A Muslim father in Toronto murdered his 16-year old daughter because she wouldn’t wear the hijab as he demanded. I’m sure that Liberals will all jump to his defense: “You have to respect his culture and beliefs. In our culture we ground the kid for a week; in Islamic culture they just ground the kid permanently.”
You know "honor killings" are part of Muslim culture, don't you? I wonder what Dr. Spock, the ultimate non-judgmental Liberal icon, would have said about Muslim child-rearing practices.
Feminists, human-rights activists, and Liberals of all stripes have been resoundingly silent about Muslim honor killings. "It's their culture, you know. We mustn't be judgmental."
Sometimes the person who impugns the honor of her husband, father, or family, is not lucky enough to die.
Zahida Perveen's head is shrouded in a white cotton veil, which she self-consciously tightens every few moments. But when she reaches down to her baby daughter, the veil falls away to reveal the face of one of Pakistan's most horrific social ills, broadly known as "honour" crimes. Perveen's eyes are empty sockets of unseeing flesh, her earlobes have been sliced off, and her nose is a gaping, reddened stump of bone.
Sixteen months ago, her husband, in a fit of rage over her alleged affair with a brother-in-law, bound her hands and feet and slashed her with a razor and knife. She was three months pregnant at the time. "He came home from the mosque and accused me of having a bad character," the tiny, 32-year-old woman murmured as she awaited a court hearing ... "I told him it was not true, but he didn't believe me. He caught me and tied me up, and then he started cutting my face. He never said a word except, "This is your last night." (Constable, "The Price of 'Honour'," The Gazette (Montreal), May 22, 2000.)
Perveen's husband stated in court that "What I did was wrong, but I am satisfied. I did it for my honour and prestige."
Go here for more information about how Muslims handle female disobedience, alleged infidelity, or just about any other instance of a Muslim male being dissatisfied by something a female did or didn't do.
In the curious logic of Islam, if a Muslim woman is raped, she is killed by her family. Then her brothers rape the wife of the rapist, who then is killed by her father and her rapist husband. The result? Two innocent victims dead, and many guilty parties congratulating themselves for preserving their honor and prestige.
True, we do look at many things differently. Here when the National Endowment for the Arts subsidizes an “artist” to create “Piss Christ,” simply a photo of a plastic crucifix in a jar of the artiste's urine, we declare anyone who doesn’t come all over themselves in orgasmic appreciation of such artistic vision as a cultural Neanderthal. (For an example of such self-gratifying excess, go to Salon.com's review of The Holy Virgin Mary in elephant dung and pornography in their Arts & Entertainment section.)
In an Islamic culture any artist who sketches anything, and labels it “Muhammad,” or a teacher who allows a Teddy Bear to be named “Muhammad,” is immediately reserved a prominent position in front of a firing squad.
Artistic expression and freedom be damned.
Take a simple test. Google “Piss Christ” and you will find thousands of images and news stories, not one of them about anyone killed because of it.
Now Google “Danish cartoons.” You will find articles about jihad and fatwas against the cartoonists, and against any publication that even runs one of the cartoons, or just champions the right of a free press to publish them.
What you will find little of is the cartoons actually being published in a western newspaper or magazine (but you can see them here. Please be my guest). In contrast, after Piss Christ was “created,” then displayed in 1989, its image was ubiquitous.
Personally, “Piss Christ” and “Elephant Dung Virgin Mary With Pornography” inspired me to draw “Gay Muhammad.”
I’m still waiting for a check from the NEA to match the $15,000 (with increases for inflation) grant they gave Andrés Serrano for his masterpiece.
Or a laudatory review in the Arts & Entertainment section of Salon.com.
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