National Park Service Video Praises Islam’s Contributions to Women’s Rights

Yes, you heard me right: The National Park Service has produced a video, at taxpayer’s expense, praising Islam’s contributions to women’s rights. The video states that Muslim women have enjoyed a whole bunch of rights not held by Western women until the 19th and 20th centuries, BUT Muslim women have enjoyed these rights since the 7th century. That list of rights includes:

1. The right to be involved in politics
2. The right to earn and keep their own money
3. The right to work outside the home
4. The right to own property
5. The right to divorce
6. The right for a woman to choose whom she marries.

Are you jealous yet? Before you rush down to your local mosque and convert, I would like to make you aware of some of the rights of Muslim women that the National Park Service left out.

Last Sunday, I had the privilege of hearing Nonie Darwish speak in person. Darwish is an Egyptian woman who was a Muslim from birth until she was thirty years old. At that time she converted to Christianity, although it meant becoming an outcast to her family and friends. She is the Author of “The Devil we Don’t Know” and the president/founder of Former Muslims United and Arabs for Israel.

Darwish did not mention the National Park Service video, but during her presentation she repeated several times that she could not imagine why any non-Muslim woman would EVER convert to Islam. She talked about the horrors of life as a Muslim woman and provided the audience with a list of some of the Sharia laws that are a major threat to our Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Darwish’s list included 42 laws, but for this blog I am sharing only those that deal specifically with women’s rights.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am, therefore, listing some of the rights Islam gives to women that the National Park Service forgot to mention. Darwish has noted on this list that these laws are found in the mainstream Islamic Sharia Book “Reliance of the Traveler” which has the stamp of approval by all Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East, including Al Azhar University.

1. There is no age limit for marriage of girls. The marriage contract can take place any time after birth and be consummated at age 8 or 9.
2. A husband has the right to beat his wife and does not have to give a reason either to her family or to the police.
3. Rebelliousness on the part of the wife nullifies the husband’s obligation to support her and gives him permission to beat her to keep her from leaving the home.
4. Divorce is only in the hands of the husband and is as easy as saying: “I divorce you” and becomes effective even if the husband says he did not intend it. Perhaps, the National Park Service should have listed a woman’s right to divorce as a woman’s right to BE divorced by her husband.
5. There is no community property between husband and wife and the husband’s property does not automatically go to the wife after his death.
6. A woman inherits half of what a man inherits.
7. Parents have the legal right to perform female genital mutilation on daughters (al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveler, Chapter o4.3)
8. A man has the right to have up to 4 wives and the wife may not divorce him even if he is polygamous.
9. Marriage is a buyer/seller contract whereby the dowry is given in exchange for the woman’s sexual organs.
10. A man is allowed to have sex with slave women and women captured in battle, and if the enslaved woman is married, her marriage is annulled.
11. The testimony of a woman in court carries half the value of that of a man.
12. To prove rape, a woman must have 4 male witnesses.
13. A woman loses custody of her children if she remarries.
14. A rapist may be required to pay only the bride-money (dowry) without marrying the rape victim.
15. A Muslim woman must cover every inch of her body, which is considered “Awrah,” like a sexual organ. Not all Sharia schools allow the face of a woman to be exposed.
16. A Muslim man is forgiven if he kills his wife at the time she is caught in the act of adultery. However, the opposite is not true for women since he “could be married to the woman he was caught with”.
17. There is no retribution for parents or grandparents for slaying their daughters, even though Islam abolished killing infant girls. This is significant in supporting honor killing of daughters.

I would like to know how our federal government justifies spending our money producing pro-Muslim propaganda. I dare say that if a Christian group were to ask the feds to produce a video extolling the benefits of being a Christian woman, the Christians would be turned down flat and probably undergo an extensive IRS audit.

Our government is waging a war against Christians, and it is time for us to stand up and tell our representatives that we have had enough. They are fond of saying that under the Constitution we must have complete separation of church and state. While that is arguable, those are the rules that our government imposes on Christians. We must demand that they make these rules apply equally to all religions.

The Planner, the prequel to The Chosen, is Free on Kindle September 25-28th.

