Just one question: are boys ever “honor killed”? Does their behavior—oh I don’t know, torching cars, throwing Molotov cocktails, fighting with police, harassing and beating Jews—ever rise to the level of dishonor? Or is that sort of thing tolerated and even condoned? When was the last time a Muslim male was beaten and suffocated by having a plastic bag shoved down his throat?
You start to read this story, and your blood simmers if not outright boils:
An Israeli Muslim lesbian couple who claim they will be killed if deported to Israel due to their sexuality is being given a second chance to remain in Canada.
According to the Toronto Sun newspaper, Iman Musa and Majida Mugrabi who are currently living in Toronto, arrived in Canada from Tel Aviv in 2007 and filed unsuccessful refugee claims that were appealed to the Federal Court of Canada.
There goes Canada again—giving in to the prejudices against the Jewish state (in spite of their awesome Prime Minister, Stephen Harper)! Gays face no discriminated in the only Democratic state in the Middle East; Israeli Arabs are freer than any other Arabs in the region.
Huh? What’s that? Oh… okay. Never mind:
Judge Roger Hughes on March 8 granted the couple another hearing by an Immigration and Refugee Board based on new information that shows one of Mugrabi’s cousins confessed to the “honor killing” of his sister 12-years ago.
The couple in an emotional letter presented to the courts claimed they would be killed if forced to return to Israel for being a same-sex Muslim couple.
“We have a same sex relationship, which is forbidden back home,” the couple wrote. “We have dishonored our families by running away to try and start a life with each other.”
The couple, through their lawyer, Daniel Kingwell, said they were pleased by the court’s decision but still fear for their lives.
“As Muslim women, we don’t have any rights in our families,” the couple wrote. “The fact that we are lesbians does not help.”
The letter claimed Mugrabi’s grandfather is a Muslim sheikh, who “repeatedly threatened to kill her.” Musa’s brother, from Ramleh, has “threatened to kill her if she does not leave her lesbian relationship and marry a male,” the women alleged. “There are several police complaints regarding the threats of her brother.”“Same sex relationships are not permitted or accepted in all Arabic countries,” they said. “There are many stories about honor killings and we are victims of this.”
There are several police complaints regarding the threats of her brother.”
Kingwell said the women will be killed if deported to Israel.
“The situation is not the greatest for gays or lesbians in some Arab countries,” Kingwell said on Saturday, adding many “honour killings” occur from family members who slay their same-sex or gay relatives.
“This couple face a real threat from Muslims in a Conservative country,” Kingwell said.
…
While Israel is known as a country highly tolerant of its thriving LGBT community, it is a well known fact that the Arab communities in Israel still hold an extremely conservative outlook and condemn the LGBT lifestyle.
Good job, Canada!
If you read the media we all seem to read, so-called honor killings are not news. They are common, and the stories, while each unique, are depressingly familiar.
But Phyllis Chesler notes some media are less observant than others:
Although Hindus also commit honor killings, they do so infrequently in the West. Some Sikhs have perpetrated honor killings in Canada. One such high-profile case involved a British Colombian mother who sent her daughter abroad in 2000 where she arranged for her contract killing. Today, more than a decade later, Canada has issued an arrest warrant for the mother, Malkiat Kaur, to be extradited to India to stand trial for the murder of Jaswinder “Jassi” Kaur and for the attempted murder of Jassi’s beloved husband. Jassi’s crime? She fell in love with a social inferior and dared to marry him.
Some Muslim immigrants in the West still behave as if they are still living in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, the Maghreb, or on the West Bank. According to my 2010 study, 91% of the honor killings in the West were Muslim-on-Muslim crimes. Yes, this includes the honor murder of wives by their husbands and with the help of both their in-laws and their own family of origin. This is another kind of honor killing. These poor souls are almost double the age of the daughter-group. I discuss this in the 2010 study.
It is important to note that for the first time the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal did cover an honor killing case which involved Muslim perpetrators in North America. In the past, they failed to do so — or they focused on Hindu honor killings [3] committed in India.
However, the Wall Street Journal [4], the New York Times [5], CNN [6], BBC [7], and the Washington Post [8] all shied away from using the term “Muslim,” but did indicate that the perpetrators of these honor killings were “Afghans” and “immigrants”; they sometimes utilized the term honor killing but usually either in quotes or preceded by the phrase “so-called.”
