…unless you’re a Bangladeshi Muslim Woman in the UK. Then it’s all good –
A BANGLADESHI woman who shook a baby boy so violently that he suffered brain damage walked free from court yesterday because a judge conceded that she did not know how to behave in the West.Rahella Khanom, 24, caused the five-month-old boy in her care to suffer fractures to his breast bone and ribs as she tried to rid him of evil spirits, Southwark Crown Court was told.
The injuries inflicted on the child over several weeks had caused one side of his brain to shrink. It was believed that the boy would have been screaming in agony for eight weeks because his injuries went untreated.
…The court was told that Khanom, a Muslim, did not understand that shaking a helpless baby would not exorcise an evil spirit.
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p>The judge issued a verdict which is almost its own caricature of a relativist, multiculturalist world gone astray –
the judge said that Khanom’s strong cultural and religious beliefs, and the fact that she had been forced by her husband to live in isolation since coming to Britain from Bangladesh, meant that there were exceptional circumstances in her case.
One can only imagine other, future defenses inspired by the socio-cultural isolation tank argument.
“So when the President of the United States makes major foreign policy decisions based on prayer AND America doesn’t think its a problem …”
given the resultant harm, one would think that’s problematic.
Well ms cleo is targetted towards low income black americans. & Its late night TV which appeared on AIR (similar to my tony robbins claim). John Edwards is on day time. But you have a point there. He probly represents the pinnacle to which such fellows can rise in mainstream america.
From the article:
i can almost hear my Nani yelling at me when i was 8 and running around like a crazed monkey: “kee jinn thoresey!” (apologies for bad transliteration.) I wonder how much of the woman’s story was twisted by language barriers. Even if you translate the words correctly, you often miss the essense. My Nani didn’t really believe I was possessed (I think), but thats a common expression for general frustrations.
this actually makes a lot of sense. in rural Bangladesh, the village raises the child. a frustrated mother would have help from the neighboring mud hut (i LOVE the mud huts) to calm down a crying child. Suddenly, she’s alone in the UK with no help.
The title of the article in Leniency for ‘ignorant’ woman who hurt baby. Except for the “…Khanom, a Muslim, did not understand…” I think the article is fair. I also think the court’s verdict is fair.
Yes, and you also can find people lampooning such nonsense, (Christian) religious figures, American symbols and presidents and not being threatened by death too.
I sort of agree
without knowing the stats on british courts i cant be sure
but i think the courts in such cases would have offered most offenders(not just B’desi/Asian/whatever) some kind of plea bargain/lineant sentencing
But the discussions here show kind of dichotomy. ie the libby row getting their chaddis in a knot over bangladeshi/muslim having strange beliefs or saying its not them but everyone the conservative side saying how dare they do minority appeasement.
Hey, didn’t Prophet Muhammad [PBUH] talk to Djinns and Fairies ? If I recall my hadiths correctly, he even said the Djinns sleep in our nostrils at night.
pearljamfan i have a problem with you addressing these people as ‘backwards’. backwards in relation to what? just because you come to live in a country different from your country of origin, does not mean that you need to denounce where you’ve come from. i agree that many people try not to assimilate and the ghettoization of communitites really contributes to this. hell i get mad when people come into my job and try and speak to me in _____ because they see brown skin or try and get a deal out of me for the same reason. but using the word ‘backwards’ feels really offensive because it seems to imply that you, or the west, is somehow better than these people.
there was Miss Cleo hawking her spiritual powers on late-night cable TV a couple of years ago, and ‘psychics’ Sylvia Browne and John Edward are regularly invited onto daytime talk-shows.
lmao! omg…..my mum loved john edwards for awhile..she actually believed him. and my grandmum was for sylvia…what a luagh…
Apuna
I’m sorry for calling people backward, but it due to years of frustration at some immigrants who are take pride in being backwards. These people give the whole community are bad name.
