An update on this story. "Nigeria: Court to hear child-bride case," by Bashir Adigun for the Associated Press, June 4:

ABUJA, Nigeria -- A Nigerian federal court will hear a case over whether the West African nation's religious freedom and privacy laws allow a Muslim senator to marry a 13-year-old girl, the latest rift in a country split between Christians and Muslims.

The lawsuit filed by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria on behalf of Senator Ahmad Sani Yerima challenges the country's child protection laws that ban women from marrying before age 18. The suit, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, claims that Yerima's constitutional rights are being trampled over the controversy surrounding his alleged marriage to a 13-year-old Egyptian girl.

It's a common ploy the world over in courtroom jihad: pleading in the name of constitutional rights to advance an agenda that would trample those rights if given the chance.

"The Nigerian constitution guarantees and protects the privacy of any citizen (and) his family member ... against invasion, intrusion and interference," the lawsuit reads.

The suit names the government's National Human Rights Commission, the Senate president and the speaker of the house as defendants. The Human Rights Commission has urged the police to investigate Yerima, while both chambers of the National Assembly have called for their own investigations.

Human rights groups say the 49-year-old lawmaker married the girl at the National Mosque in Abuja after paying her family a $100,000 dowry. Under child protection laws enforceable in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, a woman must be 18 before being able to consent to marriage. However, those laws aren't enacted in all of Nigeria's 36 states and activists say child brides have been married off in Muslim communities after their first period.

It also isn't the first time Yerima has apparently married a child. The rights commission alleges he married a 15-year-old girl, only to divorce the young mother at 17.

Yerima himself appears unrepentant in recent interviews, though he has declined to say how old his new wife is. He told the BBC's Hausa language service in April that he considers "God's law and that of his prophet above any other law."...

And, he observes, Muhammad also married a child.

One can only trust the apologists are burning up the phone lines trying to reach him and tell him Aisha was actually older, and that the account given Sahih Bukhari, for example, is a bunch of hooey taken out of context by cheeky Islamophobes.

Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh), June 01:In an alleged attempted "honour killing", a man poured acid on his daughter and threw her into a canal for planning to marry a man from another religion Tuesday, police said. The girl is in critical condition in hospital.

Gulistan, 18, daughter of Asghar Ali of Charaura village in Bulandshahr district, 350 km from Lucknow, fell in love with Ravinder, 20, who ran a medical store in the village and often came to their house to deliver medicines.

The couple eloped 10 days back but were traced to Delhi and Gulistan was taken back to the village. Her parents then pretended that they had agreed to let her marry Ravinder and asked her to come with them to Delhi to buy clothes for the marriage.

War Is Deceit, after all. And make no mistake: as far as this family is concerned, this is war.

The girl left with her father and brother. When they reached near the upper Ganges canal on Grand Trunk Road, they stopped and dragged her out. First they poured acid on her face, strangulated her and then threw her in the canal. Assuming that she had died, they left the place.

However, Gulistan revived in the water and shouted for help. Some local boys of nearby villages, playing there, rescued her and informed police, who admitted her to hospital.

Asghar has been arrested and a search is on for his son, Superintendent of Police (City) J.K. Sahi said.

"On the spot from where the girl was rescued, she said her father was annoyed over her love affair with the local Hindu boy but when her statement was recorded before the magistrate in the hospital, she shifted from her original statement made before the police and said after getting angry at her father's objection, she poured the acid on herself," Sahi said.

It seemed she was trying to mislead police with her declaration, he added....

No kidding, really? And why might she be interested in doing that?

An Asian man whose marriage breakdown allegedly led to the murders of his parents and sister may have split up with his wife because he had a love-child with a secret girlfriend.

Kamar Mahmood separated from his wife Nabeela after being married for nine years.

It is understood that the shame of the couple's split - and the news that Mr Mahmood had allegedly cheated on his wife with a white, blonde girl - outraged Nabeela's family so much that they decided to take revenge.

Nabeela's three brothers and two other men are accused of shooting dead Mr Mahmood's father Mohammad Yusaf, 51, his mother Pervaze, 49, and sister Tania, 22, who were in Pakistan for the marriage of their youngest son, Asad, 24.

The victims were sprayed with bullets as they prayed at a relative's graveside in a village in Gujrat province....

Inspector Meraj Baig, a Gujrat officer investigating the murders, said: 'His wife found out he was involved with a British girl and that he was preparing to marry her. She told his parents and other family members and then her own brothers, who were furious.

There were quarrels between the two families and, ultimately, it is alleged, it led to murder.'...

In FrontPage this morning I discuss the letter to the editor recently written by the Muslim girl who endorsed genocide:

Questioned by David Horowitz, Jumanah Albahri, a Muslim student (and Muslim Student Association member) at the University of California at San Diego, recently endorsed a new genocide of Jews - thereby giving voice to the real agenda behind the land-for-peace rhetoric that Palestinian spokesmen generally retail in America. Aware of the enormity of what she had admitted, Albahri tried to quell the controversy by issuing a statement full of evasions, half-truths, and claims that she was the true victim. Now she has compounded that with a letter to the UCSD student newspaper, the Guardian, complaining about biased press coverage!

Whatever else you can say about Jumanah Albahri, you've got to admit she's got chutzpah.

The new letter is a tour de force of self-righteous victimhood, demonstrating that Albahri has been a dutiful and attentive student of her Islamic supremacist and Leftist mentors, since both camps make such liberal use of this tactic. She begins with a double ad hominem, as the girl who endorsed genocide of the Jews complained that the Guardian's "abysmal coverage of Justice in Palestine Week and the Horowitz fiasco reeks of Hearstian and Horowitzian journalism."

Hearstian, i.e., yellow journalism a la William Randolph Hearst. Horowitzian, as in David Horowitz, the man who exposed her as a proponent of organized mass murder. Jumanah would have us believe that the real villain is Horowitz, whom we are to see as an irresponsible yellow journalist, not the girl who endorsed genocide. For Jumanah herself is a poor victim of biased reporting: she complains that the Guardian didn't quote her statement that purports to clarify her pro-genocide remarks: "My opinion of Hamas is not as simple as condemn or condone, for it or against it. I firmly believe that the killing of civilians, even as collateral damage regardless of creed, politics, sexuality, nationality or ethnicity is one of the highest crimes in the eyes of God and is morally reprehensible and abhorrent."

High-sounding words, but empty ones without an explicit avowal that Jumanah Albahri includes Israeli civilians in her definition of civilian. For many jihadists have declared that there are no civilians in Israel, and that consequently every Israeli citizen was a military target. Jumanah Albahri is probably aware of this, since it is not a fringe view among supporters of the Palestinian cause, and so she could have done her own cause a favor by spelling this out - unless, of course, she preferred to leave it ambiguous....

Read it all.

