Child brides for Muslims?

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Doctor Evil
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Child brides for Muslims?

Post by Doctor Evil »

I heard part of a show on the radio the other day where an Islamic scholar was saying that the prophet Mohammed had a 9 year old bride. He went on to say that the marrying of young girls to older men was a very common occurence in that culture. I am just curious if this is a practice that died in years gone by or if it is still done today. Also, if it is still done, is it a "religious freedom" protected by the Charter of Rights here in Canada. :twisted: :twisted:
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Dex
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Post by Dex »

This was not a practice mutually exclusive to Islam. Yes, it is happening today; look no further than the interior of British Columbia and South of the border in Colorado and Utah (among other places). No, these people are not Islamic. No, these actions are not protected under the Constitution.
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Walker
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Post by Walker »

Exploitation of the weaker is as old as life itself; Even our own cultural heroes were big into these practices;
Im going to be lazy today and just repost someone elses comments instead of going on a long winded rant of my own;
Direct off the presses from the liberal leftwing conspiracy I give you (Imperialism day!)



Well, another Columbus Day is almost upon us (although the media will be calling it something like An Italian Celebration so that no one could argue against it). And for those of you with kids, it's a good excuse to teach them a little lesson about American history. After all, they're getting two days off from state-sanctioned indoctrination. We don't want them to start thinking independently, now do we? So in the spirit of blind patriotism, I give you a fun Columbus Day activity the whole family can enjoy. Make history come alive and show the kiddies that they, too, can be great explorers like Columbus!

First, be an illegal immigrant without papers. Then break into someone's house. I suppose any house will do, but a real nice and big one is preferable. Stick a flag in the front lawn and claim it as your own. Congratulations! You have just discovered a new house!

But what about the people already living there? Good question. Haven't you always wanted servants? All you have to do is convert them to your religion and make them your slaves! And remember: if they start protesting, making wild claims like "This is our house" or "Aren't you a little smug for someone who never bathes?" just kill them. They're obviously ignorant savages who have no idea how to run a household as well as you do.

Once you've gotten the natives under control, then comes the fun part. Take that nice, big, beautiful dream house and tear the mother apart. Fill the air with smoke. Let the plants wither and die, or better yet, throw them all out the window and replace them with plants that you like. Kill the previous owner's pets for no reason other than to marvel at how easy they are to kill. Remember: it's your house; you discovered it; you can do what you want with it.

More and more people are figuring out that hands-on learning is a truly effective way to teach. This project should be an educational and enjoyable "blast into the past!" And most likely, you'll also get a close look at the American judicial system. Good luck, and happy Columbus Day!


I was being sarcastic, in case you didn’t get it.
The longer we live a lie about the past, the easier it is to fool us with lies in the present and future. We end up living in a life of fantasy, not able to deal with the reality of a situation.


"Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise."
-- Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.

"Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith."
--George H.W. Bush, 1989 speech


"If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea.
The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what's happening in the whole world.
When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino "Indians" who loved there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of Columbus's crew such as Miguel Cuneo.
When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola, however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come out to greet them. Cuneo wrote: "When our caravels… where to leave for Spain, we gathered…one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495…For those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island's fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done."
Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she "resisted with all her strength." So, in his own words, he "thrashed her mercilessly and raped her."
While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus - which is to this day still taught in some US schools - to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: "It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell…Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold…"
Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus' men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."
However, the Taino turned out not to be particularly good workers in the plantations that the Spaniards and later the French established on
Hispaniola: they resented their lands and children being taken, and attempted to fight back against the invaders. Since the Taino where obviously standing in the way of Spain's progress, Columbus sought to impose discipline on them. For even a minor offense, an Indian's nose or ear was cut off, se he could go back to his village to impress the people with the brutality the Spanish were capable of. Columbus attacked them with dogs, skewered them with pikes, and shot them.
Eventually, life for the Taino became so unbearable that, as Pedro de Cordoba wrote to King Ferdinand in a 1517 letter, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth… Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery."
Eventually, Columbus and later his brother Bartholomew Columbus who he left in charge of the island, simply resorted to wiping out the Taino altogether. Prior to Columbus' arrival, some scholars place the population of Haiti/Hispaniola (now at 16 million) at around 1.5 to 3 million people. By 1496, it was down to 1.1 million, according to a census done by Bartholomew Columbus. By 1516, the indigenous population was 12,000, and according to Las Casas (who were there) by 1542 fewer than 200 natives were alive. By 1555, every single one was dead.
This wasn't just the story of Hispaniola; the same has been done to indigenous peoples worldwide. Slavery, apartheid, and the entire concept of conservative Darwinian Economics, have been used to justify continued suffering by masses of human beings.
Dr. Jack Forbes, Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis and author of the brilliant book "Columbus and Other Cannibals," uses the Native American word wétiko (pronounced WET-ee-ko) to describe the collection of beliefs that would produce behavior like that of Columbus. Wétiko literally means "cannibal," and Forbes uses it quite intentionally to describe these standards of culture: we "eat" (consume) other humans by destroying them, destroying their lands, taking their natural resources, and consuming their life-force by enslaving them either physically or economically. The story of Columbus and the Taino is just one example.
We live in a culture that includes the principle that if somebody else has something we need, and they won't give it to us, and we have the means to kill them to get it, it's not unreasonable to go get it, using whatever force we need to.
In the United States, the first "Indian war" in New England was the "Pequot War of 1636," in which colonists surrounded the largest of the Pequot villages, set it afire as the sun began to rise, and then performed their duty: they shot everybody-men, women, children, and the elderly-who tried to escape. As Puritan colonist William Bradford described the scene: "It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they [the colonists] gave praise therof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully..."
The Narragansetts, up to that point "friends" of the colonists, were so shocked by this example of European-style warfare that they refused further alliances with the whites. Captain John Underhill ridiculed the Narragansetts for their unwillingness to engage in genocide, saying Narragansett wars with other tribes were "more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies."
In that, Underhill was correct: the Narragansett form of war, like that of most indigenous Older Culture peoples, and almost all Native American tribes, does not have extermination of the opponent as a goal. After all, neighbors are necessary to trade with, to maintain a strong gene pool through intermarriage, and to insure cultural diversity. Most tribes wouldn't even want the lands of others, because they would have concerns about violating or entering the sacred or spirit-filled areas of the other tribes. Even the killing of "enemies" is not most often the goal of tribal "wars": It's most often to fight to some pre-determined measure of "victory" such as seizing a staff, crossing a particular line, or the first wounding or surrender of the opponent.
This wétiko type of theft and warfare is practiced daily by farmers and ranchers worldwide against wolves, coyotes, insects, animals and trees of the rainforest; and against indigenous tribes living in the jungles and rainforests. It is our way of life. It comes out of our foundational cultural notions. So it should not surprise us that with the doubling of the world's population over the past 37 years has come an explosion of violence and brutality, and as the United States runs low on oil, we are now fighting wars in oil-rich parts of the world.
That is, after all, our history, which we celebrate on Columbus Day. It need not be our future."
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