No Honor (on the honor killings)

National Review Online ^ | 7/12/06 | Kathryn Jean Lopez

[blitzgig]

Samaira Nazir was brutally and needlessly murdered. The 25-year-old in Southall, England, was killed in April of last year by her 30-year-old businessman brother — all in the name of “honor.” He stabbed her, cutting her throat in front of his young children, ages 2 and 4.

Samaira had turned down family arrangements for marriage and ultimately fell for another man, an Afghan her family said was from the wrong — lower — caste. As a prosecutor put it, “It would appear she lost her life for loving the wrong man.”

Her brother, appropriately, has been found guilty of murder, and is facing the prospect of life in prison. And the good news, if it can be called “good,” is that you’re reading about Samaira and her story. Her name lives on and makes headlines. And in her memory, we’ll keep any veil from covering the next time this happens — until, finally, there is no next time for these “honor killings” that are anything but honorable.

We’ll remember, too, Ghazala Khan, who was shot dead in a town west of Copenhagen, Denmark, this past September, by her brother, just two days after her wedding. Her death won’t go unpunished, either: Both her brother and her father, along with other family members (six in total were all involved in the planning of the murder, which had been ordered by her father) are now in jail for their crime.

The murders of Samaira Nazir and Ghazala Khan are infuriating and tragic. But that we know about them, and that civilized society is refusing to tolerate what happened, is cause for hope.

Honor killings, to be honest, are hard to write about — in part because they are so brutal. No one really wants to read that Samaira’s blood splattered on her young nieces as they were made to watch, authorities believe, the perverse execution — including her escape attempts. (Neighbors reported seeing her dragged back into the family home by her hair.) But what makes it even more difficult is the sense that the honor killings we know about may be the tip of a horrific iceberg.

You see, honor killings sometimes (possibly most often) go completely unreported: Murders will be disguised as suicides, and no one outside of a particular family will know what really happened. Some will be killed and never found. In Jordan, just a few weeks ago, three bodies were found in makeshift graves outside Amman — three sisters, killed 12 years ago by their brother (again, on their father’s orders) for “immoral behavior.” The family told anyone who asked that the girls had left the country.

As the free world wages an international war on militant-Islamic terrorism, nations like Britain and Denmark need to confront this far more domestic form of terrorism. And it is Muslims who face a special challenge, as word of these honor killings spreads. As many honor killings involve Muslim families — they need to make it clear that they will not tolerate these atrocities, often committed in the name of Islam.

Here in the West we are constantly cautioned, when we encounter news of a terrorist plot in which Muslims happen to be involved, not to take out our anger on Muslims in general, which is only sensible. One shouldn’t lash out at a whole group of people because a member of the group did something awful. But what we really need are loud Muslim voices of outrage. They’re out there, but not quite loud enough yet. Moderate, mainstream Muslims — those who abhor the kind of values that condone honor murders — need to speak out against those who are bringing such shame upon their religion.

This kind of speech can have a global effect. As Nina Shea of Freedom House has pointed out, “even Islamist totalitarian governments like Iran and Saudi Arabia can be shamed by public exposure. There are examples where these governments have desisted from executing stonings and other hideous human-rights atrocities after a public outcry either in the West or at home.” Bat Ye’or, a scholar of Islamic culture, says we need to denounce these atrocities vigorously “because secrecy is the best friend of crimes.”

Denounce them not just for the sake of those who died; the Samaira Nazirs and Ghazala Khans, who can’t tell their own horrible tales; denounce them also for the “lucky” ones like Noor Jehan, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot five times by her cousins (by order of her father) because she wouldn’t submit to her arranged marriage. She told reporters, “They thought I was dead but ... somehow I got courage to come out of that ditch.”

Hundreds of women and girls are believed to be killed this way in Pakistan annually. Muslims need to start leading, and take their religion out of that deadly ditch.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online. Copyright 2006, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

[Gay State Conservative]

This is what happens when women sign up with iHarmony.com.

[Rummyfan]

What kind of animal murders its own offspring for marrying someone the parents didn't approve of? RoP bump.

[navyguy]

"Moderate, mainstream Muslims — those who abhor the kind of values that condone honor murders — need to speak out against those who are bringing such shame upon their religion."

Not gonna happen. Ever.

Besides, Islam is the Religion of Peace, and we should be more sensitive to the cultural need of Muslims to decapitate young girls. We need to recognize that this is all part of diversity and we would be racist not to be more inclusive of this cultural tradition.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

They hate the West. Why are they here ?

[rock_lobsta]

If there are these so-called 'Moderate muslims', I gather that they don't rat on their religion out of the possibility of reprisal. Those few that do speak out of the injustices of islam soon find that some wacko imam put out a fatwa for their execution.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Among them is a very little boy, who chews tobacco like a very big one; and a droning gentleman, who talks arithmetically and statistically on all subjects, from poetry downwards; and who always speaks in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, and with very grave deliberation. He came outside just now, and told me how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had been spirited away and married by a certain captain, lived in these parts; and how this uncle was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn't wonder if he were to follow the said captain to England, 'and shoot him down in the street wherever he found him;' in the feasibility of which strong measure I, being for the moment rather prone to contradiction, from feeling half asleep and very tired, declined to acquiesce: assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified any other little whim of the like nature, he would find himself one morning prematurely throttled at the Old Bailey: and that he would do well to make his will before he went, as he would certainly want it before he had been in Britain very long.

From Dickens's "American Notes."

[GladesGuru]

The author is a female who can't quite break with the Liberalism she was exposed to during her education as a presstitute.

Her line " - what we really need are loud Muslim voices of outrage. They’re out there, but not quite loud enough yet." is a case in point. "Pressie" starts with a reasonable statement about the need for Muslim 'voices of outrage' which seems like a good start. It is a good start.

But she can't break with the Party Line and then she slips over the edge into egregious presstitution with the next sentence.

"They’re out there, but not quite loud enough yet." says Pressie of the Muslims. No, they are Not quite loud enough, Pressie. What is worse is that "they" are both exceeding few in number, ignored by their fellow neck cutters, and barely whispering under their breath so that their necks are not cut by their co-religionists.

Pressie needs to read Churchill's The River War, and in particular, his description of Islam and its negative impact on all peoples that have adopted it.

[thulldud]

They hate the West. Why are they here ?

To get rid of it.

[cinives]

loved this one: As many honor killings involve Muslim families

Can anyone point to any so-called "honor" killings that did NOT involve Muslims ?

[synbad600]

Great book re: this is Burned Alive : A Victim of the Law of Men (Hardcover) by Souad, Judith Armbruster (Translator)

[bruin66]

I think you mean eHarmony. I know, I know...

[Democratshavenobrains]

Its not unknown in the Christian world for relatives to kill a woman for marrying outside her race/religion etc. However, they were much more common centuries ago and even the ones that exist today are so outside the norm and crazy that they have no support outside the KKK or skinheads.