Another Afghan School Poisoned — 160 Girls Hospitalized

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, we discussed news of an anti-education attack on an Afghani school, which poisoned 150 Afghan schoolgirls. Now, a hospital in the same province has admitted 160 more girls who seem to have suffered a similar attack. 'Their classrooms might have been sprayed with a toxic material before the girls entered, police spokesman Khalilullah Aseer said. He blamed the Taliban. The incident, the second in a week's time, was reported at the Aahan Dara Girls School in Taluqan, the provincial capital. The girls, ages 10 to 20, complained of headaches, dizziness and vomiting before being taken to the hospital, said Hafizullah Safi, director of the provincial health department. More than half of them were discharged within a few hours of receiving treatment, Safi said. The health department collected blood samples and sent them to Kabul for testing.'"

Islam strikes again!

[Psyborgue]

Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri The Prophet said, "Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?" The women said, "Yes." He said, "This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind."

Sahih Bukhari 3:48:826

And this is hardly the instance of this in Islam.

Re:Religious extreme

[Psyborgue]

I'm Gay and i'd vote for Santorum. Why not? Obama is not going to let me marry. He says he supports gay marriage as a personal opinion but he quickly notes it should be left up to the states -- which is really no different than any of the republican candidates when it comes down to what will get done. When it comes down to it most presidents, regardless of party, will do pretty much the same things when they get elected. Plus. I'm sick of Obama sucking the cocks of our enemies and weakening our position on the world scale. I didn't much like the way Bush did things but I like Obama even less.

Re:Solution

[vlm]

Their culture is inhumane and should be replaced without qualm or concern. Problem solved.
Aside from that, the protocol is simple, build two identical schools on each side of town, each morning flip coin and heads the boys go to the north school, tails the girls go to the north school. Ditto the delivery of water trucks (like last incident) etc.

A note for naysayers

[Quila]

Sahih Bukhari 3:48:826

The "Sahih" in this means that the source and the chain of narration of the Hadith is considered to be trustworthy. Of all Sahih Hadith, al-Bukhari is considered the most trustworthy. This means that to the average Muslim, there can be no doubt that Mohammed said this, and therefore that it must be true.

There is a very small minority of Muslims who reject all Hadith, believing only the Quran is authoritative and that it actually bans following texts such as Hadith. Mainstream Islam considers them to be apostates. Too bad, you remove Hadith, you remove much of the backwards, nasty stuff about the religion.

Re:Another peaceful message

[dskoll]

According to Islam, the Quran is the ultimate authority and must be taken as truth. Other Abrahamic religions have their fundamentalist nutcases, it is true, but they have much less of a problem with people reinterpreting the religious texts than Islam does.

Also, giving any sort of religious text a free pass because it's "not meant to be taken literally" is a dangerous game. It allows religious adherents to present their religion as moderate to outsiders while revealing its true and violent face to insiders. I don't think any religious text, whether it's Islamic, Christian or Jewish, should be viewed as anything other than hateful if it promotes violence, genocide, etc.

Re:Clearly a very serious issue, but

[shutdown -p now]

Misogyny and violent oppression of women may not be a part of the overall Afghan culture, but it certainly is a part of Pashtun culture, and Pashtuns are the single largest ethnic group in Afghanistan (12 million out of ~30).

Read this paper [slashdot.org] for some more in-depth look at the subject - while its topic is not obviously related, it does cover the issue of misogyny, and how it is perpetuated in the culture from generation to generation.

Re:Universal Human Rights Are Above Relativity

[DarkOx]

Even though Rand herself does not think so; the most salient arguments against it I have ever read are in "We the Living", it was her first, about something she actually knew and is nothing like her other books. I highly recommend everyone read it, especially if they vehemently dislike her other works such as "Atlas Shrugged." You will probably enjoy it and learn something about the nature of men under communism.

The problem is not communism, its probably a fine political and social system for some space aliens some place else in the universe. It does not work well humans though. It simply exchanges one system of class and privilege based on monetary wealth, birth, or both for different one. Society must be run by people therefore there are politics. Under communism where and whenever its tried men turn political clout and favor into first a new form of currency which they then use to get more of the old form of currency. Within half a generation you move for the prospect of a future "workers paradise" like Marx describe to an authoritarian regime. Some people are lucky enough to be born (back to by birth) into good communist families and groomed to be future leadership everyone else becomes members of an under class.

With the added tragedy that production and resources (human and natural) are almost always badly allocated; corruption assures this even if don't believe the invisible hand is the most efficient system of allocation. At least with capitalism society is crudely steered in the vague direction of meritocracy.

Communism is evil and it should be opposed whenever it is proffered as a solution. We must not be naive though. We have gotten along okay for about 2 1/4 centuries but there are problems with our system. Our freedoms and equality really are being eroded by corruption as well.