Islamic slave traders in Pakistan

[econ21]

I tend to think I can no longer be appalled by the depths of depravity to which some people will sink. And then some sick so-and-so goes and does something so despicable, it proves me wrong yet again.

Here's the latest example - it angered me so much I had to post it:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2189789,00.html

An excerpt showing the treatment of the boys kidnapped to sold as slaves:


“I drank from a glass of water and one of the kidnappers pushed me so hard I fell on the glass and it broke in my hands,” he said. His slender fingers still bear the scars. No more glass for him, he was told: he was fit to drink only from a tin cup.

The boys were ordered not to talk, pray or play. Five of them were playing a Pakistani equivalent of scissors, paper, stone one day when the guards burst in and beat them savagely on their backs and heads.

What makes this report of barbarism so disturbing is that it is not the work of some lone mentally deficient sicko. It's done by organised, well-resourced men who - besides their venal greed and cruelty - have some pretensions at political and religious beliefs. And it goes on the in Wild West of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border areas, where decent government does not seem to reach.

I have no "solutions", but just want to vent a powerless howl of rage and disbelief.

[Fragony]

What are these boys used for? Are they sold to do work or, well, something else? These people are animals, killing them a little bit every day is what they deserve. Not a great place to be a christian it seems.

[Lemur]

FTA: (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2189789,00.html)


Gul Khan planned to sell his young captives to the highest bidder, whether into domestic servitude or the sex trade. The boys knew only that they were for sale.

[edyzmedieval]

Horrible. HORRIBLE.

They should be sentenced to torture(the slave traders), not instant death. :shame:

[econ21]

What are these boys used for? Are they sold to do work or, well, something else?

These particular ones were rescued, thank goodness, so we don't know.

The sickest thing was one of the slave traders making a threat about how much the boys were worth for organs. Whether he was just mouthing off or not, it's enough to make me want to impose my own version of Sharia law on the freak.

[Lemur]

What's super-bonus fracked up is that the police know all about it, but won't do anything. Again, FTA:


Why should it be so difficult to prosecute slave traders who cloak themselves in the garb of pious Muslims? For one thing, the JUD offers free medical care and education and won hearts and minds by providing blankets, tents and food after last year’s Kashmir earthquake. Few Pakistanis care to know how closely it is associated with Lashkar-i-Toiba, a group proscribed by Pakistan and Britain as a terrorist organisation that participated in an Al-Qaeda attempt to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, in 2003.

There can be no denying Khan’s connections with the JUD. After he collected his $28,500, he was seen driving directly into its headquarters.

[yesdachi]

They claim western “depravity” then plan to sell children as sex slaves. The hypocrisy is disgusting. Is it any wonder that half of the depraved westerners would like to turn the entire area into glass.

[Lemur]

It just goes to show that our founding fathers were absolutely right -- individual liberties must be preserved at all costs, and nobody should be allowed to exercise unchecked power. God bless those enlightenment dudes.

[Fragony]

The sickest thing was one of the slave traders making a threat about how much the boys were worth for organs.

Dear god. It wouldn't surprise me if this actually happens, there are some truly immoral people in this world. Bah :shame:

[Duke Malcolm]

It just goes to show that our founding fathers were absolutely right -- individual liberties must be preserved at all costs, and nobody should be allowed to exercise unchecked power. God bless those enlightenment dudes.

You know a few of those dudes had slaves themselves...?

I would thank the Quakers, that mighty pressure group that made the British Parliament pass a law prohibiting the slave trade and later slavery itself, and sent the West African Squadrons of the Royal Navy out and about to stop foreigners doing the same...

But Slavery must be stopped, especially this. Isn't homosexuality illegal under Sharia? So if the boys were to be used for such things, the "owners" would go off and burn?

[Fragony]

But Slavery must be stopped, especially this. Isn't homosexuality illegal under Sharia? So if the boys were to be used for such things, the "owners" would go off and burn?

Dunno if it is true, but I remember from Shalimar the Clown that a lot of these pious guys have a male sextoy. It is fiction of course but it probably has some truth in it.

Anyway, I am happy to find out wether or not it is possible to analy insert barbed wire and reclaim it from the nose.

[Byzantine Prince]

This isn't that shocking, it's been happening forever. You can easily buy a wife for like 50 dollars there. Historically slaves of the area have been used for sex.


