An honor killing in Texas?

Here is the story from the Dallas/Ft. Worth paper: Teen girls shot

This caught my eye for two reasons: primarily, because we used to live less than 3 miles from the high school these girls attended, and difficult child had several friends there when she was in middle school and just getting involved in drugs and partying ('94/'95).

The other reason is that this type of killing, which very well may be an "honor killing" (where a father or brother kills a girl who has brought "dishonor" on the family, usually by becoming involved in a relationship with a boy; they are common in strict Muslim countries), has been virtually unknown in the west but is becoming increasingly common in Europe and now is being seen in the USA, Canada and Australia.

I read a comment by JoG on jessica_j's thread about being treated as a servant by the in-laws: "Nowhere does it say that the wife has to do everything and be a slave to H's entire family. What, are you the designated family mule?" That is very true in our culture, but in parts of the world where honor killings occur, which now is becoming everywhere, it is a very different story, and the daughter-in-law is regarded as a servant of her husband's entire family.
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
OMG - the depths and breadths that people are willing to go to - and some high zoot attorney will get them off - just like (orangejuice)

Good find HWGA - tragic story!
 
The feminist movement here has gone so far off the deep end that it no longer resonates with most of us. But there was a timehere in our own country when it was absolutely legal for a man to beat his wife and children.

There was a time when children could only be protected from abusive parents because they qualified as animals ~ and while there were no child-protection laws on the books, there were laws addressing cruelty to animals.

Although we hear ad nauseum about how awful our country, our values, our systems of government and religion are here in the West, we hear very, very little about the wonder, the incredible, never before realized wonder, of what has been created, here in this City on a Hill.

We hear all the time that we are free, but we really have no idea anymore, what freedom means.

Belief systems such as those which encourage honor killings are one of the many things we are free FROM.

And it goes beyond the deaths of the sisters.

The more horrible part of these kinds of deaths is that the lives of the murdered women are seen as less important than the honor of the murdering father.

He would be more ashamed to be seen as a father who lost control of his daughters than to be seen as a father who, seeing his daughters running out of control, murdered them both.

Just imagine that mindset, along with everything it says about men, and women, and personhood, for a minute.


*********************


Red Azalea was written by a Chinese woman raised during the regime of Mao Tse Tung. Reading that book will describe the things we are free FROM further.

The writer loves the West, loves this country, loves her own potential, here.

In the book, she describes the highest freedom here as being the freedom to love.

Freedom to love God, to love herself, to love a man or a child or a piece of art having nothing to do with the ruling political system.

I will get down from my soapbox, now.

Thank you for posting this, HWGA.

Barbara
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Even though wife beating is illegal, it is unfortunately still a fact of life for many women even here in the enlightened USA.

I have never understood why the word feminism has gotten such a bad rap. It simply means "a doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men."

Anyone that has doubts about advocating women’s rights needs to read Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. His description of the treatment of women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan is utterly horrifying up to and including childbirth by c-section without anesthesia.

Women in Saudi Arabia cannot drive, leave their houses by themselves, or travel without written permission from a husband or father. Yet, the USA considers this country to be an important ally. Can you imagine the outcry if these things were done to a race instead of a gender?

Somehow, because it is only women that this is happening to makes it okay to consider them the good guys (politics make strange bedfellows indeed).

It makes me sick.

~Kathy
 

klmno

Active Member
This is horrible. Even though I understand this man was raised in a different culture, I can't see ever justifying this- I wonder if the mother forgives him or thinks he's nuts.
 

Fran

Former desparate mom
kimno,I don't think the mother's opinion holds any weight. She is totally submissive to her husband and her culture. She doesn't like it that her daughters are murdered doesn't matter as long as mom serves dinner on time, follows the rules and sleeps with her husband at his whim.
 

Stella Johnson

Active Member
OMG - the depths and breadths that people are willing to go to - and some high zoot attorney will get them off - just like (orangejuice)

Good find HWGA - tragic story!


No high zoot attorney can get someone off for that in Texas. We stick them with a needle faster than any other state. I am 99% sure this guy will get the needle. Too bad we don't have Sparky any longer.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
I thought of NY and NJ as having more extremist Muslim immigrants but I suppose TX has now found its place on the map.
So sad. These people really must send their kids to public schools and educate them, to avoid creating yet another genertion of Medieval thinking murderers.
 

