Patterico's Pontifications

7/25/2014

Meriam Ibrahim’s Release: Whom to Thank

Filed under: Current Events,General,Obama,Politics,Religion — JVW @ 10:24 am



[guest post by JVW]

Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese Christian woman married to an American citizen, was flown to Rome from Khartoum yesterday, thus bringing to an end the saga of her death sentence handed down by a Sudanese Islamic court for alleged apostasy and adultery.

The trouble apparently began when Ms. Ibrahim traveled to Sudan on a Sudanese passport to visit her ailing mother. She brought her 18-month-old son, Martin, and was at the time in the second trimester of a pregnancy. Her Sudanese-American husband, Daniel Wani, is confined to a wheelchair due to MS and therefore remained in the couple’s New Hampshire home. The trouble in Khartoum began when Ms. Ibfahim’s Muslim half-brother, Al Semani Al Hadi, brought charges against her for allegedly abandoning the Islamic faith to marry a Christian man. Ms. Ibrahim contends that her mother is an Eastern Orthodox Christian and she has always practiced the Christian faith, but authorities declared that by having a Muslim father Ms. Ibrahim was obligated to follow the tenets of Islam, even though her father had left the family early in Ms. Ibrahim’s youth. Her marriage to a Christian and the birth of her son Martin (along with her obvious pregnancy) thus became adultery in the eyes of the Sharia court. Ms. Ibrahim was sentenced to death for the “crime” of apostasy and tossed in prison and placed in shackles. The death sentence was “mercifully” delayed so that Ms. Ibrahim could give birth to her second child, a daughter, Maya, and the 100 lashes that she was to receive for adultery were cancelled. According to both Ms. Ibrahim and Mr. Wani, she gave birth while her legs remained chained.

After an international outcry caused the Sudanese court to release her, she was once again arrested at the Khartoum Airport and charged with carrying false travel documents. This time, she and her children were allowed to serve their detention at the U.S. Embassy, but the family had to worry not only about the possibility of not being permitted to leave but also having the death sentence restored. Finally, she was granted new travel documents and permitted to leave with her children yesterday. The lawyer for Ms. Ibrahim told the Daily Mail that her release was secured by the Italian government, who provided the plane and dispatched a deputy foreign minister to escort the family to Rome where they had an audience with Pope Francis.

So you would think that the wife of a United States citizen with a son and a daughter who are natural-born United States citizens would have been way too frightening of a target for a Sudanese Sharia court, but we simply cannot ignore the degree to which radical Islam apparently believes that there are no consequences for poking the U.S. in the eye as long as Barack Obama is President.* As he so often does, Mark Steyn sums up the impotence of the Obama/Kerry crew perfectly:

Just to reiterate what happened here: A barbarian regime seized an American’s family and jailed them – and throughout their imprisonment no one in the United States Government did anything and neither the President nor his Secretary of State said a word. The British and Canadians helped, and the Italians sent a government plane and the deputy foreign minister. The Pope had time for the Wani family, but not President Fundraiser.

Meanwhile, the last remaining Christians are being forced to leave Mosul, a city that was once considered the heart of Christendom in Mesopotamia. And so it goes.

[* I am willing to concede that there exists the possibility that the Obama Administration worked relentlessly behind the scenes to secure the release of Ms. Ibrahim and her children, but thought that taking a strong public stance would complicate their efforts. Perhaps they coordinated very closely with the British, Canadians, and Italians on this matter, and someday the truth will come out and we will see that they deserve a great deal of the credit for convincing Sudan to release her. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Still, if I had to bet in this matter, I would put my money down on passivity and fecklessness by the administration where radical Islam is involved. If it can’t be accomplished with drones, this President doesn’t seem to want to try.]

– JVW

39 Responses to “Meriam Ibrahim’s Release: Whom to Thank”

  1. Thanks for the great wrap up of this sordid affair.

    It is important to shed light on the intolerance of Islam. Only when Muslims tire of attempting to defend the worst of Sharia will there be “reformation” in Islam as there was with Christianity 400 years ago. There is no place for state religions in the world today.

    Corky Boyd (f38e2c)

  2. i seriously doubt food stamp and vajajay got all worked up about this lady while leaving that marine to rot in mexico

    they just have different priorities

    raising money mostly

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  3. No civilized country would force a woman to give birth in shackles, right?

    Leviticus (3b77b1)

  4. SQUIRREL

    JD (dd5bcb)

  5. “Christian” is the operative word here.

    Leviticus, why do you feel compelled to make this point? Do you really think anyone on these threads has ever defended such atrocious behavior?

    Dana (24e307)

  6. but authorities declared that by having a Muslim father Ms. Ibrahim was obligated to follow the tenets of Islam, even though her father had left the family early in Ms. Ibrahim’s youth.