Questioned by David Horowitz, Jumanah Albahri, a Muslim student (and Muslim Student Association member) at the University of California at San Diego, recently endorsed a new genocide of Jews – thereby giving voice to the real agenda behind the land-for-peace rhetoric that Palestinian spokesmen generally retail in America. Aware of the enormity of what she had admitted, Albahri tried to quell the controversy by issuing a statement full of evasions, half-truths, and claims that she was the true victim. Now she has compounded that with a letter to the UCSD student newspaper, the Guardian, complaining about biased press coverage!

Whatever else you can say about Jumanah Albahri, you’ve got to admit she’s got chutzpah.

The new letter is a tour de force of self-righteous victimhood, demonstrating that Albahri has been a dutiful and attentive student of her Islamic supremacist and Leftist mentors, since both camps make such liberal use of this tactic. She begins with a double ad hominem, as the girl who endorsed genocide of the Jews complained that the Guardian’s “abysmal coverage of Justice in Palestine Week and the Horowitz fiasco reeks of Hearstian and Horowitzian journalism.”

Hearstian, i.e., yellow journalism a la William Randolph Hearst. Horowitzian, as in David Horowitz, the man who exposed her as a proponent of organized mass murder. Jumanah would have us believe that the real villain is Horowitz, whom we are to see as an irresponsible yellow journalist, not the girl who endorsed genocide. For Jumanah herself is a poor victim of biased reporting: she complains that the Guardian didn’t quote her statement that purports to clarify her pro-genocide remarks: “My opinion of Hamas is not as simple as condemn or condone, for it or against it. I firmly believe that the killing of civilians, even as collateral damage regardless of creed, politics, sexuality, nationality or ethnicity is one of the highest crimes in the eyes of God and is morally reprehensible and abhorrent.”

High-sounding words, but empty ones without an explicit avowal that Jumanah Albahri includes Israeli civilians in her definition of civilian. For many jihadists have declared that there are no civilians in Israel, and that consequently every Israeli citizen was a military target. Jumanah Albahri is probably aware of this, since it is not a fringe view among supporters of the Palestinian cause, and so she could have done her own cause a favor by spelling this out – unless, of course, she preferred to leave it ambiguous.

Albahri then goes on to make a claim about Hamas that is flatly false: “Hamas,” she says, “(regardless of its designation as a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S.) is neither genocidal nor Holocaust-denying.” Yet Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV in 2008 featured a Muslim cleric, Sa‘d Abu Jleidan, saying that the jihad against the Jews would continue “until their annihilation.” She claims that Hamas “calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state where people of all religions can coexist in peace” – yet the Hamas Charter contains an epigraph from the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Albahri doesn’t mention that the Jews that would remain in the Palestinian state that Hamas envisions would not be equal citizens, but subjugated dhimmis, in accord with classic strictures of Islamic law that Hamas spokesmen have spoken about wanting to revive.

The Jumanah turns on David Horowitz with more empty ad hominens, claiming that he was “not invited to present any argument or engage in constructive dialogue — rather, he was brought because of his reputation for racism and hatemongering against Arabs and Muslims.” And the primary victim of this racism and hatemongering? Why, Jumanah Imad Albahri herself, of course: “If anyone can claim alienation or marginalization, it’s me. For the university to allow him to set foot on my campus using my student fees is a slap in my face and a slap in the face of all other non-Jewish minorities on this campus. Need more proof? Google this article: ‘Guns Don’t Kill Black People, Other Blacks Do.’ Tell me: Who needs to apologize now?”

Uh, that would still be the girl who endorsed genocide, Jumanah.

But no, for her it is all the fault of the Jewish-controlled media, that ever-present invention of Nazi and Palestinian paranoia: “The voices of the Palestinian people have been silenced by the mainstream media for too long,” Jumanah asserts, “and I refuse to silence my own voice to appease the twisted politics of the pro-Israel communities on and off campus.”

Clearly Jumanah Albahri’s voice is not silenced. The more she talks, however, the more her allies and supporters may wish it were.

Jenn Q. Public and Lori Ziganto appeared on the Smart Girl Report to discuss the Feminist Hawks’ Nest.

Fantasy, yes, but ultimately a murderous, genocidal fantasy. "PA TV again to children: All Israel is 'Palestine,'" by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik for Palestinian Media Watch, May 18:

During this week's PA TV children's program Katakit ("Chicks") the children in the studio told of their visits to places in Israel - Jaffa, Haifa and the Sea of Galilee. However, following the common PA teaching, Israel's existence was not mentioned and the PA TV host included those places as all being part of the "state, Palestine."

The PA TV studio displays a large map of "Palestine" that includes all of Israel. On the map are the words in English: "Explore Your Country," and in Arabic: "My country is so beautiful." The program is broadcast twice weekly.

The transcript of PA TV presenting Israel as "Palestine":
Host: "Do you enjoy going on trips? So show me where you've been on the map of Palestine."
Children approach the map in the studio on which all of Israel is "Palestine."
Girl points to places on map: "We went to the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret, lake in Israel) and to the Dead Sea."
Boy points on map: "Jaffa, Haifa." (Israeli cities)
Girl: "And Jericho."
Boy: "And Jenin and Nablus."
Host: "So you've visited many different places in Palestine, and that's very good. It's very good that we're always visiting new places in our state, Palestine."
[PA TV (Fatah), May 16, 2010]...

Lastly, and most importantly, there are those four words of the Hippocratic oath that the American Academy of Pediatrics seems to have forgotten: First do no harm. And if it is supposed to be harmless, let the AAP doctors line up forthwith for their own "ritualized nick."

"'Compromise' on Female Circumcision Ignites Debate," by Katie Drummond for AOL News, May 10 (thanks to DJM):

(May 7) -- The American Academy of Pediatrics has moderated its policy on female circumcision -- a decision that quickly spurred widespread denunciation from advocacy groups and government officials.

The academy's committee on bioethics released a new position paper last week, suggesting that doctors perform a "ritual nick" to prevent families from going overseas for full circumcision procedures.

Right now, federal law in the United States prevents "any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals" of females.

The position statement describes the nick as "a compromise" that could limit the number of young girls forced to endure female genital mutilation in their family's native country.

An estimated 100 million to 140 million girls and women in 28 countries have experienced female genital mutilation, according to the World Health Organization. In Africa, 3 million girls are still operated on each year.

In the U.S, the change to the American Academy of Pediatrics' stance occurred just as a members of Congress proposed a bill that would make traveling overseas for the procedure illegal.

"I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether FGM is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls," Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., who proposed the bill, said in a statement....

"Investigation into Nigerian senator's 'child bride'," from BBC News, April 28:

Nigeria's Senate has ordered an investigation into reports that one of its members has married a 13-year-old Egyptian girl.

Ahmad Sani Yerima, 49, is alleged to have married her at the national mosque in Abuja several weeks ago.

