Books I've Read: Not Without My Daughter

A friend of mine has been saying for years now that she will not allow her daughter to leave for college without reading Not Without My Daughter. Never having read it or seen the movie myself, I checked it out of the library recently. How I missed this powerful tale of oppression and adventure, I’m not sure, but I think I’ll follow my friend’s lead and have my daughter read it before she leaves home.

For those of you not familiar with the story, in 1977, Betty Mahmoody had married an Iranian doctor practicing medicine in the United States. He was loving and kind during their courtship and even during the early part of their marriage. He was also apparently not a devout Muslim.

Then the revolution overturned the shah’s rule in Iran. Suddenly, Moody, as she called him, became increasingly interested in Iranian-American politics and critical of the United States of which he almost became a citizen. His interest in and practice of Islam increased wildly.

A few years later in 1984, one of Moody’s relations arrived for an extended visit. Shortly after his departure, Moody decided that they needed to go on a two week visit to visit his family in Tehran. Moody swore on the Koran that they would come right back after their trip. The two weeks were miserable for Betty and her little girl, Mahtob. Moody’s family was unfriendly toward Betty and unsanitary. Betty and Mahtob counted down the days; soon it was time to leave. However, at that time, Moody and his family announced that they would not be returning to the United States after all. Thus Betty’s life was reduced to separation from her sons and aging parents in America, beatings, imprisonment, and separation from her daughter for a time as a punishment, all at the hands of her “loving” husband.

Some of Moody’s female relatives eventually felt bad about his treatment of Betty, but there was nothing they could do to intervene. No one would defend her when Moody beat her. No one would help her escape when he imprisoned her for various lengths of time. One relative said she was sorry about what she was going through but not to feel bad because all men were like that.

In addition, Betty met Ellen, another American woman to whom a similar thing had happened, but who had finally accepted her fate. Betty initially felt a kinship with Ellen upon meeting her at a class as they were from the same state in the U.S. Ellen’s husband had been an engineer in the U.S. and was very Americanized when they had met, but he changed drastically when they moved to Iran. He beat her into submission and imprisoned her for a year. Ellen finally converted to Islam and accepted her oppressed role. Betty never did.

Although Moody had beaten Betty at their daughter’s school in front of all the teachers and the principal, they would not go to the police for her. Even if she had gone to the police, there was little they would or could do. The Iranian constitution gave no real rights to her, a woman.

While the extremists argued that hyper-modesty would protect women, it somehow failed to prevent sexual abuses against them. Daily, girls and women were raped in Tehran, sometimes murdered. Not only did women have to completely cover themselves to avoid immodesty and inciting men to lust, but they couldn’t travel alone safely anymore in Tehran even when covered. To be alone was to be at risk. Betty herself was accosted twice but managed to get away both times. Funny but even a chador revealing only a small part of a woman’s face was not enough to quell the lust in some men’s hearts. Could it be that women’s modesty or lack thereof wasn’t the problem?

Betty did manage clandestinely to make contacts with people in the underground, who also wanted out of Iran. She snuck such meetings into her shopping schedule when she was able to move about. The Swiss Embassy and a few other people, both Iranian and American, wanted to assist her out of the country. Her escape could have been accomplished fairly easily if she had been willing to leave without her child, but she refused. Several times Helen of the Swiss Embassy strongly suggested she just forget about her daughter and they could get her out. Those of Iranian background, such as Helen, could not understand her refusal as in their worldview the children belonged to the man.

Under pressure from friends, Moody finally agreed to let Betty go back to visit her dying father but refused to allow their daughter to accompany her. First he told her that she would need to sell off all their assets in the States and send the money to him before she would be allowed to return, then he slipped his master plan to her that she would never see her daughter again. With the situation now more desperate than ever, one of her secret friends pulled all his favors to execute a dangerous cloak and dagger plan to hide Betty and her daughter and shepherd them out of the country.

Most striking to me in reading Not Without My Daughter was the consistent witness of the oppression of women in Islamic societies. Reading Lolita in Tehran and Infidel both corroborate Mahmoody’s tale. Reading Lolita in Tehran obviously focused on oppression in Iran following the revolution thereby confirming Mahmoody’s eyewitness account while Infidel demonstrated the dire circumstances of women’s lives in several countries. In Saudi Arabia in particular, the author related how every night she and her family would hear the cries of women beaten by their husbands in homes close to theirs. Everyone heard, and everyone could recognize the voices, but no one talked about it or did anything. Brutality against women was just a fact of daily life.

Certainly violence against women occurs in the United States as well. I’ve known many women who have shared details of their nightmarish lives before their escapes with me. Yet the law was on their side, and the culture as a whole backed them in their desire to live free from familial harm. Such violence is not brushed off as "just part of life" or "all men are like that". Spousal abuse is deviant behavior.

