Alea iacta est

Good thing it was only a "link"

Apparently, there was a "religious" link to this event.

A religious feud between a Muslim father and his teenage daughter may have sparked a bloody domestic dispute on the Gold Coast which left the man's wife dead and him fighting for life in hospital.

Police are investigating suggestions the violence erupted after the 17-year-old girl told her father she wanted to opt out of the Islamic faith and convert to Christianity. The girl's mother is believed to have stepped in to protect her daughter, only to be fatally stabbed with a kitchen knife.

Neighbours reported hearing "blood-curdling" screams before the hysterical girl ran half-naked from their Southport home unit covered in scratches.

Police later found the body of the girl's mother, 41, inside the blood-smeared unit. Her husband was taken to the Gold Coast Hospital with a stab wound to the chest. He was last night in a critical condition under police guard.

Neighbour Caitlin Dalton was taking out the rubbish about 7pm on Monday when she heard "loud, huge, terrifying screams" coming from the unit complex.

"She (the teenager) was yelling, 'Help me, help me, they're trying to kill me'," Ms Dalton said. "Everybody heard the screams but we couldn't work out which unit they were coming from. Then this girl emerged in the stairwell hysterical and crying.

"Her clothes had been ripped off, she was just in her underwear and she had quite severe scratches down her arm and across her back."

Ms Dalton said that as residents tried to comfort the sobbing girl, she told how she had wanted to "convert from the Islam religion . . . and obviously her father didn't handle it very well".

Well...no...not really.

"She said her parents were really strict," Ms Dalton said.

Hmmm...you don't say.

I mean, this shit can't be real, can it? It seems so bizarre that people would try and maim their own daughter over this. I keep having this strange feeling that this is all some collossal practical joke, and tomorrow we're going to hear the words:

"Islam? Naw...we made the whole religion up as a gag, man! You really think we were that crazy? Fo-ol-ed you!

UPDATE: According to the Gold Coast Bulletin.

A Muslim source told The Gold Coast Bulletin last night that Dr Hussain arrived a month ago to take up a position as a GP and prepare for his family to join him.

"From what we understand the daughter decided to tell her father of her radical plan to convert to Christianity which, in the eyes of most Muslims, is totally unacceptable and to be honest, sadly, many would react as he has done,” said the source.

"It is the Islamic way that if a son or daughter does or plans to do something that is unacceptable or wrong for a Muslim then it is the mother who is automatically at fault and will bear the brunt of the blame."

How this squares with the fact that the vast majority of Western converts are women, I am unsure. I guess its the people who would have normally become Breatharians.

Posted by Quentin George at October 11, 2006 10:01 PM