Okay... By me, do you mean me personally, or Americans, or "Westerners", or what. So... interesting horror story about horses. Not really much of a point. Plus, even if your right about deaths (which I doubt) isnt it better for adults to die due to their own life choices than children to be murdered?

Many-no cancel that- Most_no cancel that again- ALMOST ALL american women do not do what you say. The ones that do, have chosen to. They were not killed. The more I actually think about your logic train, the more I hate you. You, as an individual, are a bad person.

And whats this 20 years bullshit? I dont know who will be running things then, (Id bet a combination of the US, Russia, and China as world powers, with a series of important regional powers) but I guarantee it wont be whatever culture youre from Idi. If America ever goes off a cliff, the one thing I look forward to is how the third world will miss us. What do you think will happen, that the Muslim world will become stable and powerful and nothing bad will ever happen again? What would happen is that you would get to deal with newly aggressive China and Russia, and well, let me put it this way: Youll start missing us real fast. You are such a perfect illustration of the problems of most Muslim countries, I must suspect your a secret Zionist trying to make Muslims look bad.

Your post definitely earns points for creativity. This is the first time I've ever heard of this particular use for the hormones of artificially inseminated mares (if those hormones are used for anything at all). Certainly you can furnish documentation for those of us that are not familiar with this treatment.

In any event, what you failed to mention is that decisions concerning plastic surgery are made by the women undergoing those procedures, virtually all of whom have reached their majority. They are not pubescent and prepubescent little girls subject to the whims of a father who sees them as pieces of property rather than the children they are.

This is not a part of Islam, this is child abuse, if not out and out sex slavery. How you could defend it is beyond me.

...that this is what former writers of the Weekly World News have come to since the publication stopped printing.

The number of women who have plastic surgery in the US is minuscule. And, because the US has extremely good health care, the rate of death from plastic surgery is far more minuscule yet. FYI, whatever surgical practices are used in your country, they were overwhelmingly developed and perfected in the US (with some contribution from Japan and Europe, both notably non-Islamic).

Almost certainly, the percentage of adult American women who choose to take the risk associated with plastic surgery, and who nevertheless die or are permanently injured, is FAR less than the number of raped Yemeni child brides whose insides are torn up, leaving them infertile, crippled, or dead.

This not only because nowhere near a third of US women have plastic surgery, while a third of young Yemeni girls are force-married, and thus raped, as children. It is also because utmost care is taken to not botch the surgeries. The overwhelmingly common outcome with the surgeries is health. In contrast, internal damage is an extremely common outcome when men force themselves into children. If care were taken with these girls, they would not be raped in childhood at all. They would be left alone until at least age 15, which is what the Yemeni marriage age USED to be before Islamists started messing around with it.

Regarding Premarin, first you have no business talking about the horse's rights unless you are a vegetarian. Find a video of slaughter--even halal slaughter--then post it here, and then claim it's better for the animal than production of Premarin. Second, Premarin is not used in any significant numbers anymore, because it causes cancer. Thankfully because we aren't wildly morally corrupt, when we find something hurts our family members, we stop using it. Third, when Premarin was used, it was used by MENOPAUSAL women, to ease menopause medical symptoms, like aches and hot flashes. This is easily as ethical as eating meat. There are lubricants old people use for sex, Premarin wasn't for this purpose. No one goes on a hormone pill for something that can be solved with jelly. To focus only on the sexual symptoms of menopause is absurd, and it demonstrates how you see women. Fourth, since most women are NOT menopausal, Premarin was by no means the largest source of female hormones in this country,--ordinary biology was. Again, you claim is absurd.

You are weirdly obsessed with what adult women CHOOSE do in order to enjoy sex, and weirdly unconcerned with what little girls are FORCED to endure so that men can perversely enjoy having sex with them. The values that can be deduced from this are that men's pleasure counts for more than the suffering and damage of children, while adult women's pleasure is an innate evil. This is a perverse perspective, the first part especially is akin to the value system of Jeffery Dahmer, and you should be in a mental institution for having it.