The Huffington Post [9] has published more than twenty articles in the last 24 hours on this trial. A quick review suggests that very few articles use the word “Muslim.” Some of the journalists include Supriya Dwivedi [10], Danielle Crittenden [11], Stephanie Levitz [12], and Ayaan Hirsi Ali [13]. My Canadian colleague, Farzana Hassan, uses the word “Muslim” and addresses the cultural and religious tradition of honor killings:
Regrettably, far too many men raised in patriarchal settings regard their female offspring as liabilities. The birth of a female child is often marked with anxiety and dismay. Later on, the issue of family honour kicks in when the girl reaches puberty. In fact, the notion of honour revolves primarily around women and their sexuality and conduct. The men in the family are rarely subjected to the kinds of constraints their female relatives endure. It is mostly when the conduct of the women is perceived as dishonourable that matters worsen.
Interestingly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali does not use the word “Muslim” as she opines on this case. But she does make an important point, namely, that American justice may lag behind Canadian justice. Hirsi Ali cites the Arizona case of Faleh Almaleki, who was only convicted of “murder in the second degree.” However, Almaleki received a sentence of 34 years — and for only one murder, not for four. An additional point that one must make concerns Arizona’s failure to charge Noor’s mother as a co-conspirator. Texas made the same mistake in the Said case, as did Canada in the Parvez case.
There has been something of a silence, at least so far, on the part of the various North American Muslim associations.
…
Why do I obsess about the use of the word “Muslim”? I do so because too many Westerners are confusing this simple descriptor with an insult; too many Westerners have been intimidated by false concepts of politically correct, anti-racism into never describing a Muslim as anything other than a victim. Well, there actually are four Muslim victims in the Shafia case and they are all female. In order to honor that truth and hopefully to prevent further such honor killings, we must speak accurately.
Not all Muslims honor kill their daughters. But those who do are rarely punished in Muslim-majority countries. Most are “covered” by Shari’a law and by custom which despises the ways of the infidel. It is important that moderate and modern-oriented mullahs and imams call for the abolition of women’s subordination in mosque sermons. In 2011, the Canadian chapter of CAIR [16] announced that Canadian Muslim leaders should issue a call against domestic violence. In my opinion, this should include an end to the normalized battering of daughters and wives, an end to the overly strict supervision of female behavior, and definitely, an end to murdering female family members.
What a pushy dame, huh?
Look what the MSM are selling: Obama, liberalism, pro-Palestinianism and anti-Zionism, global warming, illegal immigration, sensitivity to “Moslem issues”. I wouldn’t believe the sports scores in my morning paper without triple-checking them. Truth is the first casualty in modern journalism.
Moslems are the greatest slaughterers of Moslems, the greatest captors of Moslems, the greatest deniers of liberty to other Moslems—the greatest threats to Moslem women and children. Those are facts, and if we are afraid of facts, we are without hope. And so are Moslems.
Teenagers: can’t live with ‘em; can’t drown them in the back of your Crown Vic:
A Montreal man accused of killing three of his teenage daughters and his first wife believed two of his children had been “cruel” to him by dressing in revealing clothes and consorting secretly with boyfriends, he told jurors at his murder trial Thursday.
“My children did a lot of cruelty toward me,” Mohammad Shafia testified during questioning by his lawyer, Peter Kemp.
Shafia said he was angry when he saw a photo of one of his daughters in a short skirt, hugging a boyfriend she had secretly dated. He saw it after her death, he insisted.
“I was upset, I swore because I didn’t expect this thing from my children,” Shafia testified. “I was not happy about that.”
Shafia said he expected that his children would have “consulted” him before making plans with boyfriends. He said he would have allowed the girls to marry boys of their choosing, even if he didn’t approve of them.
Shafia’s daughters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 — along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead inside a car that was discovered at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. The victims had drowned.
Those of us with teenagers might think about putting the car in neutral and pushing it into a canal (am I right or am I right?), but we wouldn’t do it. And not for that reason.
Spare the clutch, spoil the child, I always say!
If he’s worried about cruelty, I hope Canada’s prisons aren’t crowded with skinheads and neo-Nazis. We can always send them a few of ours.
The wonderful thing about being an empire (past or present) is that your subjects contribute so much to the cultural mix: vindaloo, hummus, Bollywood, reggae… well, you know:
The number of women and girls in the UK suffering violence and intimidation at the hands of their families or communities is increasing rapidly, according to figures revealing the nationwide scale of “honour” abuse for the first time.
Statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act about such violence – which can include threats, abduction, acid attacks, beatings, forced marriage, mutilation and murder – show that in the 12 police force areas for which comparable data was available, reports went up by 47% in just a year.
…
The 39 police forces that gave Ikwro figures recorded 2,823 incidents in 2010. Ikwro estimates that another 500 crimes in which police were involved were committed in the 13 force areas that did not provide data.
But this is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, campaigners say, as so many incidents go unreported because of victims’ fears of recriminations.
Jasvinder Sanghera of victim support group Karma Nirvana said the real figure could be four times as high.
…
This is the first time UK figures have been collated for so-called honour-based violence, defined as crimes planned and carried out by a family or community in order to defend their perceived “honour”.
