Passersby did nothing. Incredible.

Posted by: SF at June 7, 2006 5:39 PM

Even their use of words dishonors them.

They need to shut up for a while, and control their terrorist lunatics.

Then reform their cruel 'cultural' traits like "honor" killing and FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), and tame the violent Koranic dogmas.

Muslims are only attacking us because they're too lazy to attack their own failings.

The tolerance of it in the West is fading like fog at dawn.

If they don't like the bright Sun of freedom, there are plenty of slavish shadows left in Mecca.

A nice place to reform.

Or rock to kiss.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 7, 2006 5:45 PM

Passersby did nothing. Incredible.

Given enough time and ignorance, the same will happen here.

Posted by: deesine at June 7, 2006 5:51 PM

Release him to the Palestinian authority. He'd be a natural there.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at June 7, 2006 6:20 PM

There is a very similar case being tried at the court in Denmark right now. A Pakistani man killed his own sister with a handgun at point blank range, because she had abandoned her family and married a man of, shock horror, her own choosing. The execution was caught on cellphone camera bý a witness. The creep is here seen bent over his sister who is lying down beside her husband (who survived, and who is testifying in court under unprecedented security measures, as he must also be killed in order to restore their "honour"). What makes the case all the more rotten is the fact that she girl fell into a trap set up by her aunt whom she trusted, and that she had been tracked down first by Pakistani taxi drivers employed by her father, and finally by auntie carrying a GPS device that led the killer on to her. "Brother, what are you doing?," were her last words.

So can we expect harsh punishment, US-style-life-without-parole, orange jumpsuit and shackles for brudder, dad, auntie and co.? No. Let's see what happens, but sentencing will in all likelihood be ridiculous by any standard, and few, if any, will be kicked out of the country after serving a measly few years under conditions that would make US prisoners, let alone Pakistani, drool with envy.

"Brother, what are you doing?"

Posted by: anti-uffe at June 7, 2006 6:36 PM

See, what we have here is two eras of humankind occuring but not meshing at the same time more acutely than ever before. Of course, one could say that these inhuman acts of alleged 'honour' happened before as now, but weren't widely acknowledged in the west, and now it can be disseminated easily.
But there is an entire civilization of people, including the pseudo-'doctors' and proliferance of professors educated in our schools, right down to those sucking on smoke in their desert tents...it is more than a millenium of culture, deeply ingrained, and seemingly all-consuming.
This slams headlong into the modern world, our world, of toleration and decency (with it's faults, but I'll take 'em), and you have a crappy emulsion at best...it ain't gonna mix.
Conflict will increase, in frequency and scope...there's going to be some interesting times ahead. Murder of a stranger is just wrong...murder of your sister, mother, daughter, whoever - now that is just beyond the pale.

Posted by: anathema at June 7, 2006 6:57 PM

Unfortunately, that sort of thing has become increasingly common, even in Western Europe, where such things were unheard of--until the "multiculturalists" started importing the culture of Islam:

"The Whore Lived Like a German"

By Jody K. Biehl in Berlin

In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women?

The shots came from nowhere and within minutes the young Turkish mother standing at the Berlin bus stop was dead. A telephone call from a relative had brought her to this cold, unforgiving place. She thought she would only be gone for a few minutes and wore a light jacket in the freezing February wind. She had left her five-year-old son asleep in his bed. He awoke looking for his mother, who, like many Turkish women in Germany, harbored a secret life of fear, courage and, ultimately, grief. Now her little boy has his own tragedy to bear: His mother, Hatin Surucu, was not the victim of random violence, but likely died at the hands of her own family in what is known as an "honor killing."

Hatin's crime, it appears, was the desire to lead a normal life in her family's adopted land. The vivacious 23-year-old beauty, who was raised in Berlin, divorced the Turkish cousin she was forced to marry at age 16. She also discarded her Islamic head scarf, enrolled in a technical school where she was training to become an electrician and began dating German men. For her family, such behavior represented the ultimate shame -- the embrace of "corrupt" Western ways. Days after the crime, police arrested her three brothers, ages 25, 24 and 18. The youngest of the three allegedly bragged to his girlfriend about the Feb. 7 killing. At her funeral, Hakin's Turkish-Kurdish parents draped their only daughter's casket in verses from the Koran and buried her according to Muslim tradition. Absent of course, were the brothers, who were in jail.

The crime might be easier to digest if it had been an archaic anomaly, but five other Muslim women have been murdered in Berlin during the past four months by their husbands or partners for besmirching the family's Muslim honor. Two of them were stabbed to death in front of their young children, one was shot, one strangled and a fifth drowned. It seems hard to fathom, but in the middle of democratic Western Europe -- in Germany, a nation where pacifism is almost a universal mantra -- murderous macho patriotism not only exists but also appears to be thriving. It may even be Germany's liberalism -- and its post World War II fear of criticizing minority cultures -- that has encouraged ultra-religious families to settle here.