In 20 years, the US will still be a world power, we will just be sharing the stage more with China (which persecutes its Muslims) and Russia (which persecutes its Muslims). This will hardly leave you better off. Ask any Muslim who has been here and didn't go around with his nose in the air the whole time, and you'll find that the overwhelming majority of American are friendly to Muslims, and the overwhelming majority of women are not vanity-stricken whores but normal, modestly-dressed people concerned with their children, husbands, parents, and careers--usually in that order.

The culture of widespread child rape that you are defending is extremely immoral and perverse--far more so than a culture of voluntary and rare plastic surgery. There is no comparison between the two. To the extent that you link this perverse culture to your religion, all you do is convince the world--not just Americans but everyone with an internet connection, Russians and Chinese included--that your religion is barbaric. If it isn't, then you are doing your religion a huge disservice. So, clearly the real way to defend your religion is to focus on delinking it from obviously barbaric practices, not waving fingers about how dare someone else collect pregnant mare urine.

The adult woman who dies from a botched plastic surgery was there by choice. Explain to me again how a 13 year old girl had a choice in being raped.

IDI, how do you support your claim that the number of American women who die each year due to plastic surgery is higher than the number of child brides who die due to child-birth in the Islamic world?

The facts and statistics do not support this claim.

USA:
death rate for plastic surgery in the U.S. is 0.0019% (1)
1.47 million plastic surgeries in 2009 (1)

So, 0.0019% death rate * 1.47 Million surgeries = 28 deaths expected in 2009 (1)

YEMEN:
more than 52% of all brides are child brides under 15 years old (2)
the maternal mortality rate was 430 deaths per 100,000 births (3)
there are 22,917,485 people in Yemen currently (4)
there are 35.32 births/1,000 population (2009 est.) (5)

So, 35.32 births/1,000 people * 22,917,485 people * 430 deaths/100,000 births = 3480 deaths in childbirth expected in 2009

In the Islamic world, sex before marriage is forbidden, we can assume that only married women are having sex, and by extention that child brides are having sex. Therefore, the birth rate applies equally to child brides. Since more than 52% of all brides are children under 15 years old, and only married women have sex, that mean that up to 1800 deaths (52% of 3480) each year are women under 15.

So, in Yemen, up to 1800 child-brides die in child birth each year versus 28 deaths due to plastic surgery in the U.S.A. And that's just for Yemen. We haven't even explored the largest Islamic countries of Indonesia (196 Million Muslims), Pakistan (125 Million Muslims), and Chine (135 Million Muslims).

Based on these numbers, upwards of 30,000 child-brides die in the Islamic world each year in child birth. Worldwide, there are about 536,000 maternal deaths each year, of which 99% are in the developing world (3).

Sources
1. http://www.plasticsurgery.org/Media/Press_Releases/Plastic_Surgery_Complications_and_Deaths_are_Rare_Despite_Highly_Publicized_Death_of_Donda_West.html
2. http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/CultureAndMedia/?id=1.0.2237886194
3. http://www.who.int/making_pregnancy_safer/documents/9789241596213/en/index.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Yemen
5. http://www.indexmundi.com/yemen/birth_rate.html

I am honored to be called Mr. America, even though I know how you meant it. I think you read my original post in the wrong tone. Yemenis helping themselves is the ideal solution. The problem is that these nascent groups will not be able to make permenent changes without modernization, and I, personally, dont see any sufficient modernizing trends inside Yemen.

The "trick" thing was an exclamation of exasperation. As was the "adult" thing I mentioned, which looking back, clearly set you off. By other world powers I meant China (not Christian) or Russia (Christian but extremely secular). Noone thinks that could happen, I didnt mean it seriously. The ideal solution is the one about infrastructure, or Yemenis solving their problems with little outside help.

