I did a double take when I saw this headine this morning in the LA Times:
Iraq festival is bloody but not in a bad way
No, actually, it is "in a bad way."
The balding head of Hamid Hussein had been sliced open with a sword. Bright scarlet blood flowed down his sunburned face, trickling down and staining the white robes worn by his 5-year-old son, Hussein.
It was a momentous day for father and son. They were observing Ashura, the annual religious holiday when Shiite Muslims display penance and mourning with self-inflicted wounds to commemorate the 7th century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.
It was a momentous day for father and son. They were observing Ashura, the annual religious holiday when Shiite Muslims display penance and mourning with self-inflicted wounds to commemorate the 7th century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.
The article goes on to explain that it's a "good" blood-letting because it was marked by a lack of violence as has been seen in the past. The Times begrudgingly credits the presence of US forecs, although notes:
"It's better that the Americans are leaving, because we can run our own affairs now," Hussein, 32, a stocky, white-robed resident of Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood, said this week as he wiped streaks of blood from his eyes.
Their own affairs?
The men, and some young boys, had sliced their heads or flayed themselves with chains to open wounds and draw blood.
There used to be a time when we called such thing child abuse. Now the Times would have us embrace it as another happy facet of multi-culturalism. You know, like child brides and femal genital mutilation.
At one time, I had a client who excused their conduct of getting drunk in front of their minor childen by saying, "Well, they're just little adults." It is a mentality like this that promulgates what I could call societal child abuse - we treat children as "little adults," slipping more sly sexual innuendo into PG-ated movies and charging a first grader with sexual harassment when he kicked the groin of his opponent in a school yard fight (while those aforementioned PG movies consistently use the groin shot as a sight gag). It causes parents to think they need to be their kids "friends" while abdicating their role of educating and leading.
Ashura - just another golden holiday memory for little boys:
2 comments:
Doing that to tiny babies and children. *special place in Hell*
You know the saying that Israel made the desert bloom but the Arabs make it bleed? Nail. Head. *smack*
WOW!....just........DAAAAAAAAANG.
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