Political Crossfire Forums

[brian_in_idaho]

I'm including a couple of links involving Muslim men and gang rape in Europe. I am not saying either site is necessarily accurate or representative of Muslims, only bringing this up for debate. I have the following questions:

1) I believe that Islam does place women in a subservient position to men. Is rape ever considered "acceptable" in Islamic culture?

2) For our European members, is gang rape by Muslim men seen as a common problem in European cities?

3) Do we have the same thing happening in American cities with a large immigrant population, but not discussed in todays PC culture to avoid offending anyone?

Bri



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/13/60minutes/main617270.shtml
Quote: (CBS) For almost half a century, Europe has depended on imported labor to do the kind of menial jobs its own people don't want to do -- so much so that, today, the population of France is almost 10 percent Muslim.

They are the descendants of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian workers who came from France's ex-colonies.

Now, many of them live in neglected public housing projects, ruled by violent gangs and increasingly susceptible to Islamic fundamentalism. Correspondent Christiane Amanpour reports.
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When people talk about ghettos in France, they're talking about high-rise complexes that have been built far away from the city center to house African and Arab immigrants.

Just saying you live in the neighborhood is enough to get your job application thrown in the garbage. And the unemployment amongst young people is four times the national average.

With little hope of making it outside the projects, many of these young men try to dominate their own neighborhoods, resorting to violence, especially against young women.

They rule gangland style, combined with the male-dominated traditions of the Arab countries they came from. It's gotten so bad that, today, most of the young women only feel safe if they are covered up, or if they stay at home. Girls who want to look just like other French girls are considered provocative, asking for trouble.

Samira Bellil wasn't asking for trouble, but trouble came to her. She's the granddaughter of Algerian immigrants and she's written a book about surviving the hell of the Paris ghettos.

"I was gang raped by three people I knew, and I couldn't say anything, because in my culture, your family is dishonored if you lose your virginity,” says Bellil. “So I kept quiet, and the rapes continued. The next time, I was pulled off a commuter train and no one lifted a finger to help me. …Everybody turned their head away. They were all looking out the window.”

When Bellil's family discovered that she had been raped, they weren't sympathetic. They threw her out onto the streets. But she's since discovered that what happened to her was not the only case.

“There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,” says Bellil. “In the case of Argenteuil, it was horrible. A young woman was raped in a school. Of course, everybody knew, but they're so afraid of these young men that they prefer to close their eyes. That's the price of peace in the ghettos.”

When the verdicts came down in this case, the courthouse turned into a madhouse. Eighteen teenagers were convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl over a two-month period. But what really shocked France was how the mothers of those boys reacted.

“You call this justice, seven years in prison for some oral sex,” says one mother. “It's the girl who should be behind bars.”

Aboubacar was one of those convicted, not of raping the girl, but of knowing about it, and doing nothing to stop it. “When you live in a neighborhood that's so dark and tough, you can’t mess with others' business, unless you want to put your life on the line,” says Aboubacar.

He received a suspended sentence, and now he's using his rap music to spread the message that violence is wrong.

“We were gangsters. If someone was robbing a house, I had to follow the group, otherwise they'd say I wasn't a man,” says Aboubacar. “Men are stronger than women. Men are more respected than women. So if I don't have many brothers, my sister can be attacked. But if I come from a big family, people will lower their eyes when they pass my sister. That's part of the law.”
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Nadir Doudane grew up in the same projects. Now, he works as a youth counselor trying to encourage more normal relations between the boys and girls.

What is it about the projects that is at the root of this violence?

“I think it’s because of the tradition that make the boys think that the girls should be treated this way and not that way,” says Doudane. “It’s not France here.”

What really scares Doudane is that Islamic fundamentalists are taking advantage of these frustrations. “It’s tough. What the fundamentalists are saying to the young kids, ‘We will help you find a job. We will help you be proud of who you are.’ That's why it's a big success here.”