Thank you for going at the racist angle. I did a little victory dance. Racism was, and remains to some degree, a problem. As a self-identifying nationalist, no group infuriates me as much as the old racist Southerners, who would have sold us to the Soviets to protect their contemptable little culture. Also, the risk should have occured to you that I might be a miscegenist(I hope I spelled that right). If I lynched blacks thirty years ago, Im older than I thought I am, and I have several loved ones I should probably speak to. (I am now doing another victory dance)

I will now address your points quickly. The prison population is a problem, but it has drastically improved our crime rate from what it was in the 80's and 90's. I was always against the Iraq war. I am kind of relieved to have Russia and Chinas as rivals now, since our decision-making process did start to decay without any peer rivals to keep us honest. (Such always happens, look at Rome, the Mughals in India, or the later Chinese dynaties.) The war was idiotic, I agree with you there, but once started, we did conduct it more humanely than any other nation in a similar situation. (That does not morally justify it, but if we lose our sense of comparison, all judgements are worthless) It was not for oil, however. It was about domestic politics, which is still awful. Bush wanted to step out of his father's shadow, and secure his popularity. China got most the oil deals, even the Euros got more than us.

I do not have any problems with Muslims. I know 6 well and dozens by name. All the American Muslims I know are very reasonable people. In my junior year of highschool, I was the right offensive tackle and the right guard was a Muslim. You may not know much about American football, but the Guard-Tackle relationship is a very close one. Often, they must instinctively know what the other is thinking so the opponent doesnt know what they will do. In the post-classical era, Islam was the only Eurasian civilization that did not
collapse into barbarism. Without it, not only would have all progress stopped, all the knowledge amassed by the classical civilizations of India, China, and the Mediterranean would have been lost. Since the Meso-American, Australian, and Southern African civilizations were stuck in the stone age, (Northern Africa is culturally considered part of Eurasia) humanity would have restarted with copper tools. Islam is not an inherently bad religion, but currently, the muslim world is probably the world's most screwed up.

Finally, I explicitly said intervention is a bad idea, so how do I want to invade?

temper temper idi amin. forging in the conspiracy websites eh? No to get in between you and Captain America ( he has been promoted for taking you on, although it is not recommended), i wanted to further add to his points possibly correct. Our prison population: we have on average or below average crime (especially violent crime) in the OECD. Yes, turns out the 'gun-totting, crazy americans' have some the least amount of crime in the developed world. the prison population you so fondly like to recall, is mostly filled with people who cannot afford bail (people awaiting trial). there was an excellent expose on NPR, about this whole thing, essentially putting the blame on the bail-bond industry. Sexual molestation on the other hand is a problem no doubt; because we have laws against marrying children and trying to make sexual molestation kosher. you are flat out wrong about std rates, and please don't say we doctor the numbers. while i agree with you that child marriage has nothing to do with islam, it is counterproductive for the Prophet (PBUH) to marry a 6 and consummate that marriage at 9. It is hard to keep a straight face in such situations. easy with the curse words, otherwise it makes us feel you are hurt, and we americans dont know what to do when people are hurt. We either squirm in our seats, or invade the country of that IP address, and we do it with indignation of course. yes those last two sentences were sarcastic, in case it was above your head.

*marry a 6 year old, and consummate the marriage when she is 9.

I don't respond to hyena like laughter, mangled syntax, retarded punctuation, and misinterpreted words from another rent-an-American. It is just too difficult to read.

So fuck off Med.

Norboose

Good of you to see some of my points. All these issues are nothing but a side show to the real prize: Control of hydrocarbons in these areas. Demonisation of the 'other' is an age old tactic. It makes slaughter that much easier. I see that you proudly consider yourself a nationalist. I honestly would like to know why you think that is so commendable. I find nationalism odious. All nations are ephemeral and evanescent. Here today, gone tomorrow. Why is your country, other than being hyper wealthy, any different. Even with you, as your wealth and prestige diminishes, the descent into fascism, rank bigotry and intolerance has not only begun but is already well entrenched.

