What really irks me about Islam is that it puts women on a lower position than men. It's OK if a guy has premarital sex, but not a woman. You never hear about a woman refusing to marry a guy because he's not a virgin, do you? And what about those veils- a woman has to cover her hair in order to not tempt men into sin, ie. she has to be inconvenienced so that it's easier for men not to sin.

Islam, in the form that it is practiced by many people, is one of the most repulsive religions around, next to scientology.

I have to believe this kind of thing is cultural and not religious. I think the religion provides the excuse because Islam seems to be very concerned with other people's behavior, and instead of leaving the matter between the individual and God, these clerics are teaching that it is incumbent upon others to enforce God's will. I don't agree with this, and I'd like to see it brought up by some Islamic scholars, what about "personal responsibility and leave everybody else alone - even if you don't like what they do, what they think, how they live - it's not your business" something like that would go a long way. That's the real road to a truly peaceful Islam - that and separating it from the political process.
Of course, this problem is worse in communities where the men feel emasculated. They feel that their authority is being threatened, especially when (as immigrants) they feel like the bottom rung of society's ladder so they have to exert their dominance all the more fiercely over their wives and daughters - the people they think they have a right to control.

At the heart of all this is a psychological question - why do these men feel that they have to dominate and belittle someone else in order to be men? rather than focusing on religion in these cases, group and individual psychology must be the answer. If someone can find a way to give young Muslim men purpose, meaning, and self respect in their lives, maybe they won't feel the need to dominate others. It's true that bullies are cowards and that's what they are - but what are they afraid of and why? Answering that question will go a long way toward ending this particular kind of violence against women.

@Maria Frania

After your bigoted remarks you actually said something worth commenting on - "Islam, in the form that it is practiced by many people."

It is not the religion which breeds this discrimination but rather those (minority) who have used it as a vehicle, carte blanche, to dictate their insecure disposition onto women. Each of the examples you used, if you actually read the Quran, would be seen in a completely different light. The issues you brought up are societal rather than religious.


I would hope you don't have the same audacity to call Catholicism, Judaism or any other major religion repulsive before actually taking the time to learn about the actual spiritual and intellectual aspects of each. But then again, its always ok to ignorantly write about Islam, remaining unscathed, however any remarks criticizing the other religions would be deemed politically incorrect.

Perhaps you can move past the preconceived notions you have and actually start reading the articles you're commenting on. Asra is attempting to bring a new Muslim perspective which is practiced internationally but is very rarely reported on.

LEARN SOMETHING.


What happened to this young woman is awful and her father's actions are by no means condoned by any true believer in God.

I totally agree this is religious.I have an experience to live together with muslim community, there are a lot of good, kind and peaceful people until it does not touch Islam, for those who is real practices Islam is very usual behavior when they hate west life more then they love their own children

There are idiots in every culture and every religion.
The fundamentalist psychosis is a far greater threat to the far far greater majority of reasonable humans on this planet than any other.

Quite frankly, it doesn't matter whether it's cultural or religious, except for the fact that I can see it going to happen that someone is going to sue that an "honor killing" cannot be criminally tried. They'll say they are just practicing their religion and that our Constitution gives them the right to practice their religion. Then they will probably use the non-prosecution of polygamists as a point in their defense.

I'm really, really tired of people immigrating to our great country, reaping the benefits and then using the negatives to condone their own behavior. If it's so darned bad, then why don't they just go home, or at least, back from where they came?

Religion of peace, huh?

This is religion at it's absolute worst! I realize there are those apologist's who do not want to believe that any religion is capable of such unmitigated cruelty but it to many times is. That religion is not involved in such deplorable practices as well as ethic cleansing which is in reality religious cleansing. The Honor Killing is pervasive in middle eastern cultures. It is unfortunately enough based on a erroneous religious belief that all women should be pure. And a belief that females are little more than a possession. When religion gets involved there is always that very clear double standard for behavior between men and women. For one not to be pure is a dishonor to ones family and deserves death. I don't pretend to understand the sick mindset behind this practice. Because as far as I am concerned it has to be one of the most deplorable practices to come out of Islam. But, the question I would like to ask of the girl's father? If your didn't want your daughter to become westernized they why the f... did you bring her to this country???????? I do not understand this. It is obvious he did not want to become an American in any way shape or form. Which means he should have stayed in the country he was from or went to one that was very similar to his home country. So therefore he bares the sole responsibility for why she became westernized. Fry the b.....!

