine guns, assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades.</p>
<p>The women enlistees are thought to have been recruited from Chechnya, the semi-autonomous republic in the Russian Federation and a state which has long provided fertile ground for producing female jihadists.</p>
<p>That disturbing history was most notably on display in 2002 when bomb-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis">strapped</a> Chechen women were among 50 Islamist militants who held over 800 people hostage in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater. In that assault nearly 130 civilians were killed.</p>
<p>While Muslim women, dressed as males, have in the past fought alongside Islamist militants, the creation of an all-female fighting force adds a new twist in the escalating use of women combatants by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist terror groups in the region.</p>
<p>Yet, while the overall use and effectiveness of the all-girl fighting brigade remains unclear, it is likely that its formation will not eclipse the feminine combative role most favored by Islamist terrorists: suicide bomber.</p>
<p>That terrifying function is, unfortunately, ideally suited for women given Islamic restrictions against searching females. Those taboos often allow Muslim women to hide explosive-laden suicide vests underneath their burqas and pass undetected through security checkpoints.</p>
<p>It should be noted that while women are highly valued by jihadists as human projectiles, children and the mentally impaired used in that same capacity are equally prized by Islamist terrorists.</p>
<p>The Taliban, in particular, has a predilection for utilizing youthful suicide bombers given that nearly ninety percent of the estimated 5,000 suicide bombers trained in Pakistan are under the age of 16. As Pakistani Taliban commander Qari Hussain once <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121014102539659862.html">explained</a>, “Children are tools to achieve God’s will, whatever comes your way you sacrifice it.”</p>
<p>However, not to be outdone, al-Qaeda has shown an appreciation for utilizing the mentally impaired for its suicide operations. Al-Qaeda in Iraq energetically used this tactic when it employed mentally handicapped women, many with Down Syndrome, to carry out suicide attacks against American and Coalition forces during the Iraq war.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the use of women as human explosives has gained growing admiration among Jihadist circles. This admiration has been evidenced since 2010 by the growing swell of al-Qaeda and Taliban-run suicide training camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border designed to specially train female bombers.</p>
<p>Included in the deadly curriculum is instruction on how to wear suicide vests, carry bomber bags, and drive bomb-laden vehicles. This latter activity was on <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-afghanistan-blast-idUSBRE88H05S20120918">display</a> in September when a camp graduate drove her car, packed with 400 pounds of explosives, into a bus in the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing 12 people.</p>
<p>For its part, the Taliban alone has employed female suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Pakistan at least eight times in the past two years. These suicide attacks <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/08/female_suicide_bombe_5.php">included</a> bombings in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province that killed two US soldiers in June 2010 and 12 American and Afghan troops in June 2011.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the Taliban employs no age requirement for becoming human ordinance. One horrifying example of this barbarity occurred in 2011 when Afghan Taliban fighters in Uruzgan Province handed an eight-year-old girl a bag of explosives which prematurely detonated, killing the child before she could reach her intended target.</p>
<p>For some women, joining the ranks of suicide bombers is a voluntary affair, one borne out of true jihadist fervor, a promise of a heavenly reward, or simply a need to avenge the deaths of their husbands and brothers lost in battle.</p>
<p>Others, however, need a nudge toward self-slaughter, often egged on by militant clerics, scholars and others who stress a woman’s responsibility to participate in jihad includes being employed as a human incendiary device.</p>
<p>One of those encouraging people is Omaima Hassan, wife of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who in 2009 issued a seven-page <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-reaches-women/story?id=9364879">letter</a> posted on Islamic websites to her “sisters in Islam,” in which she described how Muslim women could assist their men with jihad.</p>
<p>In addition to helping ‘to preserve the mujahedeen in their sons, and homes, and…to help them raise their children in the best way,” Hassan said women could also go the extra mile and participate themselves in “martyrdom missions” as suicide bombers.</p>
<p>Apart from personal appeals, websites and publications have also arisen to issue the clarion call to female jihadist activism, the most notable being the on-line <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365806/Glossy-Jihad-Cosmo-combines-beauty-tips-suicide-bombing-advice.html">magazine</a> Al Shamikha, better known as “Jihad Cosmo.”</p>
<p>Al Shamikha, which debuted in March of 2011, is dedicated to the up-and-coming female jihadist, a journal which offers an eclectic mix of beauty and fashion tips intermixed with guidance on how to attract, marry and care for a mujahedeen fighter.</p>
<p>In the unfortunate event, however, a woman can’t find Mr. Right, Jihad Cosmo urges alternative routes, such as becoming a martyr for the Islamist cause, advice which it says “the believer will gain security, safety and happiness.”</p>
<p>Yet, despite all those persuasive efforts, most female suicide bomb recruits, tragically and unsurprisingly, are unwilling participants, dragged to the Jihadi cause through abduction or coercion.</p>
<p>For example, in June 2011, the Pakistani Taliban <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/20/us-pakistan-girl-bomber-idUSTRE75J2ON20110620">kidnapped</a> an eight-year-old girl and attempted to force her to carry out a suicide attack against a group of Pakistani soldiers. Fortunately, the plot failed when the young girl, strapped in a suicide vest, was able to warn off the troops, who in turn defused her vest.</p>
<p>During the Iraq war, al-Qaeda in Iraq ordered the rape of women as a way to fill its suicide bomber ranks. Since a raped woman is viewed in many Muslim societies as having brought shame to her family, the terrorists would then coerce the defiled woman into believing her familial dishonor could be erased by her martyrdom.</p>
