When a culture gives divine sanction to wife-beating (cf. Qur’an 4:34), this kind of thing is going to happen: a cultural atmosphere is created in which the brutalization of women is deemed acceptable. “Pakistani woman killed in Italy over arranged marriage,” from the Telegraph, October 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A Pakistani woman has died in Italy after her husband beat her with a brick for opposing the arranged marriage of her daughter, triggering a wave of outrage among Italian politicians on Monday.
The daughter, 20-year-old Nosheen Butt, was admitted to hospital with a cranial traumatism and a broken arm after her 19-year-old brother beat her with a stick in the courtyard of their building in Novi, near the north Italy city of Modena.
According to Modena prosecutors’ initial findings, the father Ahmad Khan Butt, a 53-year-old construction worker, threw his wife to the ground and beat her with a brick while the brother Umair attacked his sister.
“The victim did not want her daughter to have an unhappy relationship like the one that had been forced on her,” said deputy Modena prosecutor Lucia Musti, who is in charge of the investigation….
Livia Turco, a senior politician in the Democrats of the Left main opposition party, condemned “arranged marriages and violence against women” on the pretext of “ethnic traditions” that she blasted as “medieval practices”.
Politician Isabella Bertolini in Italy’s main conservative party said that the deceased woman, Beghm Shnez, was a “martyr for freedom, a victim of obscurantism and Islamic fundamentalism”.
She said that the father had been in Italy less that 10 years and was the owner of the local mosque.
Conservative lawmaker Souad Sbai of Moroccan origin said that such “intolerable barbarism” was the “result of failed integration” of the father and brother into Italian society.
Yeah, sure, that’s it.