Therefore, it is a mystery to me how a religion of peace can brush off this kind of oppression against women. It is a mystery to me how Westernized men can so quickly return to brutality against women they supposedly loved, once they return home. It is a mystery to me how people anywhere can witness violence and oppression and not intervene and how “law” can side with the guilty. And it is a mystery to me how anyone claiming a faith in God can justify to himself violence against women and children. But no one seems to have any answers, and I remain mystified.

(Despicable) Quote of the Day

"A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, other sexual act such as forplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy is allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not comitted a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man's four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl's sister."

-Ayatollah Khomeini

Sexual activity with a little girl is permissible if they're married? How can a little girl be consentually married?

Not permanently damaged? What does that mean? Physically? Emotionally? How can she not be?

Hello? This is pedophilia, not holy matrimony, that he's advocating.

This shocking quote cannot be chalked up to that of an errant, obscure cleric. No, this is the religious teaching on marriage and women by the leader of a religious and political revolution that overtook an entire country.

We have a place for men in our country that would use little girls this way. It's called prison.

Revolting.

Source

Honor Suicides

Heartbreaking.

But "when a man's honor is between the legs of a woman" it makes perfect "sense".

"When wrong boyfriends or clothes lead daughters to kill themselves," by Helena Smith for The Guardian:

Nuran Uca never made it to 61 Aydin Arslan Street. If she had gone to the colourful two-storey building, climbed its narrow stairwell, walked down a corridor and sat in the plump brown armchair that so many other women had used, she might be alive today. There, with counsellors from the Kam-er support group, she could have talked about the "crime" of falling in love with a man she could never marry.

Instead, on June 14 the Kurdish woman succumbed to the phenomenon that is claiming lives in this Kurdish area of south-east Anatolia: she hanged herself in the bathroom of her home.

"She was just 25 but it was especially tragic because both were teachers, educated people," said Remziye Tural at Kam-er, the women's organisation that has become a lifeline in Turkey's poor south-east for those who face death because of a perception of dishonour. "She was modern and wore tight clothes - which is why his family rejected her.

She was banned by her parents from seeing or speaking to him, and then they stopped her leaving the house. In the end the pressure was too much."
[...]
Invariably, survivors said it was their kader, or destiny, to meet such an end.
But women's groups and human rights advocates believe the suicides are tantamount to murder. Stories have emerged of girls as young as 12 being locked in rooms for days with rope, poison or a pistol.

"There's a lot of evidence to suggest that these are, in fact, 'honour killings' passed off as suicides - that these girls are being forced to take their own lives," said Aytekin Sir, a psychiatrist who has studied the practice. There is no evidence that Nuran Uca's family forced their daughter to kill herself.

Last year, Yakin Erturk, a special UN envoy, arrived at the same conclusion, saying "honour suicides" had clearly begun to replace "honour killings", with the deaths
increasingly being disguised as accidents.

Death sentences

For a long time the potent forces of fear and shame in the communities stopped young women visiting the Kam-er centre on Aydin Arlsan Street. But recently at least four girls a day have gone there, often in fear of death sentences issued by their fathers and brothers for infractions perceived to have brought shame on their families.

Nearly one-fifth of those who walked through the doors of the organisation since it started up in 1997 complained of threats from their families. Some had received text messages on their mobile phones saying typically: "You have blackened our name. Kill yourself or we will kill you."

According to Vildan Aycicek, at the organisation's headquarters in the city of Diyarbakir, west of Batman: "Women apply to us when they think they cannot survive the violence any longer. Most are illiterate and don't know their legal rights. If they do, they have no idea how to use them."

There had, she said, been cases of Kurdish and Turkish women calling Kam-er's hotline from Britain and other countries saying they also feared for their lives. Worldwide, the numbers of "honour killings" are notoriously difficult to estimate. But in Turkey the vengeful practice is cited by academics as the cause of death for
hundreds of women each year - far above the official annual figure of 70.

Sometimes adultery, or a woman's desire for divorce, prompts an all-male "family
council" to order a killing.

But the list of "offences" is long: rape, incest, pregnancy brought on by both, a girl ringing into a radio chat show, exchanging eye contact with a boy or wearing a skimpy shirt. Sometimes accusations are no more than rumours.

One villager near Diyarbakir explained the attitude of his home area. "Without rules you have chaos," said Seyikan Arslan. "If my sister or my mother made a mistake we [men] would have to make it right. They would have to pay to cleanse our honour."
[...]
The culture clash has played a large part in exacerbating tensions within families and particularly between patriarchal fathers and their female offspring. "Migration is behind the big rise in honour and suicide killings," said Dr Sir, whose research found that support for the deaths far outstripped other popular penalties such as a woman having her nose sliced off or head shaved.
[...]
Ironically, the suicides have also been blamed on Turkey's efforts to stop "honour crimes". With Ankara's reforming Islamic-rooted government determined to enter the EU, it has toughened laws against the killings. Lenient sentences for those who cite provocation as a mitigating factor are no longer possible. So, to save men from a life in prison, experts believe families are instead forcing women to kill themselves.
[...]
Absent from the campaign in Batman has been the mayor, Huseyin Kalkan, who was awarded damages by DC Comics after a lawsuit over the use of his town's name for the superhero Batman. That money, activists point out, could be used to save women like Nuran Uca.

