Levitt Letter Extra News

By Claudia Rosett, www.PajamasMedia.com

Yes, fresh from denouncing America on national television (on ABC’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour) as a place rife with “hate of Muslims,” a place so Islamophobic that “it’s beyond Islamophobia,” Daisy Khan, co-planner of the Ground Zero mosque project, is hopping a plane at taxpayer expense, courtesy of the State Department, to jet from New York to the United Arab Emirates and deliver to the Emiratis her views about Muslim life in America.

This is what the State Department calls “public diplomacy” — a program that enlists about 1,200 Americans each year to fly with plenty of leg room to foreign lands and tell folks over there what it’s like to live in America. You might think a lot of these junkets would by now be redundant, in a world so interconnected that the Fort Hood shooter took cues from an imam in Yemen. But then, the web just doesn’t have the zing of international business class and $496 per diems.

For Daisy Khan’s circle, State’s public diplomacy program is a boom industry. Khan’s husband and “bridge-building” partner, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque, Imam Feisal Adbul Rauf, is already on a more extensive State Department tour. After stops in Bahrain, where he has just been, and Qatar, where he will be this week, Rauf will meet up with Khan in the UAE, from Aug. 29-Sept.2. His trip will cost U.S. taxpayers $16,000. Hers will cost $12,000.

(Hmmm. I flew out to the UAE this spring, spent more time there than they plan to, spent another two weeks in Turkey, stayed in some very pleasant hotels, hired cars, ate well, and somehow it all came to significantly less than Khan’s trip alone… next time, I’ve got to get this right. Or maybe someone ought to take a closer look at the State Department budget?)

If you want slightly more detail about the Rauf-Khan trip to the UAE, the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi has posted an announcement on its web site (http://abudhabi.usembassy.gov/index.html). But don’t get your hopes up that you’ll learn anything there about who Rauf and Khan will actually be seeing as they build their “people to people” ties. Most details of these public outreach trips are kept secret from the American public.

By Chana Ya’ar, www.IsraelNationalNews.com

Skies throughout the Holy Land were a bright blue Thursday, clearing the way for Israelis to hopefully get a good view at night of the upcoming Perseid Meteor shower.

The annual “show” is actually expected to light up the skies overnight Thursday for everyone living in the northern hemisphere. The moon is just a few days past “new” at this, the peak of the shower, contributing little if any moonlight to compete with the glow of the faint meteors, which appear as shooting stars.

Viewers should expect to see a maximum of a few dozen meteors per hour, according to the Star Date.org stargazing web site.

The Perseid meteor shower, observed for more than 2,000 years, was first recorded in China. The point from which the meteor shower appears to emanate – called the “radiant” – lies within the constellation Perseus, located in the northern sky and named after the ancient Greeks’ mythical hero Perseus.

Special viewing events have been scheduled for the Perseid Meteor shower all around Israel.

Professor of Astrophysics Tzvi Piran of the Hebrew University told Israel National News when to best view the meteor shower in Israel. “Very late tonight is the best time,” said Prof. Piran. “The peak is between 3:00 – 5:00 AM. In principle you can see it from everywhere, but what you need is a dark place. Therefore, outside the city is good. If you go into the Negev that’s probably the very best place. Near Jerusalem, one of the darkest places is Har HaTayasim. Then, just lay flat on the ground and look at the sky.”

When asked if there have been meteorite landings in Israel, Piran said “None that are known.” Piran added that the well-known Ramon crater and the Large and Small Craters in the Negev desert were definitely not formed from meteorite landings. “The craters in Israel are not meteorite craters. They are unique geological structures.”

Tour guide Denis Weintraub noted that the “show” can be seen from anywhere in the country, but added that it is “best seen from areas where there is little peripheral light from the city landscape” – for example, the Arava or the Ramon Crater. There are a number of activities that have been formally organized, he said, but one need not participate in order to enjoy the sights. Viewing is best at 2:00 a.m., opined Weintraub, who posted an update for English speakers on the Anglobeersheba email list serve, which networks English speaking immigrants in southern Israel.

There is even an official Hebrew-language Internet web site devoted to the subject, Meteors.org, which lists all the official shows and other events connected with the meteor shower. A set of directions (in Hebrew) on how to best view the meteor shower is one of the features posted on the site by the Israel Association for the Preservation of Nature, the Mitzpe Ramon Municipal Council, the Astronomy Club of Tel Aviv University and the Science Authority. (For those readers who cannot find a Hebrew-fluent friend, it is possible to use Google’s “translate” tool to derive a basic translation of the text.)

By Robert Spencer, www.HumanEvents.com

In February 2009, Aasiya Z. Hassan, a 37-year-old Muslim woman, was found decapitated in Orchard Park, N.Y., a village near Buffalo. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, admitted that he beheaded his wife. [See story in April 2009 Levitt Letter, p. 3.] Yet now, in a bizarre turn in the case, Muzzammil Hassan has claimed that he was the real victim in the case, driven to murder his wife after enduring years of her emotional and physical abuse.

The case stands as a classic example of the universal tendency on the part of Islamic supremacists and jihadists to blame everyone but themselves for what they have done.

In a larger sense, Muzzammil Hassan’s attempt to claim that he was actually the victim of the woman he beheaded is exactly like the jihadis blaming American foreign policy for the global jihad, and is related to the campaign to get the West to “stop linking Islam with terrorism.”

Islamic jihadists link Islam with terrorism with consistent and religious fervor, but if a Western non-Muslim notices this, he is “hateful,” “bigoted,” “Islamophobic,” “ignorant of Islam,” etc. Never would the Muslims who accuse non-Muslims of “hate” for “linking Islam with terrorism” ever look to themselves and see the responsibility for the link as being within the Muslim community rather than outside it.

It is always someone else’s fault. In this case, according to the Buffalo News, “Hassan has never publicly denied killing his wife. Instead, he has suggested he will build his court defense on the grounds that as a long-abused spouse, he finally snapped and killed his wife in a desperate bid to end the psychological abuse inflicted upon him.” Hassan himself has claimed that “anytime I sought outside help, I got falsely accused of sexual misconduct or physical abuse—more than 12 police reports, each in response to my reaching out for help from counselors, my family, or her family.”

Poor lamb. Clearly the only option left open to him was to behead his wife.

He beheaded Aasiya in the offices of the Muslim cable channel, Bridges TV, which he founded. Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he thought were dominating the mainstream media.

According to a Reuters story at the time, none other than Aasiya “came up with the idea.” It was all about depicting Muslims as moderate and peaceful. Muzzammil explained: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven-months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.”

