FOUR "youths of Middle Eastern background" guilty of raping two 14-year-old Caucasian girls near a Melbourne train station

* This is the kind of BS reporting that makes the papers these days. Nothing to do with Islam. Not a word about that these good Muslim ‘youths’ are taught that infidel women are whores and deserve to be raped, and more over “war booty”- because in the Muhammedan belief-system, the Muslim is always at war with the infidel.

Carly Crawford/Herald Sun

FOUR youths of Middle Eastern background have pleaded guilty on charges including the rape and sexual assault of two 14-year-old Caucasian girls near a Melbourne train station.

Crime scene: Four youths of Middle Eastern background have pleaded guilty on charges including the rape and sexual assault of two 14-year-old Causcasian girls near this railway station. Picture: Andrew MacColl

It is alleged that one of the gang members later threatened to kill the victims for reporting the attack to police.

* There’s more: Warrnambool teenager on schoolgirl rape charge

Warrnambool is the place where Muslims are demanding the government build them a mosque… or else!

Four boys in the gang of six are facing 21 charges including rape, indecent assault, procuring sex by threats and intimidation, making threats to kill and sexual penetration of a child under 16.

All four have entered guilty pleas in a Children’s Court.

It is believed the gang of six, aged 16 and 17, staged an elaborate stunt to lure their victims to an isolated industrial area where they took it in turns to violate the girls, who tried to resist.

The mob allegedly jeered and laughed as they forced themselves on their terrified victims, demanding sex and sexual favours in exchange for a mobile phone they had stolen from the girls.

One of the gang later vowed to find and kill the victims for reporting the attack to police.

The Sunday Herald Sun believes one of the boys also raped another girl two months before the gang rape, which happened in April last year in Brunswick.

He was found guilty of the first rape count and entered a guilty plea to the alleged gang rape.

The law forbids the Sunday Herald Sun naming the attackers because they are under the age of 18.

Police allege the girls, from country Victoria, boarded an Upfield train at Flinders St station about 5.30pm.

Police allege the six youths boarded the train before one of the boys struck up a conversation with one of the girls, touching her inappropriately.

When the girls got off the train at Anstey station, the gang followed.

One attacker put his hand up one victim’s skirt and also touched her breasts before stealing her mobile phone, police allege.

The girls escaped, but soon after one received a phone call from a gang member who said he had the other victim’s mobile phone.

He said they could collect it from Anstey train station as long as he got “something in return”.

The girls returned to the station from where the group led them to a nearby industrial site and demanded sex in exchange for the stolen property.

The victims escaped and told their parents, who alerted police.

Detectives later overheard one of the gang members threatening to find the victims and “f–ing kill them”.

Police also found allegedly stolen mobile phones and laptop computers during raids at the home of the alleged rapist.

Police used train surveillance camera footage to identify the culprits.

Slaps on the wrist:

One offender, charged with four counts of indecent acts, has been placed on probation for one year. The remaining three are due to be sentenced in January.

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Islam in the media – Domestic violence and polygamy 

‘Some Muslim religious leaders are condoning domestic violence, rape within marriage, polygamy, welfare fraud and exploitation of women, according to a new Report prepared by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria’.(1)

Barney Zwartz, writing in The Age, said the Report also says “some imams perform polygamous marriages knowing that the second wife, a de facto under Australian law, can claim Centrelink payments.”  His article has extensive quotes and details from the Report. The actual Report is not available online.

The study was funded by the previous Howard government and its’ Muslim Community Reference Group and the final Report was presented at the National Centre of Excellence in Islamic Studies Conference in Melbourne on 19-20 November 2008. Click here for details of the Conference and speakers. The NCEIS was also funded under the same program by the Howard Government.

Some of these claims have been made before, but the fact that they are made in a Report published by a Muslim women’s group is very significant.

Responses from Australia’s Muslim Mufti Sheikh Fehmi:

The Victorian Board of Imams rejected the Report by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria. 

In the same article, Barney Zwartz reported: 

“The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, said he could not understand how the council could write such a report and denied the complaints “absolutely”. “They must have heard stories here and there and are writing about them as though they are fact,” he said. 

Sheikh Fehmi, who is also Mufti of Australia, said no authorised imam would conduct a polygamous marriage, and it was absolutely wrong that women’s rights were ignored in marriage or divorce, or that imams ignored domestic violence. “I haven’t heard of any case where the board disregarded a woman or did not try to help her,” he said.

Perhaps it depends on how one defines the word ‘marriage’…

Sheikh Fehmi’s comment on polygamy in the above report is somewhat different to what he told the ABC’s Compass program back on 6 May 2001:

Narrator: “... Islam recognises polygamy so prior to 1968 Imams like Sheikh Fehmi were not permitted to celebrate marriages.

Sheikh Fehmi : “It used to be at the time the late Mr Snedden he was the Attorney General. So I had a good meeting with him one day and tried to convince him that it is important for the Muslim to marry their own people. But he used to say to me. Well you know Sheikh Fehmi that you Muslims may marry more than one and when we are not allowed to let anybody here for have only one wife. I said to him, listen to me please you may register the first one and don’t worry about the second one. He laughed and said all right we won’t have anything to do with the second one. I stopped at the idea and at the time we had gained recognition from the Attorney General for all our Imams around Australia from that year onward.” (2)  [emphasis added]

Following the report in The Age on Friday morning, 21 November, Sheikh Femhi was interviewed on the ABC 7pm News that evening. (3)

During the interview he endorsed polygamy. Although he apparently said it was uncommon and difficult, Sheikh Fehmi said in “some circumstances you may be able to have another wife”. Those circumstances included when the “wife is unable to carry out her duties for her husband”.

Australia’s highest Muslim authority has defended the practice of polygamy. 

ABC News, Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:04pm 

In a detailed interview following these initial reports, Sheik Fehmi responded to the complaints of the women. He said “It is good to hear the complaints of the sisters, and to try to find some solution to their concerns.” (4) 

In response to criticism of mosque facilities, he offered to try and organise to allow men and women to pray together in mosques. 

He acknowledged that there may be problems with some imams. He said:

* On domestic violence, imams taught that men should never strike their wives. “The prophet said, ‘I never hit a wife in my life’, and everybody should do the same.”

– BUT what about the Qur’an verse that says men may beat their wives? See Sura 4:34

*On polygamy, he said Islam allowed a second wife only if the husband guaranteed he could treat both exactly alike, which almost amounted to a prohibition. “Polygamy in Islam is not willy-nilly. There are a lot of restrictions, which sometimes make it impossible.”

But that means it is sometimes possible!

* On rape within marriage, he said the solution was to link legal divorce with Islamic divorce — something the board was working towards.

This article contains extended quotes from the Report by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria. (4)

 

Media reports: 1. Local Muslim clerics accused

1. Local Muslim Clerics Accused, The Age, Barney Zwartz, 21/11/2008. 

2. The Sheikh of Melbourne, Compass, ABC, 6 May 2001. 

3. Australia’s highest Muslim authority has defended the practice of polygamy, ABC TV News, 21 Nov 2008. “Australia’s highest Muslim authority has defended the practice of polygamy in the Islamic community in response to a report which found some religious leaders were pressuring women to drop complaints of domestic violence.”

4. Cleric vows to end segregration in mosques, The Age, Barney Zwartz, 22/11/2008.