Senators called for the investigation after receiving a petition by protesting women's groups, who believe Mr Sani has broken the law.

The senator has not spoken publicly about the reports of his marriage.

The BBC's Caroline Duffield, in Lagos, says Nigeria's human rights commission has already begun an investigation.

Mr Sani was the governor of Zamfara state, where he oversaw the introduction of Sharia law - for the first time in a northern state - in 1999.

Legal action

Our correspondent says reports of the marriage - appearing in newspapers - are creating a storm among human rights groups.

The female senators, lawyers and doctors who are protesting say that they fear for the child's health.

Speaking of her health, as she came from Egypt, chances are all too high that she has also already undergone female genital mutilation.

"What we are concerned with is that our minors, the girl child, should be allowed to mature, before going into marriage," Mma Wokocha, President of the Women's Medical Association and one of those behind the petition, told the BBC.

"This very evil act should not be seen to be perpetrated by one of our distinguished legislators ... that is what we are saying.''

The senator is reported to have paid a dowry of $100,000 (£66,000) to the child's parents - and to have brought the girl into Nigeria from Egypt.

The women's groups want Mr Sani to be taken to court, to face a fine and a jail sentence.

Our reporter says the whereabouts of the teenager are unknown - and it is not clear whether she has any parent or guardian with her.

Newspaper reports have also accused the senator of having previously married a 15-year-old girl in 2006.

The investigation is to be carried out by a Senate committee.

I know. I had forgotten that show was still on the air, too. Well, I suppose even Michael Moore needs a show to appear on where he is actually slightly more attractive than the host. Anyway, Larry “I literally am older than dirt” King is at it again. Not content with just exposing his serial cheating this week, he also had to expose his creepy and sexist tendencies.

Larry “I do Remember the Maine” King had Sarah Silverman on his CNN show the other night when the subject of Sarah Palin came up. Oh yeah, the subject didn’t just organically pop up either. That doesn’t happen with Larry any longer; he needs pills for that now. (Video after the jump)

Ah, can’t you just bask in their tolerant, enlightened, progressive glory? His producers urged him to ask the question. Purposefully. Why? For what fathomable reason? Is Sarah Silverman suddenly some policy wonk? In what world? Wait, I suppose the same world that results in the election of Al “Stuart Smalley” Franken to Senator. Sigh. In any event, they clearly were hoping for a Sarah Palin bash and they got it. Via newsbusters:

LARRY KING, HOST: We can’t leave without asking you, my producers say I must ask you. Sarah Palin, what do you think? Sarah Palin? I got to say her name because we have to say it every night.

Sarah Palin. What do you say?

SARAH SILVERMAN: Oh, about what? Her posing in “Playboy”? I think she should go for it.

KING: Agreed. Thank you, Sarah.

SILVERMAN: Thank you.

My goodness, are they obsessed with her or what? They have to mention her every night, says Larry! It’s like a bunch of mean high school girls sitting around every night scrawling frantically in their slam books because the smart, popular girl is, you know, smart and popular. Instead of bitter and miserable like they are. In Larry’s case, his constant and obsessive bashing of Sarah Palin seems to be a case of the old being a meany pants to the girl you really like-like.

She should be in Playboy. Huh. The trampy meme seems to be especially popular with the Left, especially when it comes to attractive Conservatives, and even their children, as David Letterman so hatefully and disgustingly proved not too long ago. Where is the outrage from the Faux-Feminists (Femogynists)? What if someone suggested that Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter (and her dead sister’s teeth) should pose for Playboy? I know; I couldn’t even keep a straight face whilst typing that. But, you get the point. It’s okay to be misogynistic and sexist, as long as the woman isn’t the “the right kind” of woman.

Palin is the popular, pretty girl who doesn’t fit the liberals’ ideological agenda nor their idea of what a woman should be. I mean, she got pregnant and chose not to abort! She managed to have a career and children! While they claim they want women to “have it all”, that has been exposed as utter lip service. They actually believe that there is a conflict between motherhood and self-fulfillment. As such, they become insane with jealousy and rage when a successful, conservative mother proves them wrong.

Since I am a true feminist, unlike the modern day self-proclaimed ones, I’ll speak out against Larry King:

Dear Larry King: Please, stop talking. Now. You are dirty old man creepy. You are a bitter, sexist man and you have gone from irrelevant hack to utterly revolting in one fell swoop. Try working on yourself before sneering at others.

You’re welcome.

—–

Follow Lori  on Twitter and read more of her work at Snark and Boobs, iOwntheWorld , Right Wing News and Red State.

Islamabad - A Hindu girl from Punjab province was kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam and is currently being held in a madrassa, leading Pakistani rights activist Ansar Burney said today.

Burney said his rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Trust International, had learnt that 15-year-old Gajri, the daughter of Mengha Ram, was abducted by a Muslim neighbour from her home at Katchi Mandi, Liaquatpur, in Rahim Yar Khan district on December 21, 2009.

Gajri's parents later found out that she was being held captive in a madrassa or seminary in southern Punjab and that she had been married and converted to Islam, Burney said.

The local administration is "refusing to respond to the abduction" of the girl, who is not being allowed to leave the madrassa or to speak to her parents, he said.

Burney, a former human rights minister, condemned the forceful conversion of the Hindu girl and demanded her immediate release.

"Pakistan is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which oblige authorities to protect religious minorities under international law," he said.

According to Ansar Burney Trust, on 21 December 2009 Gajri disappeared from the home of her Hindu parents in southern Punjab.

On December 26 last year, the local police station in Gajri's hometown received a letter with an affidavit from madrassa that said she had "embraced Islam and had married her neighbour Mohammad Salim", Burney said.

The letter did not enclose a marriage certificate, he said.

Police did not immediately inform Gajri's parents about the letter even though they had tried to file a First Information Report after she had gone missing.

The parents were discouraged from doing so by police, Burney said....

Kabul, 21 April (AKI) - At least 12 female students were hospitalised in Afghanistan on Wednesday after inhaling a poisonous substance sprayed at a school in northern Afghanistan.

The 12 students of the Fatima Zahra Girl School, and a teacher and an assistant were mysteriously poisoned, Hamayon Khamush, director of the hospital in Kunduz city, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The Taliban's strict form of fundamentalist Islam prohibits girls from attending school.

To defend their ideology, Taliban militants have attacked girl students with gas and acid.

In May last year 90 girls were hospitalised in Kapisa province, north-east of the capital, after someone sprayed toxic chemicals in the classroom.

A similar gas attack reportedly took place on Tuesday in Shina, a suburb of Kabul, where over a dozen girl students had to be sent to hospital after exhibiting symptoms of poisoning.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is David Kupelian, award-winning journalist and managing editor of online news giant WorldNetDaily.com as well as its popular monthly newsmagazine, Whistleblower. A widely read online columnist, he is also the author of the bestselling culture-war classic, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom, now in its eleventh printing. His new book, released in February by Simon & Schuster, is How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America.