Bridges TV originally declared that its intention was to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way.”

However, there were indications at the outset that it might not have been as moderate as many assumed. Bridges TV from the beginning had ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, and Islamicity.com, which retails rabid anti-Semitic literature. In 2006, Arab News reported that Hassan was trying to raise money for the network from Saudi investors.

Government and law enforcement officials should have recognized these warning signs and paid more heed to Aasiya Hassan’s claims of abuse. The mainstream media should not have given Muzzammil Hassan credibility as a “moderate” Muslim without looking more deeply into his connections. And on a larger scale, the claims of groups like CAIR that have so many connections to terror groups and activities should no longer be taken at face value.

The stakes are simply too high. And the decapitated body of Aasiya Hassan will be just the beginning if these words are not needed, as they probably will not be.

Muzzammil Hassan is not a victim. Muzzammil Hassan is a murderer. Islamic jihadists worldwide are not victims of American foreign policy, or Israel’s, or of anything else. They are murderers. If the West doesn’t regain its moral clarity about this, it will not prevail against them.

By Phyllis Chesler in Middle East Quarterly, www.MEForum.org

Morsal O, a 16-year-old German-Afghan girl, was killed in May 2008 by her 24-year-old brother Ahmad Sobair O. He stabbed her twenty-three times in a parking lot in Hamburg, Germany, because of her alleged impure moral conduct. Murder of teenage or young adult women by their fathers or other close male relatives is characteristic of classic honor killings and is not a pattern in non-immigrant Western populations.

To combat the epidemic of honor killings requires understanding what makes these murders unique. They differ from plain and psychopathic homicides, serial killings, crimes of passion, revenge killings, and domestic violence. Their motivation is different and based on codes of morality and behavior that typify some cultures, often reinforced by fundamentalist religious dictates. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that there are 5,000re 5,000
English: World English Bible - WEB
Štetje svetopisemskih vrstic se začne z ¹! Vrstica ⁰ ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin honor killings every year.[1] That number might be reasonable for Pakistan alone, but worldwide the numbers are much greater. In 2002 and again in 2004, the U.N. brought a resolution to end honor killings and other honor-related crimes. In 2004, at a meeting in The Hague about the rising tide of honor killings in Europe, law enforcement officers from the U.K. announced plans to begin reopening old cases to see if certain murders were, indeed, honor murders.[2] The number of honor killings is routinely underestimated, and most estimates are little more than guesses that vary widely. Definitive or reliable worldwide estimates of honor killing incidence do not exist.

Most honor killings are not classified as such, are rarely prosecuted, or when prosecuted in the Muslim world, result in relatively light sentences.[3] When an honor killing occurs in the West, many people, including the police, still shy away from calling it an honor killing. In the West, both Islamist and feminist groups, including domestic violence activists, continue to insist that honor killings are a form of Western-style domestic violence or femicide (killing of women).[4] They are not.[5] This study documents that there are at least two types of honor killings and two victim populations. Both types differ significantly from each other, just as they differ from Western domestic femicide. One group has an average age of seventeen; the other group’s average age is thirty-six. The age difference is a statistically significant one.

Families Killing Their Young Women

The study’s findings indicate that honor killings accelerated significantly in a 20-year period between 1989 and 2009.[6] This may mean that honor killings are genuinely escalating, perhaps as a function of jihadist extremism and Islamic fundamentalism, or that honor killings are being more accurately reported and prosecuted, especially in the West, but also in the East. The expansion of the Internet may account for wider reporting of these incidents.

The worldwide average age of victims for the entire population is twenty-three (Table 1). This is true for all geographical regions. Thus, wherever an honor killing is committed, it is primarily a crime against young people. Just over half of these victims were daughters and sisters; about a quarter were wives and girlfriends of the perpetrators. The remainder included mothers, aunts, nieces, cousins, uncles, or non-relatives.

Honor killings are a family collaboration. Worldwide, two-thirds of the victims were killed by their families of origin. (See Table 1). Murder by the family of origin was at its highest (72 percent) in the Muslim world and at its lowest in North America (49 percent); European families of origin were involved almost as often as those in the Muslim world, possibly because so many are first- or second-generation immigrants and, therefore, still tightly bound to their native cultures. Alternatively, this might be due to the Islamist radicalization of third or even fourth generations. Internationally, fathers played an active role in over one-third of the honor murders. Fathers were most involved in North America (52 percent) and least involved in the Muslim world; in Europe, fathers were involved in more than one-third of the murders.

Worldwide, 42 percent of these murders were carried out by multiple perpetrators, a characteristic which distinguishes them considerably from Western domestic femicide. A small number of the murders worldwide involved more than one victim. Multiple murders were at their highest in North America and at their lowest in Europe. In the Muslim world, just under a quarter of the murders involved more than one victim. Additional victims included the dead woman’s children, boyfriend, fiancé, husband, sister, brother, or parents.

Worldwide, more than half the victims were tortured; i.e., they did not die instantly but in agony. In North America, over one-third of the victims were tortured; in Europe, two-thirds were tortured; in the Muslim world, half were tortured. Torturous deaths include: being raped or gang-raped before being killed; being strangled or bludgeoned to death; being stabbed many times (10 to 40 times); being stoned or burned to death; being beheaded, or having one’s throat slashed.

Finally, worldwide, 58 percent of the victims were murdered for being “too Western” and/or for resisting or disobeying cultural and religious expectations (see Table 1). The accusation of being “too Western” was the exact language used by the perpetrator or perpetrators. Being “too Western” meant being seen as too independent, not subservient enough, refusing to wear varieties of Islamic clothing (including forms of the veil), wanting an advanced education and a career, having non-Muslim (or non-Sikh or non-Hindu) friends or boyfriends, refusing to marry one’s first cousin, wanting to choose one’s own husband, choosing a socially “inferior” or non-Muslim (or non-Sikh or non-Hindu) husband; or leaving an abusive husband. There were statistically significant regional differences for this motive. For example, in North America, 91 percent of victims were murdered for being “too Western” as compared to a smaller but still substantial number (71 percent) in Europe. In comparison, only 43 percent of victims were killed for this reason in the Muslim world.

Less than half (42 percent) of the victims worldwide were murdered for committing an alleged “sexual impropriety”; this refers to victims who had been raped, were allegedly having extra-marital affairs, or who were viewed as “promiscuous” (even where this might not refer to actual sexual promiscuity or even sexual activity). However, in the Muslim world, 57 percent of victims were murdered for this motive as compared to 29 percent in Europe and a small number (9 percent) in North America.