Isn't homosexuality illegal under Sharia?
Are you kidding me, most of those guys sleep with eachother. Homosexuality is rampant in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan where all this slave trade hapens.

[Duke Malcolm]

So the Mighty Muslim Council of Britain are just hypocrites when they describe sodomy as evil? I did not know about all this. The InterWeb certainly is horizon-broadening.

[yesdachi]

So the Mighty Muslim Council of Britain are just hypocrites when they describe sodomy as evil? I did not know about all this. The InterWeb certainly is horizon-broadening.
Sodomy is only evil when it is done by someone else. :wink:

[Kagemusha]

News like this just make me sick. This is just one more proof that Osama and his Taliban and other islamistic buddies are just criminal hypocrites riding on their high horse and blaming the west from everything while they are just disgusting criminals who are only concerned of their own power hungry political goals.Sometimes i just dont know.Hearing news like this just leave me wondering what is supposed to be the sense behind all this.:shame:

[Bar Kochba]

the muslims arnt being hypocrits its against there religon are they supposed to change it becuase sum people dont keep to it

like some people in the world murder other people lets call a country that has them in them hypocrits for punsing murder but having them in there country

p.s this slavery is sick and these slave traders should all be put to death in a nasty way along with rapists

[stalin]

Wow the backroom has become a muslim bashing section.

[Lemur]

If bashing is defined as "noting the atrocious behavior of fundamentalist members of a religion," then yes. Really, Stalin, everybody's against human slave trafficking. What's jarring is that mainstream muslims don't make more of a ruckus about this sort of thing.

Sexual deviation always rises in proportion to repression and lack of safety valves. Look at the polygamous Mormon fundamentalists in New Mexico and Utah. Chronic problems with child rape and incest. Look at the Catholic priests. Chronic problems with child molestation, and an underreported problem with priests taking an abandoning mistresses. Lastly, look at Muslim fundamentalists. Saudi Arabia ranks #2 in searches for "gay sex", according to Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=gay+sex&ctab=1&geo=all&date=all), which also shows the top five countries worried about "bad sex": Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates.

There's a good article about homosexuality and Islam here (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/793/cu5.htm). It's all a bit more complicated than you're thinking.

[Scurvy]

Wow the backroom has become a muslim bashing section.

its not bashing islam as a whole, just that particular group...

[Duke of Gloucester]

I hope we are not claiming that in our free-er society there is no such thing as sex slaves. Forcing women into prostitution happens in most major cities in Britain. On the radio this morning a website for a massage parlour in Scotland (in Glasgow, I think, but it may have been Edinburgh) was mentioned. It boasted that all its employees were bonded so confidentiality could be maintained.

I understand people's anger against those involved, but lets not pretend this is an islamic, or even a foreign problem. Similar things are happening in a city near you.

[yesdachi]

the muslims arnt being hypocrits its against there religon are they supposed to change it becuase sum people dont keep to it
i do not understand what you are saying.

[Reenk Roink]

What's jarring is that mainstream muslims don't make more of a ruckus about this sort of thing.

Good luck if you expect the mainstream group to speak out against every offense that fringes from their group commit. How many Christians speak out against the Lord's Resistance Army? Haven't seen a thread yet in the backroom that does this.

Of course, most Christians would never condone such action, but are either unaware or apathetic to such acts.

[Lemur]

Point taken, Reenk.

[Kagemusha]

If you guys look at my reply carefully.I never spoke a one word of the general muslim population.Islamistic = extremist among muslims. And to me someone who declares himself as an crusader of his faith and then acts completely against his beliefs is a worst kind of hypocrite.And if his actions are selling children to sex slaves or bodyparts.I say then that people is a worst kind of criminal. How is that muslim bashing?

[KrooK]

I don't see anything suprised here. Slavery still is everywhere - in Asia, Africa, Europe, South and North America or Australia. Best allies od USA are famous from slavery - like Mauretania on Sahel.

[Dâriûsh]

Heh, after reading the first few lines I almost immediately knew that this had to be in the NWFP.

That area is home to many isolated tribes and they have traditional tribal laws and ethics with an Islamic flavour. And tribal people do the darndest things.


But hey, they are Muslims, hence Islam=Barbarism.

[Reenk Roink]

But hey, they are Muslims, hence Islam=Barbarism.

