Cruel Affection

OVER THE PAST FEW months, I have watched bits of programs on a channel called Animal Planet. For example:

In the southeastern corner of Michigan beats the industrial heart of America's "Motor City" — Detroit. And on the outskirts of town is the headquarters of the city's primary animal welfare agency, run by the nonprofit Michigan Humane Society (MHS).

Animal Cops: Detroit follows the MHS's animal cruelty investigators as they track down animal abusers and bring them to justice.

It was fascinating to see all these different men and women who do their best with the provided resources to help the neglected, and sometimes battered, creatures. Their genuine concern for animals was always evident from their body language.

Such shows always bring back a rotten memory or two from my life among the Ummah. In a topsy-turvy reality, Western society tries to provide a comfortable life for animals whereas the Islamic World has rules about wife-beating and where children are treated with mindless savagery.

ONE OF MY RELATIVES was having a conversation with my dad in 1996. My dad was being updated about all the different family members and their present situations. The talk soon turned to one of my uncles who, at the time, had been recently married. This guy told my dad in a most nonchalant manner, "He beats his wife practically everyday."

"Tsk tsk, that's not good," said my dad.

Then, they moved on to other topics.

DURING THE SUMMER OF 1995 in Lahore, Pakistan, my mom asked me to come with her to a nearby town as she was going to meet a tailor. My leg was aching but I agreed anyway. A few minutes later our car stopped in front of the tailor's house. My mom went in as I stood outside with our transport. It was a bright sunny day and not a single structure with more than two stories could be seen in that village.

Suddenly, a wailing noise broke the calm. It was coming from the street at my front-right. Soon, a child, who was at most five, emerged from there. He was crying his lungs out. Behind him, I guess, was his father. He was ferociously yelling at the kid. The weeping boy kept on walking as his dad approached him from behind. Then, he hit his kid on the back of the head with such revolting force that the frail boy practically leapt forward and landed on his face.

The crying stopped for a moment. The boy got up and started to weep and walk again. And again that man would menacingly catch up to him and sickeningly smack him with brutal power. It was not the first and likely not the last time that he had hit a kid. In public. No-one in the neighborhood stopped the brutal beating or even uttered a word of disapproval. There were no Kid Cops who could rescue that young boy from his gruesome fate.

IN AN OLD POST, I described the barbaric behavior of teachers in my Muslim school. I ended that piece with this:

Some of you might be asking, "How could the parents allow this barbarity to continue in schools?" You naively assume that such violence is limited to schools in Muslim lands.

I've been hit with the following list of things. By some magical coincidence, the people responsible--parents, teachers, and relatives--were all adherents of the Religion of Peace.

1. Hands. On many occasions I was smacked across the face. Most of the time, I didn't even know that I had done anything wrong.
2. Footwear: flip-flops, slippers, boots etc. My dad lovingly used to call the procedure Bata service.
3. Clothes Hangers. Lots of 'em; mostly plastic. A few hits would break the hanger right in the middle at its horizontal part. It would leave burning pain; often I'd sob and go to sleep.
4. Sticks. All sorts of varieties: small, thick, rounded, long, taped. In Urdu, a stick is called a dunda. I got the dunda treatment almost exclusively from my teachers. What did I do to "deserve" the punishment? Take your pick: failed a test, couldn't recite or write a verse from the Quran, didn't do an assignment, collective corporal treatment for everyone in the class because of excessive noise.
5. A Spoon. A stainless steel spoon to be precise. It was hurled from across the room and I instinctively raised my arms to protect my skull. It hit me on my elbow and afterwards my mouth was wide open for a few seconds but not a single sound came out. There was some bleeding.
6. A Water Pipe. A stainless steel water pipe to be precise. After being hit on my left leg, I couldn't walk for the rest of the day. The affected area was bruised and I had trouble walking comfortably for a couple of weeks.

I'm fortunate to be no longer around such viciousness and to point it out. However, today literally tens of millions of kids within Islamic borders are subjected to such vile brutality. The overwhelming majority grow up and internalize this loathsome pathology, instead of rejecting it.

Violence is utilized in countless Muslim-majority schools, not just the madrassas, to keep pupils "in line" and in most homes to restrain a "disobedient" wife or raise "honorable" children.

Non-Muslims have to ask themselves: When most of the Ummah treats their own offspring with such an abhorrent passion, then what is in store for those whom the Muslims hate?