What the Age Differences Mean

This study documents that there are at least two different kinds of honor killings and/or two different victim populations: one made up of female children and young women whose average age is seventeen (Table 3), the other composed of women whose average age is thirty-six (Table 5). Both kinds of honor murders differ from Western domestic femicide.

In the non-immigrant West, serious domestic violence exists which includes incest, child abuse, marital rape, marital battering, marital stalking, and marital post-battering femicide. However, there is no cultural pattern of fathers specifically targeting or murdering their teenage or young adult daughters, nor do families of origin participate in planning, perpetrating, justifying, and valorizing such murders. Clearly, these characteristics define the classic honor killing of younger women and girls.

The honor murders of older women might seem to resemble Western-style domestic femicide. The victim is an older married woman, usually a mother, who is often killed by her husband but also by multiple perpetrators (30 percent of the time). Worldwide, almost half (44 percent) of those who kill older-age victims include members of either the victim’s family of origin or members of her husband’s family of origin. (See Table 5.) This is extremely rare in a Western domestic femicide; the husband who kills his wife in the West is rarely assisted by members of his family of origin or by his in-laws.

However, in the Muslim world, older-age honor killing victims are murdered by their own families of origin nearly two-thirds of the time. This suggests that the old-world custom has changed somewhat in Europe where the victim’s family of origin participates in her murder only one-third (31 percent) of the time. Thus far, in North America, no members of the family of origin have participated in the honor killing of an older-age victim. Whether North America will eventually come to resemble Europe or even the Muslim world remains to be seen, as this will be influenced by immigration and other demographic factors. Finally, nearly half the older-age victims are subjected to a torturous death. However, the torture rate was at its highest (68 percent) in Europe for female victims of all ages. The torture rate was 35 percent and 51 percent in North America and in the Muslim world, respectively.

Worldwide, younger-age victims were killed by their families of origin 81 percent of the time. In North America, 94 percent were killed by their family of origin; this figure was 77 percent in Europe and 82 percent in the Muslim world. (See Table 3.) In North America, fathers had a hands-on role in 100 percent of the cases when the daughter was eighteen-years-old or younger (See Table 4). Worldwide, younger-age women and girls were tortured 53 percent of the time; however, in Europe, they were tortured between 72 and 83 percent of the time—significantly more than older-age women worldwide.

Western Responses to Honor Killing

Many Western feminists and advocates for victims of domestic violence have confused Western domestic violence or domestic femicide (the two are different) with the honor killings of older-age victims. Representatives of Islamist pressure groups including Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Canadian Islamic Congress, various academics (e.g., Ajay Nair, Tom Keil), activists (e.g., Rana Husseini), and religious leaders (e.g., Abdulhai Patel of the Canadian Council of Imams) have insisted that honor killings either do not exist or have nothing to do with Islam; that they are cultural, tribal, pre-Islamic customs, and that, in any event, domestic violence exists everywhere.[7] Feminists who work with the victims of domestic violence have seen so much violence against women that they are uncomfortable singling out one group of perpetrators, especially an immigrant or Muslim group. However, Western domestic femicide differs significantly from honor killing.[8]

Former National Organization for Women (NOW) president Kim Gandy compared the battered and beheaded Aasiya Hassan[9] to the battered (but still living) pop star Rihanna and further questioned whether Hassan’s murder was an honor killing:

Is a Muslim man in Buffalo more likely to kill his wife than a Catholic man in Buffalo? A Jewish man in Buffalo? I don’t know the answer to that, but I know that there is plenty of violence to go around—and that the long and sordid history of oppressing women in the name of religion surely includes Islam, but is not limited to Islam.[10]

At the time of the Hassan beheading, a coalition of domestic violence workers sent an (unpublished) letter to the Erie County district attorney’s office and to some media stating that this was not an honor killing, that honor killings had nothing to do with Islam, and that sensationalizing Muslim domestic violence was not only racist but also served to render invisible the much larger incidence of both domestic violence and domestic femicide. They have a point, but they also miss the point, namely, that apples are not oranges and that honor killings are not the same as Western domestic femicides.

One might argue that the stated murder motive of being “too Westernized” may, in a sense, overlap substantively with the stated and unstated motives involved in Western domestic femicide. In both instances, the woman is expected to live with male violence and to remain silent about it. She is not supposed to leave—or to leave with the children or any other male “property.” However, the need to keep a woman isolated, subordinate, fearful, and dependent through the use of violence does not reflect a Western cultural or religious value; rather, it reflects the individual, psychological pathology of the Western batterer-murderer. On the other hand, an honor killing reflects the culture’s values aimed at regulating female behavior—values that the family, including the victim’s family, is expected to enforce and uphold.

Further, such cultural, ethnic, or tribal values are not often condemned by the major religious and political leaders in developing Muslim countries or in immigrant communities in the West. On the contrary, such communities maintain an enforced silence on all matters of religious, cultural, or communal “sensitivity.” Today, such leaders (and their many followers) often tempt, shame, or force Muslim girls and women into wearing a variety of body coverings including the hijab (head covering), burqa, or chadari (full-body covering) as an expression of religiosity and cultural pride or as an expression of symbolic resistance to the non-Muslim West.[11] Muslim men are allowed to dress like Westerners, and no one challenges the ubiquitous use of Western technology, including airplanes, cell phones, the Internet, or satellite television as un-Islamic. But Muslim women are expected to bear the burden of upholding these ancient and allegedly religious customs of gender apartheid.

It is clear that Muslim girls and women are murdered for honor in both the West and the East when they refuse to wear the hijab or choose to wear it improperly. In addition, they are killed for behaving in accepted Western or modern ways when they express a desire to attend college, have careers, live independent lives, have non-Muslim friends (including boyfriends with whom they may or may not be sexually involved), choose their own husbands, refuse to marry their first cousins, or want to leave an abusive husband. This “Westernization” trend also exists in Muslim countries but to a lesser extent. Allegations of unacceptable “Westernization” accounted for 44 percent of honor murders in the Muslim world as compared to 71 percent in Europe and 91 percent in North America.

Tempted by Western ideas, desiring to assimilate, and hoping to escape lives of subordination, those girls and women who exercise their option to be Western are killed—at early ages and in particularly gruesome ways. Frightening honor murders may constitute an object lesson to other Muslim girls and women about what may happen to them if they act on the temptation to do more than serve their fathers and brothers as domestic servants, marry their first cousin, and breed as many children as possible. The deaths of females already living in the West may also be intended as lessons for other female immigrants who are expected to lead subordinate and segregated lives amid the temptations and privileges of freedom. This is especially true in Europe where large Muslim ghettos have formed in the past few decades. It is particularly alarming to note that in Europe 96 percent of the honor killing perpetrators are Muslims.

