Daughter raped by brothers, murdered by mother'Thousands of women have been killed'

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | November 18, 2003 | WorldNetDaily.com

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A Palestinian girl who was raped and impregnated by her two brothers was later murdered by her own mother – even though her daughter was the crime's innocent victim – in another of the disturbingly common, if vastly underreported, instances of "honor killings."

The mother will be sentenced in two weeks, but a harsh penalty is not expected.

According to a Knight Ridder report, court records show that Rofayda Qaoud was raped by her brothers, Fahdi, 22, and Ali, 20, in a bedroom they shared in the family's three-room house in the town of Abu Qash in the West Bank. When her mother found she had become pregnant, she insisted her daughter commit suicide, and even bought the unwed teen a razor so she could slash her own wrists. When the daughter refused, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud took matters into her own hands and murdered Rofayda to restore her family's "honor."

Entering her sleeping daughter's bedroom last Jan. 27 with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, reports Knight Ridder, the mother told her daughter: "Tonight you die, Rofayda." Wrapping the bag around the teen's head, Qaoud cut her daughter's wrists, while ignoring her cries of "No, mother, no!" Qaoud then struck her daughter in the head with the stick to finish off the job, said the report.

Every year, dozens and probably hundreds of brutal "honor killings" of Palestinian women and girls – most of whom are virtually blameless – go unreported, according to an anthropologist's recent study.

In a story for World and I magazine, James Emery says women in the communities of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel and Jordan are killed by male kinsmen in an attempt to protect the reputations of their families.

Emery says the women "are murdered in their homes, in open fields and occasionally in public, sometimes before crowds of cheering onlookers."

Most occur among Muslims in poor, rural tribal areas or among uneducated urban dwellers, he says, although the practice is not explicitly condoned by the Islamic holy book, the Quran.

In the feudal, patriarchal societies of the Middle East, writes Emery, "honor is based on what men feel is important, and reputation is everything."

"Unfortunately," he says, "thousands of women have been killed in the name of honor because imagination and rumors are as important as actions and events."

When a girl's chastity is in question, he says, her family feels the shame, even if she is raped or the rumors prove unsubstantiated.

"A woman shamed is like rotting flesh," a Palestinian merchant told Emery. "If it is not cut away, it will consume the body. What I mean is the whole family will be tainted if she is not killed."

Emery says the reasons for honor killings include allegations of premarital or extramarital sex, for refusing an arranged marriage or attempting to obtain a divorce, or simply for talking with a man. The murders normally are carried out by fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, cousins or sons.

Among Palestinians, all sexual encounters, including rape and incest, are blamed on the woman.

"The issue of consent is irrelevant when it comes to honor killings," says Marsha Freeman, director of the International Women's Rights Action Watch. "It has to do with the woman being defiled. It completely objectifies the woman as being about her sexuality and purity. It makes her not human."

Under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, at least 25 "official" honor killings occur each year, says Emery, but the actual number of deaths is much higher.

Because honor killings are accorded special status, murderers serve little or no jail time, the anthropologist notes. Some men convicted of premeditated murder serve as little as three months and are treated as celebrities by family and friends upon release.

Emery has done extensive research in Palestinian communities and has lived and traveled overseas for a number of years. He is an expert witness on Asian and Arab culture in civil and criminal cases and a lecturer on Middle Eastern terrorism.

He says the murder of females in the Middle East is an ancient tradition that began prior to the arrival of Islam in A.D. 622. Arabs sometimes buried infant daughters to avoid the possibility they would later bring shame to the family, Emery notes.

In the case of Rofayda Qaoud, the mother will appear before a three-judge panel on Dec. 3. She says her husband, Abdul Rahim, urged her not to do it, and said the Quran forbids "honor" killings. The Knight Ridder account says Rofayda gave birth to a healthy boy last Dec. 23, who has been adopted by another Palestinian family.

Honor killings committed in the heat of passion generally carry a light term – six months to one year in jail. Qaoud's premeditated act is likely be earn her a stiffer sentence – perhaps three to five years, said the report. Yet the fact that she was attempting to save her family's honor means she's not guilty of premeditated murder, which can get the death penalty. The two brothers are serving minimum 10-year jail sentences for raping their sister.

Related stories:

Muslim slays daughter in 'honor killing'

Sisters axed in Muslim 'honor killing'

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"Religion of peace" alert.

[Damocles]

These "people" leave me speechless...

[Dudoight]

And nothing happened to the sons? Did the mother still fix their coffee in the morning....serve their cous cous? Unbelievable.

[JustPiper]

Need to read and please ping your lists!

[Free ThinkerNY]

If these things were happening in Israel, the Leftist media and the useless human rights groups would be foaming at the mouth.

[StriperSniper]

in an attempt to protect the reputations of their families.

They damage the reputation of all their 'culture'.

[biblewonk]

Religion of dogs alert.