<p>So, given all that, the formation of the female Burkha Brigade should engender little surprise as it just represents the next logical step in the Islamist’s unending war on women.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Dem Caught Red-Handed Promoting Election Fraud</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/dem-caught-red-handed-promoting-election-fraud/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dem-caught-red-handed-promoting-election-fraud</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 04:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Another clue as to why the Left so vehemently opposes voter ID laws. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/dem-caught-red-handed-promoting-election-fraud/okeefe-moran-620x362/" rel="attachment wp-att-162845"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-162845" title="OKeefe-Moran-620x362" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/OKeefe-Moran-620x362.gif" alt="" width="315" height="213" /></a>The Democratic Party’s categorical opposition to fair elections has just hit a new, but unsurprising, low. A high-ranking official with Congressman Jim Moran&#8217;s re-election campaign was recently caught on video encouraging an undercover reporter to forge documents in order to cast phony ballots in the upcoming Virginia election. The incident is particularly compromising for Congressman Moran, as he has been a vocal opponent of the state&#8217;s voter ID law, which is designed to protect against voter fraud. More hypocritically, Moran had been previously caught on film demanding that constituents show their IDs at a local town hall meeting.</p>
<p>Patrick Moran, son of Democratic Virginia Congressman Jim Moran and field director of the congressman&#8217;s reelection campaign, was forced to resign after the video was made public. Moran’s transgression was captured in a conversation he had on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT77qP2Nai8&amp;feature=youtu.be">video</a> with an undercover investigative reporter with Project Veritas, a conservative nonprofit group investigating election fraud in the United States.</p>
<p>The undercover reporter had approached Moran, asking him how he could cast votes on behalf of nearly 100 Virginia residents he knew were registered but who weren’t planning to vote in the upcoming election.</p>
<p>Virginia voter ID <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/justice-department-upholds-virginia-voter-id-law/2012/08/20/76d609f6-eb2a-11e1-a80b-9f898562d010_blog.html">law</a>, which does not require photo identification, instead allows voters to cast ballots by providing substitute documents, such as paychecks, library cards, utility bills, and bank statements.</p>
<p>Yet, despite the fraudulent request, Moran <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT77qP2Nai8&amp;feature=youtu.be">counseled</a> the reporter that while there would be “a lot of voter protection” at the polling places to enforce the ID laws, the plan would work if he produced a “utility bill or bank statement…Bank statement would obviously be tough…but faking a utility bill would be easy enough,” adding, “You’d have to forge it.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Moran was also quick to advise that if a problem arose at a polling place, the reporter needn’t worry because his back would be covered by “an Obama for America lawyer, or another Democrat lawyer…on hand to provide help…You’ll have somebody in house, that if they feel that what you have is legitimate, they’ll argue for you.”</p>
<p>Of course, that advice comes as little surprise as the Department of Justice has been working overtime the last several years to strike down or delay from taking effect newly passed state voter ID laws, even though the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of such laws since 2008.</p>
<p>For his part, Moran denied that he had engaged in “any sort of illegal or unethical behavior.” In fact, Moran chalked the incident up to his playing along with a reporter who he thought was just “joking” around, noting, “I should have immediately walked away, making it clear that there is no place in the electoral process for even the suggestion of illegal behavior, joking or not.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas had a different view, <a href="http://www.theprojectveritas.org/node/149">arguing</a> that “Patrick Moran doesn’t respect the integrity of our elections. He would rather win by fraud than risk seeing the political positions of his father, Barack Obama… rejected by the legitimate voters of Virginia.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the lack of respect for electoral integrity is not confined to Patrick Moran but to large swaths of the Democrat Party, which have been vigorously opposing voter ID bills, maintaining they serve to suppress the votes of minorities, the elderly, and the poor.</p>
<p>Moreover, they argue that forcing someone to produce a photo ID in order to vote is not only racist, but marks the return of Jim Crow. As Virginia Democratic State Senator Mamie Locke <a href="http://electionlawcenter.com/2012/02/07/voter-id-passes-virginia-senate---so-1866.aspx">responded </a>to the passage of Virginia’s voter ID law, “This bill –and others like it — is so 1866.”</p>
<p>Of course, if that is true, then also apparently racist are current photo identification requirements for all Americans that include cashing checks; opening a bank account; boarding airline flights; purchasing firearms; driving automobiles; buying alcohol and tobacco products; renting/buying property; purchasing prescription drugs; applying for food stamps; applying for welfare; applying for a bank loan; applying for a job; and using a credit/debit card.</p>
<p>Yet those opponents of photo voter ID laws fail to mention that every state that has passed such a law has also ensured that individuals who do not have a photo ID can easily obtain one for free if they cannot afford one. Not surprisingly, they also fail to mention that minority voter turnout has actually increased in states that have implemented voter ID laws.</p>
<p>Thus, despite liberal objections, voter photo ID laws have engendered widespread bi-partisan and bi-racial support, evidenced by a 2011 Rasmussen <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/december_2011/69_say_photo_id_voting_laws_are_not_discriminatory">poll </a>which found that 70 percent of likely US voters believe that voters “should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to cast their ballot.”</p>
<p>Among those who don’t share that view is Patrick Moran’s father, Congressman Jim Moran, an 11-term Congressman from Virginia’s 8<sup>th</sup> District, who has been strenuously opposed to Virginia’s voter ID law.</p>
<p>In fact, Jim Moran’s distaste for election integrity was such that in September he and 15 other Democrats co-sponsored a federal <a href="http://larsen.house.gov/sites/larsen.house.gov/files/AmericaVotesActof2012.pdf">bill</a> that proposed allowing voters to simply sign an affidavit attesting to their identity if they did not possess the required voting identification documents.</p>
<p>It should be noted, however, that while Jim Moran may believe that producing proper ID should not be a prerequisite for voting, it’s certainly a prerequisite when it comes to connecting with him, given his highly publicized town hall meeting in 2009 over Obamacare in which he demanded those speaking in opposition present their IDs before asking him a question.</p>
<p>Ironically, however, the resignation of his son over election fraud comes days after Jim Moran dispatched a letter to the DOJ urging an investigation into a GOP firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, which had been linked to allegations of voter fraud in Virginia and Florida. That letter <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/263953-rep-jim-morans-son-resigns-in-voter-fraud-scandal">read</a> in part, “The number of allegations in a multitude of locations would seem to suggest something more than the isolated acts of ‘a few bad apples.’”</p>