FP: David Kupelian, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s start by talking about the Stockholm syndrome that, as you discuss in your book, is affecting the West right now in its confrontation with Islamic Jihad. Give us your perspective.

Kupelian: Jamie, thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to talk about “How Evil Works.” In Chapter 3, “How Terrorism Really Works,” I use the Stockholm syndrome to explain the inexplicable level of weakness and appeasement we continually see in the West toward Islam – for instance, in our disastrous failure to stop Nidal Malik Hasan before he shot dozens of people at Fort Hood, killing 13, even though we knew full well he was a jihadist time bomb waiting to explode.

Everyone’s heard of the Stockholm syndrome, named after the Swedish bank robbery when two escaped convicts terrorized four hostages in a bank vault for five and a half days, during which time the hostages grew increasingly sympathetic toward their captors and antagonistic toward the police who were risking their lives to rescue them. The hostages, who had been tied to chairs, had nooses around their necks and guns trained on them day after day, ended up siding with their captors wholeheartedly, later raising money for their defense and refusing to testify against them at trial.

The syndrome, which law enforcement psychologists recognized long before it had a name, is pretty simple: When we’re seriously intimidated, in a life-threatening way, some of us start to side with whomever or whatever is intimidating us. I don’t mean just cooperating and “agreeing” with a captor as a survival strategy, which makes perfect sense. Extreme intimidation has a way of sometimes flipping our sympathy and loyalty in favor of the people doing the intimidating. In the news business, we see this in high-profile cases like Patricia Hearst, Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard.

Radical Islam is extremely intimidating – by design. The more crazy it acts, the more powerful it becomes. Just a few weeks ago, in Nigeria, Muslim gangs slaughtered 500 Christians, including many children and pregnant women and old people – hacked them to death with machetes. Islam has spread in this way – “at the point of a sword” – for centuries. As I write in “How Evil Works,” I personally lost many family members, perhaps over 100, in the genocide of the Christian Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks. I tell one story in which my great grandfather, a Protestant minister, was martyred, along with 60 or 70 other clergymen and their wives, in Adana, Turkey, because they refused to convert on the spot to Islam. This is how it spreads, by traumatizing people. Many, just to survive, join the religion.

So the murderous Islamic tantrums we keep hearing about have a certain dark logic to them, in terms of enabling the spread of Islam. Remember the Danish Muhammad cartoons, which resulted in over 50 deaths? Or when Newsweek reported (incorrectly) that someone at Gitmo flushed a Quran down the toilet, which led to at least 15 deaths? Or the Miss World contest in Nigeria, when a single comment by a newspaper columnist about the beauty of contestants led to insane Muslim rioting in which rioters massacred over 200 people with machetes, or beat them to death or burned them alive – all because of a single sentence a newspaper columnist wrote, which wasn’t even offensive?

How do we respond to these outrageously demented and murderous tantrums? We refer to terrorist acts as “man-caused disasters.” We proclaim Islam as a “religion of peace.” Burger King recalls thousands of its ice cream cones because someone thought the ice cream swirl logo looked too much like the way the word “Allah” is written in Arabic and was therefore sacrilegious. “The 3 Little Pigs” is repeatedly censored in Britain so as not to offend Muslims, who don’t like pigs. In the U.S. we have a middle school curriculum that requires our children to dress up in Islamic garb, take on a Muslim name, memorize verses of the Quran and play so-called “jihad games.” Imagine trying that in today’s public schools with the Christian religion!

America, Europe and Britain today, in the way they deal with radical Islam and the terror threat, reveal something very akin to a low-grade, widespread Stockholm syndrome.

Bottom line, we don’t want to offend Muslims. Why? Because we’re afraid of them. We’re not afraid of Christians or Jews, because Christians and Jews don’t have tantrums and burn down other religions’ houses of worship and cut of people’s heads and commit terrorist acts. Radical Muslims do. We’re so afraid that, even after the Fort Hood attack, the Pentagon, in its 86-page postmortem report analyzing the event, did not see fit to mention the word “Muslim,” “Islam” or “jihad.” This is reminiscent of the “Harry Potter” stories, where everyone is so spooked by the villain Voldemort that they are afraid even to utter his name.

Ironically, people in the grip of jihadist fervor have nothing but contempt for our weakness and appeasement, which actually encourages more violence. Their madness is neutralized only by strength. Ronald Reagan knew this, which is why his watchword was “Peace through strength.”

FP: David, you mention how just recently, in Nigeria, Muslim gangs slaughtered 500 Christians, including many children and pregnant women and old people. Everyone has heard about the “Christian militia” that was just arrested in Michigan (casualties, which seem to be at the number of zero, are still to be numbered or named). How come the slaughter in Nigeria, which took 500 lives, is not in the news and no one has heard about it?

Kupelian: The Obama propaganda ministry – aka the “mainstream press” – is always looking to reinforce the largely phony narrative that “homegrown terrorism” on the right is a major danger to American civilization. Hence the saturation coverage of the “Christian militia” group. The “rightwing terrorism” narrative is necessary for justifying the left’s attacks on normal, hard-working, tea-partying Americans – evident in the growing allegations that speaking  honestly about the leftist coup in Washington is “hate speech,” that those opposing Obama are racists, and that tea partiers are one step away from violence.

On the other hand, dwelling on Muslims’ blood-lust and widespread massacring of Christians in foreign lands supports the “wrong” narrative (from the media’s point of view) – namely, that Islam is not a religion of peace after all, hasn’t been one for the last 14 centuries and shows no signs of starting. Thus, the murders of 500 innocent people are reported perfunctorily, if at all, and then dropped. The mainstream media are just not interested.

FP: You say that, “Bottom line, we don’t want to offend Muslims. Why? Because we’re afraid of them.” Absolutely, we have a pathetic talk show host on the CBC up here in Canada, George Stroumboulopoulos, who makes constant jokes about Jesus, yet you will never hear him make one joke about the “Prophet” Mohammed.

Fear, as you state, is definitely a factor. But let’s move a bit further and deeper. I’ve made a life-time study of these people and we know that in the world of the Left, it is unimaginable to criticize an adversary culture or religion, and that it is very chic to slander anything connected to the Judeo-Christian tradition. To poke fun at Islam would threaten these peoples’ whole identity, world vision and social life. Can you comment on this a bit?

Kupelian: For one thing, the Left’s very identity and sense of righteousness are tied up in hating America for all its supposed wrongs, arrogance, injustices, exploitations and wars of oppression. And since, as we all know, “the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” cultures that hate and revile America are therefore respected and even admired by the Left, which also hates America. This is one reason Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court; he secretly – maybe  unconsciously – has a certain amount of sympathy for the 9/11 mastermind. The logic of this is straightforward and incontrovertible: KSM hates and blames America, and because leftists like Holder also hate and blame America, leftists “understand” and even sympathize on some level with terrorists, no matter how despicable their crimes.

