Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police say.
The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province on Wednesday when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini told AFP.
'The two men attacked her and slit her throat with a knife,' he said on Thursday. 'They were arrested and are in police custody.'
Hussaini said one of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl, but her family had rejected the offer.
Extreme violence against women and girls remains a major problem in the conservative Muslim nation more than a decade after US-led troops brought down the notoriously brutal Taliban Islamist regime.
According to figures by British charity organisation Oxfam, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.
Last month a 20-year-old woman was beheaded by her husband's family in the western province of Herat after she refused to become a prostitute, police said. Four people were arrested over the brutal killing.
And in September, five people were arrested over the public flogging of a 16-year-old girl for allegedly having an affair.
The girl was whipped 100 times in front of village elders and family members in central Ghazni province. Her alleged boyfriend was fined.
Unmarried girls are often confined to the home and forbidden from maintaining any contact with men outside the immediate family.
Few countries have tighter restrictions on women's freedoms than Saudi Arabia — Saudi women are barred from travelling, working or attending school without permission from a father, husband or other male guardian. They're also unable to vote, though they've been promised that will change in 2015 for local elections.
While women's rights activists in Saudi Arabia have made some small progress in the past few years, the Saudi government has recently expanded its oversight of women's activities. Since last week, Saudi men have been receiving unsolicited text messages alerting them when their wives or daughters are leaving the country, according to CNN.
Saudi men are reportedly getting these texts even if they're travelling alongside their wives, daughters or other female relatives.
The Saudi government has had an electronic notification system like this in place since 2010, but it would previously only notify men who opted-in to the service. Now it's apparently texting all men, regardless of whether they have signed up for the notifications.
Showing that technology's nature lies in the hands of its users, news of and uproar against the text notifications first spread after Manal al-Sherif, a prominent Saudi women's rights activist, tweeted about them.
Al-Sherif first rose to prominence in 2011 after uploading a YouTube video of herself defying the driving ban on women. She was then arrested, jailed and later released on bail.
A cloud of suspicion will continue to hang over the family of missing toddler Rahma El-Dennaoui after a Coroner found some of their behaviour was "puzzling" and their evidence "troubling".
In Glebe Coroner's Court on Thursday, deputy state coroner Sharon Freund said she cannot be sure that missing toddler Rahma is dead. Ms Freund handed down an open finding and referred the case back to the homicide squad.
Ms Freund said that after four weeks of hearings, which had testimony from more than 40 witnesses, the inquest "did nothing, in my view, to exculpate Rahma's immediate family".
"Troubling" ... parents Hosayn and Alyaa El-Dennaoui leave the Glebe Coroners court. Photo: Nick Moir
She declined to find that Rahma was kidnapped by a person or persons unknown to the El-Dennaoui family, or to rule out the suggestion that they staged an abduction to conceal that she died at home.
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Rahma has not been seen since she was put to bed by her parents Hosayn and Alyaa El-Dennaoui in their Lurnea home about 2am on November 10, 2005. At the time she was about 21 months old.
The inquest heard various theories as to what happened to her, including that she was abducted by a relative, or a stranger, and is alive and well.
Missing ... Rhama el-Dennaoui. Photo: Supplied
It also canvassed the possibility that she was taken by a criminal, particularly a paedophile, who harmed and murdered her. But the second half of the inquest focused on Rahma's parents, Hosayn and Alyaa El-Dennaoui, and their siblings and in-laws.
Outside the court, Mr El-Dennaoui said: "We don't know what happened to her, we'd like to know."
"Me and my wife, we've not done nothing to Rahma".
Ms Freund said during the hearings in April and May this year, "it became clear that some of the evidence given by the parents of Rahma, and their close relatives, was inconsistent and raised questions about the veracity of earlier accounts they had given to police".
Ms Freund said it was "unfortunate" that detectives did not focus their investigation on the family, particularly her parents, immediately after her disappearance.
The officer in charge, Nicholas Sedgwick, told the inquest there was no obvious reason to target the family because initial inquiries did not find suggestions of child abuse or neglect, drug or alcohol abuse, mental illness or criminality.
But after a review of the investigation in 2011, Detective Sedgwick said he changed his mind and decided the family warranted a closer look.
When the hearings resumed in October, counsel assisting the coroner, Robert Bromwich, SC, revealed police had secretly intercepted a number of phone calls between the family members.
Ms Freund said the telephone intercepts "revealed behaviours that were, to say the least, puzzling as they were not ad idem with those of a grieving family.
"In particular, the jokes and laughing by Rahma's parents with third parties about the kidnapping and the splitting of the reward money, the specific references to avoiding talking about the inquest on the telephone and actually talking in code".
