No honour here

 From my mailbox, yet another long lecture on how I always criticize Christianity (and Judaism) but give Islam a pass. You know, like I do here and here and here and here and here and here...

To readers like this, when a Muslim man kills his wife (or female relative), it's an ''honour killing.'' But when an American non-Muslim does it, it's just another story in the back pages of the paper.

That's if it gets reported at all.

I replied several times to this guy but, typically, he just keeps coming after me.

I'll spare you all the blah-blah-blah. Here are the nut graphs, where he accuses the Star and me of being too politically correct to connect the dots.

The paper has repeat stories which show us the true face of Islam but refuses to connect those stories with Islam.

So Ms. Zerbisias, since you "criticise all religions",  but you some how seem inclined to paint your criticism with a brush which gives Islam 3ird and less severe billing after Judaism and Christianity, (as per Toronto Star policy?) do you truly believe that there is, in the world we read about today, a moral equivalence between the three?  Do you believe (unlike the leader of Turkey) there can be secular Muslims who don't necessarily buy into the more ugly aspects of their ideology.   Well so do I. I think however, that they need to be challenged big time in our media instead of being molly coddled. The problem is how will they behave and what choices
will they make when things are a bit dicey?  Where will their trained loyalties lie when we are on the line between what I feel would be an agreed upon (between you and I) standard for light and the dark.  Which way would the tide go?

The theat is real and the potential picture looks ugly to me.  Lets talk about it and truthfully report on it well ahead of time.

These guys always write as if somebody is coming to take away my rights and wrap me up in a burka, like any second now. To them, every killing of a woman by a Muslim man, even when it's clearly by a deranged psycho is an ''honour killing.''

Just like this latest tragedy:

A Jordanian man confessed to stabbing to death his pregnant sister and mutilating her body to protect the family honor, said Jordanian authorities on Sunday.

Prosecutor Mohammed al-Tarawneh said the man turned himself into police and has been charged with murder.

The 28-year-old married woman was five months pregnant and stabbed repeatedly in the face, neck, abdomen and back as well as being hacked up with a meat cleaver, according to government pathologist Awad al-Tarawneh.

Police familiar with the case said the woman had moved back in with her family after an argument with her husband six months earlier. The brother believed that she had then started seeing other men.

The names of those involved have not been released.

The incident, the ninth such case this year and the second this month, took place in the village of Basira, in the conservative Bedouin heartland of southern Jordan.

Strict tribal and religious values are enforced in these villages, including the belief that women carry the family's honor.

Around two dozen women are killed each year in these conservative areas of Jordan by male relatives who typically accuse them of besmirching the family honor through adultery or having sex outside of marriage.

Around two dozen women? This is terrible. But it's a drop in the bucket compared with the U.S.

So anyway, tonight, prompted by this blog entry, I looked up some numbers.

Turns out that in Jordan, and hey, what the heck, throw in all the other Muslim countries, honour killers are amateurs compared with the guys right here at home.

For example, American men have it all over Muslim men in the wife-killing department. They even kill their kids just to spite their wives.

Like this guy did last week.

Or this guy tried to do yesterday.

And what about this guy last month?

On Saturday US media reported a brutal scene discovered at a Boston home -- a man had stabbed to death his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his five-year-old sister and began stabbing another sister before being shot by police.

Need more?

PRICEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A man facing a divorce trial shot and killed his estranged wife, their teenage daughter and two other relatives in rural north Alabama before returning to his home in a nearby town and killing himself, authorities said Tuesday.

Kevin Garner's body was found Tuesday afternoon near his Priceville home, which burned to the ground overnight. His divorce trial was to start Wednesday.

Garner apparently shot himself in the chest, said Travis Clemmons, chief investigator for the sheriff's office in Lauderdale County, where the four bodies were found earlier in the day in a home in Green Hill, a small community near the Tennessee line.

The victims were identified as Garner's estranged wife, Tammy, 40; their 16-year-old daughter, Chelsie; Garner's sister, Karen Beaty of Illinois; and Beaty's 11-year-old son, whose name was not released.

Not in Canada you say? Again, last month:

A 33-year-old man accused of stabbing his wife in the face and head with a screwdriver while the couple's four children watched will be in court Monday to face a charge of aggravated assault.

The Steinbach RCMP detachment was called at about 8 a.m. Saturday about a woman who had just fled her home with her children after being stabbed in the tiny community of Mitchell, about 60 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg.

Police said the man repeatedly stabbed his wife with the screwdriver inside a bedroom while the children were present.

In fact, my guess is, any day, at random, if were to go to Google News and punch in ''man kills wife,'' you'd get plenty of stories. Every other day, some guy goes nuts because his wife/girlfriend/sister/mother hurts his feelings/ego. Isn't that  ''honour killing'' too?

Now obviously, comparing numbers is difficult as it's impossible to know how many women are killed by the mates in Muslim countries. And in the U.S., femicide is one of the most under reported crimes by the media.

But get a grip, dear letter writers, and spare me the Muslim-bashing. Quit spilling your crocodile tears when women and children right here are being slaughtered.

