The National Post has a collection of pictures of the Safias – of Rona and Mohammed on their wedding day 30 years ago, of Rona and Mohammed and Yahya on the wedding day of the latter two in 1988, of Sahar, Geeti, Zainab, Rona in 2009. Especially wrenching, there are pictures of all four taken days before they were murdered, retrieved from cell phones that were in the car at the bottom of Kingston Lock.
It’s interesting that there aren’t any Rage Boys shouting about this. It’s interesting that Rage Boys get contorted in the face because Salman Rushdie is scheduled to appear at a literary festival, yet they remain entirely calm when members of their “community” murder their daughters and discarded wives. It’s interesting that a novelist writing a book is a horror and an outrage, but a murder of four women is not on the register. It’s interesting what people choose to get outraged about.
“A Sharia judge recently said in Britain that there is no just thing as marital rape.To call it rape is actually the act of violence and aggression, not the actual act that takes place against the woman.” — Maryam Namazie http://dotsub.com/view/1b62e113-4119-4ebb-bb7a-b3c63146b72c/viewTranscript/eng
These murders do not question the basis or veracity of Islam. , Novelists, apostates and others who cast doubt on or ridicule the basis of the religion are a danger to the continued strength of the meme. This is not something Rage Boys can afford to let anyone get away with. I wonder how much of the Rage Boy fanaticism is for the benefit of their fellow Rage Boys, making sure that everyone else on their side knows they have a pure faith untainted by doubt. Attacking those who entertain and express doubt might be a way of eliminating a source of temptation to doubt oneself. To police others may be an act of policing oneself?
Nobody gets to say the emperor has no clothes, or worse, that there is no emperor at all. These are courtiers with knives, guns and bombs. Critical analysis of the source and origins of Islam is a much greater danger to the beliefs of True Believers than is one believer behaving badly. Drawing a picture of their prophet is much worse than killing someone for drawing the picture. Similarly destroying a supposedly magic cracker that is a god is a much worse crime than violating actual children. Burning a flag is much worse than torturing living, breathing human beings. Messing with symbols or objects deemed to be imbued with “holiness” is messing with a Higher Power. Anyone being able to do this with impunity puts True Believers on the spot; they are compelled to enforce the taboos against “desecration” of their holy things (though one would think any Higher Power worth its salt would be able to defend its own holy things and fight its own fights without human help). Everyone is to bow down to this holiness, believers or not. To not recognize their holy things as holy is an affront. How can mere human lives (and female ones at that) hope to compete with the defence of holy things?
Kingston Mills is a beautiful little park, and within what I consider my “neck of the woods”. Not gonna seem quite the same after this….
Bastards.
This is the great tragedy of religion.
It’s the same attitude Bill Donohue has when he said he could think of nothing worse than taking a cracker out of a building. A “sin” against a religion or its god is infinitely worse than a crime against an actual person.
I’m sure the Rage Boys will show up after they find enough reportage and commentary “attacking” the murderer.
I am sure that the Rage Boys think that what those murderers did was justified in the name of “honor.” I swear, I have no idea what “honor” and “sin” mean.
Oops. That was supposed to be a response to #2.
The Rage Boys. sounds like a great name for a punk band. . . if only it were a funny situation.
These people are broken by religion, since they hold human lives in lower esteem than insults to their magic man in the sky.
As my niece explained to me, these were not because of the Muslim religion, they were because of the culture that devalues women.
I explained to her that in many Muslim countries that since religion is part of the culture, it is responsible.
My niece is a recent convert to Islam, and she and I disagree a lot about religion…
Windsor [Ontario] Muslim women react to Shafia verdict:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2012/01/30/wdr-windsor-muslim-women-react-shafia.html
Well, there were islamic hecklers at the court house claiming it was all lies, and that the Shafias were not guilty.
There is another honour-killing case before the courts in Montréal.
Last year a twelve year-old muslim girl was kicked to death by her father because she no longer wanted to pray.
I’ve seen only ONE brief news report on that around the time it happened, but am unable to find any further coverage by ANY of the local media.
I’d just like to add that far from just an issue of “culture”, honour-killings are condoned in islam’s core texts.
I fully expect Canada’s muslim community to react, not by condemning honour-killings per se, but rather by pulling the wagons in a circle and then denying any scriptural basis (when there clearly is) to any of this.
John @15
Could you offer quotes of the relevant text(s)?
John @15
Maybe not entirely cultural, but in large part cultural. No one follows the whole of a religious text, they pick and choose and culture is a large part of what guides that.
Re: jolo5309
I see that explanaition in the reaction article posted by Veronica Abbass, too.
How is it that people are even able to separate religion from culture? Religion is a cultural practice. And a culture that devalues women is a part of all the Abrahamic traditions no matter how many mental moats they build around their towers to their deities.
It never stops.
Afghan woman slain for giving birth to daughter
I know…I posted a link to that (a different source) in ur-B&W News a few hours ago.
Nasty stubborn woman, insisting on having another girl.
@20: Note that it was the MIL who killed her, just as Tooba Yahya actively participated in the murders of her own daughters at Kingston Mills. There are always those in the oppressed group who acquiesce to and enable further repression.