The level of primal, sadistic, or barbaric savagery shown in honor killings towards a female family intimate more closely approximates some of the murders in the West perpetrated by serial killers against prostitutes or randomly selected women. It also suggests that gender separatism, the devaluation of girls and women, normalized child abuse, including arranged child marriages of both boys and girls, sexual repression, misogyny (sometimes inspired by misogynist interpretations of the Qur’an), and the demands made by an increase in the violent ideology of jihad all lead to murderous levels of aggression towards girls and women. One only has to kill a few girls and women to keep the others in line. Honor killings are, in a sense, a form of domestic terrorism, meant to ensure that Muslim women wear the Islamic veil, have Muslim babies, and mingle only with other Muslims.

Since Muslim immigration and, therefore, family networks are more restricted in North America than in Europe, honor-killing fathers may feel that the entire burden for upholding standards for female behavior falls heavily upon them and them alone. This may account for the fact that fathers are responsible 100 percent of the time for the honor murders of the youngest-age victims. In Europe and in the Muslim world, that burden may more easily be shared by sons and brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins.

What Must Be Done

How can this problem be addressed? Immigration, law enforcement, and religious authorities must all be included in education, prevention, and prosecution efforts in the matter of honor killings.

In addition, shelters for battered Muslim girls and women should be established and multilingual staff appropriately trained in the facts about honor killings. For example, young Muslim girls are frequently lured back home by their mothers. When a shelter resident receives such a phone call, the staff must immediately go on high alert. The equivalent of a federal witness protection program for the intended targets of honor killings should be created; England has already established such a program.[12] Extended safe surrogate family networks must be created to replace existing family networks; the intended victims themselves, with enormous assistance, may become each other’s “sisters.”

In addition, clear government warnings must be issued to Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu immigrants and citizens: Honor killings must be prosecuted in the West, and perpetrators, accomplices, and enablers must all be prosecuted. Participating families should be publicly shamed. Criminals must be deported after they have served their sentences.

Western judicial systems and governments have recently begun to address this problem. In 2006, a Danish court convicted nine members of a clan for the honor murder of Ghazala Khan.[13] In 2009, a German court sentenced a father to life in prison for having ordered his son to murder his sister for the family honor while the 20-year-old son was sentenced to nine and a half years.[14] In another case, a British court, with the help of testimony from the victim’s mother and fiancé, convicted a father of a 10-year-old honor murder after the crime was reclassified;[15] and, for the first time, the Canadian government informed new immigrants:

Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation or other gender-based violence. Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws.[16]

Islamic gender apartheid is a human rights violation and cannot be justified in the name of cultural relativism, tolerance, anti-racism, diversity, or political correctness. As long as Islamist groups continue to deny, minimize, or obfuscate the problem, and government and police officials accept their inaccurate versions of reality, women will continue to be killed for honor in the West.

The battle for women’s rights is central to the battle for Europe and for Western values. It is a necessary part of true democracy, along with freedom of religion, tolerance for homosexuals, and freedom of dissent. Here, then, is exactly where the greatest battle of the twenty-first century is joined.

Phyllis Chesler is emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at the Richmond College of the City University of New York and co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women’s Health Network. The author wishes to thank Jonathan Francis Carmona, graduate student at Hunter College, CUNY, for the statistical tests for this study, and Prof. Howard Lune, director of the Graduate Social Research Program at Hunter College.

Table One: Entire Population (N = 230)

1 Significant according to a chi square test.
2 Family of origin includes fathers, mothers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins.
3 “Other” includes mothers, aunts, cousins, and no familial relation.
4 Significant according to a Pearson correlation test.

Table Two: Women Only, All Ages (N = 214)

1 Significant according to a chi square test.
2 Family of origin includes fathers, mothers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins.
3 “Other” includes mothers, aunts, cousins, and no familial relation.
4 Significant according to a Pearson correlation test.

Table Three: Females 25 Years of Age and Younger (N = 129)

1 Significant according to a chi square test.
2 Family of origin includes fathers, mothers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins.
3 “Other” includes mothers, aunts, cousins, and no familial relation.
4 Significant according to a Pearson correlation test.

Table Four: Females 18 Years of Age and Younger (N = 68)

1 Significant according to a chi square test.
2 Family of origin includes fathers, mothers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins.
3 “Other” includes mothers, aunts, cousins, and no familial relation.
4 Significant according to a Pearson correlation test.

Table Five: Females 26 Years of Age and Older (N = 51)

1 Significant according to a chi square test.
2 Family of origin includes fathers, mothers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and male cousins.
3 “Other” includes mothers, aunts, cousins, and no familial relation.
4 Significant according to a Pearson correlation test.

Methodology

This study analyzes 172 incidents and 230 honor-killing victims. The information was obtained from the English-language media around the world with one exception. There were 100 victims murdered for honor in the West, including 33 in North America and 67 in Europe. There were 130 additional victims in the Muslim world. Most of the perpetrators were Muslims, as were their victims, and most of the victims were women.

The perpetrators and victims in this study lived in the following twenty-nine countries or territories: Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Gaza Strip, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the West Bank.

In general, statistically significant interactions were found for age, geographical region, the participation of multiple perpetrators (mainly members of the victim’s family of origin, including the victim’s father), family position, multiple victims, the use of torture, and the stated motive for the murder. Between 1989 and 2009, honor killings also escalated over time in a statistically significant way.

Worldwide, the majority of victims were women; a mere 7 percent were men. Only five men were killed by their families of origin whereas the rest of the male victims were killed by the families of the women with whom they were allegedly consorting or planning to consort with either within or outside of marriage. The murdered male victims were usually perceived as men who were unacceptable due to lower class or caste status, because the marriage had not been arranged by the woman’s family of origin, because they were not the woman’s first cousin, or because the men allegedly engaged in pre- or extramarital sex. Men were rarely killed when they were alone; 81 percent were killed when the couple in question was together.

Although Sikhs and Hindus do sometimes commit such murders, honor killings, both worldwide and in the West, are mainly Muslim-on-Muslim crimes. In this study, worldwide, 91 percent of perpetrators were Muslims. In North America, most killers (84 percent) were Muslims, with only a few Sikhs and even fewer Hindus perpetrating honor killings; in Europe, Muslims comprised an even larger majority at 96 percent while Sikhs were a tiny percentage. In Muslim countries, obviously almost all the perpetrators were Muslims. With only two exceptions, the victims were all members of the same religious group as their murderers.