On downtown Paris streets, racy ads are still the rule. But in the projects, the fundamentalist voices are growing stronger. They are now targeting the disaffected youth in the ghettos. Many of the mosques there are filled with fundamentalist preaching.

This is what an influential imam of one French mosque recently said about how men can treat their wives: “If a woman cheats on her husband, her husband can beat her, as long as he doesn't hit her nose, her eyes, her ears. That's part of our religion.”

The French government promptly deported this imam back to his native Algeria. Bouziane is the fifth Muslim cleric thrown out of France this year, for preaching such an intolerant form of Islam.

But this clash of cultures is threatening to divide France, between those who want to keep the country secular, and those who protested against the government’s ban on wearing Islamic headscarves in public schools.
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It's also dividing many immigrant families, like that of a young woman we’ll call Sonia. She doesn't want to be identified, because she's cut off all contact with her family. She was born in France, but her parents are from Tunisia.

Sonia's father tried to send her to Tunisia for an arranged marriage, after he found out that her boss had raped her. In her father's eyes, Sonia had dishonored her whole family.

“My father told me it was my fault, that what happened to me,” says Sonia. “I provoked him to do what he did to me. I couldn’t change his mind.”

And there are many others like Sonia. At least 70,000 young women have come under pressure to accept arranged marriages, according to France's Commission for Integration

“It's necessary to explain to parents and to young people that we are in France,” says Zair Kedadouche, of Arab descent, who sits on that commission. “The relation between Islam and the relation between a woman and men, it’s very hypocritical. Even in I'm Muslim, but I know it’s very hypocritical.”

Equally hypocritical, he says, is the French government, which champions equality, but has effectively disenfranchised its own Muslim community -- the biggest in Europe.

“We are 10 percent of the French population, and we have no members of parliament…We have 37,000 mayors. In France we have no mayor [of Arab descent],” says Kedadouche. “It’s very strange. … We can compare the situation of black people in the beginning of the ‘60s in America and now in France.”

Why, then, does there seem to be so much violence in the ghettos, in the slums and project areas, where most of the immigrants have to live?

“It's not because we are Arabic that we are delinquent. It’s because we are poor, and we live in very bad conditions,” says Kedadouche.
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But nothing prepared France for what happened to a 17-year-old French Muslim girl named Sohane Benziane. Her case really woke up the country to the nightmare that has been festering so long in these projects.

Sohane was burned alive in the basement of an apartment complex by a gang leader who had told her that he didn't want to see her on his turf. After her murder, her sister, Kahina, dedicated a memorial at the site of her killing.

And just in case there was any doubt about where loyalties lie in these projects, when the young man accused of killing Sohane returned with police to show how he had doused her with gasoline, the highrise he had controlled broke out in cries of support.

That just infuriated Samira Bellil enough to help lead a national movement against this violence. “Before, they would rape us. Now, they're burning us alive. Sohane can't speak anymore, so I'm gonna do the talking,” says Bellil.

“Ni putes ni soumises,” is a provocative slogan that, roughly translated, means “We're neither whores nor doormats.” It's a movement that sprang out of the ghettos, made up of mostly immigrant women who are now fighting back against the gang rapes and violence that plague their neighborhoods.


http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/02/muslim-rape-epidemic-in-sweden-and.html

Quote: Muslim Rape Epidemic in Sweden and Norway - Authorities Look the Other Way

(Note: Updates to this post here: The Norwegian Government - Covering Up Immigrant Rapes and here: Rapes: Nothing to do with Islam?)

Numbers released in January 2005 indicate a sharp rise in the number of rape charges in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city:

Thomas Anderberg, responsible for statistics at the Malmö Police, says there was a doubling of the number of reported rapes by ambush in 2004, following what was already a decade of steadily increasing numbers of sexual crimes. - I think that’s great news, says Anna Gustafsson, head of the Domestic Violence Unit at the Malmö Police. She suggests that the increase is due to the fact that women who otherwise wouldn’t press charges for rape now choose to contact the police.

