Monday, October 23, 2006

What She Needs is a Good Stoning

From Gates of Vienna
I was reading Gates of Vienna and came across this piece. The following are selections from that article:
'A schoolgirl at the Jean Mermoz college [secondary school] in the eighth district of Lyon was pelted with a hail of stones on Wednesday morning in a playground where she was eating a snack. The theory that the act was related to the non-observance of Ramadan has been confirmed by the prosecutor in Lyon on the strength of the earliest results of the investigation.

The forum said the girl was Christian, but the newspaper story seems to imply that she was Muslim and had raised the ire of her persecutors by appearing to be breaking the dietary laws re Ramadan. Perhaps she could wear some sign which would allow others to know that she is menstruating so they wouldn't stone her. No shame in that for an adolescent girl, right?

However, here is what this sane Muslim (safely out of Saudi Arabia) thinks about the fundamentalists in his native country who have spread their poisonous message world wide:

[It is] the full spectrum of institutionalized insanity that the House of Saud and their friends with long beards have created.


That “full spectrum” includes stoning a kid for eating. Jesus would’ve suggested that before they pick up a rock they examine their own souls to see if they were without sin…an admonition that probably doesn’t make sense in a tribal, warrior culture burdened with shame.

Gates of Vienna is the only place to get this kind of information I have found. This is not the first of this kind of horror I have seen documented here. The case of the pregnant girl who was chased and the boys tried to kill the baby inside her. She crawled for help. This is just over the top for me. Starving children for "religion"?

Dr Sanity sums up the shame culture in the article: Shame, The Arab Psyche, and Islam

Children who live with constant hostility and criticism learn to defend against the bad feelings and shame within; and to externalize blame onto others. Projection and paranoia, which are both external assignments of blame, are psychological defenses against shame.

Often this excessive shame is dealt with by humiliating someone perceived as weaker or more worthless than the shamed person (e.g., the family pet, women, Gays, or outside groups serve this function for both individuals and cultures).


Guilt is an emotion that rises after a transgression of one's own or cultural values. Guilt is about actions or behavior; while shame is about the self. There is an important psychological difference in saying to someone that their behavior is bad; as contrasted with saying that they are bad. The former leads to guilt; the latter to shame.

The purpose of guilt is to stop behavior that violates a self, family or societal standard. Guilt keeps score on excesses or deficits of behavior deemed undesirable and is expressed in regret and remorse.

And this all dovetails nicely into the recent piece on the mask veil
How much of a moron can I be?
In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.
Well, I think that idiot notion has been debunked pretty well, through the links here and at many other sources. And is "superiority" the goal of any religion? Not mine.

islam, politics

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