<p>Given the recent actions of his son, Jim Moran knows something about bad apples: they don’t fall far from the tree.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Taliban Solution to Bad Press: Kill Journalists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/taliban-solution-to-bad-press-kill-journalists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=taliban-solution-to-bad-press-kill-journalists</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Oct 2012 04:13:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[activist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Malala Yousafzai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The terror group is reeling from its botched attempt to assassinate a 14-year-old girl. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/taliban-solution-to-bad-press-kill-journalists/ap_malala_yousufzai_nt_121019_wg/" rel="attachment wp-att-159825"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-159825" title="ap_malala_yousufzai_nt_121019_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ap_malala_yousufzai_nt_121019_wg.gif" alt="" width="315" height="239" /></a>The Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has declared war on Pakistani and Western news organizations after blaming unfair press coverage for the negative reaction to its failed assassination attempt on 14-year-old youth activist Malala Yousafzai.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/teen-school-activist-malala-yousafzai-survives-hit-by-pakistani-taliban.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">shooting</a> of Malala by a TTP death squad had generated immediate and widespread international condemnation, including outrage from large numbers of Pakistanis, many of whom had shown previous sympathy or fear toward the Islamist terror group.</p>
<p>This Pakistani outrage found its form in numerous fatwas issued by Islamic clerics denouncing the attack as well as in million dollar bounties being offered by the Pakistani government for the capture of the Taliban members responsible for the shooting.</p>
<p>As Muhammad Amir Rana of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/15/taliban-threaten-journalists-malala-yousafzai">said</a>, “We (Pakistanis) have seen a similar public sentiment in the past, but this time it is quite unique. This case has provided a catharsis of the masses for all the grievances that have been building up for years.”</p>
<p>For its part, however, the Taliban was stung by the negative public reaction, unable to fathom that shooting a young girl in the head for her outspoken views would be generate such open and unified hostility toward the Islamist terror group.</p>
<p>After all, the Taliban has been viciously targeting Pakistani children for years, including training thousands of children as suicide bombers, a practice which has failed to generate the near universal revulsion in Pakistani society as this one heinous act.</p>
<p>Instead, the Taliban concluded that <a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-71745-TTP-issues-detailed-response,-labels-Malala-as-an-American-spy-">blame</a> for its public relations dilemma must lay squarely at the feet of a biased news media, co-conspirators who, they claimed, have long been working with Malala on a “pre-planned strategy” to “pollute the minds of youth against the Taliban.”</p>
<p>As such, the Taliban claimed the unholy partnership between Malala and the press had unsurprisingly produced a media unwilling to provide fair and balanced coverage of the shooting, a lack of objectivity which included throwing hurtful insults at the Islamist terror group.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/19/world/asia/pakistan-taliban-media-threat/index.html">According</a> to a Taliban spokesman, “this filthy, godless media has taken huge advantage of this situation, and journalists have started passing judgment on us.” This includes calling the Taliban “derogatory names” and labeling them the “worst people on earth.”</p>
<p>Now faced with what one Pakistani journalist called “undoubtedly the worst press the TTP has ever had,” the Taliban’s instinctual reaction to this journalistic malpractice has been to kill the messenger.</p>
<p>Specifically, a directive was recently <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19978021">seized</a> by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in which TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud had ordered that all current Taliban operations against Pakistani government forces be halted, with attention now focused on attacking media organizations and journalists that had denounced the murder attempt of Malala.</p>
<p>To that end, the Taliban had reportedly selected a dozen suicide bombers to target television and radio stations, journalists, columnists, and TV anchors throughout Pakistan, including the cities of Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.</p>
<p>As a Pakistani Taliban commander in South Waziristan, who calls himself Jihad Yar, said, “The Taliban will not spare journalists who focus on this one girl,” adding that “99 percent of the reporters are using the shooting as an excuse to attack the Taliban.”</p>
<p>Given all that, it’s not surprising to find that the Committee to Protect Journalists has <a href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012%5C10%5C19%5Cstory_19-10-2012_pg7_19">reported</a>, “Media houses, TV anchors and some well-known journalists are under serious threat,” while the All Pakistan Newspapers Society has requested extra security from the government.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the Taliban threats aren’t idle chatter given it has previously killed and kidnapped other journalists whose work it found issue with, assaults which have killed 10 reporters and which have served to make Pakistan the world’s <a href="http://en.rsf.org/IMG/CLASSEMENT_2012/C_GENERAL_ANG.pdf">deadliest</a> country for journalists. As one Pakistani journalist <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/19/world/asia/pakistan-taliban-media-threat/index.html">said</a>, “We are scared, but what can we do? We have to work.”</p>
<p>Still, while the Taliban may be working to eliminate unfavorable news organizations and journalists from existence, it insists it will not harm those media people who help get the Taliban message out.</p>
<p>One such person is Hamid Mir, a popular Pakistani columnist, who recently published a seven-page <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/452331/taliban-says-its-attack-on-malala-justified/">statement </a>from Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan that detailed the Islamist terror group’s justification for the attack on Malala.</p>
<p>For starters, the media narrative had claimed the Taliban targeted Malala for her work in advocating child rights in Pakistan, in particular for her focus on educating girls, an issue decidedly frowned upon by the Taliban given its rampant <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/10/swat-ngo-solution-to-assault-on-education">destruction </a>of over 400 mostly girls schools in northwest Pakistan.</p>
<p>Instead, the Taliban strenuously denied it had tried to murder Malala for “raising voice for education,” but rather because she was a “spy of the West” who “propagated against mujahideen (holy warriors) to defame (the) Taliban,” efforts for which the “infidels gave her awards and rewards,” such as Pakistan’s 2011 National Peace Award.</p>
<p>As Ehsan then noted, the Koran calls for the killing of “people propagating against Islam and Islamic forces,” and “those who are spying for enemies.” Therefore, Malala’s offenses against Islam left the Taliban little choice but to carry out the stiff Sharia punishment.</p>
