Parts of the world may have developed certain backwards views but they aren’t compatible with Islam, a Muslim would show compassion were he or she a good one.

The problem here is the aunts, uncles, mums and dads - fresh off the boat from villages in developing countries bringing their gossip driven, superstitious, horrible little idea of a ‘community’ with them.

Personally I wouldn’t give some of these people the time of day and generally they give Islam a bad name but to expect them to share ideals with a modern Canadian is ridiculous.

Certainly not. Nor will I let a fashionable hostility towards any culture lead to me to confect an issue through misattribution and selective quotation where there is, in fact, none.

Raphael, I think you may have missed what the gentleman interviewed actually said, as opposed to Joel’s truncated quote.

“Rape is not stigmatized here in this culture, our culture, Canadian culture.”

I’ve never quite figured out how to render a look of polite incredulity in type. Can someone help me out with an appropriate smiley?

And don’t lecture me about other cultures. I know full well about rape stigma outside of Canada. But again: We weren’t talking about other cultures, we were talking about the Muslim cultural view in Canada.

You are free to interpret his use of the word in any way you wish. However, taken in its entirety, without the excision of text, the speaker’s message is very different than the message you are trying to attribute to him.

First, thank you, your point re: “clear her name” is a fair one. That’s the reporter’s fault.

Second, I don’t think it was misleading to use Mr. Akhtar’s quote the way I did. He tried to say the right thing in the quote you cite, but his odd use of the word “innocent” in the quote I pulled is telling.

Finally, I don’t dispute that other religions can take a disgusting view of rape as well. My point was simply that Islam shouldn’t get a pass from the feminist left out of political correctness.

The first quote you cite is this: “Ottawa’s Muslim community yesterday supported the woman’s decision to clear her name.” You take exception to the phrase “clear her name” You will note, of course, that that phrase is the reporter’s, not the community spokesperson or the victim.

You also chose to cut off the community spokesperson’s quote at a very odd point. The very next sentences read:

“He acknowledged that in some Muslim countries, especially in smaller villages, people do hold the belief “that victims of rape are unclean.”

“They despise the person who has been a victim of rape, even if it is their own daughter. But it is not like that here. People are more educated.”

That is precisely the case in many rural and remote communities in older European Catholic countries like Ireland and Italy. There is a strong stigma associated with being a victim of rape.

In fact, if you care to investigate the phenomenon with a broader goal than simply providing more fodder for brainless Muslim-bashing, you’ll learn that just about ALL countries and cultures stigmatize rape victims.

I will note, however, that most Jews and most Christians have moved beyond a literalist interpretation of their holy texts. It would be a positive thing if more Muslims could do the same.

For example, consider Deuteronomy 22:13-21

Moses said to Israel:

Suppose a man starts hating his wife soon after they are married. 14He might tell ugly lies about her, and say, “I married this woman, but when we slept together, I found out she wasn’t a virgin.”

If this happens, the bride’s father and mother must go to the town gate to show the town leaders the proof that the woman was a virgin.

Her father will say, “I let my daughter marry this man, but he started hating her and accusing her of not being a virgin. But he is wrong, because here is proof that she was a virgin!” Then the bride’s parents will show them the bed sheet from the woman’s wedding night.

The town leaders will beat the man with a whip because he accused his bride of not being a virgin. He will have to pay her father one hundred pieces of silver and will never be allowed to divorce her.

But if the man was right and there is no proof that his bride was a virgin, the men of the town will take the woman to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death.

This woman brought evil into your community by sleeping with someone before she got married, and you must get rid of that evil by killing her.

Or, in other words, if a man marries and then decides that he hates his wife, he can claim she wasn’t a virgin when they were married. If her father can’t produce the “tokens of her virginity” (bloody sheets), then the woman is to be stoned to death at her father’s doorstep.

Or how about Deuteronomy 22:23-24?

If there is virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones,

The young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife.

In other words: If a woman is raped in the city and doesn’t cry out loud enough, the men of the city must stone her to death.

Next, Deuteronomy 22:23-24

But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.
But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor,

Because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.

In other words, if a woman is raped in the country, then only the man shall die (since there was no one to hear her if she cried out.)

And my favourite: Deuteronomy 22:28-29

If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found,

Then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.

In other words, if a man rapes a virgin, he must pay her father 50 shekels of silver and then marry her, PLUS, they are not allowed to get divorced.

You might start seeing sex offenders hanging out around the local mosque.