Actually, every response to this thread has avoided a generalization of Islam/Muslims. The title is the problem. Instead of "Slave traders in Pakistan", 'Islamic' is unnecessarily added. We learn about the 'Slave traders in the South', not the "Christian Slave traders in the South".

[Dâriûsh]

Actually, every response to this thread has avoided a generalization of Islam/Muslims. The title is the problem. Instead of "Slave traders in Pakistan", 'Islamic' is unnecessarily added. We learn about the 'Slave traders in the South', not the "Christian Slave traders in the South". Actually, the last line was for econ21. ~;)

[stalin]

It just seems that every thread here becomes an excuse to draw those generalisations about 1.25 billion people who are all unique.
Just remember that the people that actually killed the 6 million jews and used nukes against other human beings were all christians and not all christians are responsible for that. I don't recall muslims invading our parts of the world in the last 100 or so years either. if they did we might be calling for a holy war too,

[Ser Clegane]

The title is the problem.

The title of the thread reflects the title of article that is quoted in the opening post

The title of the article refers to the following:

The children, all Christians, had fallen into the hands of Gul Khan, a wealthy Islamic militant and leading member of Jamaat-ud Daawa (JUD), a group linked to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

I think if Fred Phelps did something like that headlines would also point out that he is a (radical) Christian

[spmetla]

Who's generalizing? No one here has said that all muslims are slave peddling homosexuals or even implied that. The outcry is against a group of people in tribal Pakistan who are actually guilty of it. Western influence and power is no excuse for these things to happen.

As for the Holocaust comment, remeber the Nazis didn't sanction Christianity or even approve of it. They considered organized reliegion as a threat because people might have loyalties to something besides the state. The atomic bombs in Japan actually saved human lives. There would have been far more dead Americans and Japanese if an invasion was carried out. This is an undeniable fact.

And as for muslims not having invaded our parts of the world recently yes it's true but seeing as history is a pattern of invasions and counterinvasions you can look back to the Arab conquest and the crusades and reconquista then the Ottoman empire's expansion and so collapse which only ended after WWI. It's just plain stupid to blame the current situation on the colonial experiment that the West tried out. And remeber the Islamic world as a whole isn't engaged in a holy war with the West, many muslims have embraced western culture and technology without problems and just about every Islamic country has peaceful relations with the west. Only a few fringe nations and a few fringe extremists are causing this trouble.

[Leet Eriksson]

I honestly didn't see any generalisations.

Its a common tactic to use religion as cover, also slavery is not exclusive to islamic countries by any means, its rampant in most of the world except Europe and North America ~;p

[econ21]

But hey, they are Muslims, hence Islam=Barbarism.

Actually, the last line was for econ21.

Yes, my thread title was provocative. I wondered if it was unfair. But it is certainly fairer than saying I was equating Islam with barbarism. You'll find no claim in the text of my post of such a defammatry equation.

I took the thread title from that of the orignial piece, which was even more provocative:


Rescued - the Christian children seized by Islamist slave traders.

As I said, I did wonder whether the Sunday Times title was sensationalist, but then, as Ser Clegane pointed out, it is not simply that some Muslims have done some (very) bad thing. It's that some people connected to an Islamic Party (with links to AQ terrorists) have done this. I did not highlight the fact that the children were Christian, although that was also disturbing.

Beyond the sheer inhumanity, what is striking about the case is that it is not just simple criminality (people trafficking Russian mafia style) or psychological perversion (paedophilia etc). It's (1) the link between the slave trade and the "politics/religion"; and (2) the impotence/indifference of the authorities.

I also wondered about the argument that it happens everywhere, including Europe. But again dismissed it. What happens elsewhere is typically much more like the criminal and psychologically perverse. For example, in the UK - do sex traders here target specific religious groups - say, young Muslim boys? Are the British police indifferent? Are journalists taken hostage by armed gangs of slave traders? Do slave traders walk into the offices of political parties after doing their "business"? To say this report could be true of 99% of places in the world is ludicrous. Here I agree with Dâriûsh, the report points to something much more culturally specific.


How many Christians speak out against the Lord's Resistance Army? Haven't seen a thread yet in the backroom that does this.

We did have a thread on this a few months ago - I recall posting in it. No Christian who has read the bible will have any time for the superstitious mumbo-jumbo of Alice Lakwena (faith stopping bullets - come on, how many Christian soldiers believe that?), still the less her venal successors in the LRA leadership. The (largely Christian) government of Uganda is - rather ineptly - fighting these thugs, who take refuge in Islamic Sudan.