FP: Tell us a bit about how people who want to manipulate us often use crises to do so. Explain how this is connected to what Obama and his administration are up to.

Kupelian: As all skilled manipulators know, the easiest and surest way to exert control over people is to get them to react emotionally to you. One way to get people to do what they wouldn’t ordinarily do is to create a phony crisis for them to overreact to.

For instance, in “How Evil Works” I cite a child-abduction case in which a little girl was approached after school by a man she didn’t know. He claimed her house was burning down, that her parents were busy putting out the fire, and that he was a friend of the parents who had asked him to pick up their daughter and take her to them. The crisis – and the emotional upset the girl experienced over the thought of her house being on fire and her parents in danger – drowned out her normal caution about getting into a car with a stranger. Result: The stranger, a predator who had concocted the lie for the sole purpose of upsetting and tricking the girl into going with him, murdered the little girl. This same routine was portrayed in the film “Changeling” starring Angelina Jolie, a true story that involved a serial child murderer who enticed youngsters into his car using this exact “your-house-is-on-fire” ruse.

As I explain in Chapter 1, “Why We Elect Liars as Leaders,” manufactured crisis is the primary modus operandi of the Obama administration. After all, how else could a far-left administration lead a center-right country in such a terrible direction without big-time deception and subterfuge – which is accomplished handily by constantly creating bogeyman crises? For instance:

* We heard for 14 months that our healthcare system is desperately broken. In reality, it’s the finest healthcare system in world history. If you’re an illegal alien child molester and you get sick or injured and go to a public hospital, you will, by law, be taken care of whether or not you can pay. That’s not a broken system. And as for the relatively small number of Americans who truly can’t afford health insurance, our government has always been good at creating safety nets. But that was not the intent of Obamacare, which conspicuously bypassed all sensible, market-based reforms – like litigation reform and allowing intrastate purchase of insurance – that would lower costs without degrading quality of care.

* Until wave after wave of scandalous fraud revelations proved the global warming “consensus” was a giant hoax, America was poised to pass “cap-and-trade” legislation which would institute massive and ruinous levels of wealth redistribution – which was the object all along. The administration is now regrouping and re-strategizing how best to force this abomination down Americans’ throats, as they did with Obamacare.

* We’ve been told throughout the age of Obama that America will plunge into hopeless depression if government doesn’t spend trillions and take over entire sectors of the economy. In reality, massive government and Federal Reserve intervention has always worsened and prolonged economic downturns, not solved them.

* Here’s one most people don’t know about: Last May, just a few days before the World Health Organization classified swine flu as a phase 6 pandemic – the highest, scariest category – the WHO quietly redefined pandemic to eliminate the phrase “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” and substituted wording that said pandemics “can be either mild or severe in the illness and death they cause.” You see, the WHO grows in power and lots of money starts to flow when a phase 6 pandemic is declared. The White House, never one to let a good crisis go to waste, issued a press release saying up to 90,000 Americans would likely die from swine flu. The next day, the head of the CDC, Dr. Thomas Frieden, told Americans to ignore the White House’s wild fear-mongering, saying “Everything we’ve seen in the U.S. and everything we’ve seen around the world suggests we won’t see that kind of number if the virus doesn’t change.”

Fundamentally, the whole leftist obsession with power – which promotes ever-increasing dependency of people on government – is, in and of itself, a huge crisis machine. Normal competent adults are able to take care of themselves and their families through their own efforts and through voluntary cooperation with other free individuals. That’s America. If you’re an adult who can’t take care of your own life, that’s a crisis – and this is the state leftists want us to be in, to be dependent on them since that’s the basis for their growth in power. So socialism not only requires crisis to become established, its very existence is a state of perpetual crisis for free people.

FP: You refer to the “whole leftist obsession with power” in passing. Not everyone might know what you mean. In my own research and study, I know this reality in terms of how the Left lives vicariously through supporting communist dictators like Fidel Castro through what is called “negative affirmation.” But that is another matter (a bit). I know our themes are connected, so can you expand a bit on what you mean?

Kupelian: Whole people – that is, people who are internally connected to conscience, to common sense, to God, however you want to put it, and who therefore possess a certain natural reverence for other souls and their autonomy – are not attracted to obtaining power over other people.

But people who have become twisted in certain ways – maybe they had a crummy childhood, or were brainwashed in college into embracing some toxic ideology, or simply are really resentful or envious or insecure – sometimes develop a compulsion to control others.

Imagine that you just met someone for the first time, and discovered that this person considered himself or herself far superior to others, above the need to be truthful, above the law, willing to break the law, and was arrogant and defiant at every turn. And that furthermore, this person harbored an overwhelming urge to control you, take what’s yours, and exercise power over you. You might understandably conclude this person is not only dangerous, but likely a criminal and/or mentally ill. That’s who we have running the country right now – the inmates are truly running the asylum.

These are very sick people we’re talking about: They thrive on crippling others, because the more dysfunctional people there are in the general population, the greater their power. More competent, mature, self-sufficient grownups translate into less power for them, which is why they disdain and malign the tea partiers and other normal, hard-working, tax-paying, independent Americans.

For the very egotistical, deluded person, power is like alcoholism. People like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are drunk – on power. They don’t think, feel, reason or act in a normal way; they’re in an altered state of consciousness. As we say, “power corrupts,” and the more power we give them, the more absolute that corruption becomes.

Also, we need to remember that leftist politicians by definition believe the purpose of government is to ensure, by force, that wealth is evenly distributed. Thus, they look at us like we’re farm animals and they’re the farmers. When some of us have “too much food” and others “don’t have enough,” they come in and take it from us, and scold us for “hording” all that food we don’t need, and give it to the poor, righteous animals with not enough food. The problem is, we’re not animals and we don’t belong to them.

FP: How come the West has such a difficult time understanding the conflict we are in? This has much to do with, as is the subject of your work, the difficulty we have in understanding evil. Illuminate this phenomenon for us.

Kupelian: In the past 60 years, America as a whole has been conned into abandoning the core Judeo-Christian values that have provided the moral foundation of Western civilization for millennia, and of American civilization for centuries. The fundamental principles of life that previously gave our existence meaning and kept our society unified, safe and strong – belief in God, belief that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount were the basis for a good life and a great society, recognition of the sanctity of life (which means you don’t kill babies before they’re born or old people when their care gets too expensive), belief that sex is sacred and reserved for marriage, and so on – have been discarded like yesterday’s newspaper.

If we don’t understand that we are created by God and that we live in a moral dimension in which we constantly can choose between good or evil, and that things go really badly when we choose the wrong way – if we don’t recognize this basic reality level of our lives, then it’s very difficult to understand evil, or to understand ourselves for that matter.