However, she said there was "no conclusive evidence to suggest that the El-Dennaoui family had staged the kidnapping and are implicated in Rahma's disappearance".
Ms Freund said the investigation of a suspected paedophile who lived near Rahma's house "had a number of shortcomings and issues", but she declined to comment further lest it taint any investigation.
Rahma's uncle, Said Dennaoui, told reporters the family would support the police investigation continuing.
''We do not accept anything [about] anyone from the family being involved when Rahma disappeared,'' he said.
Outside the court, Detective Sedgwick said: "We won't stop until those responsible are brought to justice."
In a disturbing video that the Paulding County Republican Examiner received this morning via the United West organization revealed Christians holding signs all the while being physically attacked at the 2012Dearborn, Michigan Arab Festival. They were assaulted with bottles, eggs, crates, stones, and other objects while police stood by and made no arrests or intervened.
The video was published this morning.
Although Wayne County Deputy Chief Mike Jaafar summed up his situational awareness of the 2012 Dearborn Arab Festival in the Dearborn Patch by stating, “No official arrests were made, and Jaafar said his team was pleased with the overall outcome,” that appears, according to the video, that appears to not be the case. The video is 22 minutes long and is laced with foul language, mocking, and violence from the AmericanMuslims. Most of the violence came from children, teens, and young adults.
After 30 minutes of violence, the Dearborn police arrived and exchange a few words with the Christians and then walked away. Shortly after the exchange, the American Muslims begin the harassment again.
A short time after that, the police returned and a lengthy talk ensued with the Christians in which they defended their right to be there as they were peaceful and just holding signs. When one of the Chief Deputies, said that they must leave because they said they were causing a disturbance and could not afford them police protection, the Christians said they would not leave as they did nothing wrong although they eventually did leave but did suffer some minor injuries and they never fought back.
“Deputy Chief Jaafar immediately got into the camera frame and said, “It’s not your call, we’ve been very gentle and very, very respectful to you and you are jeopardizing public safety. And you need to understand it’s gone overboard. We don’t have the coverage to protect you and if we have two officers who can protect you it would work great but it’s impossible to do so. Your attracting a crowd and your affecting public safety, you need to understand that.” Chief Jaafar then told Chief Richardson to take over from here and left the scene rudely without listening to Mr. Israel’s response, “said Alan Kornman, Regional Coordinator of the United West organization.
Kornman said, “All eyes will be on the City of Dearborn between now and next year’s Dearborn Arab American International Festival. And this reporter would not be surprised if a lawsuit or two are in the City of Dearborn’s Future.”
In this close election, it is a small voting bloc that will decide the outcome. On November 6, American Muslims are in a position to determine which presidential candidate will win in key swing states such as Ohio, Virginia and Florida.
A recent survey of registered Muslim voters, conducted by an independent research firm for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), indicates that some 25 percent of Muslim voters are still undecided about who to vote for in the presidential election and are therefore still open to appeals from the candidates.
CAIR’s survey also shows that American Muslims are engaged in the political process, with more than 90 percent of Muslim voters saying they will go to the polls on election day. Of those polled, 68 percent said they will vote to re-elect President Obama and seven percent said they will vote for Mitt Romney.
Like many other Americans, the top five issues of importance to American Muslim voters are jobs and the economy, education, health care policy, Medicare and Social Security, and civil rights.
The percentage of those who said they are closer to the Democratic Party grew from 49 percent in a similar poll taken in 2008 to 66 percent today. Almost half of respondents said that the Democratic Party was friendly towards Muslims.
Muslim voters are very concerned about the rising level of Islamophobia within American society and with the promotion and exploitation of Islamophobia within the Republican Party. More than half of CAIR survey respondents say that the Republican Party is unfriendly toward Muslims.
As was evident from the third presidential debate, Mitt Romney's hostile view of the Muslim and Arab world makes American Muslims voters anxious about a possible repeat of George W. Bush’s counterproductive foreign policies. Romney’s ideological approach to foreign policy does not inspire confidence in the establishment of more productive relations with the Muslim world.
Because of their knowledge and understanding of international issues, American Muslims also care about foreign policies such as democracy in the Muslim world and peace and justice for the Palestinians.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents to CAIR’s survey say the U.S. should provide support to those fighting for freedom in Syria and 76 percent say the U.S. and NATO made the right decision by intervening in the Libyan revolution.
The majority of American Muslims will likely vote for President Obama, but not as enthusiastically as they did in 2008. They are clearly not happy with the continued erosion of Muslim civil liberties, the most egregious example of which was the widespread spying on Muslim students, shopkeepers, schools, and mosques by the New York Police Department in cooperation with the CIA.
There is relief that the unjustified war on Iraq was ended by President Obama, but also concern that the escalation of military action in Afghanistan caused more harm than benefit. And American Muslims are not alone in opposing the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have claimed so many innocent civilian lives.