And yes this might upset some people the culture of the west is better then other parts of the world. Yes we in west have our faults, but I still would not ever want to live in a non-western country.
re: superstition & religion, there are shades & grades here. the early christians campaigned against “soothsayers” and “oracles” because they opposed such magic (manifestations of demons, etc.). most american doctors are christian, but they don’t agree with the older ideas promoted by christianity which derive from galen and the greeks about the cause of disease. some christians believe the “time of miracles” is over, while others do not. some buddhists are agnostics whose non-materialism seems a matter of semantics, while other buddhists (the term is usually ‘folk buddhists’) are believers in magic and godlings.
in other words, there is a lot of diversity in religion. as an atheist i think the whole lot of it is silly, that being said, i do have personally silly beliefs too. the key is not to let the silly beliefs get in the way of proper functioning in a ‘modern’ society. my personal experience is that many ‘modern’ religionists believe in silly things, but nicely partition the silly implications away from their day-to-day activities. some of the silliness does bleed over, we just spend $2.6 million here in the united states to see if ‘prayer’ aids in recovery from illness (statistically it doesn’t, though that doesn’t stop people’s belief in prayer). this was a stupid waste of money, but since most people are religious and believe in such silly things it is a compromise that those of us who aren’t believers in such things have to accept.
the key, for thorough materialists is to forward the constraint of silliness to manageable portions. muslim fundamentalists are silly beyond compare, they will kill you if you reject their own view of silliness. evangelical christians aren’t as bad, they’ll just talk silly shit at you constantly and divert funds that should go to real research, or help egg on foreign wars over silly impulses (though some economic interests are necessary), at least in the USA, but won’t threaten death. some religionists espouse silly beliefs, but rarely seem to act silly in their normal activities, so i don’t really care about this sort.
the problem with many third world religionists, especially muslims, is that the religion’s balls haven’t been cut off yet by an enlightenment. another key is that religionists need to think that the balls getting cut off is how it should have been. see, it is great that modern christians, in the majority, think that freedom of religion was the true christian way, that killing in the name of god is a no-no, and equal rights for women, at least legally up to voting and etc., is the true christian way. just ignore 2,000 years of history (wink). just got to get muslims on board with thinking that allah really wants you to be a liberal democrat.
couldnt agree more. although i prefer the term pragmaticaly religious….cause that way of being has been there since forever.
question. don’t general ‘good thoughts’ have psychosomatic effects? if so, isn’t prayer a type/vehicle for such thoughts? and if so, how do you separate general ‘good thoughts’ from religiously inspired/prayer-like good thoughts in any statistically testable way?
Ignorance of the Law is no Defense unless…Issues unless youÂ’re a Bangladeshi Muslim Woman in the UK.
Is there a relation here with the fact that she was a Muslim and the incident. Would it have been any different if she was a rural christian woman from Bangladesh? One would imagine the SM bloggers would not make such gratuitous references to Muslims. Of course that would be expecting too much from people who usually pick up their stories from LGF or fuckmuslims.com.
is it really AMfD or has sumone else co-opted that id?
fuckmuslims.com.
this redirects to a place holder site with the title “Adult Shopping.”
question. don’t general ‘good thoughts’ have psychosomatic effects? if so, isn’t prayer a type/vehicle for such thoughts? and if so, how do you separate general ‘good thoughts’ from religiously inspired/prayer-like good thoughts in any statistically testable way?
the key is that they were looking at the effects of prayer from person A to person B, when B didn’t know that A was praying for them, and A didn’t know who B was (except their name or something dumb like that). i believe the current study showed that people who had strangers pray for them were actually more likely to be ill. i guess god was pissed (there seems to be a study like this every 5 years).
ha!
so.. you would concede that praying for a loved one, the way many of us do, might possibly be effective? perhaps even to the degree of statistical significance?
you would concede that praying for a loved one, the way many of us do, might possibly be effective?
if they know you are praying for them, yes. prayer as a factor in psychosomaticism seems fine, prayer as god-vibrations emenating from a big dude in a sky who listens to everything and sees everything seems rather silly though 🙂 but we’ll keep spending money every few years to check on it i’m sure.
they sell hallal whips & leather suits there.
just got to get muslims on board with thinking that allah really wants you to be a liberal democrat.
LOL.. that seems to be the ideal solution to avoid a lot of bloodshed. Invent some hadith (like the latest Judas gospel) saying so.. I know hadiths carry less weightage than Quran, but worth the effort..
LOL.. that seems to be the ideal solution to avoid a lot of bloodshed. Invent some hadith (like the latest Judas gospel) saying so.. I know hadiths carry less weightage than Quran, but worth the effort..
i’m being serious. i’m pretty convinced people have a cognitive bias to believe in supernatural agents. so, if they are going to believe in them no matter what (repeated experiments which have shown prayer doesn’t work doesn’t convince them in the lower p value of supernatural agents), just make sure they believe that these agents want them to be people who are nice to atheists 🙂 i think a pretty plain reading of most religous texts implies that one has to do pretty fucked up shit. i mean, theodicy anyone!?!?! but who cares, most people don’t get that far, they just believe, so take life as it comes.