This literally makes me sick. There are no words to describe the contempt I have for this man and others like him.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've heard a story like this. In a similar case, a Mideastern father took both his daughters out in the car and murdered them both. This might have been covered on America's Most Wanted. The two daughters had become "Americanized" and were resisting his efforts to stay under his thumb, etc.

Groupthink Rule # !: Muslims can do no wrong.
Groupthink Rule # 2: individual human beings do not matter in Islam; only Islam as a movement or entity counts; and
Groupthink Rule # 3: Muslims do not consider things in terms of right or wrong, moral or immoral; the only consideration is "Muslim or non-Muslim"?
Thus, acting in the name of Islam, the father, in his mind, could do no wrong. Having deviated from his notion of Islamic behavoir, the daughter's life was meaningless; Islam as an entity had to be kept pure. Since her actions were deemed un-Islamic, killing his own daughter was the right thing to do.
We must understand the dangers of Groupthink, which needs must rely on violence to be imposed.

When I see a veil, hijab or burqua, I see a klan robe or a swastika. I see a totalitarian mindset that brutalizes women,
and a cult that would make all women obey men in the name of "god". They would strip modern women of every hard-fought right we've achieved, and place us under male control.

I see the rise of fundamentalist religions as a reaction to women's rights. An attempt to rule women with fear and violence. It happens in most countries, and the fundamentalist christians and jews are no kinder to women than islam.

I don't think anybody knows islam well enough to criticizing them unless you are one of them.

Great article and really addresses the substance of the issue. Too many want to shy away and fail to address the fact that these killings ARE motivated by religion, but in our attempt not to offend other people by saying negative things about their religion, we are doing a disservice to humanity as a whole.

Let's call it for what it is--another negative consequence of another irrational belief.

Most religions are dominated by old men who want to control a woman's sexual behavior and reproductive decisions. Christians have a long history of killing women they were afraid of (Spanish Inquisition anyone?) and so do Muslims.

No god of mine would celebrate the death of a daughter at the expense of a father's "honor". he is no man at all. a coward and a sissy is more like it. when old men are finally forced to accept their biological and social station, change will occur. only then.

I think itstrue may have a point about the psychological approach to this horrid practice of honor killing. Basically, this honor killing practice, when you really come down to it, is all about one human being entirely controlling another. Compared to the other Abrahamic faiths, Christian nations and the one Jewish state, the Muslim countries don't have much going for them except oil. From what I've read, many of the Islamic countries have high unemployment and the young guys don't have enough to do. They probably look around at the Western countries and Israel and feel smouldering resentment. These Muslim guys feel bad about themselves and they feel like they don't measure up to the men in these more successful countries, so they control women and girls because they are physically weaker. There may be an element of jealousy there, too-maybe the women are more employable than the men because they don't have the sterotype hanging over them that the Muslim men do, of human beings so consumed with rage that they literally blow themselves up.

This affects me in a huge way. My half sister was raised orthodox Muslim (when my father re-married he converted to Islam). She was married off at 15 and is now somewhere in Saudi Arabia. I remember she always looked up to me because I was independent and free. I felt so bad for her that she was raised to hide her face and subjugate herself to the man in her life, first my father and now her husband. The thought that she could be suffering abuse in some far off land just kills me. While I do not believe that most Muslims are like this, there are a huge number of misogynist psychos who hide behind the Koran. This must end. As American women we must do what we can to help especially if this is happening within our borders. Thank you for writing this article.

All organized religions rank humans, and their behaviours & nature, below a god who judges them. This is where it all starts going wrong - with people pretending to know what god wants, and then acting on it. "Each man ends in his own fingertips." DH Lawrence

This tragic story hasn't exactly brought out the best in folks commenting here. "Religion bad." "Men bad." Your bus to whiner/victim/crazy town is leaving, people. Run along now.