A number of surveys have shown that Muslim voters are religiously diverse, well integrated in American society, politically active, and support candidates of any party who address their concerns.
In the 2000 election, Muslims voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush, in part because of his public stand against the use of secret evidence in the nation's courts. In 2004, Muslims concerned about the erosion of civil rights in the post-9/11 era voted for Sen. John Kerry. In 2008, almost 90 percent of American Muslim voters picked Barack Obama.
It is this willingness to swing between parties that makes Muslim voters so important in close elections.
In the end, American Muslim voters will look at the overall picture of the future under either one of the major candidates and will then they make a decision about who to vote for. But the lack of engagement with American Muslims by the candidates may very well cost one of them the presidency.
The fact that more than 90 percent of registered Muslim voters intend to go to the polls on November 6 clearly shows that Muslims are among the most politically-engaged of all Americans.
Nihad Awad is national executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization. He may be contacted atnawad@cair.com
A Muslim mother in Wales stands accused of beating her seven-year-old son to death because he failed to memorize the Koran. Prosecutors claim Sara Ege used a stick to beat her seven-year-old son “like a dog” if he could not recite passages from the Islamic text.
Currently Sara Ege, 33, is on trial for killing her son, Yaseen Ali Ege, and attempting to pervert the course of justice by burning his body in a fire at their home in Cardiff. Her husband, Yousef Ali Ege, 38, is also on trial, charged with failing to protect his son. Yaseen died on July 12, 2010.
On Thursday, November 1, the court was toldhow Sara Ege would hit Yaseen with a hammer, a rolling pin and a slipper as well as repeatedly punching him for failing to memorize and recite passages from the Koran.
She would also allegedly lock her son in the shed, tie him to a door, and force him to do push ups if he failed at his studies.
The court also heard that in the months after Yaseen's death Ege told a doctor she had been told to kill her son by Shaitan - an Islamic name for the devil - and that she felt 100 per cent better after he died.
In a video recording of her interview with police, Mrs Ege told them:
“I was trying to teach him the Koran. “I was getting more and more frustrated. If he didn’t read it properly I would be very angry — I would hit him. “We had a high target. I wanted him to learn 35 pages in three months. “I promised him a new bike if he could do it. But Yaseen wasn’t very good — after a year of practice he had only learnt a chapter.”
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- It's the latest cruel tactic in the Pakistani Taliban's battle to stop girls and women from getting an education: acid thrown in their faces to scar them for life and deter others from following in their footsteps.
A doctor who treated the victims of an acid attack on a college van in the city of Parachinar in northern Pakistan last month told CNN that two girls had been left with severe burns to their faces.
The Pakistani Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack in threatening pamphlets distributed around the city. They also warn local girls against going to school, Dr. Shaban Ali said.
"We will never allow the girls of this area to go and get a Western education," said Qari Muhavia, the local Pakistani Taliban leader, when contacted by CNN by telephone.
"If and when we find any girl from Parachinar going to university for an education we will target her (in) the same way, so that she might not be able to unveil her face before others," Muhavia said.
The Pakistani Taiban's violent campaign to stop girls from getting an education was brought to international attention early last month when gunmen in the Swat Valley attacked another van, this time carrying schoolgirl education activist Malala Yousufzai. She is in a British hospital recovering from a gunshot to the head.
Shahab Uddin, a local government official from Kurram Agency in Pakistan's northern tribal belt, said the acid attack was the latest method used to terrorize young girls and deter them from going to school.
Fifteen students, boys and girls, from Kohat University were on their way home to Parachinar when unknown "extremists" stopped the vehicle and threw acid at the girls and shot one of the boys, according to Uddin.
Two girls, Zahida and Nabila, and one more boy had suffered burns, Uddin said, while Mohammad Ali, a fourth boy, was the student who was shot.
"After throwing acid on the students the assailants opened fire on the van," Uddin said.
He said the girls who were targeted "are alive and out of danger now, but their faces are badly scarred."
Ali, of the district headquarters hospital, confirmed that four students were brought into the emergency room for treatment, three with acid burns and one with a bullet wound.
"We are all graduate students studying in the master's program, and we were coming back home after taking our exams," one of the girls who was targeted told CNN under condition of anonymity.
"We don't know who the attackers were, but when our vehicle reached Doranai they stopped us and threw acid on our faces ... now we are scared of going back to our studies," said another girl, who also asked not to be named because she didn't have permission from her family to speak.
"Other passengers who were sitting in the vehicle were also wounded, but they were not as serious as Zahida and Nabila," she said.