I don’t think anybody talked about this. But this was another example of a muslim women being kept locked up by husband after she came to west.
The good new is that in europe now several of the countries with a backward muslim problem are now making it harder for these kind of marriages to happen now with there new immigration policy. All I have to say it’s about time.
OR you’re an Army Sargeant in the US. Then it’s all good too –
MANY baby shakers get lenient sentences.
But we shouldn’t let facts get in the way of a good savage immigrant bashing festival.
The main reason why people shake babies is because they just want them to stop crying. It’s a problem in ALL socities, not just primitive ones. It’s amusing that when Westerners shake their babies to death or disability it is because they are suffering from post natal depression and just want their baby to stop crying. But when Eastern woman do the same it is because they are stupid, inferior savages and primitive barbarians who aren’t assimilating.
Anyhow, maybe the main reason why the judge was lenient in this case was because:
This is why i think the judge and the prosecutor might have been more inclined to go easy on her.
The judge make mistake on by going easy on her. All this will do is encourage more backward muslims to remain backward.
Lots of folks seem to be missing the point here. Although pointing out that she was a “Bangladeshi Muslim” may have been a harmless detail to provide texture to a story, we have to read between the lines a bit. Were the woman Christian, the article would not have simply referred to the woman as a “Christian woman,” but rather would have pointed to a particular sect and likely have called her a “fanatic” and “fundamentalist,” thus separating her from the majority of sane Christians. The article did not call her an aberration amongst Muslims, but rather simply referred to her as “Muslim”. Taken in light of a general climate of hostility towards Muslims, the implication here is that it is typical practice in the Bangladeshi Muslim community to shake babies vigorously to rid them of evil spirits. I think it’s important for Christians to own up to the element of privilege and power that comes with being Christian in this country.
if the defense set the tone, is the article really to blame?
in ilight of general climate of hostitily towards muslims
Can you really blame the british, I think the muslims have to take alot of blame for that and in rest of europe for so called islamophobia
PearlJamFan:
Oh for fcuk’s sake dude. Shaken Baby Syndrome is not monopolised by muzzies. Every society does it.
Espressa – I had the same feeling when reading the article.
is it really AMfD or has sumone else co-opted that id?
Well, LGF could very well be called f***muslims.com. I think the opening line in this article is symbolic of the visceral dislike some on SM hold for all Muslims. Nothing gets them more excited than to see some Muslim involved in some crime/wrong doing before their start beating their collective chests in mass hysteria over dhimmitude, pc, multiculturalism and lament over the oh so liberal laws which give equal protection to everybody.
This is almost bad as the excuse that muslims men in europe and australia use for all there rapes of local women. They say that the way women dress they got what the had coming. And of course the idiot liberal media try to bring up excuses for their behavior.
Could you give us some examples of the idiot liberal media making excuses for the Muslims hordes raping all those White women in Europe.
There’s no need for the judge to base a lenient sentencing on the grounds of cultural relativism. The more relevant circumstances have to do with the woman’s isolated living condition.
Very well put, and much in line with what I was thinking, but was unable to articulate.
Besides the usual lack of murderous intent behind this action, another factor is that other causes can mimic the symptoms of ‘shaken baby syndrome’, particularly severe vaccine reactions (spinal-cord damage, brain swelling, etc.), and fortunately some judicial authorities now recognise this.
Part of the problem here is that people of faith define prayer’s effectiveness in ways that are not amenable to measurement and evaluation. Physical healing is, in the cosmic scheme of things, a pretty low and temporary goal. The spiritual transformation which may result from suffering, methinks, is of much more value to the Divine, and is what prayer is really more likely to foster among those ill persons for whom prayers are offered.
example of liberal media protecting the muslim rape of white women in europe
here it is “>http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20552
i actually think Red’s take and Areem’s, even Deepa’s partial agreement are problematic. If we, minority communities, will use culture as a defense, we have to be willing to deal with the consequences. the fault rests not with the judge or the reporter, but with the defense attorney.
PearlJamFan — are you serriiouussllyy citing a David Horowitz resource?!?!?!?!? you just lost the slightest drop of credibility i was anxiously holding out for you.
