We support shelters in the Middle East working directly with women who have been abused, have survived attempted honor killings, or are in hiding from family members who have threatened their lives.

     We also work in the States and abroad to provide relief for women recovering from abusive situations who are in need of financial assistance for education, medical expenses, and emergency relocation.

The information presented on this site is an effort to expose the feminine holocaust and create a groundswell of support for women's freedom around the world. When the feminine can walk the world unmolested, and when she is no longer subjected and oppressed...we could witness the long awaited exodus away from war, greed and ignorance.

The Feminine Holocaust

In the United Nations reports for November 2005 Swiss Ambassador Theodor Winkler said the number of women who die because of gender-related violence, deprivation and discrimination is larger than the casualty toll in all the wars of the 20th century combined. “There is a shortfall of some 200 million women in the world. The deeply rooted phenomenon of violence against women is one of the great crimes of humanity.” Winkler told a news conference at the United Nations in November of 2005 that gender-related abortions and infanticides were the leading causes for the shortfall in the female population as well as domestic violence and so-called honor killings in some cultures. Joseph Farah of the Western Journalism Center/FreeRepublic referred to the gendercide as “the biggest single holocaust in human history.” The 335-page study by 60 authors brings together data on violence against women in daily life, in war and post-conflict situations for the first time.

In recent years the subservient position of women suffering under fundamentalist regimes has become somewhat common knowledge in the western world where most people seem familiar with the oppression of women, particularly in Afghanistan. Yet for so many women and girls living in Islamic and Hindu communities, reality is far worse than what most westerners imagine. Western media says little about the ongoing brutalization of women although it could be one of the worst human rights atrocities in history.

Over the past 20 months I’ve taken the time to speak individually with more than twenty thousand people in an effort to bring this dark issue to light. Islamic and Hindu men are burning women alive in by the thousands every year and there are many additional murders inflicted using garroting wires, axes, sticks and bullets. I would like to carefully explain through well cited, current information the recent numbers of honor killings, the reasons these burnings and murders are taking place, discuss passages from various interpretations of the Quran that uphold this behavior and support men who brutalize, burn and torture women. I’ll also include several specific examples representing only a tiny fraction of the actual violence.

On December 15th 2005 a Pakistani serial rapist being charged in New South Wales, Australia for raping four 13-14 year old girls told the court that the girls had no right to refuse his sexual assault because “They were not covering their faces or wearing a headscarf. I didn’t do anything wrong.” This mentality is common in Pakistan and throughout the Islamic world. According to Dr. Gudrun Eussner, who has extensive experience as a journalist in nearly a dozen Islamic countries, gang rape is often used by local authorities and town councils as legal punishment for any type of alleged or perceived misbehavior including singing, smiling or laughing in public, answering a question inappropriately or leaving the house without permission. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported in the year 2000, 804 cases of rape sentencing, 434 of which were gang rapes. One example is the case of Mukhtar Mai, who was sentenced to gang rape in 2002 by the town council of Meerwala, Pakistan because her 12 yr old brother was allegedly seen walking with a girl from a more prominent clan. Not surprisingly, one of the gang rapists was seated on the council. In many cases the relatives will kill a rape survivor in order to cleanse the family honor.

Honor killings in the Islamic world and dowry burnings throughout India are simply not investigated thoroughly enough to make an entirely accurate assessment of the death toll. In Islamabad, Pakistan The Progressive Women’s Association of Pakistan has helped more than 6,000 women burned by their husbands since opening their safe house in 1999. They estimate 40% of honor killings go unreported and admit that percentage could be much higher. Husbands often claim that kitchen stoves are to blame but Shanhaz Bukhari, Director of PWAP stated “Either Pakistan is home to possessed stoves which only burn young housewives, and are particularly fond of genitalia, or these women are victims of deliberate murder.” In her book Price of Honor, Jan Goodwin reported 2000 girls and women burned in Lahore, Pakistan during a ten month period, with one precinct averaging 15 victims per month. International Women’s Day estimates 25,000 girls and women are burned with acid or kerosene in India every year, partly due to the common practice of dowry burnings. The U.N. population report estimates 5,000 of those attacks are fatal while the remaining survivors are severely scarred and banished from society. In their 2002 report the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated “90% of Pakistani women suffer domestic violence” and particularly alarming was the “Soaring number of cases of mutilation from pouring acid over women.” According to the same report 30% of women are pregnant at the time of burning. The exact same numbers were given this year by the Pakistan Institute for Medical Sciences. This behavior is rampant throughout India and the global Islamic community yet the western world, particularly Americans, know very little about it.

The underlying reasons for brutalizing women go far beyond the alleged crimes of not serving dinner on time, wearing toenail polish or holding hands. Devout followers of fundamentalist doctrine have a long history of oppressing and burning women alive but the actual motives are also rooted in the violent sexual pathology that often arises when a man is given omnipotence over a woman. This pathology is further inflamed when a bloated sense of honor and social status is seen as infinitely more valuable than the life of an allegedly misbehaving daughter or wife. Using rape, murder and fear are used to keep the female population subservient although there are many other systematic forms of oppression, such as denying the opportunity for education or even leave the house.