FP: You refer to the Sermon on the Mount as being the basis for a good life. I always found that one of the most moving parts of the New Testament, but I always saw it mostly as a promise for the next life (i.e. your reward will be great in heaven). Can you expand a bit on what you mean in terms of it being a basis for a good life on earth?

Kupelian: The beatitudes (“Blessed are the …”) describe the kind of attitude toward life that leads to genuine happiness or “blessedness” – including the admonition to “let your light shine before men” (which includes speaking the truth even if it’s unpopular) but also to forgive people who attack you for speaking the truth (“Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely”). That’s very reassuring and strengthening.

A lot of what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount is practical, for the here and now: He talks about hate and lust and divorce, and how we need to rise above these things. Some of the most transcendent truths that have infused traditional Judeo-Christian culture derive from the Sermon on the Mount, including The Lord’s Prayer; the admonition to “Seek first the kingdom of God” (and all else will be added); the warning to “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves”; the truth that “a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,” and so on. Wisdom for living.

FP: Your book deals with the war that is being waged on men and on masculinity in our society. Why is this happening and what are its consequences?

Kupelian: In schools today, boys are doing worse than girls by every measure. The vast majority of children with discipline problems, learning disabilities, behavioral disorders, who are put on Ritalin or who drop out of school – 70 to 80 percent – are boys. Three out of five college students today are young women.

As boys grow up and get married, two thirds of divorces are initiated by the wives – and it is the wives that almost always get the children during custody proceedings, since the entire family court system is notoriously biased against men.

In popular culture, virtually every TV commercial portrays men as idiotic and women as smarter and hipper. Same with sitcoms, and with animated comedies like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy.” The dad is always the doofus. What happened to “Father Knows Best”?

In Chapter 8 of “How Evil Works,” titled “The War on Fathers,” I document how, as an outgrowth of the radical feminist movement of the sixties, today men, boys and masculinity itself are under attack. Our leftist academia harbors a major movement that is so offended by masculinity that it holds workshops on how to “transform” boys, eliminating their aggressiveness, competitiveness and maleness!

Remember the radical feminists of the sixties, with their angry denunciations of marriage as “legalized rape” and “slavery for women”? Just as the sixties political radicals are today running the American government, culturally the sixties’ radical feminist hatred of Christianity and the traditional patriarchy that goes with it has infected today’s culture. It manifests as a compulsion to ridicule, diminish and have contempt for men. You can see it everywhere.

There is, of course, also a “practical” governmental motivation for breaking up marriages: Tyranny always works better when families are in crisis. Intact, functional families constitute their own universe, one with powerful internal loyalties and transcendent values that compete and sometimes clash with those of despotic government, which therefore strives to separate fathers from their families. In 1918, right after the Russian revolution, Vladimir Lenin passed a radical no-fault divorce law. Realizing that to maintain control of the people the Russian family had to be destroyed, Lenin passed a law whereby you could divorce your spouse simply by mailing or delivering a postcard to the local register without even notifying the spouse being divorced!

FP: Final thoughts?

Kupelian: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident who exposed the evils of the gulag system to the world, once wrote: “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.’”

Decades later, Solzhenitsyn said that in trying to explain the totalitarian horrors that permeated the 20th century – which he himself endured – he could not improve on the explanation he had heard as a child: “Men have forgotten God.”

FP: David Kupelian, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

I have to tell our readers that How Evil Works is a brilliant book. Buy it!!!!

An 11-year-old Yemeni girl who was was married to a man in country's Hajja province was hospitalized today with genital injuries, said a human rights group in Sanaa.

It was the second incident involving a child bride in the last week. A 13-year-old girl died after being sexually assaulted by her adult husband. Both girls were married in the country's rural Hajja province.

The 11-year-old girl was married last year only under the condition that the adult husband would wait until she reached puberty to consummate the marriage. He did not wait, nor do many of the men who marry young brides, says Amal Basha, director of the Arabic Sisters Forum.

An estimated 50 percent of women in Yemen are married before age 18, some as young as 8. Less than a week ago the Sana'a-based human rights group reported the death of a 13-year-old bride in the same rural area. The Associated Press reported the girl was allegedly raped, and that her 23-year-old husband is now in police custody.

"She looked like she was butchered," said the girl's mother, Nijma Ahmed. The AP also cited police a report saying the husband forced himself on his young bride, feeling under pressure to prove his manhood.

An average of eight women die each day in Yemen due to child marriage, many of them in childbirth, according to the Arabic Sisters Forum. The group runs a hotline for victims of domestic violence and has been lobbying in support of a minimum marriage age now under consideration by the Yemeni parliament.

Pushing against the proposed law is the strong hand of Islamic conservatives in Yemen. Clerics have declared women like Amal Basha apostates from Islam for opposing child marriage, which they see as divinely ordained. The government, she says, is intimidated by the religious and tribal customs.

"They say this is Islamic...and they declared jihad against... the UN treaty on women's rights," she said.

"They say my campaign is a Western agenda, that it will lead to sex out of wedlock and prostitution," Basha said....

"British girl of 10 kept in Saudi hell hole for 11 years by her dad," by Sarah Arnold and Boudicca Fox-Leonard for the Mirror, April 11 (thanks to Sam):

[...] Suzanne had been working as an air stewardess for Saudi Air when she met Zuhair, a Saudi businessman.

She converted to Islam and ­married him, but after four ­children and 19 years together the marriage broke down, and ­in 1998 they were embroiled in a custody battle over their youngest child Hana, who was then living with her father.

And two days before a crucial hearing he spirited her out of Britain after telling her they were going to buy sweets.

She says: "We got in his car, but instead of stopping at the shop we kept going. Even though I was only 10 I began to get a sick feeling that something was not right.

"After nearly an hour we pulled up at the airport. Dad got out two suitcases and when I asked where we were going he said 'home'.

"I knew instinctively he meant Saudi. He shouted at me when I tried to ask questions and I was so scared I started to shake.

"I asked if we would see Mummy and he said, 'Your mum doesn't love you any more'. I couldn't even cry as he shouted at me when I did.

"When we got to the ­Saudi capital Jeddah the first thing that hit me was the heat and babble of foreign voices. I couldn't understand a word. It was the start of a nightmare."

Mum Suzanne adds: "Things were really bad between us, I became frightened of him, but it never once crossed my mind that he would flee the country and take my little girl.

"It was only when he failed to turn up at the custody hearing that I realised what he'd done and by then it was too late." [...]

"I was so miserable," she says. "It was clear from the moment I arrived that women were treated ­differently.

"When I turned 11 I was made to start ­wearing a head scarf and couldn't leave the house without my father's ­permission. I had no friends and wasn't allowed to play outside. Dad was very controlling and ­verbally abusive and expected me to do all the housekeeping. He wouldn't even have mum's name mentioned. He kept telling me she didn't love me." [...]

By 2002 when Hana was 14 she was so desperate she went to the Saudi police for help...but was sent back to her father.

