Monday, September 16, 2019

RAYMOND IBRAHIM - ISLAM'S HEAVENLY WHORES

The Jihadist Obsession with Houris, Islam’s Heavenly Whores

A dark and dirty secret behind the jihad.
 
Raymond Ibrahim

Who and what is the role of the houri—an Arabic word pronounced “hoori” and functioning not unlike its sound sake, the English word “whore”—in Islamic teaching?  It is, after all, ever and always on the lips of Islamic terrorists. 
For instance, according to a Palestinian Media Watch report
Following a recent terror attack in which the terrorist stabbed and wounded 4 Israeli policemen, a host on official PA TV read a poem in the terrorist’s honor.  The poem glorifies Martyrdom-death in battle and states that the 72 “Dark-Eyed” Virgins in Paradise who the Martyr marries according to Islamic tradition, are “yearning” for the Palestinian Martyr.
The proper Arabic term for these “dark-eyed virgins in paradise” that are “yearning” for martyrs is al-hour al-‘ayn, commonly transliterated in English as houri(s), though pronounced ḥooris, not “hour-ees.”  They are supernatural, celestial women—“wide-eyed” and “big-bosomed,” says the Koran (56:22, 78:33)—created by Allah for the express purpose of sexually gratifying his favorites in perpetuity.  
One of the canonical hadiths—a statement attributed to Muhammad that mainstream (Sunni) Islam acknowledges as true—which all jihadi organizations regularly invoke has Muhammad saying:
The martyr [shahid, one who dies fighting for Islam] is special to Allah. He is forgiven from the first drop of blood [that he sheds]. He sees his throne in paradise…. And he will copulate with seventy-two houris.   [See also Koran 44:54, 52:20, 55:72, and 56:22.]
While the houris may invoke images of scantily-clad genies and/or other wild tales from the Arabian Nights to the Western mind—and thus be dismissed as “fairy tales” with no capacity to inspire anyone—the fact is, desire for these immortal concubines has driven Muslim men to acts of suicidal terror, past and present, as recorded in both Muslim and Western historical sources.
“As for religious enthusiasm and ardour for the holy war,” writes historian Marius Canard, “it is certain that numerous Muslims were moved by this sentiment….  There are numerous accounts describing combatants going to their deaths with joyful heart, seeing visions of the celestial houri who is calling to them and signaling to them.”
Indeed, the houris are ever present on the fields of battle, beckoning their would-be lovers—jihadis—to rush to their embraces by engaging in wild acts of “martyrdom.”  This is evident from the West’s first major military encounter with Islam,  the fateful Battle of Yarmuk (636).   There, one Muslim came upon a fallen comrade “smitten on the ground, and I watched as he lifted his fingers to the sky. I understood he was rejoicing, for he saw the houris.” Another Arab chieftain told his men that a headlong charge against the “Christian dogs” is synonymous with a “rush to the embraces of the houris!”  “The Muslim preachers did not cease to encourage the combatants [at Yarmuk]: Prepare yourselves for the encounter with the houris of the big black eyes,” explains a medieval Persian historian. “And to be sure, never has a day been seen when more heads fell than on the day of the Yarmuk.”
Nearly a millennium later, on the night before the sack of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks also invoked the houris to kindle the men’s fighting spirit.  Wandering “dervishes visited the tents, to instill the desire of martyrdom, and the assurance of spending an immortal youth amidst the rivers and gardens of paradise, and in the embraces of the black-eyed virgins [houris].”  At the pivotal battle of Mohacs in 1526, seventy thousand Muslim invaders—described as devotees of “jihad and martyrdom,” eager for “a perpetually happy life” with “the houris”—defeated the hitherto mighty kingdom of Hungary, built a massive pyramid of heads, and returned to Constantinople with one hundred thousand  slaves.
From the start, Western observers have corroborated the mesmerizing effects of the houri’s siren call.  Marco Polo (d.1324) explained why after assassinating their target the hashashin (whence the English word “assassin,” Nizari Ismailis, a Shia sect) would not flee but wait to be hacked down by their victim’s guards or men: they were eager to enter “paradise, where every species of sensual gratification should be found, in the society of beautiful nymphs [houris].”
