MUSLIM HATE OF DATING
Girl takes out AVO against dad over boyfriend
Jan 4 2011
By ninemsn staff
Police have taken out an apprehended violence order against a Sydney Muslim man after he allegedly threatened to kill himself and his daughter after he found out she had a boyfriend.
Parramatta Bail Court heard the man, who cannot be named, threatened to kill himself after he found the boy in the room of his 14-year-old daughter, the Daily Telegraph reports.
It is alleged he told police the relationship disrespected Muslim culture and brought shame to his family, which is part of Sydney's Afghan community.
Police were called to the home when the family became concerned the man would kill the boy.
When they arrived he became angry that they did not arrest the boy as he had been invited into the house by the daughter.
"The accused then stated, as the boyfriend would not be going to jail, the only thing left to do was kill his daughter and himself," police said.
"The complainant is stuck between her religion, strict parents and wanting to be a typical Australian teenager."
Police told the court that when the girl ran away from home on October 27 last year her father had threatened to kill himself if she did not return by sundown.
He was stopped from hanging himself by his wife and son.
"The daughter said she fears that her father will kill her because of her actions and that if he doesn't, she will be locked in the house unable to leave, unless he kills himself," police said.
Police applied for the apprehended violence order on behalf of the girl.
He was charged with stalking, intimidation with intent to cause fear of physical or mental harm.
The man, a qualified surgeon in Afghanistan but working as a taxi driver in Sydney, was refused bail and the matter is set for mention in Blacktown Local Court on January 12.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Lovers escape Cairo's grasp
Youth torn between secularism and Islam break free in handful of spots on Nile.
By HAMZA HENDAWI
The Associated Press
CAIRO, EGYPT – On a perfect spring day, under blue skies and a gentle sun, 19-year-old Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz went on his first date. Holding hands and gently hugging, he and his girlfriend sailed up the Nile, free for a few hours from prying eyes and disapproving shouts.
They were among dozens of couples aboard the Sultan Ashraf, seeking escape from a city in constant conflict between Western influences and Islamic conservatism.
A Westerner would judge the Nile jaunt as wholly innocent. But by Egyptian standards it was daring enough to qualify as a lovers' revolt.
In a city of 18 million, whose famous cosmopolitan texture is taking on a deeper Islamic hue, the young are bombarded by a mix of Islamic messages and Western excesses on satellite television and the Internet. Often they want to date but fear disapproval.
Only out here on the water, and at a few secluded spots on its banks and bridges, can they break fully free of an informal but rigid code of segregation based on class, wealth and gender.
Abdel-Aziz is a slender young man with hazelnut eyes and a goatee - a romantic, a poet and a dreamer.
"I am a lover of love," he declared as he sat by his sweetheart on a bench on the Sultan Ashraf's upper deck.
"But when I look at the mirror before I leave home every day, I am thinking: Life is not giving me what I deserve. But, you know, I will keep at it until it does."
As the boat sailed away from the skyline of office towers, past the slums and finally into lush farmland, the couple dropped their inhibitions. He gave her a red carnation and in a gentle voice read to her from a love poem he had written and copied neatly into a red exercise book.
"I confess, my princess, that I had never tasted happiness or joy on this Earth until I met you," he read.
The girlfriend, too shy to give a reporter her name, listened attentively. She wore a head scarf and ankle-long skirt, and blushed as he inched closer. They had met a month earlier at their Cairo University college, and he had declared his love for her.
The battle for the soul of Arab youth is waged all over the Middle East. In Beirut, the sexes mingle freely. In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, they can't even meet.
"Rebelling against customs is key to progress," says Mona Helmi, a poet and a columnist in her 40s whose mother, Nawal al-Saadawi, is one of Egypt's leading women's-rights campaigners. "We cannot live by customs created by people who lived and died hundreds of years ago."
But this battle carries perhaps the most potential danger in Cairo, where economic disparities are deep and shocking, riots break out over perceived injustices and Islamic tradition is for many the only source of comfort and certainty.
Lack of social mobility leaves youngsters from poor families struggling to create a youth culture they can afford. What they want most is the freedom to date.
Yet dating is frowned upon for fear it will lead to premarital sex - or at least the temptation to have it. And an unmarried woman seen in male company could ruin her marriage prospects.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Couples arrested for time spent after dark
BIREUN, Indonesia – Islamic authorities in Aceh province arrested 36 men and women for violating laws prohibiting unmarried couples from spending time alone together after dark, officials said Monday.
Aceh is gradually introducing Shariah, or Islamic law, under an autonomy package that the central government has granted the province as part of efforts to defuse a separatist rebellion.
The youngest detained was a 14-year-old girl. All were released after several hours on condition they sign a statement promising not to repeat their crime, said Umar Budiman, the head of the area's bureau for Sharia.
Attempts to have Islamic law introduced elsewhere in Indonesia have failed to get much support from the country's 210 million people, almost all of them Muslims.