Steely

Active Member
Scary that this happened about 5 miles from where I live..........and even more scary that in my opinion, very little press is being designated to the nature of this crime. It seems it is very hush, hush..........and is being treated as a murder I would not have known, unless I read it about it on page 20 of the Dallas Morning News.

On the flip side, on the front page, we just released our 15th innocent prisoner from prison due to DNA re-testing. Sigh.........our city is a mess.
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
Tragic, and so very wrong.
Something like this happened just before Christmas, here in Toronto.
Honour Killing?

Now another bright young life has been snuffed out, far before her time.

What I find most frustrating in all of the discussions in our local media about this killing, is that so many of the pundits seem to be so worried about being branded racist, that they are dancing around the issue of Honour Killing, and trying to come up with so many other reasons that this happened. Until everyone can discuss this issue honestly and openly, and examine all the things that went horribly wrong, we can't take the right steps to stop it from happening again.
 
What I find most frustrating in all of the discussions in our local media about this killing, is that so many of the pundits seem to be so worried about being branded racist, that they are dancing around the issue of Honour Killing, and trying to come up with so many other reasons that this happened. Until everyone can discuss this issue honestly and openly, and examine all the things that went horribly wrong, we can't take the right steps to stop it from happening again.
Yes, if you notice, the Texas paper avoided the issue too. A "domestic dispute" with a "strict father".

In Canada, the newsmagazine Macleans has been hauled before the Canadian Human Rights Commission by the Canadian Islamic Congress for publishing an excerpt from the book "America Alone", charging the magazine with inciting Islamophobia. One particular quote in the excerpt, cited in the complaint, actually came from a radical Swedish imam. Let me repeat that. According to the complaint, accurately quoting an Islamic cleric is inciting Islamophobia. In other words, truth is no defense. In Europe, intimidation by mob violence incited by radical imams has the same effect -- several European governments have passed limitations on insulting religion as a result, and everybody knows which religion it is that may not be insulted (hint: it is not Christianity, which is insulted with impunity). And in the USA, imams staged a disruption at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport so that they could bring a racial profiling complaint (when did religion become a racial characteristic?).

Nuisance complaints such as these are designed and orchestrated to silence critics. They have no merit, but even if eventually dismissed, as they generally are, authors, editors and publishers will stop and think twice as to whether they really want to have to spend a lot of time and money defending themselves. Far too often they take the easy route and just avoid certain topics.
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
These are strange, strange times we live in.

I'm trying not to get political, and I hope that I'm not breaking board rules with this discussion...

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, once a body that was truly interested in fighting for people's rights, has been co-opted by those who want to silence dissenting voices.

One of my favourite magazines (The Western Standard, dealing with regional Canadian issues, politics and other items that we in the cities generally don't hear about) was forced out of business because of exactly this sort of nuisance lawsiut, put forward by the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Mark Steyn, author of America Alone, wrote for the Standard and also writes for Macleans. The Standard was a small, independently published magazine that just didn't have the financial resources to keep fighting, so they had to shut their doors.

I don't like it at all.

Trinity
 

susiestar

Roll With It
So very scary, but very much a reality for so many women.

The university in my town has given us a lot of diversity, more than most universtiy towns, simply because we are an agricultural school. One friend of mine in high school was very afraid of this. He mother had a Ph.D. and was working on her second one. Her father ran a foreign foods store. HE ruled. What her mother thought, wanted, believed, whatever had NO value in their house. My friend was a very straight arrow until after graduation. She managed to find her birth papers and citizenship papers one day. She moved out the next.

We still are close, and her dad has come a long way, but they had a marriage arranged for her back in Libya, and at one point during college tried to forcibly send her to Libya. This man had visited, he was 20 years older and very very violent. He backhanded her when she was "late" coming home for dinner. It was their first meeting.

Her mother ONLY stood up to her father when it came to female castration. It caused a major battle, apparently, and her mother only won because it would "shame" her father to be brought before the courts in the US.

My friend is now happily married with 2 little girls. Her husband is NOT muslim, and clearly she has equality in her marriage. I am very happy for her, because she has escaped the horrific life her father had planned.

I remember, clearly, having her sleep over at my house and several other friends who had strong fathers at home while they "worked out" the female castration issue. It still sends shudders up my spine. About 6 of us had her "spend the night" and we were working up a pool for her to leave town.

There is no Honor in the treatment of women in so many countries. And in some faiths.
 
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