Sorry the link didn’t work.
Then just go to yahoo.com and type in Muslim rape in europe and its the 1 search result titled Frontpagemagazine.com Muslim rape wave in Sweden by Fjordman
I’m saying that we shouldn’t be using culture as a defense.
Pearljam:
The article you posted from frontpagemagazine.com does not lend any support to your earlier assertion that ‘And of course the idiot liberal media try to bring up excuses for their behavior’. I would love to see some examples of the liberal media rape enabling.
Also from the brilliant article (which by the way is not an example of what I requested) which you posted, I found this paragraph interesting.
Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as “their women,” the women who “belong” to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hand. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men — his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us — our future booty
(1) I am presuming you subscribe to the view stated above. Maybe you could disabuse me of such a presumption, though I am pretty sure you are in complete agreement.
(2) Also I am still waiting on examples for your assertion of the liberal media bringing up excuses for the rapes of European women by Muslim men.
agreed… but in this instance, we did.
Well in that article the women was raped by somali muslim immigrants, yet the swedish medie reported it has 2 men from Sweden, 1 men from Somlia and 1 men from Finland. That was media protected the rapist from there true identy from coming out.
I see…yeah, I agree with you that the defense attorney (with or without the client’s collusion) is the one who chose to shape the defense this way.
So when you made the assertion that ‘And of course the idiot liberal media try to bring up excuses for their behavior’, the reason behind this assertion was the fact that you had once read an unsourced assertion in that beacon of objectivity aka frontpagemagazine.com that an unnamed Swedish newspaper had allegedly incorrectly identified the nationalists of 3 of rapists and so from that you obviously extrapolated to the liberal media trying to bring up excuses for all the rapes of white women by muslim men.
Shit! it all makes sense now. Sorry for bothering you with these tedious questions.
nationalists* = nationalities
It must be hard out there for a brown sahib.
Espressa – my comment had far less to do with culture as a defense (whether the judge, the defense attorney, or we come up with the defense) and more to do with the media’s labeling of the woman as “Muslim”. Were the woman Christian, the media would either have not included her faith or, if her Christianity were relevant, taken the care and courtesy of distancing her from mainstream Christians. The press did not extend the same courtesy to the Muslim community here. As a wide disseminator of popular culture, the mainstream press does have a responsibility to provide balanced coverage, rather than imply villification of a group already subject to unwarranted villification. The article should have just villified the woman, rather than the entire Muslim community.
walking home from the library (on days when i post incessantly, you can assume i’m at the library “studying”) i was struck by a few of Al Muj‘s comments. Is SM villifying muslims/bangladeshis? From the article itself I didn’t get the impression Vinod sells in his post. As I said above, i think the article is fair (except for the “,a Muslim,” clause — distaste for which goes away if read in a British accent) given the fact that the defense raised culture and religion.
So, Red, I don’t think the article villified the community. I think the defense did. But I don’t think the woman deserves to go to jail, because I think isolation in a new world is a good excuse. I just wish the defense didn’t rest it on culture. And I wish Vinod took a litle more care in writing this post. The poor woman wasn’t ignorant of the law. She was scared, alone and ignorant of how to deal with such a drastic change in her life. i wouldn’t villify her at all. I would villify her husband.
Al Mujahid asks some important questions which bear thinking on.
Pearl Jam Fan
Could you be any more obtuse, unpleasent and arrogant in your rhetoric? I don’t think so.
Red,
Not necessarily. The majority population here in the UK is far less religious than their counterparts in the US. “Strict” Christians are frequently ridiculed in the media (the phrase “Bible basher” is a common term of abuse in this country). Hell, there was even a minor uproar some time ago over Tony Blair’s attempt to include “God bless you/God bless the United Kingdom” (I can’t remember exactly which of these phrases it was) at the end of one of his public speeches in the mode of a US President-style “God bless America”. He was actually forced to drop it due to the disparity between US and the UK with regards to the public perception of — and reaction to — such behaviour.
“We?”=> something bigger. AFAIK it appears to be 1 lawyer who got a good deal for his client. Althought i dont like the british attitude towards culture(well towards every thing for that matter)… This doesnt seem any thing like it. It seems plausible that a dumb woman marries a sadist who kept her locked in… I would have liked it the judge to force divorce saying, “you 2 created a condition in which a child died now Its in the societies interest that you separate” He then twists the guys arm and yells, “say talaq talaq talaq”.