In the West, 76 individuals or groups of multiple perpetrators killed one hundred people. Of these perpetrators, 37 percent came from Pakistan; 17 percent were of Iraqi origin while Turks and Afghans made up 12 and 11 percent, respectively. The remainder, just under a quarter in all, came from Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guyana, India, Iran, Morocco, and the West Bank.

[1] “Ending Violence against Women and Girls,” State of the World Population 2000 (New York: United Nations Population Fund, 2000), chap. 3.
[2] BBC News, June 22, 2004ne 22, 2004
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Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin.
[3] Yotam Feldner, “‘Honor’ Murders–Why the Perps Get off Easy,” Middle East Quarterly, Dec. 2000, pp. 41-50.
[4] See, for example, SoundVision.com, Islamic information and products site, Aug. 24, 2000g. 24, 2000
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin; Sheila Musaji, “The Death of Aqsa Parvez Should Be an Interfaith Call to Action,” The American Muslim, Dec. 14, 2007ec. 14, 2007
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin; Mohammed Elmasry, Canadian Islamic Congress, Fox News.com, Dec. 12, 2007ec. 12, 2007
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14 For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it is good, or whether it is evil.

WP-Bible plugin; Mustafaa Carroll, Dallas branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, FoxNews.com, Oct. 14, 2008ct. 14, 2008
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Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin.
[5] Phyllis Chesler, “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 61-9.
[6] According to the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, the most widely used measure of correlation or association.
[7] See, for example, SoundVision.com, Aug. 24, 2000g. 24, 2000
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin; Musaji, “The Death of Aqsa Parvez Should Be an Interfaith Call to Action“; Elmasry, Fox News.com, Dec. 12, 2007ec. 12, 2007
English: World English Bible - WEB
14 For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it is good, or whether it is evil.

WP-Bible plugin; Carroll, FoxNews.com, Oct. 14, 2008ct. 14, 2008
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin.
[8] Chesler,” Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?“; “A Civilized Dialogue about Islam and Honor Killing: When Feminist Heroes Disagree,” Chesler Chronicles, Mar. 2, 2009Mar. 2, 2009
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WP-Bible plugin; “Jordanian Journalist Rana Husseini on ‘Murder in the Name of Honor: The True Story of One Woman’s Heroic Fight Against an Unbelievable Crime,’” Democracy Now, Oct. 21, 2009ct. 21, 2009
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Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin.
[9] Fox News, Feb. 16, 2009.
[10] Kim Gandy, NOW president, “Below the Belt. No Woman, No Culture Immune to Violence against Women,” Feb. 20, 2009.
[11] BBC News, Oct. 5, 2006ct. 5, 2006
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WP-Bible plugin; Aisha Stacey, “Why Muslim Women Wear the Veil,” IslamReligion.com, Nov 15, 2009.
[12] James Brandon and Salam Hafez, Crimes of the Community: Honour-based Violence in the UK (London: Centre for Social Cohesion, 2008), pp. 136-40.
[13] Brussels Journal, July 2, 2006.
[14] Deutsche Welle (Bonn), Dec. 29, 2009ec. 29, 2009
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin.
[15] The Guardian (London), Dec. 17, 2009ec. 17, 2009
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin.
[16] The National Post (Don Mills, Ont.), Nov. 12, 2009.

By Jamie Glazov, www.FrontPageMag.com

Bill O’Reilly is clearly continuing his shameless and cowardly surrender to sharia [Islamic] law. Daily on his program, The O’Reilly Factor on FoxNews.com, he engages in the standard and phony obfuscations about the jihad threat the West faces, consistently refusing to honestly name and label the Islamic foundations of the terrorist enterprise. Back in April 2010, he blatantly sided with our society’s dhimmis [non-Muslim in a Muslim society], blaming South Park for doing the Mohammed shows. Rather than praising the courage of South Park creators Parker and Stone, standing up for their right to make any script they wished, and denouncing the despots who threatened their lives (and the tenets of the Islamic religion that sanction such threats), O’Reilly publicly promoted submitting to sharia law, thereby surrendering to the forces who killed [Dutch] filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Now, this past Tuesday, on his July 13 program, O’Reilly hits a new low, making a grotesque statement about the millions of suffering persecuted Muslim women around the world. In a bizarre debate with Laura Ingraham about France’s move to ban the burka [full body covering, with mesh over eyes], O’Reilly flippantly jokes about a tragic and deadly reality in which any serious, sensitive person would find nothing laughable. With great self-satisfaction, O’Reilly teases Ingraham about “rooting for the French” while mind-bogglingly siding against the French ban. He makes a disparaging reference to “the Western eye” to imply that forced veiling is only oppressive through our Western lens — as though there is no universal standard of human rights. Priding himself on being for “tolerance” and, therefore, for being in favor of “allowing” Muslim women to veil, he affirms that “most” Muslim women want to veil themselves.

A vile statement like this reveals such ignorance and heartlessness in the face of mass human suffering that one does not even know where to begin in response. But here, nevertheless, the attempt shall be made:

First and foremost, stating that “most” people favor something in an environment where verbalized dissent or oppositional action is viciously punished is meaningless. In other words, to say that “most” Cubans support Castro or that “most” North Koreans support Kim Jong Il, when anti-regime thoughts and acts will, in these circumstances, get a Cuban or North Korean imprisoned, tortured or killed, is disingenuous and erroneous to the extreme.

Thus, the slightest suggestion that Muslim women “want” to veil themselves pushes millions of suffering victims into invisibility. Under Islamic gender apartheid, expressions and actions by women in support of the ingredients of the tyranny that enslave them are utterly hollow if, within the societal structure, any contrary expression or behavior will be punished by social stigma, imprisonment, maiming, mutilation, torture, gang rape and execution. So, in Islamic cultures, women do not have a choice concerning whether they can veil or not veil. If they decide to throw their covering off, they will face horrendous punishment, which includes, like in the case of 20-year-old Fatima Bibi, acid being thrown in the face and, as in the case of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez, murder.

This tragic suffering of Muslim women under these barbaric and sadistic circumstances of Islamic misogyny is tragically manifested in these heart-breaking photos of Muslim women, collected by feminist hero Dr. Phyllis Chesler, who have been disfigured by acid attacks for having trespassed the vicious codes of Islamic Law. [See photos below or at http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2009/11/23/under-the-islamic-veil-faces-disfigured-by-acid/]. I encourage Bill O’Reilly to take the time out to look at these pictures of real women whose faces have been disfigured by Muslim men. I encourage him to ask himself: Why did these women suffer these savage attacks? What theology inspires this murderous rage? Most importantly: Does it make sense, and can one possess even a shred of a real human heart, to make joking statements in support of Muslim women veiling when one knows that not veiling presents terrifying consequences to the women?

