Becoming a Hafiz

I hadn't been aware of this case, but here's the BBC report from last week (via):

The parents of a seven-year-old boy have appeared at Cardiff Crown Court in connection with his death.

His mother, Sara Ege, 33, denies beating Yaseen Ali Ege to death at their home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, in July 2010 and setting fire to his body.

The boy's father, Yousuf Ege, 38, denies a charge of causing the boy's death by failing to protect him.

The pair wept silently as Ian Murphy QC, prosecuting, explained the circumstances. The trial continues.

The jury was shown a piece of wood which the prosecution claims was used by Mrs Ege to hit her son "like a dog".

Mrs Ege covered her ears as jurors heard the 999 call she made saying that there was a fire in the home and that her son was still upstairs.

The court heard firefighters found Yaseen on the landing and he was taken to the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff where he was pronounced dead.

It was first thought that the boy had died in the fire and that his death was a tragic accident, the jury heard.

But a post mortem examination revealed he had died several hours before the blaze, of multiple injuries caused by being hit by a blunt instrument.

Sare Ege admitted she been hitting Yassen with a stick, in her own words, "like a dog," for three months before the fire, the court heard.

The prosecution claims that she beat him so severely on the day of the fire that he died.

It was also found that the fire was started deliberately, the court heard.

Mrs Ege admitted pouring lighter fuel over her son's body, the jury was told, saying "I know he was gone but I was just trying to protect myself".

So why this horrendous cruelty? The report doesn't say. You have to go to the Telegraph to make sense of it, and find the information that the delicate BBC couldn't quite bring themselves to mention:

A mother murdered her young son and set his body on fire when he struggled to learn the Koran off by heart, a court has heard.

Sara Ege used a stick to beat seven-year-old Yaseen “like a dog” if he couldn’t recite passages from the Islamic text....

In a video recording of her interview with police, Mrs Ege told them: “I was trying to teach him the Koran.

“I was getting more and more frustrated. If he didn’t read it properly I would be very angry — I would hit him.

“We had a high target. I wanted him to learn 35 pages in three months.

“I promised him a new bike if he could do it. But Yaseen wasn’t very good — after a year of practice he had only learnt a chapter.”

The court heard Mrs Ege, 32, a university graduate, and her husband, Yousuf, had enrolled Yaseen in advanced classes at their local mosque.

They wanted him to become a hafiz — an Islamic term for someone who memorises the Koran.

Yaseen was coming to the end of a three-month trial period at the mosque, and Ege was keen for him to impress his Imam.

Mrs Ege told officers: “I was getting all this bad stuff in my head, like I couldn’t concentrate, I was getting angry too much, I would shout at Yaseen all the time.”

She also hit him with a hammer, a rolling pin and a slipper, as well as repeatedly punching him, the court heard.

There are more details here, at Wales Online.

The latest BBC report does, it's true, briefly mention the Koran business. It is, after all, absolutely central to the case.

It's taken them a while to get round to it.

Comments

[grassmarket]

And even the Telegraph does not explain what is involved here. Memorizing the Koran does not require any understanding whatever of classical Arabic, only of the script - effectively the boy is being asked to memorize a long stream of meaningless sounds. (The boy had only studied for three months, so there is no question of his having learnt classical Arabic in such a period). This is why the Koran is always recited as a song, to make it more memorable to the 95% of believers who do not understand classical arabic.

Secondly, many Muslims believe that when a child succeeds in memorizing the Koran, his whole family (I am not sure to quite how many degrees, but it's more than just the parents) gets a free ticket to heaven. So essentially, these children are being enslaved to assure the salvation of their parents.