In the spirit of cultural equivalency, I suppose we just need to understand and accept, even as hundreds (thousands?) of women die each year for some man's "honor". It's just the culture. Who are we to judge?

h/t: jihad watch

Newt's Speech on Phoney War

"If they [the irreconcilable wing of Islam] were in charge tonight, not a single woman would be in this room."

Why, why, why is it a conservative male who makes such obvious complaints? Where are the feminists on radical Islam? Certainly not complaining in large enough numbers about widespread radical Islam and its effects on women around the world.

Convert or Die

But I thought there was no compulsion in religion.....

From Compass Direct:

Christians and Hindus in northern Pakistan have received dozens of letters threatening them with death if they refuse to become Muslims, church sources and a police official said yesterday. Police continued to provide security around churches and temples this week, even as Christians received new deadlines for converting to Islam.

Though the original August 10 deadline for conversion has passed, Peshawar’s minorities continue to live in fear, canceling church activities and skipping services, a Catholic priest said. “Embrace Islam and become Muslims … otherwise, after next Friday, August 10, your colony will be ruined,” read more than a dozen identical letters collected by the Church of Pakistan (COP) in Peshawar, 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of Islamabad...

Explaining that they were delivered to neighborhoods heavily populated by minority families living in small houses around a common courtyard, Dean [assistant director of communications for COP’s Peshawar diocese] said that the letters probably reached more than 100 Christians and Hindus.

A separate letter mailed to COP diocesan priest Joseph John threatened suicide attacks against churches...

Christian leaders immediately informed local police about the threats, prompting a meeting with City Police Chief Abdul Majeed Marwat on August 10. “The security in their areas has been beefed up around churches and other places of worship,” Marwat told Compass yesterday....

A Christian politician also brought the letter to the national government’s attention on Friday....“The speaker [of the house] took the matter very lightly and asked [Pervaiz Masih] to remind him about it in the presence of the interior minister,”

While some Christian sources told Compass that Peshawar police had done a good job providing security, others were hesitant to speak openly on the telephone for fear that their criticism would draw police anger.

“It’s just a hoax, I presume,” said Police Chief Marwat, explaining that a similar incident in May had turned out to be a teenage prank....

When asked why Christians did not pursue a court case against the Muslim youths, Dean said that their faith placed emphasis on reconciliation and that a court case could have backfired. “If we had been harsh, things would have escalated and gone against our interests,” said Dean. The cryptic comment reflects years of violent (though often isolated) incidents against Christians in Pakistan.

In November 2005, a mob of several thousand Muslims destroyed four churches, a convent and Christian schools in the Punjabi town of Sangla Hill after a Muslim accused a Christian of committing blasphemy. No one was held responsible for the attacks.

“We have experience of our [Christian neighborhoods] being attacked by extremists, so we took this very seriously,” Dean commented.

While there supposedly is no compulsion in religion and Christians and Jews have special status as people of the Book, these minority Christians and Hindus are being threatened to convert or die. As Christians have been attacked before with impunity, they are understandably wary even though the deadline has passed. Perhaps they're concerned that once police protection is lifted, they'll be harmed?

Also, can you imagine anyone in the U.S. fearing reprisals for complaining about the police? Complaining about authorities is practically a way of life for us.

h/t: Jihad Watch

Til Death Do Us Part

Mr. Venger used to tease about taking a second wife, funny not in a close to the truth sort of way, but because it was preposterous. I would retort that that would be a bad idea because this would be the result:

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — A woman killed her longtime husband hours before he was to leave on a trip to Morocco to try to impregnate his new second wife, prosecutors said in murder charges filed Thursday.

Myra Morton, 47, turned herself in Thursday to face murder and related charges in the death of Jereleigh Morton, 47, who was shot in his bed early Sunday morning in his million-dollar home outside Philadelphia.
Source

In seriousness, in the U.S. women have rights and legal recourse. She should have divorced him. Now she will probably spend the rest of her life in prison. We never have the right to take a life like that. On the other hand, I can't imagine this guy was worth going to prison for. I'm still wondering if there were mitigating circumstances.

While U.S. law forbids more than one spouse (for now), that didn't stop Jereleigh Morton from taking a second wife in another country. It seems likely that he was trying to bring her here:

Shortly after her husband married Toural, Myra Morton sent a letter to the U.S.
State Department in which she said her husband was trying to bring Toural over
on a tourist visa. She urged the government to keep Toural out of the United
States, going so far as to accuse the other woman of having connections to
terrorists.

This should be an interesting court case.