The only differences between what goes on over there and here are (1) there they put a label on it and (2) here women sometimes kill before they get killed.

Comments

[Shelly]

Some people out there just don't get it, do they? Good lawd.

[sooey]

Ah, the old "good guys vs the bad guys" routine. I dunno - anti-Feminists all look alike to me these days.

[Sebastian Stoker]

Antonia,

It may be very hard to keep it in perspective when you are being bombarded by such nonsense, but keep in mind that there are many more who agree with, and support, YOU.

Unfortunately, the discussion of Islam and the rights of women is often contaminated by racism and Islamophobia. Demonization of a people is a sign of, at best, a very flawed argument and lack of rationale, at worst...well, we all know.

[johnnykap]

"These guys always write as if somebody is coming to take away my rights and wrap me up in a burka, like any second now."

Hmmm. An analogy would be helpful to put that in perspective. Oh, I know. These guys write like you write about abortion; stock up on coat hangers now bc the feto-philes are going to make abortion illegal next week.

Got it, Antonia.

"Quit spilling your crocodile tears when women and children right here are being slaughtered."

Indeed, children are being slaughtered every single day in abortion clinics. I urge you to stock up on coat hangers now bc we feto-philes are going to make abortion illegal next week or sometime shortly thereafter.

[hysperia]

Gosh, that's nice, stock up on coat hangers. A great new slogan for the fetishists. Their god would really like that?

[Paul]

For your argument to be persuasive to those who don't like the taste of Kool-Aid, you need to place a context around the killing that accounts for the motivation of the killers, the community reaction, and the degree of state complicity or tolerance of the crime.

The charge regarding Sharia law and the culture in which it thrives is that the "honour killing" is either government-endorsed or tolerated or applauded within the culture (though not necessarily the whole of Islam, but certainly sectors of it) - and frequently endorsed or carried out by the whole family and sometimes the whole village.

Now, I'll grant that, dead is dead, but the straw man here is obvious. In North America, you generally don't see examples of whole villages or whole families rising up to stone or kill a woman who might have violated a social more- at least not since the 1800's.

It is lazy to argue an equivalence between that kind of barbarism and the examples you cited, unless you also account for those other details.

You can't have it both ways, either. Those are the same contextual details that feminists like yourself hold sacrosanct when discussing violence against women in Canada, particularly in the context of hate crimes. Gamil Gharbi's attack at École Polytechnique is portrayed by feminists as part of a larger war on women, and not dismissed as random violence (similar to any number of whacko attacks around the world against mixed victims). The legitimacy they try to draw for that charge is rooted in those contextual details. I'm not sure why they seem to count for so much here, and so little "over there".

---------
Sebastian said, "Demonization of a people is a sign of, at best, a very flawed argument and lack of rationale, at worst...well, we all know."
----

There are many ways to define "a people".

A careful observer points out the difference between "a people" and "a law" or "a cultural practice" - to which the people may elect to subscribe. Do we demonize the German people? Or do we attack the politic to which many of them subscribed circa WW2?

That said, I do agree with your stance on the demonization of anyone based on biological factors, and I hope that you keep that in mind the next time you generalize about the evil that men do.

[Jen Gerson]

Post props.

[sooey]

Ohferchrissakes, straw men? The point, clearly missed, is that there is no legitimate reason for the media - here - to refer to the murders of Muslim women by Muslim men - here - as honour killings.

Feminists continue to mark the Montreal Massacre because the contents of Marc Lepine's suicide note mirror - exactly - the white, male, Christian anti-Feminist commentary that appears regularly in the editorial sections of all the mainstream newspapers in this country.

You, as an anti-Feminist, are not the underdog. You are part of a very big and very powerful club.

[Antonia]

Thanks Sooey. For those too busy to Google, or who missed that day in Women's Studies class:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_L%C3%A9pine#L.C3.A9pine.27s_suicide_statement

Lépine's suicide statement

The following is a translation of the suicide letter written by Lépine on the day of the shooting.[22] The original letter in French is also available.

Forgive the mistakes, I had 15 minutes to write this. See also Annex.

Would you note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. For seven years life has brought me no joy and being totally blasé, I have decided to put an end to those viragos.
I tried in my youth to enter the Forces as an officer cadet, which would have allowed me possibly to get into the arsenal and precede Lortie in a raid. They refused me because antisocial (sic). I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way for they never really interested me, knowing in advance my fate. Which did not prevent me from obtaining very good marks despite my theory of not handing in work and the lack of studying before exams.
Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men.
Thus it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games removed the Men-Women distinction, there would be Women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontline during the world wars. How can you explain then that women were not authorized to go to the frontline??? Will we hear of Caesar's female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed. A real Casus Belli.
Sorry for this too brief letter.
Marc Lépine

The letter is followed by the list of nineteen names, with a note at the bottom:

"Nearly died today. The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive.
Alea Jacta Est."

ALSO: http://www.gendercide.org/case_montreal.html

Attached to the letter was a list of 19 prominent Québec women in non-traditional occupations, including the province's first woman firefighter and police captain. Beneath the list Lépine wrote: "[These women] nearly died today. The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive." It was, instead, dozens of ordinary women at the École Polytechnique who would bear the brunt of his fury.