This is one of those rare arguments that gets more civil as it goes on. All right. First, by hydrocarbons, I assume you mean the forms of oil useful to people, not the general chemical family. (I respect your attempt to trip me up, though)
Yes, the greatest problems of the Middle East (Which, as the center of Islam, greatly affects the rest of the Muslim East) still stems from the collapse of the Ottomans. For a long time, the Ottomans had no real competators, they grew complacent sitting on major trade routes, the Vizars increasingly made the Sultans puppets, in a society built around a strong executive. This lead to their long decline and collapse. Without that regional power, they were unable to prevent the creation of Israel, and to control their own natural resources. These two things utterly hamstrung the efforts to modernize. If there was no oil in the Mideast, or if the Mideast had oil AND powerful governments, foreign involvement would be much less. However, the role of oil is often overestimated. Oil deposits do lead to a signifficant foreign interference. But these are in the form of political and economic manuevering, espionage and infiltration, and maybe some special forces actions or air strikes, not real war. Modern warfare is just too damn expensive to be justified by anything other than a perception of strategic necessity. Strategic importance does not really have a pricetag in the minds of leaders. Why are we in Afghanistan? Its as much a wasteland as anywhere on earth. Even Iraq, if it were about the oil, we could have secured much more at much less cost. If we wanted oil that badly, we would not give any concern to drilling anywhere in America. Im pretty sure we could make Canada give us all their oil by having our president punch out their prime minister. In all seriousness, if we were that ruthless, we could easily threaten to remove our strategic umbrella, they would have literally no options.
I understand how demonization works. Thats why I was so reluctant to commit to any ideology when I was young. However, I know you understand that the sides in a conflict are not always morally equivalent. China and Russia are America's most powerful competators. Their governments disappear and assassinate thousands of their citizens per year. Mine doesnt. By every objective measurement, the US is just much less evil than any practical alternative. If America collapses, or loses its democratic ideals, humanity is damned to be ruled by utterlyy amoral superstates, kind of like 1984. Those realizations made me a nationalist, not brainwashing or self-delusion. To most people, being willing to devote your life to something because its"less evil," is unacceptable, so they think their side is perfect and the other side is evil-incarnate. That truth of moral complexity, simply does not bother me. Maybe that makes me a sociopath, but at least it makes me a useful sociopath.
The reasons I listed above are what makes America different. Without it, humanity is screwed.

One might also ask why are you so attached to the idea of raping children. Maybe YOU should find a new hobby.

#1 the plight of girls IS our business no matter where they live. And we have every right to speak out against any abuse. Yemen is not exempt from world opinion and civil rights.
#2 we obviously do have the moral authority when it comes to values. Every citizen living in any country may not follow the moral codes and laws. But at least most of the world has the good sense to condemn a child molester and put them in jail where they belong when they are caught. Which is obviously not the case in many Muslim nations.

NO, your culture is not equivalent to ours. If it were, you would not condone and protect your perverts and pedophiles, by calling it your "culture". Give me a break! That's enough to gag a maggot.

Fact is, and they know it, the men who support this hideous practice are weak perverts who need to prop up their manhood by stepping on the neck of their women. They are not competant enough to go out and compete, to win a grown woman's affections. They have to steal the virginity of a child...child rape, pedophilia. Period. That's what it is no matter how you try to paint it.

And for the women who support it, what can I say, pathetic. A disgrace to their gender and humanity in general.

NO, you will not be allowed to "live on your own" and commit the atrocity of child rape and pedophilia with out being called out for it, and condemned as the boil on the butt of humanity that you are.

Even if we can't change it, we will still condemn you for it. GET USED TO IT, OR STOP DOING IT.

I agree fully with the comments above. As a Muslim, I too am embarrassed at people (Muslims and non-Muslims) commenting on such forums with complete lack of knowledge about the reasons behind our Prophets (pbuh) marriage to Aisha (ra). His marriage to Aisha (ra) , apart from being a divine command, was a strategic (and successful) socio-political move to strengthen Islam and leave in his passing, a person, a scholar who had insight and who would guide his people 50 years after his death. Those who support child marriages must stop using this alliance as an excuse to contract marriages to prepubescent children, adolescents and young teens. Islam demands psychological maturity (required for an Informed Consent)…and then…marriage. The problem here "age of consent"...nothing to do with foreign policy or invading countries.

Its high time people got rid of 'mental slavery'...i.e. thinking that the 'West' or 'America' are responsible for the human rights/children's rights activists calling for a ban on the practice of child marriage. It is very easy for clerics or leaders to incite people by using the words 'america' or 'western policy'. Perhaps it is time for us to bring in a new generation of Scholars who will adhere to the laws of Islam AND at the same time recognize the new Urf or social norms. Do Muslims realise how important it is for THEM to step up and say NO to this practice? Only then will the Clerics and Scholars realise that the majority of Muslims are opposed to this practice and stop blaming the west.