In an eighth century “interfaith dialogue” between Caliph Omar II and Emperor Leo III, the latter wrote: “We [Christians] do not expect to enjoy there [heaven] commerce with women who remain forever virgin,” for “we put no faith in such silly tales engendered by extreme ignorance and by paganism.” But “for you who are given up to carnal vices, and who have never been known to limit the same, you who prefer your pleasures to any good, it is precisely for that reason that you consider the celestial realm of no account if it is not peopled with women” for sex, a reference to the houris.
On becoming acquainted with Islamic teaching, one Christian in Spain wondered “what will paradise be, but a tavern of unwearied gorging and a brothel of perpetual turpitude?”  For the eighth century’s Nicetas Byzantinos, a Greek historian, the Koran was “full of blasphemies against the Most High, with all its ugly and vulgar filth,” particularly its claim that heaven amounted to a “sexual brothel.”  This led to the Byzantine denunciation of Allah as an impostor deity, namely Satan: “I anathematize the God of Muhammad,” read one early Byzantine canonical rite.
If Muslims, particularly of the Salafi persuasion—virtually all jihadis are Salafis—venerate and seek to emulate the world of early Islam, it should come as no surprise that the houris are still working their magic.  The evidence far exceeds the opening anecdote concerning houris “yearning” for a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed Israeli policemen—to say nothing of all the other Palestinian acts of terror connected to the houris.
For instance, Naa’imur Rahman, a Muslim man from north London, who was “found guilty of plotting to blow up the gates of Downing Street and assassinate Theresa May ….  was motivated by the idea of being met by virgins in paradise after the attack, the court heard.”  During discussions with an undercover officer, Rahman said that he was eager to “take her [May’s] head off, yeah.   I want to go to jannah [heaven] when I’m doing it.  I don’t want to come back. I want them to kill me, but I just want to do my thing before I’m killed….  [I’ve been] thinking a lot about hur al ayn [houris]…  In sha allah [Allah willing] I meet them soon.”
Prior to the  desperate battle for Mosul in late 2016, the Islamic State’s “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said:  “All [who die fighting], without exception, will enter paradise as martyrs.  Moreover, you will enter paradise with four more houris than other martyrs.  For just as you stand by me now, so will they stand by you—or under you, or above you—so that you might forget what will happen to you by way of violence, death, and degradation in this war.”
Another video that appeared in September 2016 depicts a young boy surrounded by other children singing about jihad and “martyrdom”: “Oh houris, we will meet in Paradise. We accept the rule of Allah. We implement the Sharia and the Sunna.”
For another idea of just how pervasive the houri is in Islamic thought, consider its impact on Muslim women.  During the Q&A of a televised Islamic program, a woman called in expressing outrage at the houris; she would be driven “mad with jealousy,” she said, to see her husband copulating with these supernaturally beautiful women all day in heaven.
The cleric responded telling her that “when you enter paradise, Allah will remove the jealousy from your heart.   And have no fear, for you will lord over the houris and be their queen.”  Still apprehensive, the Muslim wife pleaded: “But must he have the houris?”  Laughing, the cleric reassured her:  “Look, when you enter paradise, you will be more beautiful than the houris—you will be their mistress.  Okay?  And, when you enter paradise Allah will remove any jealousy or concerns from your heart.”
All this is a reminder that the Muslim mindset and the motivations behind the jihad are many and multifaceted—and even include those that disbelieve in Allah and the afterlife altogether.
Regrettably, few in the West seem to understand this.  Thus  a French reporter who infiltrated and spent time with the Islamic State said “I never saw any Islam.  No will to improve the world,” only “suicidal” men looking forward to being “martyred” on, as they explained it to him, their “path to paradise,” where “women [houris] are waiting for us.”
Western secular minds would do well to stop projecting their own exclusively materialistic paradigms onto jihadis—such as when the Obama administration said that people join the Islamic State for “a lack of opportunity for jobs”—and start understanding Islam’s paradigms and motivations on their own terms.
Note: For numerous examples of how the houris inspired the historic jihad on the West, see the author’s recent Sword and Scimitar — a book that CAIR did everything it could to prevent the U.S. Army War College from learning about.

