This from Best of the Web:

What's an Arab Life Worth?


Last April a Palestinian woman was brutally murdered, stabbed more than 25 times. On Tuesday her killer went free after a court sentenced him to six months, time he'd already served.


An Israeli outrage? No. It happened in Jordan. The killer, Hussein Ahmad, was the father of the 18-year-old victim, Amal. They lived in the Hiteen refugee camp. The Jordan Times describes what happened:

On April 21, the day of the murder, the governor contacted the defendant and informed him that his daughter was in government custody. The father went and signed a guarantee that he would not harm or kill his daughter, the court said.

Shortly after arriving home, however, the defendant took his daughter to a room and closed the door behind him, the court record said. The defendant began questioning his daughter about her disappearance, preaching to her to be a good girl, the record continued, but she replied: "It is my life. I am free to do what I want." . . .

The court said Ahmad drew a knife he carried due to the nature of his job as the employee of a junkyard, stabbed his daughter all over her body, and then went out and told his family he had killed her.


The court went easy on Ahmad "because he killed his daughter in a 'fit of rage.' " The paper adds: "In an earlier story reported by The Jordan Times in April, when the woman was first reported killed, medical officials who examined her said they proved she had not been involved in any sexual activities and that her hymen was intact." Presumably had she not been a virgin, her murderer would have gotten an even lighter sentence.

I've wondered where those 72 virgins come from. I guess this explains it. For every martyr Islamic culture produces, it also has to produce 72 dark eyed virgins to service him. But that would imply that a young girl's murder is 72 times less heinous than the loss of a young man, and that doesn't include murder-suicide bombers which are the basis of family pride.


I'd hate to be the P.R. guy trying to improve Saudi Arabia's public image with stuff like this coming in all the time.