Thursday, March 03, 2005
Enough is enough.
In the past four months six teenage girls in a remote portion of Kentucky have been brutally murdered by their Christian fundamentalist fathers for engaging in premarital sex. Two of them were stabbed to death in front of their young children; two were shot, one strangled and a sixth drowned.
Why you might ask, have you not heard about this on the news?
Because it didn’t happen in Kentucky, or even in the U.S. and the girls were Muslim, not Christian fundamentalist. These six young ladies were all murdered in Berlin, Germany, in horrific archaic “honor killings.” Can you even imagine the outrage if this had happened in the Bible belt?
Der Spiegel magazine, in a piece titled “The Death of a Muslim Woman: The Whore Lived Like A German” gives a chilling account of the murders and murderers:
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.
In a post earlier this week I referenced an article which included this passage:
As he [President Bush] told his audience in Brussels, in the first speech of his tour, ''We must reject anti-Semitism in all forms and we must condemn violence such as that seen in the Netherlands.'' The Euro-bigwigs shuffled their feet and stared coldly into their mistresses' decolletage. They knew Bush wasn't talking about anti-Semitism in Nebraska, but about France, where for three years there's been a sustained campaign of synagogue burning and cemetery desecration, and Germany, where the Berlin police advise Jewish residents not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith.
Europe has a tremendous problem bubbling up under their noses in their immigrant communities: they are not even beginning to assimilate. As the Euros fail to reproduce and struggle to maintain their cradle to grave social welfare system they are becoming more and more dependant on immigrant labor. That is all fine and well- but for the fact that many of the newly arrived have another plan. They do not see themselves as having arrived in Germany and driven taxis, or bussed tables, or sold trinkets in order to support Oma und Opa. They have arrived in order to secure a better live for themselves and their families (understandable) and in many cases to maintain and spread their religion. Unfortunately they don’t just knock on your door and try to get you read a magazine, and if you flirt with their daughters they don’t just give you a stern look and maybe talk to your father.
The EU is of course, in a tizzy over this. The French ban religious symbols and the EU as a whole thinks about banning Nazi symbols, but then decides that maybe the symbols themselves are not the problem. The EU has for some time been focused on the issues of racism, in which one group attacks another, but has paid very little mind to the segregated communities living in their midst, and the violence within. Is it any stretch of the imagination to think that a boy who would kill his “favorite sister” would just as easily carry a bomb into a crowded bar?
It is time to look the P.C. police in the eye and give them our best Donald Trump “you’re fired.” We need to step up to the plate and declare wide and loud that all cultures are not equal; all religions are not something to be honored and sanctioned. Any religion that tolerates the murder of young girls is not a religion that the world needs. Any religion that teaches young men that is ok to think and say things like "She only had herself to blame,"… "She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German." is not a religion of peace, or submission, or even humanity. You say that all Muslims are not like that? Fine- then the ones who are not should lead the charge against those that are.
We have no problem protecting Blacks from Whites, Koreans from Mexicans, but we stop and quiver in our boots when it comes time to cast judgment on the internal workings of a group, unless of course that group is lily white. Enough. Germany- the September 11th cell formed in Hamburg. Do you really think it was for the pork sausages and beer? The unexamined life may indeed not be worth living, but in this day and age it may also be just the thing that kills you.
The Grand Mufti of Bosnia recently appeared in London, the following comes from the BBC :
Dr, Ceric said that tolerance of others began with how you approached those closest to you.
"Once you learn tolerance in your family, with your wife, with your children, with your local community, with the people of your own faith, then you will pass this tolerance to others," he told Australia's National Radio.
"We have rights to love our faith, our religion, but to respect others.
"We have no choice but tolerance, we have no choice but dialogue."
These killings are the latest wake up call; we have no choice but to heed it, and that might not mean dialogue. These barbaric acts and those who perpetrate them must be stopped. It is not racism or anti-Islamism or any "ism" to say this. It is simply the truth. If the Grand Mufti truly believes in his own words he and others like him must not tolerate those who would murder their own sisters and daughters, and potentially the rest of us as well. That is simply realism.