    This is actually an incorrect application of Shariah law, and they know it, but they don’t care. (a caveat: the “court” may have accepted a false version of the facts)

    If this was the general rule, we’d be seeing this a lot more often. By that token, they could come pretty close to charging Barack Obama himself with apostasy. (his case is slightly different perhaps in that his father has perhaps informally left Islam for no religion, but it is essentially the same.)

    Molems and Christians lived together in too many places for too long for that rule of the Sudanese court ever to have been a real rule.

    The actual rule is that someone needs to have practiced Islam after the age of 14 before they can charged with apostasy. It doesn’t matter if her father was supposed to be given custody according to shariah law – he wasn’t.

    Theer’s actually something a lot more going on here. You can ask why would her half brother want to do that? It seems like there is a family feud, and he invented a lot of “facts,” and the corrupt court accepted them. The “adultery” charge makes no sense at all. (are they alleging the validity of some marriage contracted on her behalf without her consent, or some marriage that never took place?)

    The court, if what is reported above, not only accepted false facts, they may have adopted false law. Shariah law is bad enough, but they make it worse. (except that the court may have accepted a false version of the facts, and based its ruling more on he false facts.)

    These people are not following any pre-existing religious law whatsoever. They’re making things up.

    It looks a little like we are seeing an application of shariah law, BUT IT’S REALLY A CORRUPT COURT.

    Sammy Finkelman (51afd4)

  7. Why would they lift a finger for her when an active-duty Marine rots in a Mexican jail?
    Of course, they could have played the “immigrant card”, but she’s a LEGAL immigrant.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  8. seriously if pitiful sad cowardly broke-ass America were a force for freedom in the world

    we’d know about it

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  9. Leviticus, why do you feel compelled to make this point? Do you really think anyone on these threads has ever defended such atrocious behavior?

    My guess is that Leviticus is making reference to an ACLU report that claims incarcerated women in the U.S. are shackled during labor. There is some information on a lefty site here.

    But, yeah, it’s a squirrel, as JD points out.

    JVW (feb406)

  10. It would be nice if the ACLU could inform us which of the 57 (Heh) states do not use shackels during child-birth.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  11. 7. The State Department never does very much for Americans locked up in foreign jails.

    Sammy Finkelman (51afd4)

  12. These people are not following any pre-existing religious law whatsoever. They’re making things up.

    Now we know where Oduma and someone pretending to be the attorney general are getting their ideas about rewriting law. They are making things up, just so far as we can see, without the “religious” part.

    Bill M (906260)

  13. That was my point, JVW, yes. I don’t see how it’s a squirrel. We balk when it happens in the Sudan, but not in the US? If you didn’t want to talk about it, you didn’t need to draw particular attention to the fact with your HTML.

    Leviticus (3b77b1)

  14. There was, Leviticus, probably a noticeable difference in the level of care provided by the Sudanese authorities and that which would be extended by even the most brutal prison administrator in the US.
    I also notice a marked improvement in the Ms. Ibrahims appearance between the pix of her in Sudan, and what we saw of her at the Vatican. It would appear that she was on close to starvations rations while in custody….but why would you feed someone condemned to death.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  15. O/T, but this is worrisome, and is a reminder of the “mobilizations” that preceded the Guns of August.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  16. The New York Times seems to have people in places wheer the CIA even doesn’t. they had someone in Raqqa, Syria.

    The caliphate seems to be following diofferent rules in different places. In Raqqa Christians are tolerated with a small tax. A tax was theoretically an option for the Chirstians in mosul but not really so. They were expelled with very little notice last Saturday (and were told on Thursday)

    Christian houses had been painted with an Arabic letter “N” and they were told to convert, pay the tax, leave or be killed. Some Christians had come back to Mosul after the initial takeover by ISIS. Of course their tactic was like the Chinese Communists in China in 1948 and 1949 – much lighter rule in newly captured territory. Bad mistake for the people who returned.

    The first thing ISIS did in Mosul was blow all those obstacles protecting buildinmgs from car bombings, just in case it got recaptured quickly.

    Now they have taken over churches and bloan up monuments. They destroyed the tomb of Jonah )Mosul is Nineveh) who may not is not really be buried there at all, of course, but it was Christian and a Moslem shrine.

    The Christians weer forced to leave Mosul with very little as their cars had been confiscated (where’s the Shariah law justification for that?) and other stuff was too like jewelry and cash. They had to walk or use bicycles or motorbikes.

    Five Christian families had difficulty leaving (ill people?) and agreed to convert.

    Now the latest news is they may impose female genital cutting although how that would be done in practice is unclear. It’s also not shariah law. The caliph or his government is making stuff up.

    None of this was on the CBS Evening News. The Wall Street Journal had some stories and the New York Times an editorial.