This problem is not exculsive Yemen, it is happening in the poorest and most illiterate regions. The fact is that the majority of Muslims are shamed by the practices of a minor group who are using the Sunnah as an excuse to commit crimes against humanity and are actually in violation of the laws of Islam.

For those who are interested in learning more about this topic, do reads this article:
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=0AcXIbtkMD2aoZGNiOG12cHhfMmNxdGh4OTZo&revision=_latest

Or join us on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=155102399909

Or sign the Petition:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/childbrides/

the arabic word for 'black' is aswad.

the arabic word for slave is 'abd.

I'd recommend going back to whatever polemicist 'scholar' you got your information from and asking for clarification.

While your at it, ask them whether every Muslim scholar in the past 1500 or so odd years was of the same conclusion that Muhammad married his wife at the age of 6 and made his icky consummation at the age of 9, which you seem a bit overly eager to shout out.

Furthermore, there were a wide range of activities that Muhammad engaged in that were made forbidden for his followers (i.e. marrying more than 4 wives, fasting for days at a time, etc.) So why then is it so implausible, if we accept that he married a wife at this tender age, that it wasn't part of his "khasa'is," instead of a genreal legal permissability for all that would follow?

Please help us on our path, sister.

That's an interesting little neologism.

And of all the scholars that the land of Jordan has produced, you JUST HAPPEN to be working for the one that teaches you virulent polemics against a millenia-old faith adhered to by 1 in every 5 human beings on this planet? That's a pretty big coincidence. Who is this 'scholar' by the way?

Did you do some sort of survey showing you that 1 billion people believe child molestation is religiously sanctioned? If not, how can you make that assertion? Conjecture? Yes, there is gross ignorance and abuse of women in large parts of the Muslim world. As there is in the rest of the world. The only question to me is whether this abuse is permitted, and even defended by the law, and that law is based on religious understanding. Which, sadly to say, is true in the case of several Muslim countries. But the folks that justify and defend these things by no means represent normative Islam, and are rejected by the concensus of verifiable scholars, untainted by the madness of Modern Muslim reform movements. Movements trying to idioticly 'go back to the original sources' and failing miserably at it.

"that Sudanese Muslims are the world's last openly slave trading society."

Well that's 1 country in like 50 some-odd Muslim Majority members of the OIC.

So by that logic, since Rwanda is a Christian Majority country, and they suffered enthnic cleansing... it means ALL Christian Majority countries, in fact, the faith of Christianity, is somehow guilty of sowing and practicing ethnic bigotry.

Illogical premises. from a prejudicial bigot.

You mean Quran-only Muslims? If so, they are irrelevant because neither of the two large groups of Muslims in the world accept their creed as sound. So why you would mention them is beyond me.

As for little girls wearing Hijabs, last I checked most western countries gave parents the right to raise their children as they see fit, within certain recognized bounds of individual rights.

If a parent wants to instill Islamic values in a child from that tender age, that's their personal choice. I'd guarantee you however that if you ask the vast majority of those parents why they are imposing that on such little daughters, very few, if any, will describe their decision using the terms "sexual property." They'd likely tell you something along the lines of what they see as the inculcation of their "Islamic values."

And I'm not even going to bother going down that insane "thighing" rabbit hole with you. Suffice it to say that there is no textual evidence from the Qur'an, or the sound traditions of the Prophet, that would justify such an act on a child. If isolated fatwas here and there are your source, fatwas that don't even bother to explain the textual justification for the specific mufti's conclusions, then that should be the end of the discussion. Unless ofcourse you're a virulently anti-Muslim fanatic with an axe to grind. If that's the case, I hope you find happiness in your doubts.

can you tell us why so many Muslim males in Yemen, Egypt, SA and elsewhere are obsessed with sex with children?

How many? I mean is this some epidemic we're talking about? What proportion of men in these countries are pedophiles would you say? And is that proportion higher or lower than those in say, the U.S? Do you have any empirical evidence supporting your claims?
Yes, it's a problem. The main issue is what society's attitudes are towards these problems. In most countries, pedophilia is an odious crime. In Yemen, it's been sanctioned by [a few people's] warped interpretation of religion, unfortunately.