If a person truly cares for human justice, doesn’t it make more sense to stand up for Muslim women’s right not to veil and not to face ferocious violence and mutilation if they choose not veil? If a person has true integrity, wouldn’t they be interested in the Islamic teachings, rooted in the Koran (i.e. Sura 24:31) and in the hadiths [sayings of Mohammed], that mandate veiling and sanction this kind of fascism against women? Wouldn’t a person who is truly devoted to human rights prioritize exposing these teachings and confront them in an effort to eradicate the fertile soil in which the oppression of Muslim women grows?

The key issue, therefore, is that Muslim women are not free to make their own choices and making the wrong choices will culminate in severe punishment. How does Bill O’Reilly not know this? And if he knows it, how can he so cavalierly and flippantly talk about how “most” Muslim women supposedly want to veil? What if Jews, for instance, were once again forced, in any given society, to suddenly start wearing mandatory articles of clothing to identify and distinguish themselves from other people? Would O’Reilly be nonchalantly setting up creepy debates with Laura Ingraham on this issue as well, taking the side of how “most” Jews in that particular situation somehow supposedly wanted to wear the articles of clothing? Does he really not recognize the complete accuracy of this analogy? And does he not gauge the wound he would be delivering to the Jewish people about whom he was speaking? Does he not recognize the same wound he is delivering, with his smug mercilessness, to the millions of Muslim women suffering behind the Islamic Iron Curtain?

One can’t help but ask: what is O’Reilly’s educational background? Has he really never read or heard anything about how despotisms and apartheid structures enforce dress codes for the purpose of totalitarian ends? In all of his years on this planet, has O’Reilly truly never become aware of how the enforcement of such codes plays a crucial role in keeping the structures of tyranny and the enslavement of a people in check? Maoist unisex clothing, for instance, had a ruthless and vicious purpose. Does O’Reilly really not grasp that dress codes in the Islamic world, such as the nikab [full body covering with slits for the eyes] and the burka, which Phyllis Chesler has accurately termed “isolation and sensory deprivation chambers,” play a fundamental role in keeping the chains of gender apartheid in place?

And so, one now wonders: what are Bill O’Reilly’s motives in all of this? When, for instance, will he invite guests like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, and Wafa Sultan? When will he invite Phyllis Chesler, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer? These guests will be able to tell him and his viewers a lot about the fate that Muslim women suffer for not wearing the veil — and the theological reasons for their suffering. They will be able to introduce him to both victims of attempted honor killings and family members of those who have been brutalized or murdered for not wearing the veil.

How much time has O’Reilly really devoted to trying to locate the families of victims of honor killings to invite them on his show? Is he interested? Does he care? How many of his shows have included these kinds of guests and discussions?

Proposition to Bill O’Reilly: Imagine a Muslim woman in a nikab or burka sitting with her husband and family in a house. All of a sudden, she begins to announce that she does not approve of wearing her covering, nor of the Islamic theology behind it. She suddenly throws off her covering and runs outside. And she does this because that is what she wants to do. Question to Bill O’Reilly: What do you think would happen to such an individual? Do you care? Do you support her for following her own conscience? Does her fate in any way make you rethink the wisdom of going on national television, in front of millions of people, and opposing veil bans in the name of “tolerance” and, off the top of your head, talking about how you think “most” Muslim women want to wear the veil?

Feminist hero and a survivor of Islamic oppression, Wafa Sultan, has crystallized this dark and tragic reality well. In talking about the veil and how it is not a choice even when someone would think it appears to be, she says:

In 2005, I traveled to Syria with my American friend. We visited a small Syrian island (Erwad). My friend noticed that the majority of women in that place were head covered. I asked our tour guide to explain the reasoning behind it. I asked: “Are ALL women on this island covered? Without any hesitation he responded: “Yes, they are ALL covered except for a few whores.”

So, yes, it might be their decision, but it’s not their choice. When you make a decision, your society does not necessarily allow you to freely choose. The decision in this case is made to avoid humiliation and reprisal by the Muslim community around these women.

So, to conclude: Bill O’Reilly, keep in mind, that when you justify Muslim veiling without stressing the consequences for Muslim women for not veiling, then you are in league with the oppressors of millions of women — and you are calling out for, and are complicit in, the institutionalization of the burka and nikab.

And so, is there really any other conclusion but that freedom fighters such as David Horowitz, Phyllis Chesler, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Christine Williams, all of whom are on the frontlines fighting for Muslim women, are our society’s real heroes? They are true patriots.

And, hence, for behaving like a dhimmi, and for sacrificing Muslim women on the altar of his own narcissistic yearnings to be popular, to get ratings and to appear as “balanced,” Bill O’Reilly continues to be the ultimate Pinhead. And that’s no joke.

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These photos from Phyllis Chesler’s PajamasMedia site show what happens to real women who wear the Islamic Veil. The photos depict horrifying hate and the unbearable suffering it inflicts upon female innocents. The photos were taken by Emilio Morenatti of the Associated Press. The text is based on work done by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times.

Irum Saeed, 30, poses for a photograph at her office at the Urdu University of Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, July 24, 2008. Irum was burned on her face, back and shoulders twelve years ago when a boy whom she rejected for marriage threw acid on her in the middle of the street. She has undergone plastic surgery 25 times to try to recover from her scars.

Shameem Akhter, 18, poses for a photograph at her home in Jhang, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 10, 2008. Shameem was raped by three boys who then threw acid on her three years ago. Shameem has undergone plastic surgery 10 times to try to recover from her scars.

Najaf Sultana, 16, poses for a photograph at her home in Lahore, Pakistan on Wednesday, July 9, 2008. At the age of five Najaf was burned by her father while she was sleeping, apparently because he didn’t want to have another girl in the family. As a result of the burning Najaf became blind and after being abandoned by both her parents she now lives with relatives. She has undergone plastic surgery around 15 times to try to recover from her scars.

Shehnaz Usman, 36, poses for a photograph in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008ct. 26, 2008
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Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin. Shehnaz was burned with acid by a relative due to a familial dispute five years ago. Shehnaz has undergone plastic surgery 10 times to try to recover from her scars.

MarkDurie.blogspot.com

This is an extraordinarily courageous YouTube video of Nagla Al-Imam, an Egyptian attorney and prominent human rights activist, who has recently converted from Islam to Christ. In this video she sings a spiritual song together with her two children, asking Christ to hold their hands and strengthen them as they go through the high waves of persecution.