Acid throwing is frequently used as a weapon in Pakistan to punish women for acts that allegedly bring dishonor to the family, or just to enact revenge.
Another recent acid attack in Pakistan resulted in the death of a 15-year-old girl, Anwasha. She was allegedly attacked by her parents for engaging in illicit relations with a boy, according to Tahir Ayub, a senior police official.
The 15-year-old girl suffered severe burns on her face and chest, but her parents initially refused to get her medical help, Ayub said. She was eventually taken to a hospital a day later and died from her injuries.
"Her father said she wasn't coming to her senses so the parents threw acid on her to save their honor," Ayub told CNN.
Anwasha's mother claimed she had seen the boy and girl secretly meet and had seen her frequently speaking on a cell phone, Ayub said.
The parents, who live in a suburban village outside the Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad, are in police custody, Ayub said.
The Taliban in Afghanistan also have used acid attacks against girls to discourage them from going to school. The victims are left to cope with a disfigurement that is shameful in their culture and is likely to impact their ability to have a husband and family.
THE leader of an Islamic group at the centre of anti-terror raids has returned from overseas to resume his hardline preaching in Melbourne.
Harun Mehicevic, also known as Abu Talha, returned from Bosnia late last month and is again extolling the virtues of jihad at the Al-Furqan Islamic Information Centre in Springvale South.
The Australian Federal Police raided the centre and Mr Mehicevic's home in September during an operation that focused on 12 properties, most of them in Melbourne's south-east. Mr Mehicevic was in Bosnia at the time.
As a result of the raids, Adnan Karabegovic, 23, was charged with four counts of collecting documents in connection with the preparation of a terrorist act. The maximum penalty for the offence is 15 years' jail.
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The raids led to the seizure of items including a computer memory stick containing ''violent extremist materials'', as well as imitation firearms and registered guns.
Speaking from the driveway of a flat in Springvale South, Mr Mehicevic said he had been silent since the raids because he felt nothing could be gained from speaking while the Al-Furqan centre was being criticised.
''With all the hype of raids and everything, you get no benefit of talking,'' he said. ''You wait for everything to settle down.''
Mr Mehicevic said he was angry that he had been described as the leader of a religious cult, but would wait until after the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, which was held on the last weekend in October, before deciding whether to discuss the raids in detail. He wrote in an email that the centre had ''decided to keep identical line related to media. Without engagement at all.''
Mr Mehicevic is a controversial figure within the Muslim community. The imam of the nearby Bosnian mosque in Noble Park, Ibrahim Omerdic, said Mehicevic had led a group of ''radical followers'' away from the Noble Park mosque about 10 years ago.
Another community source who also spoke of Mr Mehicevic soon after the raids said he was not well respected in Melbourne's Islamic community.
Mr Mehicevic said reports about his past and a protest outside the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne had made him wary of the media. He said some aspects of his history had been reported accurately, but he would not elaborate. Fairfax reported after the raids that sources said he had come to Australia from Bosnia as a young adult in the mid-1990s, and that he had a Pakistani-born wife and six children. Mr Mehicevic studied arts at Deakin University and possibly gained a diploma in teaching.
He turned to a conservative form of Islam known as Salafism, became a follower of hardline Melbourne cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran, and associated with Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who is serving 15-years' jail for planning a terrorist attack in Melbourne in 2005. When Benbrika split from Omran, Mr Mehicevic remained loyal to the senior cleric.
He said any interview to be conducted after Eid al-Adha would need to be conducted on his terms. ''Whatever we say to you is to be recorded and made to fit what we have said.''
A mother and father in Pakistan-administered Kashmir have killed their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid after seeing her talking to a young man, police say.
Local police officer Tahir Ayub told AFP on Thursday the father, Mohammad Zafar, had had suspicions about his daughter Anvu Sha and became enraged when he saw her with a boy outside their home on Monday.
"Zafar beat her up and then poured acid over her with the help of his wife. She was badly burnt but they did not take her to hospital until the next morning, and she died on Wednesday," Ayub said.
Doctor Mohammad Jahangir of the state run Kotli hospital confirmed the death, saying the girl was brought to hospital in a "very critical condition" with almost 70 per cent burns.
Anvu Sha's married elder sister alerted police and demanded they investigate the incident in Khoi Ratta district, 140 kilometres north of the state capital Muzaffarabad.
"The parents have confessed, saying that they suspected the girl had illicit relations with a boy," Ayub said. "We have registered a murder case against the girl's father and mother."
Pakistan is a deeply conservative country, where women, especially in poor rural areas, enjoy few rights and protection by the police.
"Troubling" ... parents Hosayn and Alyaa El-Dennaoui leave the Glebe Coroners court. Photo: Nick Moir
Missing ... Rhama el-Dennaoui. Photo: Supplied