In other words, Gustafsson claims that we are dealing with a “technical” increase, not a real one. However, national statistics reveal that reported rapes against children have almost doubled in Sweden during the past ten years:

According to Swedish Radio on Tuesday, statistics from Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention show that the number of reported rapes against children is on the rise. The figures have nearly doubled in the last ten years: 467 rapes against children under the age of 15 were reported in 2004 compared with 258 in 1995. Legal proceedings continue this week in a case involving a 13 year old girl from Motala who was said to have been subjected to a group rape by four men. (Note: These four men were Kurdish Muslims, who raped the girl for hours and even took photos of doing so)

The number of rape charges per capita in Malmö is 5 – 6 times that of Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen is a larger city, but the percentage of immigrants is much lower. And it’s not just the rape statistics that reveal a scary increase in Malmö or Sweden. Virtually every kind of violent crime is on the rise. Robberies have increased with 50 % in Malmö only during the fall of 2004. Threats against witnesses in Swedish court cases have quadrupled between 2000 and 2003. During the past few decades, massive immigration has changed the face of Sweden’s major cities, as well as challenged the viability of the welfare state. In 1970 Sweden had the fourth highest GDP per capita among developed countries with income about 6% above the OECD average. By 1997 it was at fifteenth place with an average GDP per capita 14% below average. Malmö has a heavy concentration of Muslim immigrants in particular. According to some estimates, it will be a Muslim majority city in no more then 10 years. Crime is rampant in the growing ghettos:

Becirov runs the Islamic Center of Malmö, on the outskirts of Sweden's third-largest city. Some immigrant neighborhoods in the city have (official) unemployment rates exceeding 50 percent. Swedish authorities have failed to lift up the area, and seem to be giving the Islamic Center of Malmö a great deal of leeway in attempting to do so. An article that appeared in 2003 noted that "a few" of the 6-to 10-year-old girls were wearing headscarves. On a visit in January 2005, fully 80 percent were covered in class--only a handful were not. In a fit of absent-mindedness, Sweden has suddenly become as heavily populated by minorities as any country in Europe. The percentage of foreign-born is roughly equivalent to the highest percentage of immigrants the United States ever had in its history (on the eve of World War I). Rosengård appears to be all-immigrant. The public schools have virtually no ethnically Swedish children. There are stories--familiar in other parts of Europe where immigrants from the Muslim world have recently settled--of students harassing Jewish teachers and defacing textbooks that treat Jewish themes. Crime is high.

Is it unfair and “racist” to suggest a link between the influx of Muslim immigrants and the growing number of rapes? Not if we compare with the situation in neighboring Denmark, where this trend has been evident for years:

Criminologist: immigrants are rape champions

If one leading expert is to be believed, the sharp rise in the number of rapes in this over the last 5 years is largely attributable to a group of unemployed and alienated immigrants. 'Over the last 5-10 years there has an increasing tendency to marginalise and alienate immigrants,' says Professor Flemming Balvig, a criminologist at Copenhagen University. 'As a result, many second generation immigrants have reacted against this through various types of criminal activity, including rape.'

Muslim rape concern

Alarmed at last week's police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

As Robert Spencer has demonstrated, rape can indeed be linked to Islamic teachings of Jihad, and even to the example of Muhammad himself, his Sunna. Above all, it is connected to Islamic notions of the role of women in society, and their behaviour in the public sphere. An Islamic Mufti in Copenhagen sparked a political outcry after publicly declaring that women who refuse to wear headscarves are "asking for rape." Apparently, he isn’t the only Muslim in Europe to think this way:

The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte told in a recent interview that in Holland, you can now see examples of young, unveiled Moroccan women with a so-called "smiley". It means that the girl gets one side of her face cut up from mouth to ear, serving as a warning to other Muslim girls who should refuse to wear the veil. In the Muslim suburb of Courneuve, France, 77 per cent of the veiled women carry veils reportedly because of fear of being harassed or molested by Islamic moral patrols.

