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| Africa: North |
| Man "martyrs" children to spite wife |
| 2004-04-03 |
| An Egyptian schoolteacher hacked his three children to death "as martyrs" to spite his bossy wife for years of humiliation and abuse, a government-owned newspaper reported on Friday. The 51-year-old man from Minya in southern Egypt confessed to killing his son and two daughters with an axe as they played blind-man’s bluff, all three blindfolded, the Al-Ahram daily said. The unnamed man was arrested in Cairo after fleeing to the capital’s Khan Khalili tourist district following the grisly crime. "My wife is to blame for everything. She took over everything: our seven-storey building, car, the money in the bank, the product of 12 years working abroad," the paper quoted the man’s confession as saying. "She considered us, our children and me, as private property," it added. "She always had the last word, up to the point where she ordered me to spend the night in the park near the house. I ended up hating her, but I adored my children, before whom I felt I was no longer a man. Therefore I decided to sacrifice them as martyrs to break my wife’s heart," the newspaper quoted the man as saying |
| Posted by:TS |
| #8 I think zen-dude's post was very interesting. |
| Posted by: ex-lib 2004-04-03 7:14:59 PM |
| #7 Raj, your own question is equally freighted with irony. Even now there are Muslim societies where a husband can divorce his wife merely by repeating thrice, "I divorce you" in her presence. As to the "whack" end of the solution, domestic violence against women (or murder, if you mean it that way) is simply unacceptable, so it is null and void regardless of entrenched popularity. With the ease of divorce most Muslim males enjoy in their religious courts, that man had little excuse for not leaving his abusive marriage. Even if he was too weak-willed to divorce her, it's still no reason for killing the children. It's pretty obvious this murderer was out to devastate his wife in a permanent way. That's just a rebranding of torture. I envy neither of them, what hollow victories they both have had in life. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-03 5:46:42 PM |
| #6 This self-centered man's claim to be devoted to his children rings hollow. That said, a portion of Christian scripture is devoted to instructions on marriage and love. Does Sufi wisdom address those topics? I have no more interest in learning what the Koran has to say about marriage but the Sufi's are interesting. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-04-03 5:22:48 PM |
| #5 Why not just divorce / whack the wife instead? Wait, too much logic in that thought. Sorry... |
| Posted by: Raj 2004-04-03 3:07:41 PM |
| #4 "She considered us, our children and me, as private property,".... Sad, he just couldn't handle the role reversal. Good call, GK. However pathetic it may be, irony is pretty much lost on that type. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-03 2:26:57 PM |
| #3 "She considered us, our children and me, as private property,".... Sad, he just couldn't handle the role reversal. Beheading is too good for this idiot, but don't bet against a slap on the wrist. |
| Posted by: GK 2004-04-03 2:20:57 PM |
| #2 This episode is so redolent with commonplace Arab Muslim thought patterns that it is almost tragic. Per the Eden myth, women are viewed as being responsible for tempting all men from righteousness' true path. So virulent is this precept that even an exposed lock of hair is deemed an unbearably inflammatory sexual lure. This is why women are clad in burkhas and chaperoned everywhere they go. It's the same reason why Saudi mutawwai'in herded those schoolgirls back into a burning building so they could perish rather than let them out in public without hajib. Until Islam is able to overcome this notion of women as chattel their religion will be increasingly marginalized by modern society. I have little pity regarding such disenfranchisement since this sort of male chauvinism has no place in the 21st century. As anyone can see, such misogyny continues to have dire implications for women throughout the Middle East. "Honor killings" (which are neither, as they are actually murder) and genital mutilation (daintily called "female circumcision") both represent the true nature of how women are treated in many (but not all) Islamic cultures. That al Qaeda desires re-entrenchment of such practices is reason enough to blot them from the face of this earth. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-03 1:45:06 PM |
| #1 typical Arab Drama Queen - "It's Not My Fault™!" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-04-03 1:16:34 PM |