<p>Ehsan also chafed at media accusations that the Taliban’s murder attempt on Malala rendered the Islamist terror group child killers, arguing that Sharia law allows for children to be killed if they are speaking out against Islam.</p>
<p>Moreover, the spokesman continued, Malala was in fact an adult despite being 14 at the time of the shooting. “Even if no sign of puberty becomes noticeable, this age of the girl marks the end of pre puberty phase,” he said.</p>
<p>Yet despite its attempts to amend the journalistic record and improve upon its deadly image, the Taliban’s efforts to play the innocent victim of a media conspiracy are likely to fall on mostly deaf ears.</p>
<p>That sympathy card is best reserved for the true victim in this gruesome saga, Malala Yousafzai, who currently lies recuperating from her gunshot wounds in a British hospital. Hers is an all-too tragic and true story, one even the barbaric Taliban can’t rewrite.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Taliban&#8217;s Barbaric Shooting of Child Activist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/the-talibans-barbaric-shooting-of-child-activist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-talibans-barbaric-shooting-of-child-activist</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:20:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[activist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Girls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Malala Yousufzai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[schools]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[14-year-old Malala Yousufzai survived -- but for how long?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/the-talibans-barbaric-shooting-of-child-activist/malala-yousufzai/" rel="attachment wp-att-148061"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148061" title="malala-yousufzai" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/malala-yousufzai.jpg" alt="" width="356" height="270" /></a>Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who garnered international acclaim for having the courage to publicly speak out against the Pakistani Taliban, was <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/449070/national-peace-award-winner-malala-yousufzai-injured-in-firing-incident/">shot</a> in the head and critically wounded by the barbaric Islamist terror group.</p>
<p>According to Pakistani police, Malala was riding home from school in the Pakistani city of Mingora when a man stopped the school bus and asked the students to point her out. Once identified, the assassin shot Malala as well as her friend who was seated next to her.</p>
<p>Despite her young age, a Taliban spokesman <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/449070/national-peace-award-winner-malala-yousufzai-injured-in-firing-incident/">said</a> it had no choice but to eliminate Malala as she “was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and… she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas.”</p>
<p>Both girls were fortunate to survive the cowardly murder attempt, in particular Malala, given that the bullet that entered her head had passed through her skull without causing any damage to her brain.</p>
<p>However, Malala’s reprieve from death may be short lived as the Taliban has stated that it still intends to kill this “secular-minded lady” and thus finish “this chapter,” a murder that it hopes will prevent other young Pakistani people from speaking ill of the Islamist terror group.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Malala has been a target of assassination since she was just 11-years-old and the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP) was ruling her home region, Pakistan’s Swat Valley, in a Sharia-based reign of terror.</p>
<p>The Taliban reign, which began in earnest in 2007, included such niceties as public segregation of the sexes; bans on music, movies, and television; a ban on girls’ education; and public whippings, beatings and stoning meted out to violators of the new rules.</p>
<p>During this time Malala, using a pseudonym, documented the abuses being perpetrated under the Taliban occupation by writing a blog under a Pakistani-language BBC website called the “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl.”</p>
<p>Malala’s blog, among other things, highlighted the Taliban’s disdain for “un-Islamic education” in general and hatred of girls’ education in particular, scorn which found its expression in the group’s rampant <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/10/swat-ngo-solution-to-assault-on-education">destruction</a> of over 400 of Swat’s nearly 1,600 schools, 70 percent of which were girls schools.</p>
<p>It should be noted that the TTP’s enlightened views on education are equally shared by its brethren in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have attacked and destroyed over 240 girls schools throughout the country, assaults which include 17 poison-gas attacks on schools as well as numerous acid attacks on girls attempting to attend school.</p>
<p>So, when the Pakistani military ousted the Taliban from control of Swat in 2009, Malala used the national attention her blog had generated to drop her pseudonym and openly campaign on the need for educating girls.</p>
<p>For her efforts, Malala was awarded in 2011 Pakistan’s National Peace Award and also nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, notoriety that only served to enlarge the Taliban target on her back.</p>
<p>In fact, despite Taliban death threats, Malala had courageously broadened her campaign to include other human rights issues anathema to the Taliban, including a focus on the rights of Pakistani children, an area decidedly lacking in Taliban concern.</p>
<p>Of course, to be fair, life for children in Pakistan is far from good even when removed from underneath the Taliban yoke, a fact highlighted in a recent <a href="http://www.sparcpk.org/SOPC2012Chapters.html">report</a> from a leading Pakistani child advocacy group, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC).</p>
<p>SPARC’s Dickensian statistics on Pakistan <a href="http://www.sparcpk.org/SOPC2012Chapters.html">include</a> 25 million children not enrolled in school, the second highest number worldwide; Pakistan’s ranking among the five most dangerous countries in the world for kidnapping, with about 7,000 child abductions reported in 2011; and most of the children working as domestic workers in Pakistan being between 10-15 years of age.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Taliban has taken its disregard for children to a completely new and ruthless level.</p>
<p>After all, this is the same barbaric group that along with its Islamist allies in the region have constructed and operated a slew of suicide training facilities, death factories that have trained over 5,000 Pakistani children, many as young as eight, as suicide bombers.</p>
<p>In fact, the Pakistani jihadists’ enthusiasm for sacrificing children can be witnessed by the fact that of the 2,488 incidents of terrorism in Pakistan since 2009 &#8212; which have claimed the lives of 3,169 people &#8212; most were the result of suicide bombings conducted by underage terrorists.</p>
<p>That casual disregard for child welfare was recently on display in comments made by a Taliban spokesman in the days preceding Malala’s shooting, when he <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan-students-left-behind-in-fata/24710912.html">said</a> the Taliban would continue to target Pakistan’s educational system, one which he said spreads “un-Islamic culture and vulgarity.”</p>
