More facts and more questions on the murder of Banaz Mahmod

I was frustrated yesterday by the British news articles on the honor murder of Banaz Mahmod because none explained what specifically was so objectionable about her boyfriend Rahmat Sulemani that her father and uncle felt “honor-bound” to kill her over her relationship with him (the loving father and uncle also attempted but failed to murder Sulemani himself). An article by Steve Bird in the London Times reprinted in today’s New York Post fills in more facts. Banaz was an Iraqi Kurd from the Mirawaldy region. Sulemani, though a Kurd also, was not from the Mirawaldy region, was not from Iraq but Iran, was not strictly religious, and also the couple had been secretly photographed lightly kissing and embracing in a London street. So, was she killed because Sulemani was from a different region, or because he was not from Iraq, or because he was not a strict Muslim, or because they kissed in the street, or because Banaz’s father and uncle assumed from the kiss that the couple were sleeping together?

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Leonard K. writes:

None of the above. She was killed because Muslims are allowed to settle in the West. If they were not, she would be living in Iraq, he would be in Iran, and they would have never met each other. And you couldn’t have cared less how many Kurds killed one another, and why they did it, as they have been doing for hundreds of years now.

Karen writes from England:

Melanie Phillips writes about the honour killing of the Kurdish girl. She talks about the “honour and shame embedded in Moslem culture” and comments upon the intrinsic inferiority of women and non Moslems in Moslem culture. Not once does she draw the conclusion that Islam and Moslems are incompatible with our culture. She recommends that this country should “come down on the subjugation of Moslem women like a ton of bricks.” This is folly. How does she propose to change a whole culture, religion and people? She is criticising the Police and whilst they may have made some errors, they are hardly to blame for their inability to deal with an alien culture which should be exported from the West.

LA replies:

The article makes it evident that Phillips is caught in an endless replay loop. She keeps complaining furiously about the politically correct culture of the British police, who are conditioned never to see anything objectionable in a minority culture, and so fail to recognize the reality of honor killings, and so failed to defend Banaz from her homicidal relatives. She talks about the amazing refusal of much of the British media even to identify the killers—who were acting in the name of their Muslim law and customs—as Muslims. All this is true, and it’s terrible. But so what? What if the British media did refer to Muslim doing evil things in the name of Islam as Muslims? What if the British authorities did recognize the bad characteristics of minority and Muslim cultures? What if the police did acknowledge Muslim honor killing? Sure, some victims might be saved. Put those girls in taxpayer financed safe houses, hidden from their families, give them a new identity or whatever. Do this for hundreds of Muslim females, do it for thousands of them. But how would that solve the underlying reality that Britain has close to two million Muslims many of whom believe in honor killings, sharia, and jihad?

Muslims in significant numbers do not belong in the West. As long as Phillips refuses to see this obvious truth, she will keep ranting against Britain’s “culture of political correctness,” imagining that if PC went away, somehow Muslims could be easily assimilated. A true liberal, she still believes that, to the extent that significant cultural differences exist, as in the case of Muslims, underneath cultural differences, which are superficial, all people are basically alike and that the Muslim failure to assimilate into Britain is Britain’s fault (for not trying hard enough to assimilate them), rather than, very simply, an unchangeable fact about the Muslims themselves.

Imagine how mentally stifling it is to be a liberal—to go through one’s life never, never, never allowing oneself to see the truth of human differences!

Nora B. writes:

I came across your website while doing some research for an entry at my blog on the murder of Banaz Mahmod. You ask: “So, was she killed because Sulemani [the boyfriend] was from a different region, or because he was not from Iraq, or because he was not a strict Muslim, or because they kissed in the street, or because Banaz’s father and uncle assumed from the kiss that the couple were sleeping together?” I am with the other commentators here. Questions like that are unanswerable when it’s about Islam. It was enough that she was entering into a relationship without the consent of her family. WHAT EXACTLY the real or perceived shortcomings of the young man were, is immaterial in this context, or at least so I think.

Just allow me a general remark: You are a ray of light in the darkness of “conservative” American punditry.

I am German born and based, and although I consider myself a staunch ally of America (and Israel), the shrill, attention seeking, sloppily informed and only too often intellectually dishonest writing irritates me frequently. Thank you for being there and partly restoring my faith in the conservative intelligentsia (for want of a better word).

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 12, 2007 04:50 PM | Send