Hijab, the Islamic veil, is thus not ”just a piece of cloth”. It serves as a demarcation line between proper, submissive Muslim women and whores, un-Islamic women who deserve no respect and are asking for rape. The veil should more properly be viewed as the uniform of a Totalitarian movement, and a signal to attack those outside the movement. Judged in the light of the Mufti who said that women who don’t wear it are asking for rape, how on earth can the veil be said to be about ”choice”? The freedom to choose not to be raped if you dress in a normal fashion in your own country? Is that what freedom is about in Europe in 2005?

Even though Sweden, unlike Denmark, has almost no public debate about immigration, frustration is very much present underneath the surface. 75 % of Swedes think that many people in their country “dislike” Muslims, more than in any other European nation surveyed. Even in Holland, which recently witnessed violent clashes with Muslims after the murder of Islam-critic Theo van Gogh, the rate is lower than in Sweden. But you’re not supposed to talk about such issues in Sweden. That would be “racist”:

Swedish laws prohibiting "hate speech" against racial minorities have been vigorously enforced. There have, for example, been a number of gang-rapes of Swedish women by Muslim immigrants. But Swedes must be careful what they say about them. On May 25, neo-Nazi Bjorn Bjorkqvist was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison for writing, "I don’t think I am alone in feeling sick when reading about how Swedish girls are raped by immigrant hordes." ["Jag tror inte jag är ensam om att må dåligt när jag läser om hur svenska tjejer har våldtagits av invandrarhorder"]

All in all, we must say that there is strong circumstantial evidence indicating that the rise in rape charges in the city of Malmö could very well be real, which puts the Malmö Police assertion that this is “great news” in a rather curious light. And the problem is not just limited to Sweden. It exists in Norway, too:

Rape charges in the capital are spiraling upwards, 40 percent higher from 1999 to 2000 and up 13 percent so far this year. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen of Oslo's Vice, Robbery and Violent crime division says the statistics are surprising - the rising number of rape cases and the link to ethnic background are both clear trends. But Larsen does not want to speculate on the reasons behind the worrying developments. While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.

Europe: Tolerating Intolerance

An incredibly revealing article that tells us all we need to know about the multiculturalist fetish in Europe and some parts of North America, not to mention the need for change within Islam. Apparently, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65 percent of rapes of Norwegian women were performed by "non-Western" immigrants – a category that, in Norway, consists mostly of Muslims. The article quoted a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo (note: her name is Unni Wikan) as saying that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor's conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it."

[Korimyr the Rat]

brian_in_idaho wrote: 1) I believe that Islam does place women in a subservient position to men. Is rape ever considered "acceptable" in Islamic culture?

Not that I am aware of, though I'm willing to bet that hardline cultures don't believe that "marital rape" is possible.

However, it's worth noting that their behavior is not at all unusual in ethnic conflicts-- it's one of the most basic, instinctual means of establishing dominance over an enemy, and predatory sexual behavior is usually triggered by feelings of powerlessness and oppression.

Brian wrote: 3) Do we have the same thing happening in American cities with a large immigrant population, but not discussed in todays PC culture to avoid offending anyone?

Are you kidding? Such attacks would be too useful for propaganda purposes in this "War on Terror" to be ignored. If the media weren't inclined to look into them, the government would be plastering them with press releases.

[Nico]

moved

[Nathyn]

There are higher levels of blacks raping white women in the United States.

OMG, black skin leads to rape!

[slitedeviance]

brian_in_idaho wrote: 2) For our European members, is gang rape by Muslim men seen as a common problem in European cities?