<p>Specifically, if that targeting included killing innocent girls and boys in the process, the Taliban spokesman said the group was, nonetheless, still providing a valuable public service as “We consider our activities beneficial because they are good for them in the afterlife.”</p>
<p>So given that, it’s certainly not surprising then to find that the Taliban would casually shoot a bullet into the head of a young girl simply for putting them in a bad public spotlight.</p>
<p>It’s certainly not surprising to Kamila Hayat, a senior official of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1009/Pakistani-Taliban-shoot-teenaged-champion-of-girls-schools">said</a> of the attack on Malala, “This is an attack to silence courage through a bullet. These are the forces who want to take us to the dark ages.”</p>
<p>Tragically, for Malala Yousufzai and millions of Pakistani girls like her, those dark ages have already arrived.</p>
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		<title>Chavez&#8217;s Victory: Blame the Socialist Public</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/chavezs-victory-blame-the-socialist-public/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chavezs-victory-blame-the-socialist-public</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:48:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Henrique Capriles]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Venezuela]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Not even the systematic dismantling of their democracy could make socialist Venezuelans show Chavez the door. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/chavezs-victory-blame-the-socialist-public/1004-venezuela-hugo-chavez-election-rally_full_600/" rel="attachment wp-att-147533"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-147533" title="1004-VENEZUELA-HUGO-CHAVEZ-ELECTION-RALLY_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/1004-VENEZUELA-HUGO-CHAVEZ-ELECTION-RALLY_full_600.gif" alt="" width="315" height="250" /></a>Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution continues on, as the tyrannical strongman claimed a third consecutive six-year presidential term on Sunday. The Chavez win was somewhat unexpected due to the great problems the country faces as a direct result of Chavez’s leadership &#8212; including endemic government corruption and inefficiency, a tanking economy, vast consumer shortages, severe inflation, electricity blackouts and growing violence. Yet considering Chavez’s radical redistributionist policies, and much of the Venezuelan public’s economic interest in overlooking his abuses, it is an unfortunate fact that his challenger’s failure should not be surprising.</p>
<p>Chavez claimed <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/10/07/venezuelan-president-hugo-chavez-wins-another-6-year-term-electoral-council/">victory</a> over 40-year-old Henrique Capriles, grandson of Jewish Holocaust survivors and a self-professed Catholic, who had campaigned on promises to rollback Venezuela’s decade-long slide into socialist tyranny and destitution. Capriles and his supporters had been confident that the Venezuelan public would finally be receptive to a campaign of promises to reform the bureaucracy, ease suffocating state economic controls, open up markets, and increase private investment.</p>
<p>Pre-election surveys found Capriles leading by as much as five points before election day, and his loss led many opposition activists to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578044142795718294.html">blame</a> massive government-orchestrated voter fraud. The Chavez-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) was criticized for its refusal to allow an independent audit of the voter registry, and the CNE’s own website listed thousands of voters between the ages of 111 and 129.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Capriles downplayed allegations of widespread voter fraud as the cause for his defeat, defusing the highly combustible situation by <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/07/us-venezuela-election-idUSBRE89601Z20121007">saying</a>, “I am never going to mess around with our people, or subject them to instability. The other side obtained more votes and that’s democracy.”</p>
<p>In truth, Capriles may be right. The occurrence of voter fraud in Venezuela’s presidential election, to whatever extent it occurred, may be far less significant than the effect a comprehensive socialist program has had on degenerating the better judgment of voters with respect to what’s in the country’s long-term interests. Rather, habituation to radical redistributionist policies have kept a comfortable portion of voters reliably in Chavez’s pocket, despite his systematic dismantlement of Venezuelan democracy and egregious abuses of power.</p>
<p>The taste for “bread and circuses” governance among Venezuelans has seemingly caused much of the population to overlook Chavez’s totalitarian transformation of the political landscape. Chavez first assumed the presidency in 1999, after which he began a decade-long accumulation of near total control over Venezuela’s economy. His power was amassed through engineered government takeovers of the country’s oil, electrical and telecommunications industries.</p>
<p>Moreover, Chavez’s takeover of Venezuela’s economy was joined by a concurrent hijacking of the country’s governmental institutions. Aided by his control of the National Assembly, Chavez ruthlessly quell any opposition from Venezuela’s judiciary, press, and political opponents.</p>
<p>The Chavez government’s policies centered on a massive wealth redistribution scheme financed mostly by Venezuela’s estimated $1 trillion in oil revenues. This provided billions of dollars in social programs for poor Venezuelans, including free goods and services like medical care, public housing and education.</p>
<p>Chavez’s role as the Venezuelan Robin Hood has built him a strong base of support with the masses, a base which he was eager to exploit this election with a deeply divisive campaign of class warfare. Chavez not only pledged to expand Venezuela’s sprawling welfare state with a continuance of populist programs, but argued that his opposition &#8212; whom he <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/south-america/item/10497-resurgent-communism-in-latin-america">labeled</a> as “fascists,” “Yankees,” “neo-Nazis,” puppets of the “rich,” and “Zionists” &#8212; would take away those government benefits.</p>
<p>Chavez’s vote-buying efforts included highly publicized ceremonies, in which he doled out government-funded handouts to the Venezuelan public, including homes, pensions and cash benefits for single mothers. As one analyst said, “I think he just cranked up the patronage machine and unleashed a spending orgy.”</p>
<p>Chavez was assisted in his campaign by the mostly government-controlled Venezuelan media. What remains of the country’s independent press was likely too fearful of being shut down, or worse, arrested for criticizing him.</p>
<p>Despite these efforts, Chavez received only 54 percent of the vote, his closest margin of victory, but one that did not prevent him from <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14287713-venezuelas-hugo-chavez-wins-3rd-term-vows-to-deepen-socialist-revolution?lite">claiming</a> an electoral mandate to further push Venezuela “along the path of democratic and Bolivarian socialism of the 21st century.”</p>