[dsc]

"If these things were happening in Israel, the Leftist media and the useless human rights groups would be foaming at the mouth."

What, hypocrisy among the lying scumbags of the left? Naaah, couldn't be.

There's a rational, moral explanation for their Jew-bashing that doesn't involve hypocrisy, surely.

I mean, just because they spent fifty-plus years impugning non-leftists for anti-semitism, then turn around and join forces with the Mohammedan hordes on an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" basis, that's no reason to rush to judgment and call liberals hypocrites, or liars, or moral lepers, or blood enemies of civilization, or clots of filth, or a stench in the nostrils of decency, or crawling insects with hairy legs and a penchant for disgusting perversions, or any such accurate description.

We should leave name-calling to those crazed extremists over on the far right wing, like, say, Jay Rockefeller.

[Lizavetta]

The faster we import McDonalds, the Internet, capitalism, and liberty to these people, the better.

If MY only alternatives in life were jihad and/or glory to Allah, and endless poverty and sand dunes, I'd probably do stupid shit like this too.

[dsc]

"I'd probably do stupid sh-t like this too."

Like kill your daughter? You'll forgive me if I refuse to believe that.

[dsc]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1103/honor_killing.php3

[samtheman]

"The issue of consent is irrelevant when it comes to honor killings," says Marsha Freeman, director of the International Women's Rights Action Watch. "It has to do with the woman being defiled. It completely objectifies the woman as being about her sexuality and purity. It makes her not human."

I wonder how loudly Marsha speaks of this to the Leftist Sisterhood of which she is undoubtedly a member.

I suspect not very loudly at all. Her friends at NOW and NARAL don't want to hear any politically incorrect criticism of Muslim men.

[samtheman]

And what of Islam? What do the clerics say of this? Where is the spiritual guidance to prevent such barbaric and disgusting acts?

But then, what can you expect from a religion that was founded by a man who raped a 6 year old girl?

Like father, like sons.

[cherry]

"Among Palestinians, all sexual encounters, including rape and incest, are blamed on the woman. "

I would say that is pretty much the norm in good old America too....

[dsc]

"I would say that is pretty much the norm in good old America too...."

And I would say that never was true, and has become even less true than ever before.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I think I'll book a vacation in Palestine. I hear Hell is crowded this time of year.

[dsc]

"Her friends at NOW and NARAL don't want to hear any politically incorrect criticism of Muslim men."

I suspect they'll have to ignore it, like they ignore slavery in Africa and...

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"When whites commit violence, they to it to blacks 2.4 percent of the time. Blacks, on the other hand, choose white victims more than half the time."

"What Should Be Done," US News & World Report (August 22, 1989), p. 54. See also Department of Justice, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1987 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), p.7.

In those cases in which the race of the killer is known, blacks kill twice as many whites as whites kill blacks. Black-on-white robberies and gang assaults are twenty-one times more common than white on black. In the case of gang robbery, blacks victimize whites fifty-two times more often than whites do blacks.

The contrasts are even more stark in the case of interracial rape. Studies from the late 1950s showed that the vast majority of rapes were same-race offenses. Research in Philadelphia carried out in 1958 and 1960 indicated that of all rapes, only 3.2 percent were black-on-white assaults and 3.6 percent were white-on-black. Since that time, the proportion of black-on-white rapes has soared. In a 1974 study in Denver, 40 percent of all rapes were of whites by blacks, and not one case of white-on-black rape was found. In general, through the 1970s, black-on-white rape was at least ten times more common that white-on-black rape.

Because interracial rape is now overwhelmingly black on white, it has become difficult to do research on it or to find relevant statistics. The FBI keeps very detailed national records on crime, but the way it presents rape data obscures the racial element rather than clarifies it.

Dr. William Wilbanks, a criminologist at Florida International University, had to sift carefully through the data to find that in 1988 there were 9,406 cases of black-on-white rape and fewer than ten cases of white-on-black rape. Another researcher concludes that in 1989...black men raped white women thirty times as often as white men raped black women.

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Of course, no "right-thinking" liberal would bring this subject up, and anyone else who did would be pilloried as a "racist."

I bring it up not to assert that any race is genetically more likely to rape than any other, but to compare the figures in the late 50s with later figures, and assert that "liberal" policies are directly responsible.

The liberals manage to remain mum about this; they won't have any trouble repeating, "Islam is a religion of peace" with a straight face.

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"I think I'll book a vacation in Palestine."

Just where, exactly, would that be?

[samtheman]

Islam is a religion of peace.

Liberalism is an intelligent political point of view.

Both statements have equal validity.

[Nagatsubo]

Hello my friend,

I'm disappointed not to see any of your own thoughts on this as I know and value your razor intellect. So, my feeble attempt to drag you into open commentary based on your original post would be this....

Do you see this as endemic of basic human nature, fundamental evil at work, or a combination of the two? What defines a deliminator of the two, if anything?