The problem is that much of this insular and ultra-religious world is out of public view, often hidden in inner-city apartments where the most influential links to the outside world are satellite dishes that receive Turkish and Arabic television and the local mosque. Tens of thousands of Turkish women live behind these walls of silence, in homes run by husbands many met on their wedding day and ruled by the ever-present verses of the Koran. In these families, loyalty and honor are elevated virtues and women are treated little better than slaves, unseen by society and often unnoticed or ignored by their German neighbors. To get what they want, these women have to run. They have to change their names, their passports, even their hair color and break with the families they often love, but simply can no longer obey.

Precise statistics on how many women die every year in such honor killings are hard to come by, as many crimes are never reported, said Myria Boehmecke of the Tuebingen-based women's group Terre des Femmes which, among other things, tries to protect Muslim girls and women from oppressive families. The Turkish women's organization Papatya has documented 40 instances of honor killings in Germany since 1996. Examples include a Darmstadt girl whose two brothers pummelled her to death with a hockey stick in April 2004 after they learned she had slept with her boyfriend. In Augsburg in April, a man stabbed his wife and 7-year-old daughter because the wife was having an affair. In December 2003, a Tuebingen father strangled his 16-year-old daughter and threw her body into a lake because she had a boyfriend. Bullets, knives, even axes and gasoline are the weapons of choice. The crime list compiled by Papatya is an exercise in horror. And the sad part, said Boehmecke, is that it is far from complete. "We'll never really know how many victims there are. Too often these crimes go unreported."

In many cases, fathers -- and sometimes even mothers -- single out their youngest son to do the killing, Boehmecke said, "because they know minors will get lighter sentences from German judges." In some cases, these boys are revered by their community and fellow inmates as "honor heroes" -- a dementedly skewed status they carry with them for the rest of their lives. Currently, six boys are serving time in Berlin's juvenile prison for honor killings. "In a way, these boys are victims, too," she said. Sometimes they are forced to kill their favorite sister....

Astonishingly, the first extensive data the German government collected about the lives of Turkish women was published last summer, as part of a study done by the Ministry for Family Affairs. The study showed that 49 percent of Turkish women said they had experienced physical or sexual violence in their marriage. One fourth of those married to Turkish husbands said they met their grooms on their wedding day. Half said they were pressured to marry partners selected by relatives and 17 percent felt forced into such partnerships.

http://tinyurl.com/3vrnv

Posted by: Steven L. at June 7, 2006 7:52 PM

So what would it take for these guys not to be "willing to do the time for the sake of honor"? A dishonorable form of execution, like being crucified upside down?

Posted by: snowpea at June 7, 2006 8:21 PM

I once read an interview in London's 'Eastern Eye' with a private detective, I think he was a Sikh, who specialised in hunting down runaway daughters. One of his wrinkles was that even in areas of the UK where there are practically no Asians you usually find that there are Asian taxi drivers. These make a note of any Asian faces they see (and of course they cover a lot of ground). Slip them a consideration and they can soon finger the hapless young woman in she's inthe area. I'm sure a lot of these girls would then be 'recaptured' by male relatives.How that guy can sleep at nights, I don't know.

Posted by: wallyUK at June 7, 2006 10:39 PM

Is the family involved here Christian or Muslim, though? Miriam ~= Mary. And Basel ~= Basil? (a common name in Eastern Christianity)

Posted by: emperor_diocletian at June 7, 2006 11:10 PM

Steven's article above puts the statistics of honor killings in Germany at 40 in a 10-year time period (1996 to present): another article puts it at 45 in an 8-year period. Recently, six women were killed in a 5-month period, putting the rate at double (approximately one per month) what Steven's article posits.

Other things to keep the mind in perspective: we are talking about

1) one little country out of many;
2) a Western country to boot;
3) Muslims from a supposedly "moderate" and modernized Muslim country (Turkey).

Posted by: Television at June 8, 2006 1:52 AM

Honour killing?

These men don't have any sense of honour.

Posted by: FreeSpeech at June 8, 2006 6:52 AM

What an honor! To murder a defenseless member of the weaker sex, the mother of a child. What a disgusting cult of death iSlime is.

Posted by: US_infidel at June 8, 2006 10:44 AM

emperor_diocletian, that's a good catch.
I have read reports of Middle eastern Christians threathening to kill family members due to marrying somebody the family didn't approve of, though the reports did not say the family members followed through on the threat.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=ramle&itemNo=724175

"He also criticized her for seeing other men while her husband was incarcerated for security violations."

Sounds like this woman was having an affair while her husband was in jail. This seems to be the driving force behind the attack. The security violations intrigues me. Maybe the family is anti-Israeli Christians?

Posted by: non-redneck at June 9, 2006 12:18 AM