Ms. Al-Imam posted this video after she was bashed by the Egyptian security forces: the bruises are clearly visible on her face, and she can barely open her mouth to sing.

In a video interview posted on July 8 with Free Christian Voice, Ms Al-Imam reported that she was taken into custody by the Egyptian security forces. The colonel took her by the hair and bashed her head against his desk, which is the reason for the bruises on her face. She also broke a tooth. She says that the colonel tightened the chain around her neck, mocking her cross on the chain, and told her to watch her neck.  She also said that he told her if she dares to come out of her house he will send some “women” and she should be expecting what will happen to her then. She said that she has not worked for the past year and she has been threatened with being deregistered as a lawyer, and false statements have been made on her behalf to defame her.

According to Islamic law, any Muslim who leaves Islam loses custody of their children. The children are to be placed in the custody of a Muslim relative. This is one of the points made in apostasy fatwas (rulings) issued by the Chief Scholar of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute, His Excellency Shaykh Sa‘id Hijjawi, during the time when he was Grand Mufti of Jordan (from 1992-2007).  (The Aal al-Bayt Institute was the sponsor of the Common Word letter to the Christian world.)

Islam is the only world religion which demands that people who leave it should be killed. As a graduate of Al-Azhar university, Ms Al-Imam is an expert in Sharia law.  She knows this.  Also, Ms Al-Imam’s decision to sing this song with her children would have been done in the full knowledge that, even if she escapes with her life, she is liable to lose custody of her children. Moreover, as an apostate from Islam, Ms Al-Imam has become a legal non-person.  She would be unable to act in her own defense in a court of law, and has most likely lost any capacity to earn her living as a lawyer.

Ms Al-Imam would have been fully aware of the risk of losing her children when she converted to Christianity.  This video has a similar function to the tattooed cross on the wrists of Coptic Christians:  it is a declaration of faith in Christ no matter what may happen. The fact that her children are singing in this video shows that they share their mother’s Christian faith.  She is, I believe, asking the world to pay attention to their fate, and has established a visible witness to the children in the future, should they be taken from her and forced to re-accept Islam.

Nagla Al-Imam has declared on the Internet that she will not flee, but is determined to stay in Egypt.  (See article by Nonie Darwish from August 2009).

You can sign a petition on line here for the support of the freedom of religion in the Muslim world. Your voice will count in removing the suffering of those who suffer for choosing to follow their conscience by leaving Islam. Please take a moment to sign this petition and pass this message on to others who may be willing to sign.

www.Telegraph.co.uk

A group of people face police forces on July 17, 2010 in the neighborhood of Villeneuve in Grenoble, southeastern France. Photo: PHILIPPE MERLE/AFP/Getty Images

Rioters in France have torched cars and opened fire on police offers during an overnight confrontation in the southeastern French city of Grenoble.

The incident begun in the early hours of Saturday morning when rampaging youths stoned a tramway and attacked it with baseball bats and iron bars.

The gangs then set cars on fire and opened fire against officers. The officers returned fire.

Regional security official Brigitte Julien says no one was injured in the incident but one youth, in his twenties, was detained.

The riots came after the death of a Grenoble resident during a robbery in a nearby town.

Karim Boudouda, 27, was one of two men believed to have held up a casino, escaping with more than 20,000 euros ($26,000).

He was killed in a shoot-out with police following the robbery. Violence flared after his memorial service.

Boudouda, 27, had three previous convictions for armed robbery. The other suspect escaped and is still on the run.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux was planning to travel to the town to monitor events.

The riot in Grenoble recalled civil unrest that exploded across France in late 2005 after two teenagers from a rough Parisian suburb died as they were fleeing police.

The deaths touched off almost three weeks of riots across the country, often in the rough suburbs that ring France’s major cities.

These high-rise neighborhoods, built in the 1950s and 1960s to house a growing population of industrial workers and immigrants, have become near-ghettos where unemployment is high, public services are poor, and resentment boils.

During the 2005 riots, some 300 buildings and 10,000 cars were burned, while 130 police and rioters were hurt.

Since then, unrest has flared often after residents have run ins with the police.

Police and government officials have a lingering fear that the poor suburbs could explode again because the underlying causes – high unemployment, few opportunities, drug trafficking and a sense of exclusion from society – have changed little.

Police unions have raised concerns about a rise in violent crime spurred by the recession and a resurgence of drug trafficking in some areas.

Two stories from www.NYDailyNews.com

Carlos Almonte protesting in Manhattan in 2008, holding the sign, 'Death to All Juice.' (Jawa Report)

Jihadist Is An Idiot, Says Former Boss

By Barry Paddock and Rich Schapiro, www.NYDailyNews.com

He wasn’t the brains of the operation.

Carlos Almonte, one of the terror suspects busted at Kennedy Airport, stunned co-workers at a New Jersey computer shop with his stupidity.

“I’m telling you, this kid is not smart,” said a supervisor. “The simplest stuff we told him to do, he couldn’t – like organize this with that.”

Almonte worked at the store for more than a year, but quit about two weeks before his arrest, saying life’s “too expensive” in the Garden State, the supervisor said.

“We were planning to lay him off, but he beat us to it,” said the boss, who spoke on the condition that his name and the shop not be identified.

Almonte told his co-workers he was moving to another state — apparently a cover for his planned trip to Africa. Authorities say Almonte and his wannabe jihadist pal Mohamed Alessa were planning to link up with an al-Qaeda-linked militant group in the hope of getting the chance to kill American troops.

His co-workers were amazed their dunce of a colleague is accused of such an ambitious plot.

“The simplest stuff he cannot do. How’s he going to do something like that?” the supervisor said.

Almonte is not the first accused terrorist to be labeled a bonehead.

Accused Times Square car bomber, Faisal Shahzad, made simple mistakes in constructing a bomb and left behind reams of physical evidence.

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New Jersey Boys Became Jihadis Because They Can’t Land Hotties

By Michael Daly, www.NYDailyNews.com

Feel like a loser?

Never cool at school?

Not much luck with women?

Don’t want to work for a living?

Become a jihadist!

Suddenly, a loser becomes a soldier of Allah with the power of life and death!

Take Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and his buddy Carlos Eduardo Almonte. They were just two nondescript New Jersey video gamers with futures promising only more of the same. Then they grew bushy beards and declared themselves jihadists. They started talking about playing video games for real and maybe cutting off a few heads.

The problem for them was that they looked like jihadists the way young men of other times looked like greasers or hippies. And, the last thing a serious and therefore secretive terrorist organization needs are recruits who might well be wearing big signs saying TERRORIST.

“I wanna, like, be the world’s known terrorist,” Alessa was recorded saying.

