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January 04, 2006
Dying so girls may learn
Although Democrats continue to tell Americans that Pres. Bush is the greatest threat to civil rights -- and especially to the rights of women and minorities, I submit that the following reveals both the true nature of our enemy, and the courage of those who stand in opposition to evil.
Taliban militants beheaded a teacher in a central Afghan town while his wife and eight children watched, officials said Wednesday, describing the latest in a string of attacks targeting educators at schools where girls study.
Four men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib eight times late Tuesday before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in Qalat, said Ali Khail, a spokesman for the provincial government of Zabul, where the attack took place.
The assailants made Habib's wife, four sons and four daughters watch, Khail said. His children were between the ages of 2 and 22. No other family members were hurt.
The insurgents killed Habib, 45, after he refused to go with them to meet their commander, said the victim's cousin, Esanullah, who goes by only one name.
. . . Habib was the headmaster of Shaikh Mathi Baba high school, which is attended by 1,300 boys and girls.
Zabul, a remote and mountainous province populated mainly by Pashtuns and bordering Pakistan, is a hotbed of Taliban militancy. The former Taliban regime prohibited girls from attending school as part of its widely criticized drive to establish what it considered a "pure" Islamic state.
Zabul province's education director, Nabi Khushal, blamed Taliban rebels for the killing."Only the Taliban are against girls being educated," he said. "The Taliban often attack our teachers and beat them. But this is the first time one has been killed in this province."
Cleric Sayed Omer Munib, a member of the nation's top Islamic council, said there was no justification in Islam's holy book, the Quran, to prevent girls from studying.
"Nowhere in the Quran does it say that girls do not have the right to education," he said. "It says that 'people should be educated.' This means girls, too."
Hundreds of thousands of girls have returned to school since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.
. . . Habib resumed a more than 20-year teaching career two years ago after the Taliban threatened him while he was working for an aid group helping the disabled. Since then, the Taliban had warned him twice to stop teaching.
Habib's funeral Wednesday was attended by hundreds of students and teachers.
In the past year, Taliban insurgents have occasionally put up posters around Qalat demanding girls' schools be closed and threatening to kill teachers, Khushal said.
There has been a series of attacks on girls' schools and teachers across Afghanistan since the Taliban regime fell. In October, gunmen killed a headmaster in front of his students at a boys' school in southern Kandahar province, the former stronghold of the Taliban regime.
This man, Malim Abdul Habib, a teacher, died a horrible death because he believed girls had a right to learn. There can be no compromise with his killers; they, and those who believe as they do, must be destroyed.
Remind me again: Who stands for freedom, and who would deny millions of women their rights?
Posted by Mike Lief at January 4, 2006 11:23 PM