Previously a figure of 12 “honour killings” a year has been cited, although it is unclear where the number comes from.
Is it just me, or do other people have a problem with whole classes of people—Moslem women (and other women victimized by similar abuse) and unborn children—being sacrificed on the altars of political correctness, multiculturalism, and liberal beliefs in general?
Just me? Okay. I’ll work on it.
You should watch this and listen carefully. He is a Canadian Muslim, born in India. He campaigned for Barack Obama. But among other things, he asserts that Obama has members of the Muslim Brotherhood working for him and helping him to set policy, in the White House. He also does a great job of discussing the hypocrisy of feminist groups around the topic of honor killings.
- Aggie
Really. That’s it. Nothing else to report. Go home.
A Henrietta teen is accused of stabbing his 13-year-old cousin in their townhouse yesterday.
Cpl. John Helfer of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office today said Faheem Abdul-Jaleel, 16, was charged with first-degree assault, a felony. He called 911 from a security phone box at the University of Rochester’s River Campus about 11 p.m. yesterday, more than 12 hours after his cousin Samina Qasim was found bleeding in the garage with multiple stab wounds to her chest and upper body.
Abdul-Jaleel was taken into custody at Kendrick and Lattimore roads without incident and allegedly admitted to stabbing his cousin in the family’s garage yesterday morning after an argument, Helfer said. It was not known what the two argued about, he said.
Maybe she borrowed his xbox and didn’t return it quickly enough. That’s gotta be it. We’re done.
Oh, did I check the “Honor Killing” box? Oops.
The borders of a future Palestine (let’s call it Jordan—not its real name) will be a chalk outline:
The case of 20-year-old Arab woman, found murdered near Hevron after disappearing a year ago, offers a rare close-up of “honor killings” in the Palestinian Authority as well as other Muslim Arab societies.
The Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency, closely linked with the Palestinian Authority, reported this week that police found the body of the young woman in a well a mile from her home and arrested her uncle, who confessed to murdering her.
The Arab news agency quoted Arab Hevron police officer Ramadan Awad as saying that the facts of the case were so shocking that “as we interrogated her uncle, the people in the room could hardly hold back tears.”
Aww, woozums.
The woman was studying at Hebron University when she disappeared in April 2010. Although she was described by classmates as chaste, Awad said one man had proposed marriage to her, but her family refused to consent.
Convinced of an illicit relationship, the uncle confessed he and three friends stuffed her into the trunk of their car, where she was sprayed unconscious with gas to prevent her from shouting.
Before she was murdered, she regained consciousness and begged for her life.
“I drove to the Khallat Salman area, where we tied a rope around her body and dropped her into the well,” Ayah’s uncle told police. She pleaded, “Please don’t throw me into the well. What did I do to be killed? Uncle! Please help, help … don’t kill me.”
…
Honor killings are common through the Palestinian Authority, where laws based on legislation from the Ottoman Empire and the Jordanian occupation in 1948 allow courts to commute sentences for men who carry out them out.
The Palestinian Authority has not repealed the laws even though PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas two years again signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Not that I ever do, but I don’t have anything funny to say.
A Coon Rapids man went to suburban Detroit and fatally shot his 20-year-old stepdaughter in the head because she left Minnesota to live with her father and was not adhering to Muslim customs, police said Tuesday.
Rahim A. Alfetlawi, 45, was charged Monday in Warren, Mich., with first-degree premeditated murder and two weapons offenses. He remained jailed without bond.
Alfetlawi is accused of killing Jessica Mokdad Saturday afternoon in her grandmother’s home. Warren Police Lt. Michael Torey said “the biological father was letting her be a little more Americanized than what [the defendant] wanted.”
…
From Michigan, Torey said that Alfetlawi was upset that Mokdad left the Coon Rapids home of Alfetlawi and Mokdad’s mother, Wendy, several weeks ago to live with her father in Grand Blanc, Mich.
Alfetlawi confronted his stepdaughter at her grandmother’s home in Warren, where she was moving some things that had belonged to her great-grandmother. She was shot with a 9mm handgun and died at the scene, Torey said.
Alfetkawu drove to a police station and “made some admissions about killing his stepdaughter,” the lieutenant said. Torey said that Alfetlawi told police the gun discharged accidentally.
Authorities say Alfetlawi told them he came to Michigan to find and confront Mokdad’s father. Torey said Alfetlawi asked Mokdad about where her father was, and an argument ensued.
Kindle, the assistant principal, said the killing “broke my heart … When I learned about Jessica’s death, I fell to my knees. She was a great kid.”
Mokdad was a quiet student who was very confident in who she was and proud of being a Muslim, he said, adding that she affected people in a subtle way because they respected her. She planned to go to college and study an occupation to help people, he said.
