When the Ford Motor Company introduced the Jeep Cherokee in 1984, it set the stage for what would become the SUV craze in America. The vehicle that is used to ferry kids to soccer, football and Little League games, as well as family outings, has found another familial application – honor killing. Faleh Hassan Amaleki, an Iraqi immigrant to the United States, is alleged to have used his 3,000-pound Jeep Laredo to run-down his daughter because, according to Amaleki, she became “too western.”
According to Peoria, Arizona, police, Amaleki ran over his daughter Noor, 20, her boyfriend and his mother as they walked across a parking lot. Noor suffered life-threatening injuries and, as of this writing, remains unconscious. Noor’s boyfriend and his mother are in serious but stable condition.
After the assault, Amaleki fled to Mexico where he caught a flight to London. British authorities refuse him entry to the country and placed Amaleki on a return flight to Atlanta, escorted by U.S. Marshals. The disease of political correctness makes it difficult to gage just how many such honor killings occur in the United State. The peculiar Islamic tradition of honor killing is simply lumped in with all the other incidents of domestic violence.
David Cook, an associate professor of religious studies at Rice University recently told the New York Post, “The vast majority of honor killings do appear to be cases where there is some attempt to violate or leave [Muslim] cultural norms. They’ve been going on in the US and Britain for a number of years, but in the recent past they’ve gotten a lot more publicity.”
According to the United Nations Population Fund, “Throughout the world, perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are murdered by members of their own families…” Asma Jahangir, an investigator for the United Nations, reported in 2000, “The perpetrators of these crimes are mostly male family members of the murdered women, who go unpunished or receive reduced sentences on the justification of having murdered to defend their misconceived notions of family honor.”
The Arizona Republic, usually a dependable left of center rag on most issues, said in an editorial:
“The Middle East and Southeast Asia are the epicenter, where the [honor] killings are often based on a warped interpretation of Islam.
America is a stew as much as a melting pot. Our vast and varied immigrant populations enrich the country.
But some things are so repugnant, they fall far outside the bounds of cultural diversity. Honor killings are intolerable. So is the malignant view of women that underlies the horrific practice.”
The act of murder in defense of a dying idea is self-defeating. Islamic societies feel threatened and alone as the technological First World disappears over the horizon, leaving backward-looking societies in the dust. In a very real sense, the attacks on 9/11 were honor killings to chastise the leader of the Western World for being “too western.” Plots to save Islamic tradition - whether hatched in desert tents, mountain caves or an Arizona suburb – will not save Osama bin-Laden’s vision of Islam or usher in an global Caliphate. A culture that murders its children to preserve tradition guarantees its end. Faleh Hassan Amaleki’s culture is going the way of the Ghost Dance.
-- Mr. Curmudgeon
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