She says: "I told them he was keeping me there against my will and all they said was, 'He's your father, if he wants he can kill you'. When I got home dad locked me in my ­bedroom, pinned me to the floor and cut off my hair and then set fire to it. He left me practically bald. He took me out of school and I felt even more cut off. He had a terrible temper and I was very frightened of him. He would beat me if I didn't do what he said."

Hana went to the British Embassy three times pleading for help, but was told that, under Saudi law, there was ­nothing they could do....

“I don’t mind being hated for my views,” says Alex Knepper, 20, a political science student at American University. Knepper wrote a column in the campus newspaper, The Eagle, which states that a woman who attends a fraternity party, drinks a lot of alcohol, and then accompanies a guy to his dorm room or apartment is suggesting to him that she wants to have sex and thus shouldn’t be able to wake up the next day and accuse him of rape. This is a conversation that even the editors of The Eagle realized was long overdue. Naturally, the feminists on campus had a different reaction.

It would be lovely if we lived in a utopia where rape was easily defined and young people were more responsible. Instead, we live in a society in which young people have too much freedom and very little moral guidance. Consequently, the rules for sex and relationships are sketchy at best. With dating a thing of the past and “hooking up” the new norm, men have no idea what women want anymore. Instead of acting with a mode of decorum — modesty, perhaps, and a little bit of class — women give men clear signals with their drunken words and actions. And when men act on this signal, they’re punished.

In an ideal world all young men, when they notice a girl is drunk, would escort her home — even if she does offer herself to him. I’ve known a few good men in my life who would do this. Unfortunately, most men will take most women up on sex when it is offered. And with drunkenness on campus being par for the course, it’s hard for men to distinguish a girl who’s just drunk from a girl who’s drunk and wants sex. Simply put: Women are acting foolish, and men are responding in kind.

This is not rape. It is bad behavior on everyone’s part, but it is not rape. To call it rape is to equate it with violence, fear for one’s life, and torn insides. For years feminists have been screaming “rape” as the new title for stupid sex — and university administrators have caved to the pressure.

“AU is committed to a safe environment for all and does not tolerate rape in any form or under any circumstance,” says vice-president Gail Short Hanson and provost Scott A. Bass.

This approach to sex is extremely open-ended. It gives women incredible power — which is precisely what feminists are after — to act irresponsibly anytime they choose and then cry victim whenever it suits them. This makes men, not women, the true victims of the “date rape” theory.

Bravo, Alex Knepper. I can’t imagine having the courage you have at your age. Oh, I suppose I should mention that Knepper is gay since everyone else who has written about this has made it a point to do. But I, for one, don’t see the relevance.

Suzanne Venker is an author, blogger, and former teacher. You can read more from Suzanne at www.suzannevenker.com and No Bull Mom.

I thought our government didn’t fund abortions?  I guess they don’t.  They just tell students to have abortions and counsel them to not tell their parents, ship them off to an abortion clinic, and make sure they’re back in time before the school day is out.  That has recently happened and appears to be the normal plan of action for pregnant girls at at least one high school in Seattle, Washington.

The names have not been released, but a mother in Seattle is rightly furious to find out that her young daughter was given abortion assistance by the local public high school.  The 15 year old daughter went to the Ballard High School’s health center to telling them she thought she was pregnant.  The health center confirmed her pregnancy and then gave the girl options which included the option to abort the baby.

The mother claims the workers told the student that if she told her mom she was going through with the abortion that the mom would be the one who would have to pay for it.  But, if the girl kept it from her parents then she could get a free abortion.  Basically, they were advertising free abortions while attempting to keep everything a secret from the mother.

The school then called a cab for the young girl to send her off all by herself to an abortion clinic.  I can’t imagine what that 15 year old was thinking as she rode in the back of that cab with so many thoughts and pressures running through her mind.  She was left alone with the task of going to a clinic where they would kill the life inside of her.  And I thought pro-choice people were supposed to care for women and young girls.

Washington state is one of thirteen states with no parental consent or even parental notification laws.  Any girl at any age can get an abortion without their parents ever having to know.  And at least at one public school in Seattle, they will help you do it. In fact, the school says sending students in cabs to clinics is a normal occurrence.  However, the school refuses to fess up to how many students they’ve sent off to abortions in the past.  Obviously this heartless act has been done before.

“We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus.  They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility…Makes me feel like my rights were completely stripped away” – Mother of teen girl

Parents had signed health forms for what they believed were for emergency reasons for when the parents could not be reached.  However, the school uses them as permission for counseling teens into abortions without telling the parents.  Why would anyone with a sane mind think this is a good idea?

If you look at the school’s health center site it says:

Teens can be seen for confidential family planning services(at any age), STD testing(if over age 14), and mental health counseling(if over age 13) without parental consent. Consent may be required for other services, and forms are available at the Teen Health Center. – Ballard Teen Health Center

What “other service” would parental consent be required for that are bigger than having an abortion?  I can’t think of any.

With abortion and government health care being in the spotlight as of late, this is a sad reminder of what our tax dollars will be used for.    Here is a government funded high school counseling a young girl to have a free, secret abortion.  What’s next?  I’m not sure I want to know.

Last night, I started seeing stuff in my Twitter feed about “#AnnCoulter,” “2000 protesters,” people throwing tables, and even people being whisked to the U.S. Embassy for protection. Ann Coulter was in our nation’s capital, to speak at the University of Ottawa.

I’d seen her speak the night before, in London, Ontario, and like many people across Canada, was wondering what kind of reception she’d get at this next venue. After all, it was a U of O provost, known Frenchman Francois Houle (his real name), who’d sent Coulter that now-famous passive aggressive letter before her arrival, ever so politely advising her not to, you know, advocate genocide or incite violence on Canadian soil.

I expected a problem. I didn’t expect a riot.

Two veteran Parliament Hill reporters, Brian Lilley (mainstream media) and Deborah Gyapong (Christian media) were on the scene and filed reports. (Full disclosure: I consider both of them friends).

Here’s part of Lilley’s report:

One of the loudest protestors outside was Sameena Topan, the young woman holding the “safe place” sign. Sameena told me she brought that sign because, “This is a space for all students from all backgrounds to come and feel welcome.” Sameena went on to say that no student should feel threatened or marginalized.

Asked if she had protested, complained or tried to shut down Israeli Apartheid week, Sameena first seemed shocked at the question, then answered no.

Here’s part of Gyapong’s account:

When I got outside one of my blog readers came up to me and told me he had been inside the hall before 7 p.m. He said a group of people rushed the hall, jostling the three people who were at a table checking student ids and those who had registered. The table got pushed aside. When the volunteers said they needed order and for people to come to the table, some of the rowdies folded the table up and threw it aside. Then the volunteers decided it was too dangerous for them and they shut the doors to the auditorium.

