honor killings

Hate Crime or Islamic Honor Killing?

April 4th, 2012

by Gadi Adelman

An Iraqi-born woman was beaten in her home in California and later died. A window was broken and a note left near the body read, “Go back to your own country, you’re a terrorist".  It was thought to be a hate crime. Now Police are wondering.

Shaima Alawadi, 32, a mother of five was found unconscious by her 17 year old daughter, in the dining room of the family’s home in El Cajon, California, at about 11:15 a.m. on March 21. Alawadi was taken off life support about 3 p.m. March 24. She died shortly thereafter.

The daughter who found her told KUSI Channel 9/51 her mother had been beaten in the head with a tire iron and a note near her mother stated, “Go back to your own country, you’re a terrorist".

The family also told police they had received a similar threatening note several days earlier but considered it a prank by teenagers.

Let me state here that this is a brutal murder and regardless of what the investigation reveals, a 32-year-old mother of 5 was cruelly taken from her family. The death of Shaima Alawadi comes on the heels of the Trayvon Martin shooting and people throughout the country are taking sides over whether Trayvon was a victim of racism. Add to that the note left by Shaima’s body, and it’s no wonder that people right away start yelling “hate crime.”

On March 26, Jim Redman, the Chief of the El Cajon Police Department, held a 15-minute news conference, which lead to more questions than answers. His statement was less than two minutes long, the 14 remaining minutes was a question/answer session with the press.

Chief Redman explained, “Based on the contents of this note we are not ruling out the possibility this may be a hate crime.” He stated the note “was threatening in nature” but continued saying, “I want to stress there is other evidence in this case that we are looking at and the possibility of a hate crime is just one of the aspects of this investigation.”

Redman then stated, “Based on the evidence thus far, we believe this is an isolated incident.”

Red flag: How can this be an isolated incident if it was hate crime? Would the Chief make such a statement if he had evidence there were a person or persons running around murdering Muslims?

The first question was asked: “Could the note possibly be a red herring or possibly family members or something like that as well?” The answer that the Chief gave would remain the same for most of the questions,“I can’t get into that; I just have to maintain my statement that we are looking at all aspects of this case”.

Questions that followed attempted to get the Chief to reveal more to no avail. Chief Redman stuck to his initial statement. He acknowledged that all the family members had been interviewed, including the victim’s husband, and stated “We’re confident that we’ll be able to resolve this case.”

Another question: “If you think this is an isolated incident, or, how do you assure residents of El Cajon that they don’t need to be concerned if we don’t know a lot about this case?”

Chief Redman’s answer goes back to the red flag: “I wish I could reveal more, but I really can’t because it would compromise the investigation, but I just want to assure the citizens of El Cajon that we believe, we strongly believe that this was an isolated incident.”

 

When asked about hostility towards the Muslim community in the area, the chief stated that there was “no free flowing hostility” in the community.  Redman added, “I can’t comment on the evidence or the reasons why we believe it’s an isolated incident other than to just assure the community that that’s our strong belief.”

So where am I going with all this you may ask. As explained in an article from August 2010 titled “Fake Hate Crimes: An Islamist Weapon”, by Ryan Mauro,

CAIR called on the FBI to investigate an act of arson at a Georgia mosque, saying that hate crimes were increasing because of a “vocal minority in our society promoting anti-Muslim bigotry.” The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) referred to it as one of the “incidents of Islamophobia [that] are on the rise in this country.” However, police later arrested a Muslim suspect.

He cites several cases within the article,

A classic example occurred in 2008, when a 19-year-old female Muslim student named Safia Z. Jilani at Elmhurst College in Illinois claimed that she had been pistol-whipped in a campus restroom by a male who then wrote “Kill the Muslims” on the mirror. The alleged attack occurred just hours after she spoke at a “demonstration called to denounce the anti-Islamic slurs and swastika she had discovered … in her locker.” A week later, however, authorities determined that none of this had taken place and she was charged with filing a false police report.