No wonder they could not get any terrorist organization to take them when they journeyed to Jordan three years ago.

Back home, they fired themselves up with videos by Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based imam. Not that they needed brainwashing. They had no brains to wash, as they further demonstrated in setting off to join the Al Shabaab terrorists in Somalia. “Shabaab is the main one,” Almonte was recording saying, as if he knew.

Thanks to a tip from one of their relatives, the FBI had been on to them and an undercover NYPD cop had won their trust. They were arrested at Kennedy Airport as they prepared to fly off for a second attempt at becoming real-life terrorists.

Apparently, Allah gives a loser an excuse to make himself a jihadist. And even two wannabe terrorists can draw an overflow crowd of agents, cops and reporters.

“SRO,” a marshal noted.

Likely, the crowd itself and not the sight of his parents in the back of the courtroom prompted Alessa to flash such a disturbingly bright smile.

After all, the loser had what he wanted.

He was a known terrorist.

By Robert Spencer, www.FrontPageMag.com

Aqsa Parvez

Justice was done June 16 when the Muhammad and Waqas Parvez, the father and brother of Aqsa Parvez, received life sentences for strangling her to death in their home in Mississauga, Ontario, on December 10, 2007r 10, 2007
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WP-Bible plugin, when she was sixteen years old. But denial as to how a father and brother could have been moved to murder what should have been a beloved daughter and sister remains all-pervasive. If Canada, the United States and Europe are not going to be the sites of many more Islamic honor killings, that has to change.

Muhammad and Waqas Parvez murdered Aqsa because she would not conform to Islamic behavior codes for women. The Koran commands women to “draw their veils over their bosoms” (24:31), and in a hadith, Aisha, the favorite wife of Islam’s prophet Muhammad recounts that he commanded that once a woman “reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands” (Sunan Abu Dawud 32.4092).

Muhammad Parvez was determined to enforce this command on Aqsa, as well as to force her into an arranged marriage, and she was just as determined to resist. Ultimately she ran away, telling friends that Muhammad Parvez had sworn on the Koran to murder her if she did so. But on December 10, 2007r 10, 2007
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WP-Bible plugin, Waqas Parvez showed up at Aqsa’s bus stop, and took the girl home.

Less than an hour later Muhammad Parvez called 911 to tell them he had killed his daughter. His calm after the killing, and his turning himself in, is common with Islamic honor murders and other killings and attempted killings: one notable example came in February 2009, after moderate Muslim leader Muzzammil Hassan beheaded his wife. He went to a police station, shook an officer’s hand, and then shocked the unsuspecting policeman by telling him: “I want to tell you that I just killed my wife and I’m here to turn myself in.” Similarly, when Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attempted to run over and kill as many students as possible (he killed none but injured nine), he appeared serene and even happy after the attack.

This calm may emanate from a sense that the perpetrators have that they have performed an act pleasing to Allah, and will be rewarded for it. And that also may lead us to where Muhammad Parvez got the idea that Aqsa deserved death for her non-Muslim attitudes, and that it was his right, even his responsibility, to kill her. For the fact is little recognized but unmistakable: Islam provides a broad justification for honor killings, such that a man like Muhammad Parvez would most likely believe that in murdering his daughter, he is not committing a heinous crime, but serving his god in a way that that god would regard as a positive good.

A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

But not being subject to a penalty is one thing, and actually being tolerated is another. Indications of the latter come from Syria, which in July 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honor ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’“

That’s right: two years for murder. Such a light penalty sends a clear signal that honor killings, while still crimes, are understandable and even justifiable: killing a wife or daughter to preserve the honor of the family extenuates the crime of murder to such an extent that it moves cold-blooded killing to the level of minor credit card fraud or less.

In Jordan in 2003, the Parliament voted down, specifically on Islamic grounds, a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

This is why honor killings keep happening — because they are broadly tolerated, even encouraged, by Islamic teachings and attitudes. Yet no authorities are calling Islamic leaders to account for this. The main thing that many analysts want you to know about the death of Aqsa Parvez and other honor killing victims is that they had nothing to do with Islam. Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, declared: “The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to color or creed.” Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario, agreed: “The bottom line is, it’s a domestic violence issue.”

Muhammad Parvez himself didn’t see it that way after killing Aqsa. He grounded his act specifically in the mores of his Islamic community, and clearly believed that that community would regard his killing his daughter more lightly than they would her un-Islamic behavior: “This is my insult. My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.”

The life sentences given to Muhammad and Waqas Parvez give Muslim spokesmen in Canada and the United States a new opportunity. They have a new chance to acknowledge that Islam’s shame/honor culture and devaluation of women has created communities in which abuse of women is accepted as normal. They could call for a searching reevaluation of the meaning and continued relevance of material from the Koran and Sunnah that devalues and dehumanizes women, and call in no uncertain terms for Muslims to reject explicitly and definitively the literal meaning of such texts, now and for all time to come. They could call for sweeping reform and reexamination of the status of women in Islam. They could call upon every mosque in the West to institute classes teaching against honor killing and directly challenging the teachings and assumptions that give it justification.

For any of this to happen, Muslim leaders in the West would have to adopt an utterly unfamiliar and uncharacteristic stance: that of self-reflection and self-criticism, rather than excuse-making, finger-pointing, and evasion of responsibility. But with the mainstream media and law enforcement continuing to abet that evasion, this is unlikely in the extreme. Much more likely is that many, many more Muslim girls in the West will die miserably like Aqsa Parvez. No one is speaking up for them or defending them.

No one, that is, except my colleague in the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, Pamela Geller, who discovered late in 2008 that Aqsa was buried in an unmarked grave. She began an initiative to obtain a tombstone for Aqsa, but encountered resistance from Aqsa’s family and the Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which owns the land in which Aqsa is buried. They refused to approve Geller’s headstone for Aqsa, which gave only her name, dates, and “Beloved, Remembered, Free” – although after all the public attention this initiative brought to the unmarked, they did ultimately provide a modest headstone themselves.

The whole affair showed yet again the tacit approval given to honor killing in all too many Islamic circles. But Geller was not inclined to acquiesce in the multicultural West’s hypocritical tolerance of this horrific practice, and succeeded in getting memorials for Aqsa in another town in Canada, as well as in American Independence Park in Jerusalem. Pamela Geller’s efforts in this epitomized what she be any free person’s reaction to honor killing – moral indignation, efforts to raise awareness of this practice among Westerners, and action to signal to the Muslim community that Westerners will no longer stand idly by as this practice spreads in the West.

For Aqsa’s sake, may there be many more such initiatives.