[PS: in case of any further misunderstanding, I should say I am a godless atheist, so I have zero interest in promoting Christianity against Islam.]

[Reenk Roink]

We did have a thread on this a few months ago - I recall posting in it. No Christian who has read the bible will have any time for the superstitious mumbo-jumbo of Alice Lakwena (faith stopping bullets - come on, how many Christian soldiers believe that?), still the less her venal successors in the LRA leadership. The (largely Christian) government of Uganda is - rather ineptly - fighting these thugs, who take refuge in Islamic Sudan.

Very well. One thread, probably before I came to the Org, and definitely before I frequented the Tavern regularly. My point still stands, abuses by radical fringes are rarely and if so, inconspicuously called out by the mainstream group.

This lack of a voice is hardly surprising, and anyone who thinks such silence represents a tacit support or acceptance is mistaken. After all, I did say concerning Christians and the Lord's Resistance Army:

"Of course, most Christians would never condone such action, but are either unaware or apathetic to such acts."

[solypsist]

how else is one supposed to fill every whorehouse and erotic club from israel to kuwait and then up to budapest? didn't you know that lapdances are better when they're crying?

[Duke Malcolm]

This lack of a voice is hardly surprising, and anyone who thinks such silence represents a tacit support or acceptance is mistaken. After all, I did say concerning Christians and the Lord's Resistance Army:

"Of course, most Christians would never condone such action, but are either unaware or apathetic to such acts."

Yes, the Lord's Resistance Army is dreadfully under-reported on. There is only the occasional program on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service about the goings on in Uganda...
Which probably also be the case with the slave traders. But overall, the various Christian churches are quicker and more ready to dissociate themselves from and condemn any notable bad things carried out by Christians than the various Islamic organisations are to do the same about things carries out in the name of Islam. While the Islamic folk no doubt do condemn it, they do not speak up quick enough or loud enough -- The Ministers and such of the Church of Scotland and Bishops of the Anglican Church often appear in the newspapers and on the Heaven & Earth show to explain their stance.

[Scurvy]

While the Islamic folk no doubt do condemn it, they do not speak up quick enough or loud enough -- The Ministers and such of the Church of Scotland and Bishops of the Anglican Church often appear in the newspapers and on the Heaven & Earth show to explain their stance.

I think the muslim community speaks up just as quickly and loudly as the christian community.....muslim clerics/community leaders often appear on bbc news and in newspapers etc..

sidenote: soes anyone actually watch the heaven and earth show? :2thumbsup:

[Leet Eriksson]

I think the muslim community speaks up just as quickly and loudly as the christian community.....muslim clerics/community leaders often appear on bbc news and in newspapers etc..

sidenote: soes anyone actually watch the heaven and earth show? :2thumbsup:

yeah they do show up on TV occassionally. I might sound a bit biased, but western media usually gives fanatics more air time than moderates.

But to be honest the same is done here with our own media, which just pisses me off more :furious3:

[stalin]

The atomic bombs in Japan actually saved human lives. There would have been far more dead Americans and Japanese if an invasion was carried out. This is an undeniable fact.

And what else are they gonna teach in your schools? That the Japanese were desperatelly trying to surrender two months before the nukes dropped? But i guess they had to be tested somwhere.

[econ21]

And what else are they gonna teach in your schools? That the Japanese were desperatelly trying to surrender two months before the nukes dropped? But i guess they had to be tested somwhere.

We're going off topic here, but what the heck. I had this argument with redleg some time ago and I was taking your "side" of the argument.

But he actually presented some pretty compelling historical evidence - based on work by contemporary Japanese historians - that contradicts your claim. The point was that the Japanese were divided. Some wanted peace but others - the Japanese "war party" - would rather accept death than dishonour. Cabinet was paralyzed by a desire to achieve consensus -effectively giving the war party a veto. Only the Emperor could break the deadlock and even then there was a nearly successful coup by the hardliners, IIRC, after both bombs were dropped. To modern Western eyes, the WW2 Japanese war party is hard to understand but you only have to look at the casualty figures for Okinawa etc. to see that their stance was by no means atypical of their military.

[drone]

And what else are they gonna teach in your schools? That the Japanese were desperatelly trying to surrender two months before the nukes dropped? But i guess they had to be tested somwhere.
And the weapon was already tested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_test