“She was someone that any father or parent would have been proud to have as a daughter,” he said.
This is in America, folks. They don’t need to fly planes into our buildings when the have 9mm slugs.
It’s rare, but sometimes I am rendered speechless.
Nabil Abu-Hadir of the Shuafat neighborhood of Jerusalem was sentenced Sunday for murdering his sister Taghrid Diab 17 years ago in an “honor killing.” Abu-Hadir was found guilty of stabbing his sister to death at a Jerusalem bus stop as her three young children cried and begged him to stop.
The 17-year delay in delivering justice was due to the fact that Abu-Hadir fled Jerusalem following the murder, running to the nearby city of Bethlehem, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. There, he worked as a university lecturer and raised a family.
The only justice would be for him to be executed while his family was made to watch. That’ll be the day.
Excuse me, but this Bloodthirsty Liberal needs to go cry.
In keeping with my morning’s theme on the right of the people to know (see below), I think you all should know about this stoning of a woman by the Pakistani Taliban.
Whether you want to or not.
The UAE-owned Alaan TV recently broadcast footage showing the stoning of a woman. The anchor stressed in the report that the footage was exclusive, filmed by a member of Taliban-Pakistan with his cell-phone and smuggled out of the Orakzai region of Pakistan. The woman’s crime: she was accused of being seen with a man.
This was followed by exclusive footage, also from Orakzai, of the summary execution of a man and woman by gunshot. The anchor said: “We do not know why this killing took place, but it is clear that the two victims did not stand any trial, and the decision to shoot them was taken on the spur of the moment.”
We’ll leave it at that; I’m sure you get the picture. But while I think it’s important that you know that stuff goes on (and more—remember the picture on the cover of Time of the woman without a nose), what can you do with that information? Aren’t you just burdened by troubling knowledge over which you have no control?
And isn’t a little knowledge worse than no knowledge at all?
After all, woman are brutalized all over the world—raped in the Congo, forced to undergo abortions in China, beaten and stoned and killed “honorably” across the Muslim world. Are you better off knowing or not knowing? I don’t know.
If you read this blog, I expect you think you’re better off knowing. Because we cover all of those things, with tragic frequency. And if you’d rather not know about them, I expect you’re long gone from here by now.
If nothing else, this information balances the equation. We are deluged with stories about colonialist crimes, imperialist offenses against indigenous peoples, Western racism, etc.—and so should we be. We hear far less often about what these people get up to themselves. All the time. With each other.
In Brad and Angelina, our species may have evolved to its pinnacle—but Brangelina is only one side of our genetic coin. As ravishing as heads is, tails is even uglier.
When blogress Kathy Shaidle links to a story about some atrocity in Africa, she often headlines it “Apartheid: Was it all Bad?” She does it to shock and offend, sure, but also to make you think. It hurts, I know, but it’s good for you, like broccoli.
Always the front-runner here at BTL, we see the bullet train heading down the fast track toward Palestinian statehood (got any other metaphors to throw in?), and we want to get out in front.
Here’s our first argument in favor: if a young girl dishonors her family here in America, she might expect to be grounded for a period of time.
Same goes for the Palestinians—the only difference being duration (eternity) and the concreteness of the language (figuratively grounded, versus literally in the ground):
On Monday, 12 April 2010, Sherin Zayed (al-‘Attar), from Beit Lahia town in the northern the Gaza Strip, was killed allegedly to “maintain family honor.”
According to the field follow-up of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), at approximately 11:50 on Monday, 12 April 2010, the body of Sherin Khamis Zayed (al-‘Attar), 32, was brought to Martyr Kamal ‘Edwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, as she was hit by several bullets to the head and the chest. The chief of police in Beit Lahia town, Sameh al-Sultan, told a PCHR fieldworker that the police opened an investigation into the incident and arrested a number of the victim’s relatives, including her father. The father told the police that five masked gunmen raided his house on Monday morning and pulled his daughter outside the house and fired at her. Data provided by the police indicates that this crime was committed allegedly to “maintain family honor.”
She was 32 and they still greased her? That must have been some dishonor! But if I ever want to off one of my female relatives (I have sisters—the thought has occurred), I’m moving to the future Palestinian state. They practically invite it:
Such recurrence may be attributed to the relative impunity granted to murderers, who are often sentenced to less than 3 civil years of imprisonment, equivalent to 24 months of effective imprisonment.
…
These murders must be dealt with in the same manner as other crimes of willful killing, taking into consideration international human rights standards. Many murderers use the claim of maintaining family honor as a justification for the crimes they commit in order to benefit from more lenient sentences.
To drop the facade of indifference, how sick a society is it that considers the murder of one’s daughter and extenuating circumstance? Dear lord!