I generally like to ponder lighter issues on the Girly Things blog. But, the matter of women and Islam is indeed a girly thing, by simple definition.

Now, I am a rational person. I understand that in different parts of the world, women who adhere to the teachings of Islam are held to slightly different expectations. While I see women even here in Florida fully covered in public, I also know women who dress and appear just like you and I, but consider themselves Muslim.

In Iraq, though, the life of a Muslim woman is very different. Even after the entire world tried to step in and help Iraq achieve a higher level of human civilization, reports now are proving that women in Iraq are living in a land possibly even more violent than when Saddam Hussein ruled.

Women are being strangled, raped, their faces mutilated, hands chopped off, even beheaded. They are tortured and killed in front of their children.

Why? Because they were not wearing a headscarf (or the wrong color headscarf) or because they allegedly ignored other “rules” within their local society, like wearing makeup. Most of the violence is being committed in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and a stronghold of conservative Shia groups.

Upwards of 133 women were killed in Basra last year for violation of “Islamic teachings” or for “honor killings”. The barbarians who are doing the killing are acting on their own accord, taking their own interpretation of justice into their hands. They are rarely caught.

Reports say that the number of killings has increased since British forces withdrew back to their base. It makes me think of Abraham Maslow’s ideas about human motivation and how some people who are less self-actualized only obey laws if they think they are going to be caught or punished. These animals were just waiting for the troops to leave so they could wreck hell on their women.

Animals. These radicals have a goal of converting the world to their beliefs, yet hey insist on acting worse than the most aggressive animals on earth. It only makes their religion even less attractive.