My two cents (yes, worth the same as yours, the world over): Most religious people and most Christians (dare I say most Muslims) think killing one's daughter for any reason is, erm, illegal. Immoral. Brutal. Unacceptable. Most men think it's horrific. Even old men. Even old church men.

I think a more interesting point is this: a freak incident iterpreted as a cultural, erm, "tradition." What hogwash. In literal-minded puritancial America, we must not judge other cultures or try to make them adopt our (fairly looney) ways. This is garbage. Every culture has a few barbaric "traditions" and eccentrics that are not worth anyone's respect. Who makes these distinctions? Well, anyone who wants to under the right to speak one's mind (a right that is squeezed right and left by rigid A-holes the world over, from China to American classrooms).

Some peoples' cultures/countries/traditions happen to suck more than others.

I had difficulty understanding the Koran when I tried to read it. It just made nosense to me. Then I figured out the key. If you replace the holy name of "Allah" with "phallus" the male principal, the meaning is clear. The religion worships the attributes of the male sexual being. Anything female is subserviant. It is not PC to say this, but all religions are not equal. And yes, a great deal of the honor killing mentality is also cultural, but all too easily translatable and implied within the Koran itself. Chrisitianity and Judaism are also paternalistic religions, but in Islam the female principal is the most despised and demeaned.

Cultural, religious... use whatever term you want. These types of killings are human. They are uniquely human forms of reaction to stimuli. Hurting other people for an idea is something only people do. Labeling it the product of a unique cultural or religious experience is tantamount to denying our universal humanity, and our global culpability in female (or any other) kind of human oppression.

I really dislike Islamophobia by anyone, praticing or not. This woman was killed by someone deeply troubled. That he (or you) give the subtext of Islam is lamentable for this overshadows a deeper problem of violence in our culture, and I would dare say the kind of oppression that many immigrants face in our culture which have them clinging to tradition since most Muslim men in our country have great difficulty getting work in their profession, as they drive cabs with a PhD in physics. This is a reality. I do not see Timothy McVeigh's actions as religious any more than this man's actions toward his daughter. Violence can be sieved into many narratives--sociological, psychological, religious, etc--but to focus upon Islam as the raison d'être is simply unjust to the victim of this crime and to her family. Her father is clearly ill and need not be ghetoized into the Muslim male cookie cutter that Fox news has made for us. We need to think outside the cookie cutter and see what kinds of pressures that many immigrants face, why many are resistant to the different cultural ways that their children, both male and female, will likely adopt, and equally as important, why so many journalists are dead set on interpreting everything through their Muslim litmus paper.

What did the stone age idiot expect in our great land???

The problem I have.. is what will happen to the father who murdered his daughter? Will he be deported with a slap on his hand? To be considered a honorable person in his country for murdering his daughter as a honor killing..

Would he not adhere to the laws of this nation for murdering his daughter?

This horrendus act is not isolated.. this is happening thru out america more and more each year..as we open our doors to these religious extremist and their families..and this is what is important to them is to kill their family as a honor killing?

WHY come to this nation for OUR benefits/Freedoms and NOT respect this NATION'S FREEDOMS?..

..If you have problem with this nation's FREEDOMS ..THEN DON'T COME HERE..let alone RAISE your children here..because your children will be westernized.

There is another case similar in Florida presently.. a young female muslim coverts to Christianity..and she opted by choice to be estranged from her family .. she fears her father will KILL her..she is being kept away and protected from her father..becuz of the fact..she has accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal saviour..she has stressed for certain her father will KILL her or have her killed if she's found by any members of her family..

For those who want to equate islam to Christianity..as parralle in regard to female oppression> is not true.. if you search the living Christian bible scriptures.. you will discover what is actually written about female progression.. which is contrary to the koran's initial ACTS of female oppression and is NOT parralle to the bible's ACTS of female progression..

Religion is such bullshit. There is nothing but anger, hatred, control, discrimination, etc., that comes out of this man-made bullshit.