The Islamabad police have arrested a prayer leader for fabricating evidence to implicate that 13-year-old girl in “blasphemy.”

Police have arrested prayer leader Khalid Jadoon on charges of fabricating evidence, which he had used to accuse Rimsha Masih of committing blasphemy by allegedly burning Quranic pages, Express Newsreported early on Sunday.

Express News correspondent Qamarul Munawar said that Hafiz Muhammad Zubair, who witnessed Jadoon adding pages of the Quran, recorded a statement with the Rawalpindi magistrate on Saturday.

According to Zubair’s account, he was sitting in Iteqaaf in the mosque when some people handed burnt pages to the prayer leader. After a little while, Jadoon added additional pages of the Quran to the pile.

Zubair, in his statement added that three other people present with him in the mosque asked Jadoon why he was adding documents to the pile of burnt paper, to which prayer leader said that such an act was necessary to strengthen their case.

Some people gave this fella some burned pages. They weren’t from the Quran. So he put in some pages from the Quran, to “strengthen” their non-existent “case.”

How very…pious.

Richard Bartholomew takes a close look at the ghastly Rao Abdur Raheem, the lawyer intent on persecuting the girl of 13 who may have thrown out a few pages of a primer on the Arabic alphabet.

In December 2010, Raheem created a self-described “lawyers’ forum”, called the Movement to Protect the Dignity of the Prophet; according to the New York Times, the group produced a petition in support of Qadri which was signed by a 1,000 lawyers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Members of the group also reportedly ”greeted Mr. Qadri’s… court appearances by throwing rose petals”. [Read more…]

Jessica Valenti is not much charmed by the Republicans’ fetishization of motherhood and “moms” as a compensation for their attack on women’s actual rights and needs.

These days, “mom” is king. It was perhaps the most frequently used word at the Republican National Convention this past week, where Ann Romney, mother of five, said, “It’s the moms of this nation . . . who really hold this country together.” Paul Ryan said his mother is his role model, and Chris Christie all but called himself a mama’s boy. [Read more…]

It’s all the fault of that mouthy woman.

When misfortune hits a village, there is a tendency in some countries to suspect a “witch” of casting a spell. In Ghana, outspoken or eccentric women may also be accused of witchcraft – and forced to live out their days together in witch camps.

…

The witch camps appear to be unique to northern Ghana. But Ghana shares with other African countries an endemic belief in witchcraft with illness, drought, fires and other natural disasters blamed on black magic. The alleged witches are nearly always elderly.

An ActionAid report on witch camps, published this week, says that more than 70% of residents in Kukuo camp were accused and banished after their husbands died – suggesting that witchcraft allegations are a way of enabling the family to take control of the widow’s property.

“The camps are a dramatic manifestation of the status of women in Ghana,” says Professor Dzodzi Tsikata of the University of Ghana. “Older women become a target because they are no longer useful to society.”

And because they’re ugly and everybody hates them.

Women who do not conform to society’s expectations also fall victim to the accusations of witchcraft, according to Lamnatu Adam of the women’s rights group Songtaba.

“Women are expected to be submissive so once you start to be outspoken in your views or even successful in your trade, people assume you must be possessed.”

And then they want to kill you, so you have to go to a camp for safety.

Fun and games in the LAPD – headline –

Woman dies after genital kick from LAPD officer

Huh. That can’t be right. Kicking women between the legs is just a joke, as any fule kno.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating at least five officers after one of them allegedly stomped on a woman’s genitals and she later died of suffocation.

Patrol car video camera captured a struggle between police and Alesia Thomas and several officers on July 22, according to the Los Angeles Times.

LAPD Cmdr. Bob Green admitted to the Times that a female officer had followed through with a threat to kick Thomas in the genitals when she resisted being put into the patrol car.

Oh well. I’m sure they’ll all see the funny side eventually.

H/t EllenBeth

Since we’re talking about it – Las Meninas.

From the Wikimedia Commons.

Village life in Punjab.

Five men allegedly shaved off the hair and eyebrows of a young woman and paraded her in the streets of a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, police officials said Tuesday.

The incident occurred yesterday in Layyah district, 350 km from Lahore, after the married woman was accused of having “illicit” relations with a man.

According to an FIR registered by police, Parveen Bibi, 25, the wife of Sabir Husain, had a quarrel with her sisters-in-law.
Yesterday, her brothers-in-law Muhammad Pervaiz and Muhammad Zafar and three other men shaved off her hair and eyebrows. They then blackened her face and paraded her through the streets of their village.

Five men bullying one woman. How picturesque.

Here’s the source painting, by the way.

 

Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jacob-jordaens/pieta

A blast from the past at the Richard Dawkins Foundation (of which Paula Kirby is the UK head), December 15, 2006.

The following is an email sent by William A. Dembski to Richard Dawkins along with other prominent Darwinists, particularly those who defended Darwinism during the Dover Trial.

There’s a Christmas present for you at my website.

— a flash animation that features each of you prominently (some of you are probably aware of it already). We’re still planning a few enhancements, including getting Eric Rothschild in there and having Judge Jones do the actual voiceovers himself (right now it’s me speeded up though it’s his actual words). In return for the judge doing himself, we’ll drop some of the less flattering sound effects. We would have included Prof. Padian, but the images of him on the internet weren’t of sufficient quality (I’m copying Prof. Padian — if you send me a hi res jpg of yourself, I’m sure we can work you in — you were after all the expert witness at the trial).

Best wishes, Bill Dembski

How festive. What a pleasant friendly winter solstice joke.

Or was it. The recipient didn’t think so.

Reponse from Richard Dawkins:

Anybody who resorts to tactics of desperation like this has to be a real loser. Dembski is a loser, and it now looks as though he KNOWS it. My guess is that he will try to take it down when he realizes how foolish it makes him look. Josh, can we can keep a copy, after he tries to remove it from his own website?

Hmm.

Update: Here it is, on the original site, where Dembski found it. Apparently it had farts, but the hosts came over all adult and removed that aspect. What’s left is totally adult and clever.

H/t Gerry.