(…)

One gal was waving one of Ann Coulter’s books around asking whether they should burn it. “Let’s debate this,” she says.

I’ll have more at my blog as the day goes on, but I should warn you that, because it is my blog and not David Horowitz’s, my language and views may be more salty than some NewsReal readers may be accustomed to.

Understand: Establishment Canada hates America, but paradoxically, cares desperately about what America says about our country, and seeks secondhand validation from any meager attention we might get from you; consider the thirty-years-worth of boilerplate Canadian puff pieces, bragging about how many now-famous comedians we’ve “given” to Hollywood, and how we built the arm (the arm!) on the Space Shuttle like, 500 years ago, to take two of the more pathetic examples. The “look at us! Pleeeeeze!!” b.s. surrounding the supposed wonderfulness of the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics (yawn) is another.

So for us, the Ann Coulter Riot is A. Very. Big. Deal. I expect lawsuits galore, questions about the pathetic security apparatus that “protects” our nation’s capital, criminal charges and countercharges, commemorative tee shirts (the “Coulter in Canada” one pictured above is now selling fast), magazine cover stories story — I forgot: we only have one magazine — and much more.

(Note: on the topic of security — “the university handed Coulter a bill to pay for her own security, something it doesn’t do for other speakers.”)

PS: if you hear something about a Muslim girl who asked Coulter a question in London, and was “stabbed in the heart” when Coulter told her to go ride a camel, do note that my husband outed the girl as a (now former) member of an anti-Israel Facebook group.

And as Michael Coren pointed out acidly, it’s other Muslims who are more likely to literally stab a Muslim girl in the heart, or other places, rather than an outspoken American pundit.

Here’s part of his Tuesday pre-riot interview with Coulter, complete with now-ironic opening segment:

Lahore (AsiaNews) - A Christian girl was raped and burnt alive by the son of a Muslim master, for whom she worked as a maid. The girl died in hospital yesterday after two days of agony, for the burns on 80% of her body. The incident occurred in a small town in Punjab and has similar details to the sad story of Shazia Bashir, the 12 year old Christian raped and murdered by a powerful lawyer in Lahore, a crime still for which he is still unpunished.

Kiran George worked for a Muslim family in Sheikhupura, a Punjab town. The girl died yesterday at the Mayo Hospital in Lahore, where she was hospitalized on 9 March in critical condition. To unleash the murderous madness of the son of the employer the threat of a complaint of sexual assault.

Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the Justice and Peace of the Catholic Church of Pakistan (NCJP), told AsiaNews that "the house of a Christian family was set on fire" as revenge because "a young man is accused of killing a Muslim." The Catholic activist explains that the suspect, Yasir Abid, is "subject to pre-trial detention. The victim is the son of a Muslim landowner in the village of Kirtu Pandora, in the Narang Mandi".

Mohammad Raza Ahmda raped the Christian girl who, at first, confided only with her friends for fear of losing her jobs. Her family's conditions of extreme poverty had led the young girl to remain silent. When Kiran George threatened her tormentor of telling her story to the police, the young man blocked her escape and closing the door, he poured gasoline all over her with the help of his sister, setting her on fire.

The Muslim master, instead of bringing the girl to the hospital, called her parents telling them that her clothes caught fire while cleaning the kitchen. Kiran George was subjected to two days of slow agony, however, before dying, she told the whole story to the police who opened an investigation file on the young man.

Also in Punjab a crowd of Muslims robbed and burned the house of a Christian family. The assault happened on 10 March in Narang Mandi, a town in the district of Sheikhupura. The extremist's anger was triggered by the alleged involvement of a Christian in the killing of the son of a local landowner. The mob also burnt some copies of the Bible.

Christian families denounced the "deliberate burning" of some copies of the Bible kept inside the home. Police started to investigate and evaluate whether to open a file of investigation for the crime of blasphemy. In this case, says Peter Jacob, the judiciary "will not act under section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code, which provides for punishment up to life imprisonment for those who desecrate the Koran, but does not provide for the holy books of other religions".

"We are against the blasphemy laws - concludes activist NCJP - and this applies regardless of the sacred text or who is guilty of the crime." However, he hopes for "thorough investigations" and the punishment of those who "burned the house of the Christian family."

Dirrrty

Grose blames cultural conservatism and neo-Victorian morality for the latest iteration of what she calls “the shame cycle,” an era of sexual regret among women who participate in casual flings. Internalized conservative values, it seems, are forcing women to end their delightfully liberating one-night stands with the dreaded walk of shame, causing many to consider more chaste lifestyles.

The five or six celebrities and authors Grose says have jumped on the chastity bandwagon are hardly evidence of a cyclical phenomenon. But even if we are entering a period in which women are rejecting their inner Girls Gone Wild, why the blame game?

Shouldn’t genuine feminists celebrate women seizing their sexual destinies? Or is embracing your inner hoochie the only path to sexual freedom?

Grose answers that question by linking approvingly to a quote from Feministing.com: it is a “feminist duty to 1) seek pleasure and feel entitled to it and 2) to make the world a more orgasmic place for other women.”

Got that, ladies? If you’re not out there hooking up with every passing fancy, you’re shirking your feminist responsibilities.  You owe it to your comrades!  Is it any wonder that Feministing founder Jessica Valenti made an abstinent college student cry during a lecture on the myth of purity?

The problem with viewing sex as a “feminist duty” is that it muddies the waters between the personal and political in a way that is ultimately damaging to men and women alike. When casual sex is a feminist act, it’s a political act, not a personal, sensual one. And having sex out of a sense of political duty is disturbingly antithetical to the notion of sexual freedom.

I was born in 1975. There’s never been any doubt in my mind that I can pursue the same opportunities as men, including promiscuous sex if that’s what rings my bell.  But it’s not my political responsibility to demonstrate that women can do anything men can do.

Who really gains when the personal and interpersonal get lost in the political? Instead of individuals examining our desires and weighing them against potential consequences, the “feminist” Left encourages women to measure desires against how well their fulfillment would exemplify sexual liberation as a political ideal.

At some point, feminism shackled us to a single interpretation of sexual freedom.  But “girl power” doesn’t come packaged in last night’s dress with a monster hangover and a DNA stain of indeterminate origin.

Sexual freedom is about self-discovery and self-determination, not eyebrow-raising political statements. It’s about real choice, not a sanitized list of acceptable options.  And it’s about finding a morally comfortable place between promiscuous and puritanical without the pressure of a hook-up culture that devalues and derides courtship, dating, and emotional attachment.

Jessica Grose says that part of the “backlash against casual sex” comes from the “73 percent of women born between 1977 and 1989 [who] place a high priority on marriage.” I guess their version of sexual freedom is the wrong kind.

Watch out for those marriage fetishists! They’re bound to leave Western civilization in ruins.

—–

Follow Jenn Q. Public on Twitter and read more of her work at JennQPublic.com.