Contents

Update
Thanks to Isabel for the link at Western Resistance.

Comments

[Jauhara al Kafirah]

I accidently posted the following on another thread: I meant to post it here.

I was punished quite often as a child with an orange HotWheels racing car track, made out of plastic. I used to dread the words our mother would say: Your dad is gonna give you the ORANGE STICK. Now that I think about it, using that track on us was way beyond cruel, because it was a Christmas present we'd all been clamoring for. Nothing says "I love you", like getting beaten with a toy you'd wanted all year.

[The Fox]

Sounds a lot like the treatment I and 13 other boys received at an English county council childrens' hostel in the sixties. This kind of violence isn't only a feature of muslim barbarity. But I take your point. Such brutality has now been replaced in the west with a ridiculous lack of any form of discipline at all. I don't really know which is worse...

[Whitewolf]

I have been watching the stuidity over a few cartoons for the past couple of weeks. What does this have to do with Spousal and child abuse? A lot. LACK OF SELF CONTROL. With maybe a few exceptions, muslum men are SPOILED, VICIOUS, UNEDUCATED and BULLIES - lacking any form of maturity. WHY do the women and children TOLERATE it? I think the best thing in the world would be for the women and kids to GET SOME KAHONIES, pick up a stick or a rock and fight back. I understand about differences in culture, but enough is enough.... if the women over there don't like the way they are being treated, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! If he wants to hit, pick up a stick and tan his worthless ass back. One thing a bully can't stand is for the same thing to be done to him. A good stiff taste of his own medicine usually puts an end to the nonsense. AND GET RID OF THE DAMN BURKAS!!!! They are half of the problem in themselves. If the men like the burkas SO much - make THEM wear them! Come on people, of ALL faiths and walks of life. It's the year 2006, for crying out loud. Let's all start acting like adults.....

Bright blessings to all

[Isaac Schrödinger]

>> The Fox,
My point isn't that such cruelty only exists among Muslims but that it exists in the Islamic sphere without any societal outcry. Thus, the brutal treatment of kids is far more rampant among the Ummah.

For example, in the US and Canada today, a teacher would be immediately fired if s/he hit a kid and a parent would have his/her kids taken away for physically punishing his/her children.

However, in practically every Muslim-majority country such behavior is both normal and expected. Millions of Muslim kids are brutally beaten in schools and in their homes with little, if any, consequence for the disgusting perpetrators.

[Lyn]

It's very strange that you were raised a mussulman with a name as yours. Every muslim in this world is given an arabic name at birth or at conversion.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

>> Lyn,
Isaac Schrödinger is not my real name; it's just a pseudonym.

[Fawad Zia Khan]

Back when I was in high school in Karachi, one day I was sitting in my chemistry class, and I just whispered something to the boy who was next to me. The chemistry teacher saw me do this and immediately had me stand up. He asked me a chemistry question which I failed to answer. My punishent was a smack in my face so hard that my glasses went flying across the room. All the kids in my class thought that was really funny and were joking with me about it all week. Despite the pain and humiliation I felt inside, I had to show a good face on the outside and even had to laugh and make jokes about it myself. 25 years later, I now think about it and I'm like "that was totally screwed up". I told this story to my american friends and they were totally shocked.

Then the following year, when I was in 10th grade, our urdu teacher had us write an essay. I made the mistake of writing "In the quran, there is this hadith...." instead of "In the quran, there is this surah...". Needless to say, the urdu teacher who was a complete prick (why are urdu teachers in pakistani high schools the biggest assholes on earth?) had a field day making fun of me and ridiculing me to death. Even though it was an honest mistake on my part and I even apologised to that dickhead, yet as long as I was a student at that high school, I never heard the end of it. Actually, I'm lucky I didn't get the shit beat out of me and I considered myself fortunate. There were many many more beatings we had to endure from our kind islamic teachers but this is just a brief sample. Of course, it was during this time that a hatred of islam was building up in me.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

>> Fawad Zia Khan,
I went to a Pakistani school in Saudi Arabia and episodes like that were common. Some teachers always picked on a few kids in the class because of: a past mistake, a "funny" name, an "odd" face, "dark" skin color, a chubby look, you name it.