<p>Of course, some are hopeful that Chavez himself may not have a prolonged stay in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, given his ongoing battle with cancer, a battle which has included surgery to remove tumors from his pelvic region as well as chemotherapy and radiation treatment. However, Chavez has claimed a clean bill of health, allowing him to continue on with his socialist revolution at home as well as deepening Venezuela’s friendship and support for America’s enemies throughout the world.</p>
<p>In that latter case, Chavez has spent enormous amounts of money, primarily through discounted Venezuelan oil, propping up the communist Castro dictatorship in Cuba and fellow socialist despots throughout Central and South America, while at the same time fostering a budding friendship with the fanatical Iran regime.</p>
<p>That Iranian friendship was on display recently in a joint press conference Chavez held with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Caracas in which Chavez joked about the two having an atomic bomb at their disposal. As the two leaders laughed about the Iranian nuclear program aimed at wiping Israel off the map, Chavez <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45938366/">said</a>, “One of the targets that Yankee imperialism has in its sights is Iran, which is why we are showing our solidarity. When we meet, the devils go crazy.”</p>
<p>This is the man that has attracted such ardent followers among the Hollywood leftist elite, including Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, all of whom have a special fondness for demagogues. Stone found Chavez to be a “charismatic and dynamic figure, bent on helping his country emerge from the crushing weight of US political interests,” while Belafonte once told the strongman, “We’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people &#8230; support your revolution.”</p>
<p>Of course, while the American left may admire Chavez, many of those unlucky enough to live under his tyrannical rule have a differing opinion, best expressed by a Venezuelan auto mechanic who <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/10/07/venezuela-election-critical-test-for-divided-nation-and-longtime-president/">remarked</a> before the presidential election that Chavez “wants to be like Fidel Castro &#8212; end up with everything, take control of the country.” Unfortunately, it is unlikely that slow and steady march will reverse any time soon.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Romney Rising, Europe Panicking</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/as-romney-rises-europe-slouches/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=as-romney-rises-europe-slouches</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:51:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Leaders reeling after Obama debate disaster. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/90238064-flag-set.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146999" title="90238064-flag-set" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/90238064-flag-set.gif" alt="" width="375" height="248" /></a>The European hope for an Obama second term is now flagging after Barack Obama’s disastrous debate performance Wednesday night against Mitt Romney.</p>
<p>As in the United States, Obama’s debate performance is being ruthlessly <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-europe-us-debate-idUSBRE8930Y520121004">panned</a> by European leaders, diplomats and media, many of whom were not only hopeful, but confident that Obama would easily win re-election.</p>
<p>Instead, that certainty has now been replaced by heightened angst, best expressed by the French paper, Le Monde, which <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-europe-us-debate-idUSBRE8930Y520121004">wrote</a> on its front page, “Where did the favorite go?: Obama fails his first televised debate against an incisive Romney.”</p>
<p>That Obama failure, according to European media accounts, is rooted in the President’s shocking lack of style, substance and commanding presence, a critique shared across both sides of the European media’s political spectrum.</p>
<p>In Britain, for example, the conservative Daily Telegraph <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9585909/US-presidential-debate-Mitt-Romney-takes-fight-to-Barack-Obama.html">wrote</a> that Romney was “stunningly on top of his argument with a faultless command of detail and a confident fluency that made Barack Obama seem hesitant, defensive and occasionally evasive.”</p>
<p>For its part, the liberal Guardian <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/04/obama-romney-debate-rocky-evening">said</a> Romney came off as “energetic and self-assured,” in contrast to the “sullen, grumpy and disengaged” Obama.” Meanwhile the liberal German news magazine Der Speigel <a href="http://www.speigel.de/international/world/the-listless-president-how-obama-lost-his-first-debate-a-859495.html">bemoaned</a> the fact the “sullen and listless Obama” could not best the “smiling and energetic” Romney.</p>
<p>The net effect, according to Der Speigel, was to render Obama “something of a Dud President,” causing a “negative effect on his candidacy” and thus placing his re-election efforts on “shaky ground.”</p>
<p>That electoral prospect, however, has engendered deep alarm in many European Union countries, led by right and left-centered governments, eager to keep their relationship with the Obama administration intact as they work to prevent the EU from fiscally imploding.</p>
<p>As one European financial analyst said, “The Europeans have a general uneasiness about a Romney presidency. It’s not because they don&#8217;t like him, but…There’s a general tendency to stick to what you know and what you have been working with.”</p>
<p>Romney certainly didn’t endear himself to EU leaders, in particular the Spanish, when he singled Spain out in the presidential debate as the poster child for the euro-debt crisis, when he <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/10/04/presidential-debate-spain-shocked-after-diss-by-mitt-romney/">said</a>, “Spain spends 42 percent of its total economy on government. We&#8217;re now spending 42 percent of our economy on government. I don&#8217;t want to go down the path to Spain.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, that pointed observation hurt Spanish sensibilities, leading the country’s main daily, El Pais, to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-europe-us-debate-idUSBRE8930Y520121004">write</a>, “Spain has never been mentioned in a presidential debate as a symbol of failure. What happened last night makes history. And not in a good way.”</p>
<p>To be fair, it’s hard to paint Spain in a positive light when the country is faced with record unemployment at 25 percent and reportedly on the verge of needing a bailout from the EU.</p>
<p>Moreover, it’s understandable why Romney wouldn’t want the United States to go down the same path as the EU, drowning in a sea of debt by giving unsustainable bailouts to welfare-state nations, such as Spain and Greece, in order to prevent them from going bankrupt.</p>
<p>Moreover, those recipient countries of EU largesse have had to impose harsh new spending cuts, tax increases and economic reforms to meet EU deficit targets, efforts which have hit their citizens with wage cuts and fewer services, prompting waves of anti-austerity protests.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, those protests have signaled a coming EU economic meltdown, one which the Obama administration has been working feverishly to prevent prior to the November election lest it affect the US economy and imperil Obama’s reelection chances.</p>
