What Victory for Islam Means, Part 5, Freedom of the Press

This is what the Salafi form of sharia law does to those, especially women, who broadcast or write about issues embarrsassing to their interpretation of islam (bow to the Mudville Gazette):

Shortly after the bombing of the Samarra shrine, an Iraqi journalist covering the aftermath was kidnapped and murdered. Her story was mentioned briefly in the western media, but was covered extensively in the Middle East.

Now a video of the brutal murder has surfaced, apparently made with a mobile phone with video capability.

Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.

We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.

By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.

It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.

Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities that she covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraq’s descent into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution embodies the depths of the country’s depravity after three years of war.

A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.

Her cries — “Ah, ah, ah” — can be heard above the “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.

Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.

Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.

The voice of one of the Arab world’s most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

Other gruesome details from a family friend: She had nine drill holes in her right arm and 10 in her left, he said. The drill had also been applied to her legs, her navel and her right eye.

This is the form of life and death that our enemy offers, first to the Iraqis, then to the whole of the Middle East not already under its sway, then to all of islam, and finally to all the world.

This is why we must fight and not summarily pull out like the fat, narcissistic, decadent American-Idol obsessed weaklings the Democrats would have us be and the muslims already think we are.

Yesterday it was Atwar Bahjat. Soon it may be your own daughter, sister, or wife.
Thus ends my Sunday meditation.

Monk