Mind Horizon

A bidah Bin Salmen, an 11-year-old Muslim girl in Saudi Arabia, was forcibly married to an imam at her local mosque after he raped her. Once married, he often abused and raped her, impregnating her six times by the time she was 17. Except her name was not Abidah Bin Salmen; it was Sherry Johnson, and she was not a Muslim girl in Saudi Arabia. She was a Christian girl in Tallahassee, Florida who was forcibly married to her local churches deacon. After he raped her, Her parents made her marry him because they did not want to cause a scandal in their strict Apostolic Church. He did continue to rape and abuse her, giving her six children by the age of 17, and she was expelled from high school. Ask anyone in the West about child brides, and they will probably conjure images of repressive, conservative Islamic countries in the Middle East and North Africa. They might even point to some Hindu practices in India, but it is always somewhere else in a faraway land where nobody knows right fr...

Socotra Island Beauty Beyond Compare Socotra, deriving its name from Sanskrit for “Island of Bliss,” is the largest of four islands making up the Socotra Archipelago. Located in the Arabian Sea between Yemen and Somalia, it is officially part of Yemen. Some believe it to be the location of the Garden of Eden, and understandably so. The island and its population have been ecologically isolated from most of the outside world for millennia, resulting in an extraordinary ecosystem and biodiversity that earned it a place on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2008. The most famous attraction is the Dragon’s Blood Tree, which looks like a flying saucer supported by an elephant trunk, and oozes a dark red sap that the locals use for medicine, varnish, makeup, and paint. From the Hajhir Mountains to the Hadibo Lagoon, the island is home to hundreds of exotic endemic species of plants and animals, including Bright reef-building coral, Socotran Chameleons, and Skinks, a reptile that lo...