<p>Administration officials have pressured EU countries to support Obama’s policy initiatives, evidenced most openly at the G8 meeting in May in which one European leader said, “It was like all of the G8 apart from Russia and Japan were expected to be part of the Obama re-election campaign.”</p>
<p>One EU official was even more direct when he <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-21/business/sns-rt-us-eurozone-greece-reportbre88k0p5-20120921_1_troika-eu-imf-euro-zone-finance-ministers">revealed</a>, “The Obama administration doesn’t want anything on a macroeconomic scale that is going to rock the global economy before November 6.”</p>
<p>To that end, Greece, which has been dependent since 2010 on billions of euro rescue loan packages as well as largesse from and the International Monetary Fund, now has a reported debt of $25 billion, double what that nation had previously claimed.</p>
<p>The European Commission wants a final decision on the next Greek bailout to take place at the next EU summit in mid-October, while Germany insists that it can’t be done until sometime in November &#8212; after the US Presidential election.</p>
<p>Yet, regardless of who wins that election, it’s unlikely that the EU will hold any longstanding objection to a Romney presidency.</p>
<p>As one diplomat in Brussels <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-europe-us-debate-idUSBRE8930Y520121004">said</a>, “Even though we have a natural predilection for Democratic presidents, we’ll embrace the next US president whoever he is. We just have to deal with it.”</p>
<p>Europe is right to be considering the possible eventualities. At this point, the election is anyone’s game.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Syrian Children: Targeted for Death</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/syrian-children-targeted-for-death/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=syrian-children-targeted-for-death</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Oct 2012 04:40:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Pro-government and rebel forces focus their viciousness on the kids. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/syria_lawrencearabia01-6f721fbf1a1d71dfb753a61b94c6645406ebff82-s51.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146649" title="syria_lawrencearabia01-6f721fbf1a1d71dfb753a61b94c6645406ebff82-s51" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/syria_lawrencearabia01-6f721fbf1a1d71dfb753a61b94c6645406ebff82-s51.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>One of the more loathsome horrors of Syria’s civil war has been the deliberate targeting of Syrian children by both pro-government and rebel forces, barbarity which includes imprisonment, rape, torture, sexual abuse, murder, and use as human shields.</p>
<p>That gruesome reality has been chillingly documented in recently released reports by the United Nations and two British-based humanitarian groups working with Syrian refugees, War Child and Save the Children.</p>
<p>While children in war zones are normally caught in the crossfire between opposing forces, the purposeful targeting of young children, according to the July 2012 War Child <a href="http://www.warchild.org.uk/sites/default/files/Syria+-+War+on+Children%28final%29.pdf">report</a>, make the Syrian conflict “disturbingly unique.”</p>
<p>A glimpse into that disturbing uniqueness can be seen in the acts of Syrian security forces and pro-regime militias abducting children and imprisoning them in former schools which have been converted into specially designed torture centers.</p>
<p>There, according to a June UN <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2012-06-12/middleeast/world_meast_syria-unrest_1_civil-war-human-shields-syrian-regime?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST">report</a> on children and armed conflict, the children are then “beaten, blindfolded, and subjected to stress positions, whipped with heavy electrical cables, and scarred by cigarette burns.”</p>
<p>One of these <a href="http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/2012-09/exposed-crimes-against-syrias-children">victims</a> was a 15-year-old boy named Khalid, tortured in his old school where his father had once been the principal, who said, “They hung me up from the ceiling by my wrists, with my feet off the ground. Then I was beaten. I was terrified.”</p>
<p>In some instances, captors would bind the children’s hands together so tightly that, according to one victim, “the veins in their wrists would start to bleed. I witnessed so many children dying from this torture.”</p>
<p>For some, the maltreatment <a href="http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/2012-09/exposed-crimes-against-syrias-children">inflicted</a> was a form of “sexual torture,” sexual violence levied on both boys and girls, some as young as 12, which included “rape, penetration with objects, sexual groping, prolonged forced nudity, and electroshock and beatings to genitalia.”</p>
<p>However, the type of sadistic punishment meted out to the children followed no formal protocol, but rather, according to a child sufferer who was subjected to electric shocks, “depended on what mood these men were in,” adding, “They showed no sympathy, no mercy.”</p>
<p>This abject cruelty was pointedly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19709041">expressed</a> in the torture and death of a 6-year-old boy named Alaa, who was slated for torture because his father was an anti-government activist wanted by the Syrian regime.</p>
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		<title>Mali’s Sharia Nightmare</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2012 04:30:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Mali]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Country descends into a land of unimaginable horrors. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cr_mega_852_ansar-dine.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-145863" title="cr_mega_852_ansar-dine" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cr_mega_852_ansar-dine.gif" alt="" width="375" height="260" /></a>Islamists are creating a nightmarish Sharia-run state in northern Mali, complete with public floggings, group amputations, and death by stoning.</p>
<p>The Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), along with its other Islamist and al-Qaeda allies, is creating a terrifying Sharia-run state in northern Mali, complete with public floggings, group amputations, and death by stoning.</p>
<p>Ansar Dine, along with the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), first gained control over northern Mali in April after it commandeered a rebellion originally launched by ethnic Tuareg separatists against the Mali government.</p>
<p>Since then, as part of their consolidation of power in the region &#8212; an area roughly the size of Texas &#8212; the Islamist Ansar Dine and Mujao have been busily imposing Sharia law in the towns and cities of northern Mali, including the region’s largest cities of Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao.</p>
<p>To that end, the Islamists have issued <a href="http://www.afrik-news.com/article19317.html" target="_blank">edicts</a> against a wide range of acts they deem to be “haraam” (forbidden), behaviors such as smoking or selling cigarettes; drinking or selling alcoholic beverages; listening to music; failing to attend daily prayers; or women failing to cover themselves appropriately.</p>