Nope. Haven't come across anyone raise it as an issue until your good self. I will add a disclaimer that the city I live in contains one of the most intergrated muslim communities in the UK as far as I'm aware, so I couldn't use this as a usual example. But I've not seen this raised even in national media.

[Conserv\Traditionalist]

I have heard of this problem and have talked of it before. Aparently it is an occerrence not only in
europe but also in australia.

[slitedeviance]

Conserv\Traditionalist wrote: I have heard of this problem and have talked of it before. Aparently it is an occerrence not only in
europe but also in australia.

Almost like.... crime in general?

[brian_in_idaho]

slitedeviance wrote: brian_in_idaho wrote: 2) For our European members, is gang rape by Muslim men seen as a common problem in European cities?

Nope. Haven't come across anyone raise it as an issue until your good self. I will add a disclaimer that the city I live in contains one of the most intergrated muslim communities in the UK as far as I'm aware, so I couldn't use this as a usual example. But I've not seen this raised even in national media.

slitedeviance, I'm glad to hear that this isn't the issue these sites would make it out to be. My supposition is that the Islamic religion is not significantly different than others in this regard. You have good and bad people everywhere, and hear far more about the bad than the good. In addition, there are many different sects of Islam, much like Christianity, that are a "subset" of the culture of a country/region. Cultures in certain areas may "accept" attrocities, but to attribute those acts to the religion common to the area, rather than to the individuals, is not a fair representation.

[brian_in_idaho]

slitedeviance wrote: Conserv\Traditionalist wrote: I have heard of this problem and have talked of it before. Aparently it is an occerrence not only in
europe but also in australia.

Almost like.... crime in general?

I suspect he is referring to this case:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/13/1026185124700.html

But again, this is a specific, horrific crime committed by a handful of Muslim men, to attribute that crime to Islam is no better than saying that any crime committed by a Christian is representative of Christianity.

[mathurin]

the most notable things i have seen about rape linked to islam is that virgins who are to be executed are "married" to a guard at the jail, he has sex with her, while consent isnt really asked, i dont mind agreeing that it typically wouldnt be given
this is done because they think virgins go to heaven, so they want to punish her in this life and the next

and the general marital rape thing is pretty well accepted i think, but dont really know, after all, it has only been a couple decades since we thought of it as wrong

but i dont think you could consider rape to be considered right or allowed in islam, premarital sex is punishable by death in iran, i doubt they kill curious teens but just slap on the back men who take women against their will

[Saracen]

Rape is forbidden in Islam. Period. All other sexual misconducts follow the same path.

[emerald]

Quote: the most notable things i have seen about rape linked to islam is that virgins who are to be executed are "married" to a guard at the jail, he has sex with her, while consent isnt really asked, i dont mind agreeing that it typically wouldnt be given
this is done because they think virgins go to heaven, so they want to punish her in this life and the next

where did you read that?!

saracen answered perfectly.

and as for gang rapes by muslims in europe, i've lived in the UK since i was 8, and i have yet to read of gang rapes by muslims on women...maybe it's the news i read but i honestly havent read anything like that and if it was the case i would have though it would have been amde public news, since anything a muslim does ends up all over the papers, i doubt the press would leave out stories of muslim gang rapes.

[Saracen]

emerald wrote: Quote: the most notable things i have seen about rape linked to islam is that virgins who are to be executed are "married" to a guard at the jail, he has sex with her, while consent isnt really asked, i dont mind agreeing that it typically wouldnt be given
this is done because they think virgins go to heaven, so they want to punish her in this life and the next

where did you read that?!

saracen answered perfectly.

and as for gang rapes by muslims in europe, i've lived in the UK since i was 8, and i have yet to read of gang rapes by muslims on women...maybe it's the news i read but i honestly havent read anything like that and if it was the case i would have though it would have been amde public news, since anything a muslim does ends up all over the papers, i doubt the press would leave out stories of muslim gang rapes.

emerald, the only thing that the "Islam is rape" side use as evidence is the idea that there are gang-rapes on part of people who happen to be Muslim, and heck, I wouldn't be surprised if "Muslim" meant anyone who came from countries like Pakistan, India, etc. Newspapers in Europe are leaving out the worsening conditions against Muslims and how ostracized they are becoming. It's scary, because the Jews of old Europe lived in similar conditions... and you know what that lead to.

