There were a couple of articles in the news feed the night before last about the two teenage British girls who had acid thrown in their faces on the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania. There is no official indication as yet that the girls’ assailants were motivated by Islamic belief, but one has to wonder, given the fact that the girls had previously been attacked for singing during Ramadan.
The two girls are also Jewish, but that may be coincidental, since they had been keeping a low profile and were not wearing any visible symbols of their faith.
In an article at Power Line, John Hinderaker points out the prevalence of acid attacks as a peculiarly Muslim form of aggression:
A Particularly Cruel Islamic Attack?
What does is say about a religion when, if two innocent teenage girls walking down the street are doused with acid by men on motorbikes, everyone assumes the attackers must be Muslims? We let a great many outrages go unremarked, but this one really should be noted.
The victims are two British girls, Kirstie Trup and Katie Gee, both 18, who were spending their “gap year” between high school and university volunteering at an orphanage in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is a mostly Muslim place, so they had been warned about the need to fit in:
Kirstie’s father Marc Trup said they were both well aware of the need to dress modestly and had been told not to wear any symbols of their Jewish faith, such as the Star of David.
Nevertheless, they experienced a couple of altercations:
The teenagers, both from north London, had been attacked twice before — once when a Muslim woman hit Katie Gee in the face for singing during the holy month of Ramadan, and once when they got into an argument with a shopkeeper days before the acid attack.
The assault happened as they were walking down the street:
The teenagers, who were on a month-long break volunteering for a charity when two men on a moped threw the acid over them, suffered injuries to their faces, hands, legs, backs, necks and chests.
Moments after they were attacked in Stone Town, Zanzibar, they ran into the Babu Cafe on the waterfront, screaming and tearing off items of their clothing, said Noonan Babu, the restaurant owner.
“[Katie] came in crying and shouting, ‘my face, my face, my face’, and she ran straight to the toilet to splash herself with water,” Mr Noonan said.
“My staff and other people helped her by giving her big bottles of water from the fridge to cover herself with and wash off the liquid. It was all over her. [Kirstie] ran straight to the sea to try to wash it off.
“They were so shocked, really they were frantic.”
The girls suffered severe acid burns.
Mr. Hinderaker mentions that a Muslim group called Uamsho is suspected of being behind the attack, and then concludes with this:
The good news is that doctors say the girls’ burns are relatively superficial, and they may recover. We certainly hope so. But what are we to make of the fact that the acid attack has become a staple of Islamic political action? Maybe it will turn out that someone else committed this outrageous attack, for some other reason. But I doubt it. Who else would do such a thing?
Hasn’t the time come to ask whether any person of good will can continue to be a Muslim? We keep hearing that the terrorists and their supporters are a minority, although polls are disquieting at best. But if there is a Muslim majority that does something beneficial to counterbalance the evil of terrorism, where is it? The cardinal rule of epistemology is, by the fruit we know the tree. What is the fruit of Islam? The world’s patience, one hopes, has limits.
This is the core issue. We know that if any self-identified Christians were to perpetrate such an act, the streets of Western cities would be thronged with Christian protesters declaring their vehement opposition to such outrages in the name of Christ.
But this is not the case with Islam. Muslims will take to the streets to riot and burn embassies in their outrage over cartoons or Teddy bears. But acid attacks? That’s just business as usual in the Islamic world.
As an aside, I might mention that Zanzibar was the great hub of the African slave trade three or four hundred years ago. Tens of thousands of black African slaves captured or purchased in the interior passed through the island every year on their way to Arabia. They were caught and sold by Arab Muslims, and the buyers were generally also Arab Muslims.
Hat tip: DS.
The Anglican Cathedral in Zanzibar is built on the site of the slave market and its altar where the whipping post once stood. Jesus Christ versus Muhammad. I’ve made my choice…
The Anglican Cathedral in Zanzibar is built on the site of the slave market and its altar where the whipping post once stood. Jesus Christ versus Muhammad. I’ve made my choice…
Liam 1304, Still it is not clear who is your choice. Many indigenous white British and Australian girls/women choose Muhammmmad for his cruelty, fierceness and, as Jane Austen says, man being servile, want to be driven like a herd because they don’t want to think.
I’m not sure what you mean my friend. The illustration provided is indicative of the reason why Jesus is my choice. 30 years ago he also released me from my slavery – as real to me as any – so I can’t stand to see the slavery that “the prophet” brings.
All the best
My letter to David Cameron, prime minister of the UK:
Mr David Cameron
Westminster
Re: Acid attacks – as prescribed by the Koran.
Sir,
Why have two girls been attacked with Acid in Zanzibar?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23645138
Because that is what the Koran says should happen to those who disrespect Islam. Acid is considered to be ‘boiling water’ (ie: water that burns) and the Koran says that:
Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Boiling water will be poured upon their heads to melt their skins and that which is in their bellies; and they shall be lashed with rods of ireon. If they try to escape, they shall be dragged back and told, ‘taste the torment and the Fires’. 22:19
For the unbelievers god has prepared a fire which will encompass them like the walls of a pavilion. When they cry out for help they shall be showered with water as hot as molten brass, which will scald their faces. Evil shall be their drink, evil will be their resting place. 18:29
As for the unbelievers, boiling water they will drink, and for their unbelief a woeful punishment awaits them. 10:9
And these two poor girls did indeed ‘taste the torment of the fire’.