In other cases, individuals are driven to fabricate hate crimes not for political reasons, but to cover up more mundane criminal activity. Take the bizarre story of Musa and Essa Shteiwi, Ohio men who received media attention in 2006 after reporting several attacks on their store, the third being with a Molotov cocktail. A fourth “attack” then occurred, when an explosion was set off and badly burned the father and son, injuries from which they later died. CAIR highlighted it as a hate crime. However, investigators found that the two had set off the explosion themselves after they poured gasoline in preparation for another staged incident and one of them foolishly lit a cigarette. The pair had hired a former employee to carry out the previous attacks as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

There are several other cases within the article, but too many to list all here.

Daniel Pipes did a report back in 2005 on this same subject titled “CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense”, he lists six cases in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) gave examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports, and he “discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration and distortion”.

I myself have written on this subject before as well. My article last may on Fatima Abdallah was just one example of an honor killing that was ruled a suicide. No, it was accidental, or was it both? The Tampa, Florida police and the medical examiner never did agree, but as I explained in the article, “Fatima Abdallah died after she allegedly beat her own head against a coffee table and then on the floor until she died.  Her death was ruled accidental and the case was closed.This goes much farther than the obvious ludicrousness that someone would commit suicide by beating their own head on a table. The inconsistencies in the police reports and statements, the 911 call report, the Tampa Fire Department medics and the Medical examiner are astounding.”

My first thought when I heard about the beating and death of Shaima Alawadi was that it was another honor killing that would be covered up. It’s not that I don’t believe that someone would murder a Muslim for being a Muslim. No, this was because of past history.

Now I am even more convinced due to the press conference by Chief Redman of the El Cajon Police. If a member of her family did kill Shaima in the name of honor, what better way to cover it up than by writing a note and breaking a window?

The reports on hate crimes by our FBI show that crimes against Muslims continue to go down each and every year. I touched on this in my article just last week, “ …the recently released FBI crime statistics from 2010... The stats section of religious bias once again shows that anti-Jewish hate crimes were far and above that of Islamic hate crimes. Of the 1,552 victims of an anti-religion hate crime, 67.0 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias and 12.7 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.

I have written too many articles on honor killings here in the U.S., and I am certain this one will be added to the list.

There is only one way that the El Cajon police could be so certain that this was “an isolated incident.” There is only one reason the Chief would make a public statement saying he wanted to “assure the citizens of El Cajon that we believe, we strongly believe that this was an isolated incident.”

That would be if they knew without a shadow of a doubt that whoever committed this murder was a threat only to Shaima Alawadi and no one else.

My hat’s off to Chief Redman and his department, it sounds to me thus far that they are truly looking in to every aspect of this murder and not jumping on the “Islamophobic” band wagon.

Only time will tell if I am right, but at least so far this case doesn’t look like it is going to end up like the Tampa case that was swept under the proverbial prayer rug. Either way, as I stated in the outset, this is a brutal murder and regardless of what the investigation reveals, a 32-year-old mother of five was cruelly taken from her family.

If I am right, perhaps we will hear some outcry from the women’s rights groups this time. Then again …

Gadi Adelman is a speaker on terrorism, jihad, sharia and Islam. He is a contributing editor for the Family Security Matters website as well as writing for Conservative Camp, Faith for Freedom, Gold Coast Chronicle and Pronline news. He has his own weekly radio show "America Akbar" that can be heard on the Radio Jihad network.

Thu, April 12, 2012 Since Islamist Takeover, Turkey's Honor Killing Rate HIghest in World

Turkey now has an honor-killing rate which is greater than 5 times higher than that of Pakistan.

by Meira Svirsky

Islam Watch reports that according to the Turkish Government figures, after the Islamists rose to power in 2002, rate of honor killings in Turkey increased at alarmingly in the deeply religious segments of the Turkish society, turning Turkey into a leading country afflicted by honor killings. After the current ruling Islamist party, the AKP, came to power in 2002, reports Christian Science Monitor (CSM), honor killings increased "14 fold" over the next seven years. There were 66 cases of honor killings in 2002, which rose 953 in the first seven months of 2009.