<p>For those unfortunate enough to run afoul of these restrictions, the <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-10/news/sns-rt-us-mali-crisis-shariabre889148-20120910_1_mali-islamists-mujwa-highway-robbery" target="_blank">punishments</a> are exceedingly harsh, punitive measures which include public beatings, floggings, amputations, and summary executions, such as death by stoning.</p>
<p>Carrying out the punishments are designated Islamic police, assisted in their tasks by a growing cadre of <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/rights_group_says_mali_islamists_using_child_soldiers/1514459.html" target="_blank">child</a> soldiers, some as young as 11, who have been recruited into the Islamist ranks to serve as spies, guards, cooks and patrol officers.</p>
<p>For some, punishment is extra judicial, swift and on the spot, with men and women taken directly off the streets by the Islamic police and whipped and beaten in marketplaces and in public squares, beatings which are often administered by the child soldiers.</p>
<p>For those spared an out of court public beatdown, they are instead given an Islamic “trial,” a hearing before a panel of judges selected by the Islamist authorities &#8212; many of whom are foreign Islamist fighters &#8212; in which the accused is given a chance to tell their version of events.</p>
<p>The verdicts given in these Islamic “courtrooms” are often handed out the same day the trial begins, with the designated punishment, be it flogging, amputation, or execution, carried out immediately in public view before the mandated attendance of the local populace.</p>
<p>One man whose hand was amputated before a full crowd, described his experience with Sharia justice, saying, “They tied my hands, feet and chest firmly to a chair; my right hand was tied with a rubber cord. The boss, himself, cut my hand as if he were killing a sheep. As he cut it, which took about two minutes, he shouted ‘“Allah Akbar.’”</p>
<p>Of course, figuring what type of punishment is appropriate for the crime committed is determined by the nuanced complexities of Sharia law, intricacies <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-10/news/sns-rt-us-mali-crisis-shariabre889148-20120910_1_mali-islamists-mujwa-highway-robbery" target="_blank">explained</a> by Oumar Ould Hamaha of the Mujao in the recent case in Gao of a group amputation in which the right hand and left foot of five suspected thieves were cut off.</p>
<p>Hamaha said the Islamists amputated the right hand and left foot of the men because “According to the Sharia, the men had to face double punishment for theft and highway robbery. The sentence for theft is to cut a hand, and the sentence for highway robbery is cutting the opposite leg.”</p>
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		<title>Obama Rebuilds Mosques While Churches Burn</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Sep 2012 04:02:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Crimi]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[As Hillary Clinton apologized for hurt Muslim feelings, more historic Christian churches were torched. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/t1larg-church-afp-gi.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-145537" title="t1larg-church-afp-gi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/t1larg-church-afp-gi.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>While Christian churches are being destroyed on a near daily basis in Muslim countries throughout the world, the Obama administration is investing millions of dollars to rebuild overseas Islamic mosques and minarets.</p>
<p>According to the State Department, the mosque restoration program, first <a href="http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/mosque-makeovers-with-your-tax-dollars/nD9db/">reported</a> on back in 2010, is a “cultural preservation” project designed to “fight Islamic extremism by building relationships with Islamic leaders.”</p>
<p>To that end, the State Department, through the US Agency for International Development, is spending millions to preserve mosques and minarets in 27 different Islamic countries.</p>
<p>While the State Department would not reveal the entire cost of its Muslim outreach program, it did acknowledge one restoration project, the refurbishing of Egypt’s 1,300-year-old Amr Ibn El-Aas Mosque, was part of a $770 million program to rebuild Cairo’s sewer system.</p>
<p>Perhaps the State Department’s reticence in sharing the full fiscal details of its taxpayer-funded Islamic goodwill project centered on the fact that federal regulations prohibit USAID funds from being used for saving structures which are used for “inherently religious activities.”</p>
<p>Of course, it should be noted, that the “inherently religious activities” of those overseas Islamic mosques includes preaching hatred of Jews, Christians and Americans, incitement to terrorist activity, and global imposition of Islamic rule.</p>
<p>In recent days, Muslim clerics in at least 20 Islamic countries have used these “houses of worship” to urge their congregations to take to the streets in violent protests to defend Islam over the release of the video “Innocence of Muslims.”</p>
<p>So, given that, it’s not surprising that the Obama administration’s diligent efforts to help preserve the religious heritage of Islam has failed to engender in its Muslim beneficiaries a similar respect toward preserving the religious heritage of Christianity in the Islamic world.</p>
<p>For example, while the State Department was busy repairing Egyptian mosques, scores of Egypt’s Coptic Christian churches were being burned down by Muslim mobs, one which included St. George’s Church in the Egyptian village of Merinab.</p>
<p>The 100-year-old St. George’s was in the midst of its own renovation when local Muslim sensibilities were <a href="http://www.christianfreedom.org/news/%C2%A0coptic-church-in-egypt-burned-by-muslim-crowd%C2%A0/">offended</a> by the presence of a cross, bell, and dome on the church’s roof. So, in the interest of “community peace,” church leaders agreed to take down the spire and cross, leaving the dome intact.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that compromise proved insufficient to soothe Muslim outrage, leading a Muslim throng numbering in the thousands to descend on the church, burn it to the ground, while shouting, “Kill all the Christians.”</p>
<p>In 2010, the State Department provided monetary <a href="http://www.afrik-news.com/article17257.html">support</a> for saving three mosques on Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania, mosques which included the 900-year-old Kizimkazi mosque, considered one of the oldest Islamic buildings on the coast of East Africa.</p>
<p>That generous American donation was repaid in July 2012 when Muslim mobs, <a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e00_1312296031">shouting</a>, “Away with the church &#8212; we do not want infidels to spoil our community, especially our children,” burned down three Christian churches on Zanzibar Island.</p>
<p>In 2011 the State Department provided funds to restore the 15th century Gobarau Minaret in Katsina State in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, an area which has become a virtual killing field for Christians at the hands of Muslim militants, led by the al-Qaeda-linked terror group Boko Haram.</p>
<p>Since 2009 over 288 Christian churches in Nigeria have been burned, thousands of Christian-owned homes destroyed, and over 2,000 Christians killed, including in July 2012 when fifty members of a northern Nigerian church were burned to death in their pastor’s house.</p>
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