And we’re going to see more, because — as I also said to Dorell — no one is challenging the Muslim community on their bland evasions of responsibility, or calling upon them to do anything about the roots of this phenomenon in Islam. I sent Dorell the legal justification for honor killing in Islamic law — the stipulation that there is no penalty for a father who kills a child — but somehow that didn’t make the cut. “‘Honor killings’ in USA raise concerns,” by Oren Dorell in USA TODAY, November 30 (thanks to James):
Muslim immigrant men have been accused of six “honor killings” in the United States in the past two years, prompting concerns that the Muslim community and police need to do more to stop such crimes.
“There is broad support and acceptance of this idea in Islam, and we’re going to see it more and more in the United States,” says Robert Spencer, who has trained FBI and military authorities on Islam and founded Jihad Watch, which monitors radical Islam.
Honor killings are generally defined as murders of women by relatives who claim the victim brought shame to the family. Thousands of such killings have occurred in Muslim countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Palestinian territories, according to the World Health Organization.
Some clerics and even lawmakers in these countries have said families have the right to commit honor killings as a way of maintaining values, according to an analysis by Yotam Feldner in the journal Middle East Quarterly.
In the USA, police allege the latest “honor killing” was that of Noor Almaleki, 20, who died Nov. 2 after she and her boyfriend’s mother were run over in a Peoria, Ariz., parking lot. Prosecutors charged Almaleki’s father, Faleh Almaleki, with murder, saying the Iraqi immigrant was upset that his daughter rejected a husband she married in Iraq and moved in with an American.
“By his own admission, this was an intentional act, and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family,” says Maricopa County prosecutor Stephanie Low, according to The Arizona Republic….
There follows the usual denial and evasion from a Muslim leader, this time Salam al-Marayati of MPAC, but in something we don’t usually see in a mainstream media story, he doesn’t get the last word.