Just as support: Islam forbids rape. There is NOTHING in the Koran that says that rape is allowed.

[Muslima]

If these gangs exist, they are mentally sick people!

[MJB]

Go to High School? Attend just about any College or University in the US? Unless one lives in a cave, he should know that gang rape is, tragically, nothing new, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, education, or culture!

[mendosan]

Quote: 3) Do we have the same thing happening in American cities with a large immigrant population, but not discussed in todays PC culture to avoid offending anyone?

No the US Muslim pop is above average educated + has above average income, they are not the left overs from colonialism like in the UK and France.

[mendosan]

slitedeviance wrote: brian_in_idaho wrote: 2) For our European members, is gang rape by Muslim men seen as a common problem in European cities?

Nope. Haven't come across anyone raise it as an issue until your good self. I will add a disclaimer that the city I live in contains one of the most intergrated muslim communities in the UK as far as I'm aware, so I couldn't use this as a usual example. But I've not seen this raised even in national media.

Likewise I have only heard accusations once, which was allegedly the spark for the Lozzells riots in Brimingham, no charges were brought.

Quote: "There is an allegation that a young black girl has been raped, some people say gang raped, by some Asian men, and that is the core cause of the tension," Bishop Joe Aldred from the Council of Black Led-Churches, told BBC News 24.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4367654.stm

[mendosan]

Quote: It's scary, because the Jews of old Europe lived in similar conditions... and you know what that lead to.

Not at the years preciding the rise of the Nazis they didn't, in fact German Jews were well intergrated (Muslims arn't) Niall Ferguson made an intresting comment in his recent TV series (and I asume book of the same name) War of the World: History's Age of Hatred that some Jewish leaders were worried that if the rates of Intermarriage between Germans and Jews contiued at the rate they were going there would be no more Jews left in Berlin.

[Saracen]

mendosan wrote: Quote: It's scary, because the Jews of old Europe lived in similar conditions... and you know what that lead to.

Not at the years preciding the rise of the Nazis they didn't, in fact German Jews were well intergrated (Muslims arn't) Niall Ferguson made an intresting comment in his recent TV series (and I asume book of the same name) War of the World: History's Age of Hatred that some Jewish leaders were worried that if the rates of Intermarriage between Germans and Jews contiued at the rate they were going there would be no more Jews left in Berlin.

I'm not talking about intermarriage. I'm talking about the rise of anti-Islamic sentiments in Europe that could lead to a Holocaust.

Jews=Communists. That was Hitler's "justification" back then. Now, it's Muslims=terrorists, etc. Dangerous path.

[mendosan]

Saracen wrote: mendosan wrote: Quote: It's scary, because the Jews of old Europe lived in similar conditions... and you know what that lead to.

Not at the years preciding the rise of the Nazis they didn't, in fact German Jews were well intergrated (Muslims arn't) Niall Ferguson made an intresting comment in his recent TV series (and I asume book of the same name) War of the World: History's Age of Hatred that some Jewish leaders were worried that if the rates of Intermarriage between Germans and Jews contiued at the rate they were going there would be no more Jews left in Berlin.

I'm not talking about intermarriage. I'm talking about the rise of anti-Islamic sentiments in Europe that could lead to a Holocaust.

Jews=Communists. That was Hitler's "justification" back then. Now, it's Muslims=terrorists, etc. Dangerous path.

Not really, theres been huge amounts of Jewish persicution in Europe for centuries and I mean actual full blown Pogroms, Anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe is more about people being generally pissed off with Multi-Culturalism, and then various other Country specific issues.