Friday, September 01, 2006

Slavery in America

[This article is from The Denver Post. If this is what globalization brings, I want none of it. Thank God he was caught. How many others from similar backgrounds might be doing the same thing right here in America?]

Article Last Updated: 8/31/2006 07:09 PM

denver & the west | aurora
Slavery case nets 28-year sentence

By Kieran Nicholson
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com

A Saudi Arabian man convicted of sexual assault and keeping a woman enslaved in his Aurora home was sentenced today to 28 years to life in prison.

Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was sentenced to 20 years to life on 12 of counts of unlawful sexual contact and 8 years for theft.

Al-Turki was also sentenced for criminal extortion, false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment, but those sentences are concurrent to the 28 year to life sentence.

He was convicted in June of keeping a 24-year-old Indonesian woman as a slave in the family home, forcing her to cook and clean and take care of the family and their five children with little pay. Prosecutors say Al-Turki eventually intimidated the woman into sex acts that culminated in her rape in late 2004.

Staff writer Kieran Nicholson can be reached at 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.

4 comments:

Jeff Burton said...

It is interesting that you link this case to globalization. We are trained to think of globalization as an "export" phenomenon. But as you point out, it can just as easily result in the import of cultural pathologies. I also note the fact that he was a doctoral candidate at a University. Does this represent a failure of multiculturalism, or a triumph?

Weekend Fisher said...

It also raises the question of how far we take "freedom of religion." According to Islam, there is nothing wrong with owning slaves and never can be since Mohammed did it; neither do female slaves have the right of refusal (written into the Qur'an). So how far do we take freedom of religion?

Mark said...

Anti-slavery sites and statistics claim some 40,000 people are sold into slavery in the US each year. Part of the tragedy is that arrests like this are not commonplace. Because that means it's not being stopped.

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

Thank you for your comments.

If the US can keep its national integrity and its commitments to its founding vision, then it will find and prosecute monsters such as this man, who would not likely be prosecuted in other Muslim parts of the world for the reasons that Weekend Fisher mentioned. That is a very big "if."

Europe, enthralled with multicult and hollowed out spirituallty (post-Christian), is capituating to Muslim culture in its midst. Consider England, Holland, and France, especially. Concerning Holland read Ali's The Caged Virgin. On Europe in general (and especially Italy) read Oriana Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason.

Multiculturalism reduces all cultures to equality, thus degrading cultures that are superior to others. Many aspects of Muslim culture are morally wrong: polygamy, the degradation of women, the oppression of non-Muslim religion, and so on. When Muslims come to the US, they need to live here on the terms of our Constitution, not according to sharia law. Yet some groups want to institute the latter here and overthrow The American Experiment. On this, see Daniel Pipes.

And, yes, let us pray for the slaveholder now imprisoned for his crimes. Pray, too, for America. God never gave her eternal security. The lampstand can be taken away.