However: Mr Cameron, how dare you criticise this attack on British citizens, while continuing to promote Islam as a Religion of Peace. It is your actions that have promoted and provoked this acid attack, because your policies have encouraged Islam and its vile and hate-filled creed. Indeed, as the political mastermind behind an emboldened Islam, it is you who should be in the dock for this heinous act and not the men on the motorbike. You are, sir, a promoter of torture and terrorism, which is a criminal act in this country.
Mr Cameron, when will you ever speak the truth?
When will you ever defend Western culture?
When will you ever defend this nation?
Sincerely,
The traitor Cameron, like Obama, is another Manchurian
Candidate. He has NO interest in Britain or its people, he
is 100 per cent a bought carreer politician. You might ask
what does a rat like his care about. He cares about his family, having a LOT of money, and serving his masters
the Rothschild Syndicate. He would like to be one of them. He sees himself as the Governor of Britain, a totally
alien country to him.
Matthew d’Ancona in the Daily Telegraph, the son of a Portuguese football player I believe, has said that Enoch Powell was wrong because Britain has been constantly changing its population, so if we end up afro-asian or muslims what does it matter? This is incorrect. As Migration Watch has pointed out, Britain had the third most stable population in the world until 1948 and there was hardly any immigration between 1066 and 1948. There has been more since New Labour came to power in the late 1990s than in all those 900 plus years. If Mr D’Ancona’s viewpoint is the official Conservative Party line and that of Mr Cameron then the English are finished and sorry Mr Ducain, the Scots as well.
There is something very special about this vile atrocity which I trust will resonate around the Western world and from which lessons will or should be drawn. It is an abject, depressing and tragic illustration of sharply contrasting values and attitudes. It is entirely fitting that it took place on Zanzibar – the historical locus of Arab-Muslim slave trading of black people from Africa.
These two 18 year old British girls were doing true charity work in their “gap” year between high school and university – selflessly devoting an important period of their lives as unpaid helpers in an orphanage in a Third World country. Noble, good intentions, etc.
They weren’t partying on the Costa del Sol or some Greek island chasing boys, or any other sort of hedonistic teenaged holiday experience. Nor were they doing a “Rachel Corrie”: indulging in a misguided, ideologically-driven, adventure holiday in a dangerous place they imagined that they understood.
It is to be noted that the sort of help Ms Gee and Ms Trup gave is rarely appreciated by the locals, especially in a Muslim area. It is in fact resented. The motorcyclists who perpetuated the acid attack (and their backers) could have devoted their time helping out in the orphanage, but didn’t. Why? Because they don’t care about the welfare of Tanzanian orphans – their own countrymen – they care about the “polluting” influence of infidels.
Almost as disturbing as the acid attack, were the facts that Ms Gee a week earlier, was hit in the face, by a woman, for singing in public during Ramadan, and both had been attacked by a, presumably male, shopkeeper. And they drew no lesson from these events. Such lesson being: these people are violent, [messed] up, maniacs; let’s get the hell out of here ASAP.
I recall in the early 80’s some friends of mine on a surfing holiday in Sumatra, were pelted with stones by local Muslim villagers as they walked to the beach each day. Their offence, the reason they were stoned, they learned after a few days of this , was that they were shirtless as they walked in the sweltering tropical heat and humidity. Of course the notion of somebody asking them to wear shirts, out of respect for local sensibilities, never occurred. Rather, straight up, throw stones at Australian boys who hadn’t the faintest idea they were offending anybody by walking to the beach only in board shorts. Of course Indonesians in Australia demand that Australians alter their way of life to suit Muslim sensibilities.
Ms Gee and Ms Trup, being Jewish, were made aware to not display anything that would give away their Jewishness in Muslim Zanzibar. One must ask: what were their parents thinking? Are they such dupes of the PC multi-culti weltanschaung that they didn’t understand the inherent dangers? For their, obviously non-Anglo looking, and strikingly beautiful daughters? If my daughter were Jewish, I wouldn’t allow her to travel to Zanzibar, or any Muslim place, in a pink fit. My children have listened to my descriptions of those parts of the Muslim world I have experienced and, all under 18, they get it. Of their own volition they will not be travelling to any Muslim country other than Jordan to see Petra – if and only if the political conditions are stable.
What a terrible price these young girls have paid for their well-intentioned naivety and, I’m sorry, but it must be said, their parents’ ignorance and stupidity. One of the fathers, I note, is 45′ presumably the other three parents are in the same age group. Thus no doubt the “beneficiaries” of a lifetime of Guardianista/BBC agitprop and an “education” system which lulled them into a false sense of security about how the world actually is. They would have been far better off going to Israel and doing volunteer work for Magen David Adom – I think its called – the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.
The Islamic world is quite simply a very nasty place, especially for non-Muslim females. I most profoundly trust that the horrific experiences of Katie and Kirstie instil a sense of reality in young Western women.
My cordial thanks for your summary of this atrocity and what the learnings should be. The daily ration of islamic brutality and the moral incompatibility of moslems with the western principles of humanity makes me shiver to the bone. I’m affraid to say I can’t see a peaceful resolution of this clash of cultures.
“One must ask: what were their parents thinking? Are they such dupes of the PC multi-culti weltanschaung that they didn’t understand the inherent dangers?”
Yes.
One has to wonder about the sanity of parents sending off their teenage daughter alone to a faraway backward Muslim island that used to be a massive slave market, be it for charity work; poor kids!