Like every school, there were a few students in our classroom who were jerks and most of the class giggled and laughed when they got a beating from a teacher. I, however, was always sickened by those scenes.

[sufi]

It is just nonsense . It is a way to concocted flabbergasted stories so as to expose Islamic community. First of all, it should be bear in the mind, that individual act does not represent whole community. Same wise, George Bush who is a butcher of Islam as well as humanity cannot be termed that he is acting on the behalf of Christianity. Christianity does not believe in revenge. Here one cannot blame Christianity because George Bush is a Christian. Secondly, world has not yet forgot the miseries and inhuman attitude of whites against blanks. Apartheid has just literally finished but people are alive are victims of aggressions. Aggressors were not Muslims, they all are champion of human rights and took responsibility to proliferate Christianity across the Europe by entice them jobs and money to their religious loyalties.

Islamic is most sympathetic and kind to animals. There rights are protected in order to maintain biodiversity. Whale , blue whale and other fish and animals are engender because western countries allowed rich people to trample and infringe rights of every people and animals were not spare. I would request to your good self to give concrete evidence against Islam. Rhetoric arguments are not enough to win sympathies of people. People are mature and understand that so called campaign against Islam would not bore fruit. I hope your kind authority will give solid proves rather than fictitious and unauthenticated. I can prove that west which is promoting democracy killed more than 30 million people without rhyme and reason. Why US is against world criminal courts. ?

[Isaac Schrödinger]

>> Sufi,
Nothing in this post is "concocted". I didn't bother with "fictitious" and "unauthenticated" stories. All I did was convey my straightforward and truthful experience. I wish that my story was rare but sadly for Muslims and ex-Muslims it isn't.

Why is it that I was only physically abused while living among, and during my "education" by, Muslims? Yet, in almost ten years in the West, I've yet to be thrashed, or see a kid get beaten up, by an infidel.

Perhaps, this news from Saudi Arabia was "concocted" as well: "Many grown ups and even officials, too thank their parents and teachers for being strict with their students and children, and even object to the idea of a law that does away with beating."

But no worry, as we all know, Muslims are the "champion of human rights"!

[Brooke]

I can verify this treatment as well. My boyfriend was born and raised in Pakistan and has related to me many stories such as this, and I was shocked to learn that there is little to no recourse taken against these abusive teachers and parents. I've seen Pakistani immigrants in Canada smack around their kids in public and it's very strange for me, they seem to be big on the smacks and the slaps upside the head. However this is much milder than getting beaten with pipes and sticks and physically injuring someone; my boyfriend's younger brother was once severely injured by a teacher. It's infuriating that there is so much corruption in the authority over there that people accept such behavior, if a particular family wants to stop it they have to take matters into their own hands, police are apparently, a waste of time. I wonder what basis this has in Islamic teaching, but I think I do remember some hadith that says to beat children who refuse to pray. Anyone familiar with that?

[Alex]

Sufi, you're absolutely right when you say that the west killed millions of people, oppressed whole races, killed off and endangered countless species, and performed all sorts of other barbaric acts. However, the key point there is that you have to use the past tense when you speak of those acts. We've learned from our mistakes. We've matured and grown. Meanwhile our muslim brothers have allowed themselves to sink into absurdity and irrelevance. They blame their problems on the west and refuse to accept any personal responsibility for their actions. They cling to their faith like a safety-blanket, and fail to realize that the more they blame and reject the outside world, the more they hurt their own societies. That's the difference between us and them; we understand that the only way to learn and advance is to admit your mistakes and correct the things you know are wrong. We know that diversity and tolerance are neccesary not only for peace, but for success. We know that we can't get ahead by sulking and blaming our problems on others. Now it's time for the Muslim world to understand and accept those same truths. Untill they do, things will only get worse.

[sufi]

Dear Alex
Still west has not yet learned from fallacies and errors. George Bush without having any specific reason killed hundred of thousands people and mostly western countries supported him. Every thought at the cost of lives, they will get oil to enhance their economy, which shows cheapest mentality of West. Saying and practicing are two different things. After 7,7 2005 when British rocked by series of bomb explosion, still it is shrouded mystery that was behind this attack. British government abruptly flagrantly violated their constitutional rights and allowed police to shoot at sight if any one found suspect. It is easy to advise other countries to adopt tolerance and cool temperament to embrace reality but when turn of west comes they proves that are still far away from height civilization.