    Jordan got a group of (former?) allies of the caliph together. Iraq has complained that meeting should not have taken place or the people involved should have been arrested.

    They elected a new President in Iraq. They are going with the process.

    Maliki is still the only candidate for his faction and allies.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  17. (where’s the Shariah law justification for that?)

    Just inside the muzzle of an AK-47/74.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  18. Sammy, do you read Arabic?
    If not, how do you know what is, and is not, Sharia Law?

    askeptic (efcf22)

  19. That was my point, JVW, yes. I don’t see how it’s a squirrel. We balk when it happens in the Sudan, but not in the US? If you didn’t want to talk about it, you didn’t need to draw particular attention to the fact with your HTML.

    OK, perhaps referring to it as a “squirrel” was going to far. I retract that statement. My point is that the issue of giving birth while shackled was only a small part of the article, with the larger thrust being the idea that (1) a Sudanese court will impose a death sentence against the wife of an American citizen on flimsy and controversial grounds (and had the sentence been carried out, her children would have have been returned to their father; they would have likely been placed with the family of Ms. Ibrahim’s half-brother) and (2) while the U.S. embassy in the Sudan may have been working on behalf of Ms. Ibrahim and her children, the President and Secretary of State were curiously silent on the issue.

    If we want to put an end to restraining incarcerated women during childbirth in the U.S., the ACLU tells us that the following states have already outlawed or restricted the practice: AZ, CA, CO, DE, FL, HI, ID, LA, PA, NM, NV, NY, RI, TX, VT, WA, and WV. Let’s work on those hyper-progressive states like Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Oregon, and Minnesota and get them to agree to change the law. I would imagine there are strong ACLU chapters in each one of those states.

    JVW (feb406)

  20. 18. askeptic (efcf22) — 7/25/2014 @ 2:47 pm

    Sammy, do you read Arabic?

    If not, how do you know what is, and is not, Sharia Law?

    You don’t need to read Arabic to know what is, and what is not, Sharia law, when it comes to something widely known, any more than you need to go to original sources to know that there a depression in the United States after 1837, or that Niagara Falls is near Buffalo, or for that matter, to know that World War I started almost exactly 100 years ago.

    I read a lot of secondary sources, over time, that come from various places.

    I knew for along time that the apostasy is taken sextremely seriosuly by Islam. I know also that in Islam a father determines the child is a Moslem. Now that would seem to be a problem for Barack Obama but I read that it isn’t, and I read an account of spomeone accused in Iran of converting and it seems the key factor is did someone practice Islam after the age of 14. And it cannot be otherwise, otherwise there’d be periodic inquistions in places where Moslems and Christians lived together and I never heard of anything like that. I never read of it occurring even once.

    Interestingly, although is a capital offense for a Moslem to convert, and several countries have enacted laws like that, executions never seem to have been carried out. There is always a way out found – so far. I don’t know why. They are not afraid to do a lot of other things. Usually the person recants or he is given the opportunity to emigrate.

    I also know female genital mutilation is not Shariah law, (although it might not be prohibited by it) because that’s what everyone seems to say and because it is not carried out everywhere. Now what they may or may not declare oin Mosul, I do not know.

    I also know there are a lot of problems with Osama bin Laden’s theology. He had “individual Jihad” He had murder of non-combatants. Suicide is also a problem. The biggest problems may not be what we find to be the biggest problems, but there are problems. They attack Islamic lerics because sometimes things like that are pointed out.

    I know there are 5 versions of Islamic law. 4 Sunni and 1 Shiite. Shiite Islam is more hierarchical. One problem for the Mullahs in Iran, or two: 1) They do not hold that the chiief cleric or judge should hold civil power 2) the chief cleric, or Shiite Pope, is Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, and not anybody in Iran. He’s called for Maliki to be rerplaced, and he rarely gets involved in politics this way.

    Sammy Finkelman (51afd4)

  21. SF: “The Christians were forced to leave Mosul with very little as their cars had been confiscated (where’s the Shariah law justification for that?)”

    17. askeptic (efcf22) — 7/25/2014 @ 2:45 pm Just inside the muzzle of an AK-47/74.
    I think you have it right here.

    Sammy Finkelman (51afd4)

  22. Here’s a Christian who converted in Afghanistan, now in hiding:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/world/asia/afghanistan-a-christian-convert-on-the-run.html?_r=0

    He wantewd to to his sister in germany. Europe has asylum rules that say the person gets asylum in the fiorst country he reaches. Sounds reasonable, maybe? It isn’t.

    He was deported from Germany to Italy. He had no family or support syste in Italy and he was not the type to be alone immigrant. he left Italy for Pakistan to be with his wife and son. he concealed his conversion, but he kept a USB drive with the details just in case he should need to ask for asylum again. It was discovered by his wife’s family when he left the drive at hoe one day and one of his wife;s brother’s wanted to save a file on it.