'We Don't Want To Die': Women In Turkey Decry Rise In Violence And Killings


Women protest against women's murders in Ankara, Turkey, on Aug. 23. Signs say "We are not silent" and show Emine Bulut, whose killing by her ex-husband was captured on video that was widely shared on social media.
Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Emine Dirican, a beautician from Istanbul, tried to be a good wife. But her husband hated that she worked, that she socialized, even that she wanted to leave the house sometimes without him.
She tried to reason with him. He lashed out.
"One time, he tied me — my hands, my legs from the back, like you do to animals," recalls Dirican, shuddering. "He beat me with a belt and said, 'You're going to listen to me, you're going to obey whatever I say to you.' "
She left him and moved in with her parents. In January, he showed up, full of remorse and insisting he had changed. She let him in.
In her mother's kitchen, he grabbed her by the hair, threw her to the floor and pulled out a gun.
"He shot me," she says. "Then he went back to my mom and he pulled the trigger again, but the gun was stuck. So he hit her head with the back of the gun."
Her father, who was in another room in the house, heard the gunshots and ran over. Dirican almost bled to death after a bullet ripped through a main artery in one of her legs.
"I was telling my father, 'Daddy, please, I don't want to die.' "
Femicide — killing women because of their gender — is a longstanding issue in Turkey. Nearly 300 women have been killed so far this year, according to the Istanbul-based advocacy group We Will Stop Femicide, which has been tracking gender-related deaths since Turkish authorities stopped doing so in 2009.
The group — widely considered an authoritative source on violence against women — compiles its data from news stories and emails from the families of women killed. It says more than 2,600 women have been murdered since 2010, most of them by their partners.
Emine Dirican survived a shooting attack by her estranged husband after she left him. "Enough," she says. "This is not what honor looks like."
Joanna Kakissis/NPR
Since 2011, the year Turkey became the first country to sign and ratify a Council of Europe convention on preventing domestic violence, We Will Stop Femicide's data shows a steady increase every year in the number of killings, with 121 women murdered in 2011 and nearly four times that number, 440, in 2018.
"Men can't accept that Turkey is a modern country where women have rights," says Fidan Ataselim, the group's general secretary. "Some of these men don't even think we have the right to live."
Last month, Ataselim led protests in Istanbul after Emine Bulut, a 38-year-old in central Turkey, was killed in a café by her ex-husband, who slit Bulut's throat in front of their 10-year-old daughter. Bulut's murder was captured on video and shared widely on social media. In the video, she is heard screaming, "I don't want to die!" Thousands of women in the protest echoed Bulut, chanting: "We don't want to die."
"If they disobey him, he is emasculated"
Emine Dirican's husband was convicted of simple assault and is now free, awaiting final sentencing. He has appealed his verdict. So has Dirican, who wants him tried for attempted murder.
Lawyers for women in cases like hers say Turkey has strong laws against abuse. They're just not being enforced.
In her no-frills Istanbul office stacked with case files of domestic abuse victims and survivors, lawyer Hulya Gulbahar pulls out a folder filled with statistics from 2009 — the last year Turkey's conservative government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, kept records on domestic violence.
That year, she said, the Justice Ministry initially recorded the killings of 953 women in the first seven months of the year — then revised it to 171 for the entire year.
"The government ignores the problem because they're complicit," she says. "Politicians imply that men and women are not equal, that women are given by God to man to care for. They want a family controlled by men, where everyone in the family obeys the men."
And male honor depends on women's obedience and men's control of women's sexuality, says gender studies scholar Fatmagul Berktay, a professor emeritus of political science at Istanbul University.
"It can be a daughter, it can be a wife, it can even be their own mother," Berktay says. "If they disobey him, he is emasculated."
In Europe and the United States, she says, women die in "passion killings." In Turkey, she says, "the men claim it's about honor. The problem is the same — women are not valued."
