Female Pakistani minister shot dead for ‘breaking Islamic dress code’ – TimesOnline.co.uk – Dress the wrong way, say the wrong thing and you end up dead? More than half the Muslims in England want to implement Sharia Law, is this to be expected by the extreme implementation of it?
A Pakistani minister and woman’s activist has been shot dead by an Islamic extremist for refusing to wear the veil.
Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a “fanatic”, who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.
Mr Sarwar, the shooter, appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God’s order to kill women who sinned. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” he said.
Since we are dealing here with an extreme representation of Islamism, there’s also this story about a father that killed his family for being ‘too western’:
A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle, an inquest heard yesterday.
Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages.
On Hallowe’en last year he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancs, and set it alight.
Caneze Riaz, 39, woke and tried to protect her three-year-old child, Hannah, who was sleeping with her, but was overcome by fumes. Her other daughters, Sayrah, 16, Sophia, 13, and Alisha, 10, died elsewhere in the house. Riaz, who had spent the evening drinking, set himself on fire and died two days later.
#7 Religion is evil, simple as that.
Martin Luther King… Mother Teresa… Mohandas Gandhi… Desmond Tutu… THOSE EVIL BASTARDS!
When you make statements like that, Peter, you are never ever allowed to call anybody else simplistic!
#32, Greg,
You have a strong point. Unfortunately, it is the people that were good, their religions are still evil.
Yes Mother Teresa did a lot by helping the poor. Yet her church forbade the use of contraceptives so many dies of malnutrition, in childbirth, or just lived in poverty caused by the extra children. Almost a self fulfilling prophecy.
Desmond Tutu belonged to the same church as many of the people that thought of him as a second class citizen. The same church that didn’t raise its voice at the atrocities committed by those who found words in the Bible to justify their actions.
Martin Luther King. I assume you mean the son. He was a great leader. Fighting to lead his people to equality and freedom against those who also found words in the same Bible to justify their actions.
Gandhi was a weird character. Several wives / partners. Vegetarian. Eschewed most modern devices. Led by example. He wanted the British out of India. And after the British left India, millions died in religious disagreements.
Wake up and smell the ritual incense, pedro.
The two greatest needs of humankind right now are knowledge and sanity. Religion is the crutch of immature minds that cannot handle reality. Relying on idiotic fairytales instead of facts is the root cause of 90% of the world’s present-day crises.
Religious belief rejects logic, it rejects sanity, it rejects knowledge and enables childish denial of reality instead of encouraging adult acceptance of things as they really are.
Ever heard of the logical principle of reductio ad absurdum, pedro? When extremists take the irrational, untrue fairytales of religion literally and act on them, bringing death, destruction and horror to innocents, it is their religion to blame, not their extremism. No matter how extreme a Quaker or a Buddhist gets, they’re not gonna start slaughtering others – because, unlike Muslims (and Xians), they are not instructed by their faith that they have the right to force their beliefs on others.
Extremism by itself doesn’t cause Crusades, Inquisitions, jihads or suicide bombings – the beliefs do. And the only antidotes are logic and facts.
People come in all flavors, and extremist is just one personality type. You can’t abolish a personality type. But you can abolish ignorance, stupidity, immaturity and irrationality, the components of religious insanity.
So, pedro me lad, abolishing religion, if we’re fortunate enough to carry it through, will not only NOT “accomplish nothing”, au contraire, it will be the greatest accomplishment in human history. Abandoning the myths and fairytales of children for reality will bring about the greatest explosion of human progress imaginable.
The alternative is death for humanity at the hands of believers in Paradise and 72 virgins…
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Oh, and didja know? Islam is a religion of peace. Bet you didn’t know that.
#35, Lauren,
Wake up and smell the ritual incense, pedro.
Now that is a classic put down. I like pedro even though we often disagree, but wow, that one is a classic.
They’re a bunch of nuts. What do you expect?