Trolling through Drudge a day or so ago, I caught hold of a headline that piqued my curiosity entitled "Burka Babies." Having an inquiring mind that is not immune to sensationalist headlines or the National Enquirer racks at the market, I bit on the following news story from Al Arabiya:

A Saudi cleric has called for all female babies to be fully covered by wearing the face veil, commonly known as the burka, citing reports of little girls being sexually molested.

In a TV interview on the Islamic al-Majd TV, which seems to date back to mid-last year, Sheikh Abdullah Dauod, stressed that wearing the veil will protect baby girls. The Sheikh tried to back his assertion with claims of sexual molestation against babies in the kingdom, quoting unnamed medical and security sources.

....Sheikh Mohammad al-Jzlana, former judge at the Saudi Board of Grievances, told Al Arabiya that Dauod's ruling was denigrating to Islam and Shariah and made Islam look bad.

He said that he feels sad whenever he sees a family walking around with a veiled baby, describing that as injustice to children.

As it turns out, this Saudi cleric was viewed as a form of extreme nut case, even by fundamentalist standards; and the majority of the faithful had decreed that Daoud had gone beyond the pale in denigrating the Spirit of Islam, which seems in itself a difficult thing to do. Somewhat encouragingly, this short article concludes with the "forces of reason" in the Oil Kingdom putting the "mad mullah" in his place and in turn making the land safe from the creeping "burkanization" of babies. It is said that even in a land of lunatics, a quality of prudence and civic decorum holds sway on occasion.

But lost in the final words of the article's text is a most revealing observation. Somehow, the twisted and selective logic of Judge Sheik al-Jzlana leads him to the conclusion that what is an injustice to children is by the same token prudent and legal when applied to an adult female. If I understand the learned judge correctly, burkas and the veil are a prophylactic means to protect adult women from the predations and irresistible natures that burn within male and female and whose interactions must be monitored at all times through a series of legal strictures. However, if the veil for a child or baby adds derision to Islam, what are we to say about a religio-legal system whose venerated Founder saw fit to give his sanctified blessing for captive women to be held as sex slaves; and indeed, who thought it morally fitting to betroth the young child Aisha at the tender age of six? What semblance of propriety are we to make of a man whose advanced holiness allowed him to forego coitus until the young girl had reached the majority of nine years or age?

In light of all this, in the February 3, 2013 version of Examiner.com, we read of a Saudi Islamic cleric who admitted to raping, torturing, and murdering his five-year-old daughter on the grounds that she had not retained her virginity. Aside from the internal paradox of concepts here, how did the learned masters of Sharia law adjudicate this diabolical mayhem -- more dispositive of a reptile than a hallowed religious devotee? Apparently, with the equivalent of $50,000 and no jail time. I quote the author Michael Stone:

Fayhan al-Ghamdi, the victim's father and a popular Islamic preacher who has made numerous television appearances promoting Islam, confessed to the heinous crime. Ghamdi told Saudi officials he used cables and a cane on his five-year-old daughter, leaving her with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns. In addition, one of Lama's fingernails had been torn off. Hospital staff reports the child's rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed.

The article goes on to elucidate the fact that had our noble cleric committed the act upon a male, he would have drawn a double fine. Moreover, under Sharia law no father may be given the death penalty for murdering either wife or children. The theme of the article continues with the notion of Guardianship in this most fundamentalist of Islamic kingdoms. It is this strict relationship between man and wife that condemns the female to the status of a minor and allows him to treat his daughter as chattel property to be auctioned off as he deems fit. Recently, a case emerged in Saudi Arabia where a fifteen-year-old girl was sold to a man of ninety for a handsome price and the young girl wisely locked herself away from him on her wedding night before finally fleeing. Alas, such anecdotal stories are legion in a culture where peace and non-compulsion are heralded as hallmarks of the moral imagination.

By now, the scrutinizing eye that has not drifted into Progressive somnamulance is well aware of the relationship between Islam and the rape of European women. Of these nations, Sweden has been encountering rapes at astronomical levels some twenty times greater than that of southern Europe. In addition, the incidents of child rape have skyrocketed and the lion's share of these cases are attributed to Middle Eastern and North African immigrants. All throughout Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, and Britain, reports of violent teams of rapists have flooded the police docks and in many cases, the politically correct authorities are complicit in the cover-up by identifying the culprits as indeterminately "Asian."

Lest we be accused of slandering Islam in our investigation, it should be emphasized that the Koran and Hadiths give full sanction to the rape of infidel women for the pursuit of pleasure in foreign lands. In Sharia, the melding of sex and savage punishment as a consequential penalty for the non-believer finds legal sanction in the Islamic jurists. Indeed, sex appears so persistent in the Islamic consciousness that it has been subject to a byzantine set of laws that seek to enflame rather than tame carnal lust.

In Shia Islam, a longstanding institution known as M'uta serves as a clever means to bypass the stringent laws against Muslim fornication that can be dealt with severely. Under M'uta, a marriage contract can be entered into by both consenting parties for as little as an hour as a means of legitimizing coitus for an agreed upon cash transaction. While scarcely distinguishable from prostitution, such a ruse operates out in the open and with the blessing of the Shia clerics. In fact, the Shia cleric of clerics, Ayatollah Khomeini, authored a book relating to human relations known as The Green Book, wherein he codified and legitimatized an entire panorama of human actions including bestiality. I quote one of his most shocking:

"A Muslim man can have sexual pleasure with a little girl as young as a baby. But he should not penetrate her vaginally, however he can sodomize her". (Tehriro vasyleh, fourth edition, Qom, Iran, 1990).

And so we at last come full circle in our query. When a religio-politico doctrine has enshrined chattel slavery and the de facto ownership of human beings within its worldview, should we be astonished that it discounts rights, human autonomy and humane moral treatment in the bargain? Having locked the unescorted female away in the home, Islam is guilty of a sin more grievous than the comingling of genders. In denying women the freedom of showing their facial countenance -- the foremost symbol of individuality and personality -- does not fundamentalist Islam express an a priori aversion to free will and create a climate wherein women become the equivalent of birds and fish -- to be enjoyed and savoured as mere instrumental goods?

If one can deny women's fundamental humanity and equality under law, then surely culture will invariably move in lockstep in the procession of burkas to rapine. There is a fundamental evil occurring in men when they ignore the filth, immoderation, and dearth of restraint that lies within themselves while reciprocally blaming the victim for the very primitive moral structures they have conspired to create. In psychologically projecting the myth that women are incapable of self-control, Fundamentalist male pride ignores the heaving beam wedged in their own eye while fixating on the mote that lies hidden behind that terrified opaque linen veil.