Lawyer Ozlem Ozkan, also in Istanbul, sees how authorities treat her clients.
"Women who have been beaten go to the police and are told, don't file a complaint, it will just make your husband angry," she says. "I've heard with my own ears lawyers telling women who have survived domestic violence, 'Well, maybe you just want a divorce because you have a lover.' "
Turkey doesn't have enough state or municipal-run women's shelters, she says — only 142 in a country of more than 80 million. Ozkan says the government calls them guesthouses because the word "shelter," she says, "expresses an immediate danger and the need for protection."
Beyond this, "The state does not favor real solutions to stop violence against women and children," she says. "Although women are subjected to violence, it does not want the family to break up."
Ozkan volunteers at at a women's rights organization, Mor Cati, or Purple Roof, that runs a private shelter. Mor Cati grew out of a 1987 protest over a male judge turning down a woman's divorce petition by saying, "A little whip on the back or on the belly is of no harm to women."
The shelter's welcome center is located off a busy shopping street in Istanbul. Children's drawings of hearts and houses fill the walls. Stuffed animals line the shelves.
"Some of these men don't even think we have the right to live," says Fidan Ataselim of the activist group We Will Stop Femicide.
Joanna Kakissis/NPR
"Many women bring their children," says one of the volunteers, Elif, who declines to give her last name because the shelter receives threats from the partners of women it protects. "They can't leave their children with family," she says, because relatives often push the women to stay with violent husbands.
"Because of the social norms here," she says, "they think violence can be OK, why are you crushing your family?"
Blaming the victims
That mindset — that violence is OK — has hardened among many Turkish men, "rural, urban, religious, secular, educated," says Berktay, the gender studies scholar. At the same time, Turkish women are exercising their rights — including the right to work, speak up, divorce.
"Women are pushing for their rights, and they're making an issue out of domestic violence," she says. "Women are awakening."
Turkish leaders are noticing. After Emine Bulut's killing in August, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu blamed "male violence" for her death. A popular soccer team observed a moment of silence in Bulut's memory. Erdogan even hinted at reinstating the death penalty for men who kill their wives.
Ataselim of We Will Stop Femicide says Erdogan's tough talk misses the point.
"High-ranking members of this government say things like women should not laugh too loudly, as if this encourages men to attack us," she says. "Domestic violence never happens because there's a problem with the woman. The men are killing. They are the problem."
Istanbul jewelry shop owner Hilmi Bilgin doesn't entirely agree, though he has two grown daughters. "I would say it's 70% the fault of men and 30% the fault of women," he says. "Women make it worse for themselves by either being meek, which makes men feel more aggressive, or they overreact, which triggers the men."
"I get emails and phone calls saying, 'I will find you and rape you and kill you,'" says prosecutor Selin Nakipoglu. "I'm not scared. But my clients are dead."
Joanna Kakissi/NPR
"This is not what honor looks like"
Istanbul-based attorney Selin Nakipoglu has spent years facing off with men in court who say they were provoked into killing their wives.
"They show up in court wearing suits and ties, saying they're sorry but 'honor' made them do it," she says. "And the judges let [them] get away with it."
Relatives of victims sometimes call Nakipoglu to the scene of the crimes. She remembers finding one young mother lying in her kitchen after the woman's husband stabbed her repeatedly in the heart. He thought she'd been cheating on him. Her two young sons found her.
"I still see her face," Nakipoglu says, her eyes filling with tears.
The woman's husband threatened Nakipoglu in court. He's not the only one.
"I get emails and phone calls saying, 'I will find you and rape you and kill you,'" she says. "I'm not scared. But my clients are dead."
Emine Dirican's estranged husband is free until another hearing scheduled for next month. She rarely leaves her parents' home. Every day, she hears about another woman being killed.
"Enough," she says. "This is not what honor looks like."
NPR Istanbul producer Gokce Saracoglu contributed reporting.

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