Bhutto assassinated in Pakistan. Well, they finally got her!

From the counterterrorismblog.com comes this shocking story about the assasination of Bhutto:

Reports: Imminent Statement Expected from Al-Qaida's Mustafa Abu Yazid Claiming Credit for Bhutto Assassination
By Evan Kohlmann
There are now widespread reports suggesting that an imminent official statement is expected from Egyptian Al-Qaida spokesman Mustafa Abu Yazid claiming responsibility for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Earlier today, Al-Qaida issued a separate statement from Mustafa Abu Yazid denying any role in recent blasts targeting mosques in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar. According to that communique from Abu Yazid (dated December 24), "We do not attack targets in mosques or in public places where there are crowds of Muslims in order to safeguard Muslim blood and to respect the sanctity of mosques. This is our approach generally, and we inform all of our supporters in Pakistan--and everywhere else--about these facts."

It should be noted that is not the first time that Al-Qaida and its affiliates have allegedly targeted Benazir Bhutto for assassination. During the Philippine police interrogation of Abdul Hakim Murad--an associate of 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef--Murad recalled that Yousef "once made a statement that BHUTTO should be replaced as PM of Pakistan since Islamic belief does not allow a woman to occupy such position and that [mujahideen organizations] should do something to unseat her. Said statement indicates that [Yousef] might be planning to carry out an attack against the PM of Pakistan." Likewise, during the mid-1990s, the FBI recorded several telephone conversations involving Kifah Jayyousi and Adham Hassoun (who were recently convicted in federal court for their role in recruiting would-be Al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla) in which the men discussed "getting rid" of the late Pakistani Prime Minister--who they referred to as "Khanazir Bhutto" ("Bhutto the Pig"): "She's done... done... she... she was finished... finished, my brother... I was reading about the life... the life of the Prophet, peace and blessing upon him... 'Men are ruined if they are to obey women'. Praise to God."

I quote this article both to share more about what happened to Bhutto and to illustrate the continuing subjugation of women in her culture. Other articles in this blog elaborate on assasination details.

I'm close friends with a Muslim man in Egypt and the fanatics who did this certainly do not represent the mindset of my friend and his friends. However, Muslim men do come down very squarely on the role of women in Muslim society. I won't belabor this. We've all read about it. My friend who is liberal compared to many of his friends still has an adult daughter living in his home who will never be allowed to live elsewhere until married. Should she do that, she would no longer be considered a good candidate for marriage to a suitable man. His other daughter wasn't left alone in the company of the man she was arranged to meet until they were engaged and then, only in a separate room from where family stayed nearby. If an uncle came to the door after they had their night robes on, my friend had to be roused from bed to open the door if asleep since they weren't allowed to unless fully dressed .

JUST ADDED TO POST:

I wrote my friend in Cairo about this. I'm sharing part of his reply on the blog.

I was shocked and felt really sad when I heard the news, for some reasons I have liked that great lady.

About the saying of not to take orders from a woman is reality in the public Muslim culture, but it does not go back to God, it goes to a questionable Hadith (saying) from Mohammed the messenger of Islam. You ought to know that the true verified and validated Hadith is very rare compared to all of what was told upon 1428 years.


The real practice on ground says something very different. Prophet Mohamed said (verified and validated) that Muslims should learn half of their religion from his youngest wife (Aisha). In the middle history of the Islamic Egypt we had a very famous Muslim queen named Shagret Eldorr (Tree of jewels), that was upon the time of the crusader’s invasion to Egypt about 1200 AD where Lewis the 13th king of France has been taking prisoner in Egypt!.


On the religion side, there is one woman of the most honorable and famous Sheikhs (priests) by the time of Mongol invasion to Islamic countries before turning to adopt Islam, her name was Rabaa. On the ground, Buto was a prime minister and a party leader and that has been approved by the religion community of Pakistan (there is no Islamic authority like the church), that is the practice of Islam, so do not pay much attention to the extremists.

Anyway it is a controversial issue and you can say that the US has not been ever under a woman’s rule or a black despite the golden sayings about liberty and equality, it is more human legacy rather than Islamic, Christian, western or eastern.