The big crime story on the right side of the blogosphere is the brutal murder of Dallas teens Sarah and Amina Said by their Egyptian born father who was said to be angry at their “western lifestyles.” He shot his two daughters in his cab and is still on the loose after police failed to find him after an early morning raid on his posh Lakeland Drive home.
The media bent over backwards to avoid calling this crime an honor killing, though it’s all but proven that these girls died because they dared to be independent of the brutally repressive culture of Wahabbist Islam that plagues the once proud land of Egypt. Interviews with the girls’ friends prove they were terrified of their tyrant of a father and his views:
Sisters, Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, were each shot to death. Friends of the girls say their father was Egyptian and critical of popular American lifestyles. “I’m definitely 100% sure that it was her dad that killed her,” said Kathleen Wong, a friend of the dead teenagers.
Wong says the girl’s father was verbally abusive and that Sarah, especially, lived in fear. “She’s always told me that she was always so scared of her dad,” says Wong. “Even at school if a teacher joked around like, ‘I’m gonna tell your parents about this’, she would like totally flip out and start crying like, ‘please don’t tell’.”
Though there are many abusive fathers of all religious persuasions, it is wrong to ignore the radical motivation for this crime, an expression of “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” according to some. Though others, like Wonkette, scoff at the theory and these girls’ deaths.
On the heels of this is this news from England, where it’s said that a conservative estimate places the number of women in England who have undergone genital mutilation at 66,000.
Gateway has news of another “Honor” Killing, this one in Chicago where an Indian man killed his daughter and her husband and children because the husband was of “a lower caste” and thus beneath him. The killer may be Hindu or Muslim, it isn’t being reported but the spread of such evil cannot stand in our country.
Aqsa Parvez was murdered in Toronto less than a month ago in similar circumstances. She attempted to flee her Jihadist father to no avail. The reaction from an increasingly radicalized Muslim community shocked older Muslims who were otherwise at odds with those of us who think Jihadism is a dangerous threat to our national security. From Khalid Hasan’s Daily Times piece:
The most shameful part of the Aqsa tragedy lies in the on line and off line rumors that those who consider themselves “rightly guided†have been circulating. Some suggested that she had a black boyfriend (note the racism), others that she was sexually promiscuous, and some even called her a drug pusher. In other words, her father had every moral right to kill her, is the message. The Canadian imams, many of them in their self-styled attires and operatic headgear came out with other justifications. Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of a Toronto mosque, said, “Women who wear hijabs occupy higher positions in Islam, according to religious teachings.†Where did the imam get that because nowhere does Islam lay that out? He also said, “We cannot let culture supersede religion. If we stay away from the teachings of Islam, we will pay for it.†Translated into straight language, it means that since Aqsa stayed away from the teachings of Islam, she had to “pay for itâ€. Imam Iqbal Nadvi of Oakville’s Al-Falah Islamic Centre mosque said, “Parents fail and bring shame upon themselves if a child chooses to abandon holy writings and not wear the hijab. It is their duty to convince their kids that this is part of their culture.†In other words, Aqsa’s father was justified in killing her because she would not wear the hijab. He also said that Aqsa was “going in the wrong direction, going with some other boy or some other thing.†That being so, she got what was coming to her and good riddance that was.
These attitudes are not just prevelant among a new generation of Muslims here, but prevailing world wide. There is a new column out in the Yemeni Times stating clearly that violence against women is not only justified, but necessary. How many Muslims in the West are reading it now and applying that “wisdom” to their own families?
We in the West sit silent as Muslim women, seeking only to enjoy the same freedoms as every other westerner, are massacred. Why?
Is it because to discuss assimilation into Western society, even of the most basic value of not murdering your daughter, has become off limits due to political correctness? Is it an affront to multiculturalism to tell Muslim men that religious beliefs aside women cannot be treated as property here?
Would we be as forgiving of any other group?
It is both bigoted and treasonous for Americans particularly, but the West in general, to abandon the ideal of gender equality for the Muslim women who live among us. It is a betrayal of our culture and heritage that undermines our society in a thousand different ways, most importantly by robbing us of these bright young women who were slaughtered by our cowardice.