Enough is enough.3/03/2005 01:59:00 PM posted by Dr. Demarche
Why you might ask, have you not heard about this on the news?
Because it didn’t happen in Kentucky, or even in the U.S. and the girls were Muslim, not Christian fundamentalist. These six young ladies were all murdered in Berlin, Germany, in horrific archaic “honor killings.” Can you even imagine the outrage if this had happened in the Bible belt?
Der Spiegel magazine, in a piece titled “The Death of a Muslim Woman: The Whore Lived Like A German” gives a chilling account of the murders and murderers:
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.
In a post earlier this week I referenced an article which included this passage:
As he [President Bush] told his audience in Brussels, in the first speech of his tour, ''We must reject anti-Semitism in all forms and we must condemn violence such as that seen in the Netherlands.'' The Euro-bigwigs shuffled their feet and stared coldly into their mistresses' decolletage. They knew Bush wasn't talking about anti-Semitism in Nebraska, but about France, where for three years there's been a sustained campaign of synagogue burning and cemetery desecration, and Germany, where the Berlin police advise Jewish residents not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith.
Europe has a tremendous problem bubbling up under their noses in their immigrant communities: they are not even beginning to assimilate. As the Euros fail to reproduce and struggle to maintain their cradle to grave social welfare system they are becoming more and more dependant on immigrant labor. That is all fine and well- but for the fact that many of the newly arrived have another plan. They do not see themselves as having arrived in Germany and driven taxis, or bussed tables, or sold trinkets in order to support Oma und Opa. They have arrived in order to secure a better live for themselves and their families (understandable) and in many cases to maintain and spread their religion. Unfortunately they don’t just knock on your door and try to get you read a magazine, and if you flirt with their daughters they don’t just give you a stern look and maybe talk to your father.
The EU is of course, in a tizzy over this. The French ban religious symbols and the EU as a whole thinks about banning Nazi symbols, but then decides that maybe the symbols themselves are not the problem. The EU has for some time been focused on the issues of racism, in which one group attacks another, but has paid very little mind to the segregated communities living in their midst, and the violence within. Is it any stretch of the imagination to think that a boy who would kill his “favorite sister” would just as easily carry a bomb into a crowded bar?
It is time to look the P.C. police in the eye and give them our best Donald Trump “you’re fired.” We need to step up to the plate and declare wide and loud that all cultures are not equal; all religions are not something to be honored and sanctioned. Any religion that tolerates the murder of young girls is not a religion that the world needs. Any religion that teaches young men that is ok to think and say things like "She only had herself to blame,"… "She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German." is not a religion of peace, or submission, or even humanity. You say that all Muslims are not like that? Fine- then the ones who are not should lead the charge against those that are.
We have no problem protecting Blacks from Whites, Koreans from Mexicans, but we stop and quiver in our boots when it comes time to cast judgment on the internal workings of a group, unless of course that group is lily white. Enough. Germany- the September 11th cell formed in Hamburg. Do you really think it was for the pork sausages and beer? The unexamined life may indeed not be worth living, but in this day and age it may also be just the thing that kills you.
The Grand Mufti of Bosnia recently appeared in London, the following comes from the BBC :
Dr, Ceric said that tolerance of others began with how you approached those closest to you.
"Once you learn tolerance in your family, with your wife, with your children, with your local community, with the people of your own faith, then you will pass this tolerance to others," he told Australia's National Radio.
"We have rights to love our faith, our religion, but to respect others.
"We have no choice but tolerance, we have no choice but dialogue."
These killings are the latest wake up call; we have no choice but to heed it, and that might not mean dialogue. These barbaric acts and those who perpetrate them must be stopped. It is not racism or anti-Islamism or any "ism" to say this. It is simply the truth. If the Grand Mufti truly believes in his own words he and others like him must not tolerate those who would murder their own sisters and daughters, and potentially the rest of us as well. That is simply realism.
Enough is enough.