Islamic or Sharia Law sees a woman as being half the value of a man, for example two female testimonies are required to equal a man’s word in court and a daughter only receives half the inheritance of a son. In February of 2005 Muhammed Kuraidy, spokesman for Ayatollah Yacoubi in Iraq told the New York Times “We don’t want to see equality between men and women because according to Islamic Law men should have double that of women. This is written in the Koran according to God.”

The world Organization Against Torture quoted an official spokesman from Morocco in 2003 stating “The government of the Kingdom of Morocco makes reservations…particularly regarding the equality of men and women in respects of rights…equality of this kind is incompatible with Islamic Sharia.

Legal inequality of women under Sharia law is based on several passages from the Quran.

Quran 2:228 – “….and women shall have rights similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable; but men have a degree of advantage over them. And Allah is exalted in power, wise.”

Quran 4:15 – If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four reliable witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordains for them some other way.

Quran 4:16 - If two men among you are guilty of lewdness punish them both. If they repent leave them alone; Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful. – Translations 2:228, 4:15 and 4:16 from respected Muslim scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali.

Quran 24:4 - And those who accuse free women and do not bring four witnesses, flog them, giving eighty stripes, and do not admit any evidence from them ever; and these it is that are the transgressors.

Quran 4:34 – Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and as to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping places and beat them; then if they obey you do not seek a way against them. Allah is High, Great. - Translations 24:4 and 4:34 by M.H. Shakir

These passages reek of blatant misogyny and assert the superiority of men as sanctioned by Allah. Women who have been raped must achieve the nearly impossible task of producing four eyewitnesses to the crime otherwise she is the transgressor of the rape. By divine mandate men have a “degree of advantage” which also allows them a degree of impunity. If found guilty of some “lewdness” such as gang rape, men can repent and be left alone, whereas if a woman is found guilty of her own gang rape, she must be locked in her house for the rest of her life according to the Quran. Verse 34 seals her fate with the words …”on whose part you “fear” desertion…” In this context fear means suspect, imagine, suppose or assume through any hearsay, rumor or gossip and there is no Quranic commandment requiring four eyewitnesses before a man can start whipping on the woman, or burning her or any other heinous act of violence imaginable.

In 2000, Zahida Perveen’s husband suspected her of “having bad character”. He hung her by her feet, beat her with a metal rod, cut off her nose and ears, gouged out her eyes and tongue and left her for dead because he heard rumor of misbehavior that might bring dishonor to his name. – National Geographic

In 1994 in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan Zainab Nur dared to speak to friends about the abuse she was enduring at the hands of her monstrous husband. As punishment he inserted red-hot irons into her genitals and burned out her rectum. She survived the attack and now wears a colostomy and urine collection bag.
–Women’s E-news

Lahore, Pakistan - Ahmedi Begum was hauled into jail and gang raped for two days by police. After raping her more than 50 times police forced and oversized truncheon covered with chili-paste into her rectum then beat her unconscious. She awoke in prison. Her crime was failing to rent a room to a police officer.
- Price of Honor

Amnesty International reported on a case in which the husband woke up and killed his wife based on a dream that she had betrayed him.

Two sisters were hacked to death in Jordan by their ax-wielding brothers the day after Parliament rejected a bill to impose tougher punishment for honor crimes. – BBC News September 2003

The Associated press reported January 6 of 2006, - A teacher in Kandahar, Afghanistan was beheaded in front of his wife and children for the crime of teaching girls how to read.

After giving birth to five girls and being continuously tortured by her husband for not giving birth to a son, 35 yr old Faisan Mai killed herself in 2002 by throwing herself and two daughters in front of a train.
-Middle East Open Forum

During the months from March 22, 2004 to February 4, 2005, 234 girls burned themselves alive in the town Herat, Afghanistan in hopes of escaping the physical and emotional brutality inflicted on them by husbands.
-Radio Free Europe Feb. 2005

Hamas morality police gunned down Yusra al-Azzami on the streets of Gaza for suspected lewdness. – Independent Media Review Analysis June 3, 2005

The Hamas religious police didn’t think to ask Yusra if she was legally engaged to the man she was walking with, which she was. Hamas never apologized for the murder and has recently enjoyed a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, controlling more than half of the positions in parlaiment. This confirms a sympathetic public mentality toward the fundamentalist values cherished by Hamas.

On May 23rd of 1998 in Kabul, Afghanistan Taliban religious police under full authority bestowed by the Department of Virtue and Prevention of Vice gang raped Shukriya to death in broad daylight.
-Hindu Unity.org

Fundamentalist officials, and the male population they represent often see women as deficient and immoral.

“Women adulterers cause a great threat to our society because they are the main reason that such acts take place. If men do not find a woman with whom to commit adultery, then they will become good on their own.”
- Mohammed Kharabesh, Jordanian Parliamentarian

“Politics needs a certain mentality. There are very few women with this kind of mind”
- Ahmed Saati, Spokesperson for the University of Gaza

“Women are deficient in intelligence and religion. Never will succeed a nation which makes a woman ruler”
- The Prophet Mohammed as quoted in the Hadiths, Book of Life

*In response to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted by the U.N. Muhammed Naceri, a member of the Morocco Council of Religious Scholars said :

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was for complete equality for man and women. For us, women are equal to men in law, but they are not the same as men, and they can’t be allowed to wander around freely in the streets like some kind of animal."

In light of this brief overveiw, we are requesting support women suffering in misogynistic cultures who are working toward a better future for their daughters.