[MensRightsNow]

There has never been a prequel or sequel to this massacre in the history of Canada. Feminists using this isolated incident from a madman for political gain is both embarrassing and in very bad taste....but typical.

[Antonia]

Really, MRN, how many more massacres of women would make the point for you?

One? Two? Five? Ten?

Does Pickton count?

http://www.missingpeople.net/perspective_on_pickton_art_show.htm
Dozens of women, most of them drug-addicted prostitutes, have disappeared from Vancouver's downtown east side over the past 25 years. Robert Pickton, accused in 26 killings, is set to go on trial in connection with six of the deaths.

In the Edmonton area, 28 women living high-risk lifestyles have been slain since 1983, said Kate Quinn, executive director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation. Of those cases, 21 are unsolved, she said.

How about massacres elsewhere?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,612863,00.html
Tim's companions say he didn't have a girlfriend and were astonished to discover that so many girls and women were among the victims. "Is that a coincidence?" asks Alexander, who knew Tim and two of his victims, from school. According to investigators, it could "have something to do with the spacing situation" in the school.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html
PARADISE, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A heavily armed truck driver who was prepared for a long standoff barricaded himself in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, killing five girls execution-style before killing himself, police said.

Six other girls were bound and critically wounded in the attack, which police said appeared to be a revenge killing for an unspecified incident that occurred when the gunman was a boy.

[Paul]

Antonia, thanks so much for sharing that letter. By golly, they must have forgotten to talk about Lepine in Women's Studies. I don't know how they could possibly have missed it. /end sarcasm.

See, I know someone who thinks the government bugs his phone, and who keeps his blinds closed because he thinks his former employer from 4 years ago has taken residence in the building across the street to spy on him. He's clearly delusional, and if he were to write a suicide note citing the harassment of his former employer, it would not necessarily make it true. You know? It might certainly shed light on what he was thinking, but it doesn't necessarily indicate a social/societal problem with corporations spying on people in their own homes.

[MensRightsNow]

Antonia...do I need to cite the historical massacres of men? Do you really want to go there? Massacres where the women and children are spared? Lepine was a nut, he killed women, then himself. This isn't a feminist issue, just like domestic violence. It is a violence issue.

There isn't a day that goes by in the news that a mother hasn't klled her child, it's sickening. Do I make that a Men's Rights issue? I could....but I don't, because its illogical...just like the suggestion the some nut gunmen is indicitive of the male gender as a whole, or a major societal problem.

[Sebastian Stoker]

Paul, thanks for backing up my point.

Sorry to not be as careful an observer as you. What would we all do without your and Stygian's tutelage.

[...pat.]

No, MRN, you do make it a men's rights issue. Over and over again. In your attempts to show that women cause as much harm as men do, and that it's equal statistics between the two when one discounts everything one possibly could, like size, weight, ... sex. It's still not true.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Stoker you Smoker,

as you seem to be missing my comments .....

I feel like Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey in Five Red Herrings (which I'm rereading in Romanian)....

to paraphrase ....

"... you're all missing the point, but one of you (Paul, btw Paul, thanks for referring to the perpetrator of the Montreal Massacre by his real name) less so than the others."

the point about "honour killings" is that a) they are directed against women by male members of their own families
b) they are often winked at or treated leniently by the state where they occur.

and the kneejerk raising of the "Islamophobia" straw/bogeyman / apparition is counterproductive at best, maybe smoothing the path to having Canada included as "a state where they occur".

in recognition of the fact that honour killings represent a new challenge to law enforcement, Denmark recently handed down sentences to a whole family involved therein.

Meanwhile, Canada has welcomed many refugees who thought they were escaping the sort of atmosphere that allows honour killings to flourish.

As Norway's Fjordman, one of the best bloggers around, put it

"Non-Muslims in Europe who want to fight against Islamization are up against the cultural, political and media elites [e.g., equivalents of the CBC, Toronto Star - S&SD]in their own countries, as well as the European Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is the largest voting block at the United Nations, and finally the entire Islamic world backed up by Saudi petrodollars."

I'm not too interested in facing this situation in Canada, quite frankly, although I fear (phoboumai, E&BM) we may be in the not too distant future.

[sooey]

Actually, you two are nowhere near the point, which was that the media here has no legitimate reason to refer to the murders here of Muslim women by Muslim men as honour killings.

[Paul]

"any day, at random, if were to go to Google News and punch in ''man kills wife,'' you'd get plenty of stories" --Antonia
-------

The faithful seek to reinforce their own beliefs, while knowledgeable seek to test them.

Without even getting into the interpretation of the data, are you able to spot the logic error in refuting a challenge to the established gender violence script by typing "man kills wife" into Google?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Sooey Sweetie,

If these murders involve plotting by groups of Muslim men (and women) against women of their own families, the media is being irresponsible if it does NOT put the "honour-killing" aspect front-and-centre.

("truth to power", forsooth!)

And politicians are being irresponsible by NOT making it an election issue.