Hot Air has a new Jihad Watch dealing with the left’s inaction in the face of these barbaric murders. It makes a good point, but what’s our (the right) excuse for inaction?
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It’s pretty obvious to a trained eye that the murders of the Said sisters were dishonor killings.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
Thanks for posting that. Anyone interested in learning more about “honor” killings can grab Ellen’s book on Amazon.com. Profits from the sale contribute to “honor” killings work.
Hello, Rob. The one in Chicago is Hindu: he said the husband of his daughter belong to a lower caste. That is a typical sign of Hindu extremism.
Anyway, in any case, all of these murders have one thing in common: a consideration of women as a thing which belongs to their family. Till this kind of ideology is pursued, whatever the man/woman/family/etc. which supports them, we are going to have that problem for ever…
Lastly, I’m linking your post… 😀
Thanks. And you’re 100% right, in both these cases religion was a factor but so was a medieval mindset where the ownership of women by male relatives was natural. I think the main culpret in these crimes is the West’s unwillingness to push for assimilation into basic Western values for all our citizens. These girls were Americans after all, they deserved more from my fellow Americans, just as Aqsa Parvez deserved more from her fellow Canadians.
That has been my fight since the beginning. If we don’t defend our values, our law system, our own culture, no one is going to.
We have been used to listen to people considering this as “very funny” cultural differences and that’s NOT THE TRUTH. If you want to eat tortilla instead of fish and chips, OK, because that’s a cultural difference which is not confronting our values. If you want to kill your daughter because he does not act like what you want, then you must know all the rule of law is going to fall down on you.
And by the way, I’m sure, the Hindu killing has been motivated by the lack of response that in Western countries we have against this type of acts. It’s very sad, but that’s reality.
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Spot on! My wife and I go to a little Mexican lunch stand a few times a week where we get (very delicious) Mexican food from a lovely family who maintain some of their Mexican culture while assimilating into America, and they are very successful. Yet there are also a large group of Latin American immigrants who speak no English in the area who have been relegated to working per diem in a car wash. Compared to the business owning family their lives are miserable.
America has done our immigrant population a diservice by changing the “melting pot” into a multicultural jumble where our common bonds have been severed and our differences accentuated. These girls above are paying the price.
The hindu murder is especially disturbing because it speaks to the importation of India’s barbaric caste system here. I’ve know many Indians in New Jersey where I’m from originally and that community is very isolated. It’s shameful and young women are paying the price.
Exactly. It’s just the same here in Spain. People with very good integration are successful. People with a very bad integration grade are not, so they are just going to enter gangs or criminal organizations in general (you have to make a living of something) or are going to be “integrated” in very extreme ideologies. This is the truth but forget the MSM to tell that. It’s not politically correct.
You must blame not the bad integrated immigrants, who have chosen not to integrate by themselves, but the people living HERE peacefully. It is just another case of simple cowardice: the non-integrated are much more dangerous than normal, integrated folks… 🙁
The West seems intent on denying the probelm until it’s too late. I’m afraid it’ll take another massive terror attack here before we wake up to the threats both within and without.
Excellent post. I wrote about the same issue this morning and surmised that, nah, religion has nothing to do with it, even though it’s just Islam in all its stupefying bloody detestable gore, a gore repeated over and over again in Islam’s history, and amazingly so, this culturereligion is very alluring to millions and millions of people, which probably explains why Barak “Hussein” Obama won the Iowa caucus last nite. God help us.
It’s troubling that radical Islam is so much more potant than the admitedly few Muslims who are preaching modernization. I sometimes think it’s because there are too few reformers in Islam willing to stand up, but I’m afraid that Islam as a philosphy is set up in such a way as to make a reformation impossible.
Good blog, Rob! It’s sad that those who could, immediately, correct the immigration problem, fail! They, both political parties, fail for want of power via votes and cater to multiculturalism and the country loses.
“Muslims in England have made it clear that they have no intention of being assimilated into the host society; instead it is up to the host country to change . . seperate rights . . seperate privileges”, (ibn Warraq, in Why I Am Not a Muslim”.
Doing something about it rests with our citizens, not Washinton. Join a local chapter of ACT! for America,