His idea of a surprise

The Daily Mail reports,

A jealous husband is facing life in prison after chopping off his wife's fingers because she began studying for a degree without his permission.
Rafiqul Islam, 30, blindfolded his wife Hawa Akhter, 21, and taped her mouth, telling her he was going to give her a surprise present.
Instead, he made her hold out her hand and cut off all five fingers. One of his relatives then threw Ms. Akhter's fingers in the dustbin to ensure doctors could not reattach them.



Mr. Islam, who is a migrant worker in the United Arab Emirates, had warned his wife there would 'severe consequences' if she did not give up her studies.

'After he came back to Bangladesh, he wanted to have a discussion with me,' Ms. Akhter told The Times.

'Suddenly, he blindfolded me and tied my hand. He also taped my mouth saying that he would give me some surprise gifts. But, instead, he cut off my fingers.'

Mohammed Saluddin, the Bangladesh police chief said that Mr. Islam had confessed after he was arrested in the capital, Dhaka, and will face charges of permanent disfiguration.

Human rights groups are demanding life imprisonment.

'He was enraged. He was jealous because while he only had a grade eight standard education, she was off to college to pursue higher studies,' said Mr. Saluddin.

Ms. Akhter says she is learning to write with her left hand and is determined to resume her studies. She is now back at her parent's house.

The attack is the latest in a series of acts targeting educated women in the Muslim-majority country.
In June, an unemployed man gouged out the eyes of his wife, an assistant professor at Dhaka University, apparently because he could not stand her pursuing higher studies at a Canadian University.

Fleeing for their lives

Now that this image of a little boy washed up on the beach is being shown across the world, people may begin to understand the plight of hundreds of thousands of families fleeing the killers in the Middle East. What killers? How about the Islamic State, the Syrian army, al Qaeda, and Iran, to whom Obama just released $150,000,000,000.00?

Ann Voskamp writes at A Holy Experience,

We’re shattered that for all of your three short years in this huge home that we call the earth, you didn’t know the sun rising over the Rockies or prairie fields of hope or countries of people all with open, beckoning doors —- you only ever knew fear, Aylan. You only knew the death and destruction that is ISIS, you only knew fleeing and running and everywhere, closed doors. We could have done better, Aylan. You’re begging us all to do better now.

...They say your Canadian aunt who lives there right at the sea, she begged them to let you in, even went directly to her Canadian member of parliament, who hand delivered a letter to Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander — but the request to let you in, Aylan, was met with a rejecting, slamming door. Hadn’t anybody bothered to looked directly into your begging, wild-eyed fear? But thanks to a strangling mess of bloodied red tape, we all instead get to look into your glassy, wild-eyed death on some Love-forsaken shore. We’re sorry. We’re all sick with this sorry sorrow.

...There’s always enough abundance and grace to welcome those in need, because it’s only by abundant grace that any of us are here — and if there’s abundant grace for us, by God, there’s abundant grace for all of us.

...there is no bureaucracy or excuse or reason that can render us impotent, that can paralyze us in helping the immigrant or wild-eyed or the littlest because we know a Love that is infinite.

Read more here.