    He had to flee to the only place he could afford to go or knew where to go – Afghanistan.

    Sammy Finkelman (51afd4)

  23. You don’t need to read Arabic to know what is, and what is not, Sharia law

    Then why do the students (taliban) at Madrassa’s learn Islamic Scripture by rote in Arabic, and not some other language – whether their native language is Arabic or not?

    askeptic (efcf22)

  24. …and just why has no Islamic Cleric – not even a Wahhabist, considered to be the strictist form of Islam – ever denounced Barack Hussein Obama as an Apostate, since both his birth-father, and step-father, were Muslim?
    What do they know that they’re not telling us?

    askeptic (efcf22)

  25. Sudan is about as Muslim as the People’s Republic of China is a republic. Never mind if Sammy can read Arabic; the question is whether the fuzzie-wuzzies* that tried this lady could. I bet they could not. Although learning Arabic is encouraged in order to be able to read the Koran, it is not required in Islam, and neither is literacy of any kind for that matter. Most places, and especially backwards places like Africa and the Indian sub-continent, their Islam is an oral tradition passed on by semi-literate mullahs and khadis.

    *The British colonial word for the Sudanese.

    nk (dbc370)

  26. fuzzie-wuzzies…
    Haven’t heard that since the last time I watched “The Four Feathers”.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  27. It’s easy to blame Obama, but there have been few consequences for Muslims poking the U.S. in the eye since the time of Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage taking (and they learned it from the North Vietnamese). Mild responses to outrages under Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and, now, Barack Obama are the rule. If anything, these men bent over backwards to placate aggressors and mollify the Muslim world. Over the 40 years since the hostage taking, Bush II represents the only outlier, and even his approach was constrained and surgical. When responding to provocations by the Muslim world, almost all Presidents lead from behind.

    By the way, this article does a fine job of explaining why Barack Obama is, in point of fact, a Muslim. Muslims make the rules as to who is and who is not a member of their faith – apostates most certainly do not. Like it or not, Meriam Ibrahim and Barack Obama fit the criteria dictated by the Koran and are Muslims.

    ThOR (130453)

  28. Thor touches on a point: Since Obama’s father was a Muslim, and since his mother married another Muslim after she divorced Barack Sr, not only was Obama born a Muslim, but he was raised in a Muslim household until the age of 10.

    So, the president is not only a Muslim by Muslim law, he has made the decision to abandon Islam and become apostate (taking him at his word regarding his Christianity). Bet you there are more places ex-President Obama (!) cannot go without fear of arrest than places W cannot go.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  29. #27: Reagan was not entirely willing to placate Muslims. Not only the Libyan raid, but also the way the Iranians had those 50 American diplomats on a plane and out of their airspace before Reagan took the oath of office. That did not happen by chance.

    He also attempted to prevent Lebanon falling completely to Syria, but it didn’t work out.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  30. Theodore Roosevelt was foolish in many respects, but he understood the muslim mindset very well. A simple “Meriam, Martin and new borne on Air Force 1 at Khartoum airport in good health in two hours, or we flatten every building in Sudan in 2 days. And then we’ll hunt the rest of you down. Your choice. Sincerely!”

    QED

    HteWon has been given so many oppurtunities to demonstrate that he is worthy of respect, and all we get is traffic jams in Seattle and L. A. What a loser!

    bobathome (4c87a1)

  31. I’ve read that the spread of TB has severely affected teh Sudan, Sammy… please investigate.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  32. Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead!

    askeptic (efcf22)

  33. Megyn Kelly certainly gave a lot of air time to this situation and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council worked behind the scenes to help where and when possible.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  34. yes, she did, note a similar fellow was in the footnotes of the Boumedienne dissent;

    http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/07/review_board_rules_t.php

    narciso (ee1f88)

  35. I always hear about the three “Abrahamic” religions. Funny that only one “member” of those religions always wants to murder members of the other two!

    MSL (5f601f)

  36. she’s lucky she got out of there with her clitoris

    those sudanians are barbaric

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  37. If Sudan would legitimately consider her a citizen then I really don’t see anything wrong with the US government not intervening, even if she is a naturalized US citizen. You return to a country with a questionable legal system where you hold citizenship I’m sorry but it’s just tough luck if that questionable legal system comes down on you. Just one of the prices of the modern phenomena of people claiming dual citizenship.

    Soronel Haetir (02427a)

  38. Theodore Roosevelt was foolish in many respects, but he understood the muslim mindset very well. A simple “Meriam, Martin and new borne on Air Force 1 at Khartoum airport in good health in two hours, or we flatten every building in Sudan in 2 days. And then we’ll hunt the rest of you down. Your choice. Sincerely!”

    But how could he do that and then condemn Israel? Oh, right, never mind.

    Milhouse (c63fe5)


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