No international furor saved Aqsa Parvez, a Toronto teenager, whose father was charged on Dec. 11 with strangling her to death because she refused to wear a hijab. "She just wanted to look like everyone else," one of Aqsa's friends told the National Post, "and I guess her dad had a problem with that." No reprieve came for Banaz Mahmod, either. She was 20, a Kurdish immigrant to Britain, whose father and uncle had her killed last year after she left an abusive arranged marriage and fell in love with a man not from the family's village in Kurdistan. Banaz was choked to death with a bootlace, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in a garden 70 miles away. More than 25 such "honor killings" have been confirmed in Britain's Muslim community in recent years. Many more are suspected. [...]
By Western standards, the subjugation of women by Muslim fanatics, and the sometimes pathological Islamist obsession with female sexuality, are unthinkable. Time and again they lead to shocking acts of violence and depravity: [...] In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after she uncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor at a friend's wedding. [...]
All these are only examples - the tip of a dreadful iceberg that will never be demolished until Muslims by the millions rise up against it. As for the rest of us, we too have an obligation to raise our voices. It took a worldwide outcry to spare "Qatif girl" and Nazanin. But there are countless others like them, and our silence may seal their fate.
[Article continues at link. The West is largely a Christian culture, but a secular Christian culture. Christianity is still tied to the Bible and all its support for slavery, all its oppression of women, all its scientific nonsense. But secular Christianity can simply ignore these cruel and foolish practices, picking out the good stuff from the Bible and getting on with things. The Muslim world has so far rejected the secular and has no intention of getting rid of its support for slavery, all its oppression of women, all its scientific nonsense. I hope the Muslim world can get its act together, keep the good stuff and join the rest of us in the 21st Century (even joining the 19th would be an improvement), but there isn't much the West can peacefully do to make that happen. But we can do something about honor killings in the West. Prosecute the murderers and their murderous support system. Use the same techniques that were successful against the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia - crushing taxation, relentless arrests and incarceration, and inescapable social opprobrium. No honor for honor killers, not one second of respect for their sacred traditions and ancient culture. - Trevor Blake]
Labels: superstition, theocracy
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