What you're doing though is taking the empirical practice of it, and presenting it as a reflection of the normative permissability of it by a major world faith. Which, I dare say, isn't believed to be the case by unanimous consent of Islam's adherents, either now, or even historically.

As for staying focused, the article also mentions that there are Yemenis (most definitely practicing Muslims) who also advocated laws against these things. I mean let's try also to focus on the fact that a Muslim Majority parliament introduced the law and passed it as well. The article is about the outrage AFTER the fact by fundamentalists and those that are coddling them for political support.

Once again, you fail to acknowledge any of the issues at hand.

I believe you're just resorting to flat-out lies at this point, for my previous comments clearly talked about these things:

"You can’t comment about Muslim slaveholding in Africa because the simple fact is that it is supported by the Koran and it is part of Muslim culture."

Yes, slavery isn't outlawed by the Quran. But there is a concerted effort to phase-out slavery by making the freeing of slaves an expiation for one's sins. The Catholic Church had popes that made indulgences a 'get-out-of-jail' card for its followers. "Give more money to the extravagant Church and erase your sins." In Islam, the highest way to expiate sins? Free slaves if you have them. Or feed the indigent. Or serve people around you. Islam's position on this issue is the same as it was for alcohol. There was a time where it wasn't outlawed, then it was made restricted because certain devotional acts couldn;t be done while intoxicated. Then it was finally forbidden. Slavery was a much bigger, much more wide-spread, socio-economic reality of every single race on Earth at the time the Book was revealed. It's phased elimination is, again, the normative stance of the Book. If Muslims failed to live up to that, that's their problem. Don't blame the Book.

"You can’t comment about young girls wearing headscarves because the simple fact is that female children are regarded as sexually desirable, therefore they are required to cover themselves so as not to arouse men – that is the very definition of “sexual property,” which as you wisely point out is a key Islamic “value.”

I can comment. And I did comment. And it's not a 'simple fact' as you stated. It's a 'bold faced lie' on your part. I don't know a single Muslim that shared your view about "female children [being] regarded as sexually desirable." Nor have I ever read any such thing in any authoritative text in Sunni Islam which was agreed upon by the community of scholars. So far you haven't given a single source for your incendiary assertions. They're just empty claims.

The Ayatollah Khomeini, if he in fact gave this fatwa, is not an authoritative source with like, 90+% of Muslims in this world. It's like me saying David Duke or Glen Beck speak for America. They may speak for a certain portion of Americans, but they don't represent the views of all [or even most] Americans, and certainly don't speak for the normative American creed. Nor did Khomeini, in his fatwa, say where he was getting all these conclusions from. What textual evidence was he basing these things on? Did every other legal scholar (much less the majority of them) agree with his conclusions?

My religion doesn't sanction the libelous crimes that you're accusing its adherents of. And there is no such thing as one stagnant, monolithic, "Muslim Culture." Asserting so just exposes further your pre-committed, rather illogical, ideological bend. You start with the imperative that Islam is bad, and you proceed to garb that pre-judice with age-old sophistry, all to try and prove to people that you were just committed to impartial truth and stumbled upon in after careful study. That's the real essence of taqiyya... mate.

as you provide no citations, and no proof, along with zero textual evidence supported by classical [or even modern] commentary, it's not even worth arguing with you anymore.

You're clearly not interested in informed debate. Just sensational claims and name calling.

As a parting gift, just consider one thought... the enlightened England which you hail from, as well as umpteen universities in France, Germany and the United States play host to tenured professor after tenured professor, many of whom are atheists, and most of whom aren't Muslim... but ALL of whom categorically reject your reading of Islam.

Even the most critical Orientalist scholars reject the obvious polemics that you *and your ilk* spew about in order to turn people against Islam.

This is to mention nothing of the fact that there are countless Muslims, at this stage, and historically, that are far more enlightened, gifted, and humanistic than you and I, and they were devout worshippers, who would have categorically rejected pretty much everything you believe to be 'facts' about this religion.

So inspite of the things you claim, at the end of the day, your bantering is pointless, as only I am reading your non-sense... and even I don't care anymore.