Major study of honor killings in Mid East Quarterly

Phyllis Chesler has produced a comprehensive study of honor killing showing they are not what US feminists define as domestic violence. The study has charts and notes and cites that will assist US feminists to define the oppression of Muslim women in the face of opposition from the male left which excuses it. It also will prepare US feminists to resist the Islamization of US culture.

Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?
by Phyllis Chesler

Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2009, pp. 61-69
http://www.meforum.org/article/2067

On February 12, 2009, Muzzammil Hassan informed police that he had beheaded his wife. Hassan had emigrated to the United States 30 years ago and, after a successful banking career, had founded Bridges TV, a Muslim-interest network which aims, according to its website, "to foster a greater understanding among many cultures and diverse populations." Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III told The Buffalo News that "this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," and Khalid Qazi, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, told the New York Post that Islam forbid such domestic violence. While Muslim advocacy organizations argue that honor killings are a misnomer stigmatizing Muslims for what is simply domestic violence, a problem that has nothing to do with religion, Phyllis Chesler, who just completed a study of more than 50 instances of North American honor killings, says the evidence suggest otherwise. - The Editors

When a husband murders a wife or daughter in the United States and Canada, too often law enforcement chalks the matter up to domestic violence. Murder is murder; religion is irrelevant. Honor killings are, however, distinct from wife battering and child abuse. Analysis of more than fifty reported honor killings shows they differ significantly from more common domestic violence.[1] The frequent argument made by Muslim advocacy organizations that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam and that it is discriminatory to differentiate between honor killings and domestic violence is wrong.


Background and Denial

Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family's domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents' wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families.[2] This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders.[3] The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women's empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.[4] ...

Willingness to address the problem of honor killing, however, does not extend to many Muslim advocacy groups in North America. The well-publicized denials of U.S.-based advocacy groups are ironic given the debate in the Middle East. While the religious establishment in Jordan, for example, says that honor killing is a relic of pre-Islamic Arab culture, Muslim Brotherhood groups in Jordan have publicly disagreed to argue the Islamic religious imperative to protect honor.[6]


Yotam Feldner, a researcher at the Middle East Media Research Institute, quotes a psychiatrist in Gaza who describes the honor killing culture as one in which a man who refrains from "washing shame with blood" is a "coward who is not worthy of living ... as less than a man." Therefore, it is no surprise that the Jordanian penal code is quite lenient towards honor killers. While honor killing may be a custom that originated in the pagan, pre-Islamic past, contemporary Islamist interpretations of religious law prevail. As Feldner puts it: "Some important Islamic scholars in Jordan have even gone further by declaring honor crimes an Islamic imperative that derives from the 'values of virility advocated by Islam.'"[7]

Islamist advocacy organizations, however, argue that such killings have nothing to do with Islam or Muslims, that domestic violence cuts across all faiths, and that the phrase "honor killing" stigmatizes Muslims whose behavior is no different than that of non-Muslims. For example, in response to a well-publicized 2000 honor killing, SoundVision.com, an Islamic information and products site, published an article that argued,

Four other women were killed in Chicago in the same month ... They were white, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian … Islam is not responsible for [the Muslim woman's] death. Nor is Christianity responsible for the deaths of the other women.[8]

In 2007, after Aqsa Parvez was murdered by her father in Toronto for not wearing hijab (a head covering), Sheila Musaji wrote in the American Muslim, "Although this certainly is a case of domestic violence ... 'honor' killings are not only a Muslim problem, and there is no 'honor' involved."[9] Mohammed Elmasry, of the Canadian Islamic Congress, also dismissed the problem. "I don't want the public to think that this is an Islamic issue or an immigrant issue. It is a teenager issue," he said.[10]


Indeed, denial is rife. In 2008, after Kandeela Sandal was murdered for honor by her father in Atlanta because she wanted a divorce, Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told the media that "most South Asian communities in the United States" enjoy "wonderful" relationships within their families and said, "This isn't a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities."[11]

In October 2008, Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), dismissed any Islamic connection to a prominent Dallas honor killing, labeled as such by the FBI, arguing, "As far as we're concerned, until the motive is proven in a court of law, this is [just] a homicide." He continued, "We [Muslims] don't have the market on jealous husbands ...or domestic violence ...This is not Islamic culture." [12]


Case studies suggest otherwise. Read more here...

And this analysis has made Phyllis a target not only from the Palestinians in this country...

"But, a highly pro-Palestinian student government, (which has learned the value of using force in response to, or to obtain, election results in both the West Bank and Gaza and obviously, now in Toronto), turned into a frightening mob which screamed out anti-Jewish as well as anti-Israeli curses, banged on the floor and on the walls, and refused to disperse. The campus police could not handle the situation. They locked twenty Jewish students into a room for their safety and then called in the Toronto police who determined that they could not provide security for the Jewish students whom they chose to lead out to safety amidst a hate-filled mob, chanting chanted ""Die, bitch, go back to Israel," and "Die, Jew, get the hell off campus." MORE HERE


PHYLLIS CHESLER IS ALSO THE TARGET OF SEX CRIMES DEFENDER, Stephen Baskerville who of course is a university professor teaching political science at Patrick Henry College. Patrick Henry is rolling in his grave. Baskerville is the author of "Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family.

We always knew they were abusers and their founder was convicted of murdering his wife but in this article, and through this man, the Father's Rights movement reveals itself as a sex offender rights movement and the enemy is guess who?

"Indeed, the fortress state may be developing externally as well as internally. Indications exist that recent Islamic militancy is fueled in large part from perceptions of Western sexual decadence. Conversely, while many feminists identify with the antiwar Left, the future may belong to hawks like Phyllis Chesler and Hillary Clinton, who push war as an instrument of worldwide women’s liberation and pressure governments to justify military policies in feminist terms. Sexuality transforms military life in complex ways. Bork criticizes feminism for weakening our military readiness, emphasizing the dangers of women in combat roles. Yet a more far-reaching consequence may be how divorce debilitates military men. Men are increasingly aware how easily they can be divorced unilaterally while serving their country, lose their children and everything else they possess, and even return home to face criminal penalties if they cannot pay child support imposed in their absence."

Greenconsciousness Notes: He is right that there is the "feminists" of the male left called the third wave or puddle as opposed to woman identified and radical feminists. Chesler and Clinton stand for women's rights globally and believe US foreign policy should be used to expand the human rights of women? Count me in as part of that movement.