Tel-Chai Nation

It's very good to see a mainstream paper reporting on these horrific cases in the US with sufficient accuracy. The New York Post (via Jihad Watch) runs an article, beginning with one of the not too many where it's the wife who's culprit, instead of the husband:

In what may be the first recorded instance of a Muslim wife attempting to murder her husband for not being pious enough, a Staten Island woman was charged this week with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon. Rabia Sarwar, a 37-year-old Muslim, said she did it because her husband, a 41-year-old Pakistani native, enjoyed booze and pork and wanted her to dress in revealing clothes. (She held fabric over her face and threw a shawl over her head before leaving court on Thursday.)

While the Sarwar case is sensational by dint of the role-reversal and the method of attempted murder (throat-slitting), it’s also pedestrian: Over the past two years, there have been about a dozen attempted or successful honor killings committed in the US.

Last week in Arizona, an Iraqi-born man tried to kill his 20-year-old daughter because she wanted out of her arranged marriage; he escaped.

In July, a 17-year-old named Rifqa Bary ran away from home because, she said, her Muslim family would literally kill her for converting to Christianity. (She has been ordered by a Florida court to return to her home state of Ohio, where she will appear before another judge.)

So: Why is there such a recent spate of honor killings in America? What does it mean when a woman tries to exact the same vengeance that’s been wreaked upon her gender by men for centuries?

“This is not a reverse honor-killing — it’s martyrdom,” says Islamic apostate and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself the target of death threats. “It’s a ticket for heaven for her, to clear her books. The only exception that’s made for a wife or daughter to disobey her husband or father is if he forces her to do something that’s un-Islamic. This is a message to other Muslims: ‘This man is defying God. What am I supposed to do?’”

“The vast majority of honor killings do appear to be cases where there is some attempt to violate or leave [Muslim] cultural norms,” says David Bryan Cook, associate professor of religious studies at Rice University. “They’ve been going on in the US and Britain for a number of years, but in the recent past they’ve gotten a lot more publicity.”

Actually, it's thanks more to the internet that they've gotten more attention.

Labels: islam, misogyny, United States