Joyce Swann is the author of Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother co-author of The Chosen, a dystopian novel about the battle of one U.S. family to restore the Constitution and stop the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

Lost

On November 17, 2006, the Kim family left San Francisco to make a road trip to spend Thanksgiving in Seattle with family and friends. After spending a pleasant holiday weekend with loved ones, the Kims began their trip home. James Kim had his heart set on staying at the Tu Tu Tun Inn at Gold Beach in Oregon. Although it was already late and their two daughters, Penelope, age four years, and Sabine, age seven months, were asleep in the back seat, the Kims decided to make the five-hour drive to Gold Beach. Kati Kim called ahead for reservations.

After a quick meal at Denny’s, the Kims headed down I-5 to Gold Beach, but they soon made a wrong turn. Before long, they realized that they were on the wrong road, but they agreed that they had gone too far to turn back. Kati consulted the map and found what she thought was a short cut to Gold Beach. As a result, the Kims made another wrong turn. Satisfied that they would arrive at Gold Beach in record time, Kati went to sleep, and while she slumbered, James made yet another wrong turn that took them up Bear Camp Road—a road that should have been blocked by a gate to prevent motorists from entering during the fall and winter months.

Kati awoke to find that they were hopelessly lost on a precipitous mountain road that led to nowhere. Snow was falling, and black bear were patrolling the forest. Terrified, James and Kati agreed to spend the night in the clearing where James had parked the car. They tried to call 911 but were unable to find cell phone service in the forest. When daylight arrived, the Kims decided to stay where they were and wait to be rescued. They remained in their car for three days, huddled together for warmth, with the engine idling and the heater running, until they finally ran out of gas. In a desperate attempt to save his family, James then took the tires off their car and burned them in the hopes that someone would see the smoke and rescue them.

On day seven James left the car to try to find help. He began walking down the road on which they had come, but, once again, left the road to take a “short cut” through the woods. On day nine, Kati and the two girls were rescued and taken to the hospital where they recovered. James eventually died of hypothermia, and on day eleven rescuers found his body in Big Windy Creek lying on its back in a foot of icy water.

This horribly tragic story provides a good parallel for what is currently happening in our country. We are headed down a dangerous road, and if we continue on this course, it will soon be too late to turn around. When my children were young, I told them that everyone makes some bad choices, but when we realize that we are on the wrong path we must stop and immediately start making better choices. We may not be able to undo all the damage that has already been done, but, in most cases, if we stop as soon as we know that we are on the wrong road, the damage will be minimal.

I wish that all Americans would hear this message: Stop stressing about the current problems that we face as a nation. Stop saying that we have gone too far for things to get better. Stop predicting that everything will get worse and worse until all hope is gone. We have the power to turn the car around and go back to responsible fiscal policies that will revitalize our economy and allow Americans to go back to work. But if we are not willing to start making better decisions and get involved in our political process and rid both houses of Congress of the legislators who are accelerating the car forward into a wilderness of wrong choices America will not survive.

If James Kim had turned around when he and his wife first realized that they had made a wrong turn, they would have, at worst, lost an hour or so of driving time. By returning to the point where they had gone wrong and getting back on the proper highway, the family would have been spared days of trauma, and James would not have lost his life. As in driving, in political matters it sometimes seems more expedient to continue on a road to nowhere than to turn around. Even when we can no longer delude ourselves that our current road will get us where we want to go, we try to compensate by simply taking another wrong turn. If we take enough wrong turns, it may become impossible to find our way back to the highway.

The choice is ours. We can continue on our current road to disaster, or we can start making better choices. We can find strong Conservative candidates who will stand up to the Washington D.C. elite and refuse to allow more wrong choices; we can start paying attention to the 2014 elections that can enable us to take both houses of Congress; we can get behind the candidates who are willing to turn the car around and hold them accountable for their choices. Get informed. Know your candidates. Make your voice heard. Today is the day to begin. Tomorrow may be too late.

Joyce Swann is the author of Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother co-author of The Chosen, a dystopian novel about the battle of one U.S. family to restore the Constitution and stop the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.