In Pakistan, notorious for honor killing, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded 943 cases of such killings in 2011, and about 100 less in 2010. That means Turkey had about double the number of honor killings in 2009 as compared the number honor-killed in Pakistan in 2011. Given Pakistan has a population of 177 million as compared to Turkey’s 75 million, Turkey has an honor-killing rate, which is greater than 5 times higher than that of Pakistan.

For more about honor killings in Turkey, click here.

 

Thu, April 5, 2012 Hate Crime, Not Likely: An Update

Search warrants show that Shaima Alawadi, the 32-year-old Iraqi-American mother of five who was brutally beaten to death in California, was planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas.

The U-T San Diego newspaper reports that Shaima Alawadi, left, the 32-year-old Iraqi-American mother of five from El Cajon, California, who was brutally beaten to death, was planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas , The paper reports that search warrant records show “a family in turmoil,” which casts doubts on the likelihood that her slaying was a hate crime, as originally reported.

Alawadi’s body was found by her 17-year-old daughter Fatima, with a note lying close by telling the family to go back to where they came from, according to the daughter. Investigators have not made   public the contents of the note. The sheriff’s crime lab has only said that the handwritten note was a photocopy.

Alawadi’s husband, Kassim, Alhimidi, said he was taking the younger children to school when the murder happened, however, police have stated that his whereabouts have not been confirmed.

The paper also reports that records obtained at El Cajon Superior Court reveal that Fatima, below, who called 911 to report the attack, was distraught over her pending arranged marriage to a cousin.

During a questioning after the attack, an affidavit states that Fatima’s received a text message on her cellphone that said, “The detective will find out tell them (can’t) talk.”

A neighbor reported seeing a skinny dark-skinned male running west from the area of Alawadi’s house. He was described as being in his late teens to early 20s and carrying a brown doughnut-shaped cardboard box.

See RadicalIslam.org's original article on this case Hate Crime, Not Likely that foresaw suspicious elements in this murder.

Wed, April 4, 2012 Britain's Multicultural Nightmare

Forced marriages, bigamy with multiple welfare payments, honor killings and sharia-controlled no-go zones now plague Britain. And the BBC refuses to "talk about it."

by: 
Soeren Kern

More than 400 children were subjected to forced marriage in Britain during the past year, including a five-year-old girl who is believed to be the country's youngest victim of the practice.

The statistics were provided by the British government's Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) as part of an ongoing effort to create a law that would criminalize forced marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The custom is already illegal in Scotland.

Overall, the FMU said it gave advice or support related to nearly 1,500 cases of forced marriage during 2011, although experts say the vast majority of forced marriages in Britain go unreported.

Most of the instances of forced marriage in Britain involve Muslim families from South Asia, particularly Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Many of the cases involve Muslim children who are taken abroad by their parents and forced to marry against their will. Forced marriages often involve kidnapping, beatings and rape.

Prime Minister David Cameron has compared the practice of forced marriage to modern day slavery and has said people should not "shy away" from addressing the issue because of "cultural concerns." A new law outlawing the practice is currently being drafted and could be in place by the end of 2012.

Separately, more than 65,000 women and girls in England and Wales have been the victims of female genital mutilation, and another 24,000 girls under the age of 15 are believed to be at a high risk, according to a London-based non-profit group called Foundation for Women's Health Research and Development.

Speaking in the House of Commons on February 6, British Home Secretary Theresa May said "Sadly, what we see are too many examples of this terrible crime continuing to take place. I think most people would be shocked to know how many young girls within the United Kingdom are subjected to female genital mutilation."

Female genital mutilation is most common among Muslim immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Although the practice is illegal under the 2003 Female Genital Mutilation Act, and carries a jail term of up to 14 years, no one has yet been successfully prosecuted.

In many cases, Muslim families often pool resources to fly professional "cutters" to Britain from Africa to perform mutilations on pre-pubescent girls for as little as £40 ($65), often without anesthetics, using blunt knives, razor blades or scalpels. In other cases, girls are flown abroad to their family's native country to help minimize the risk of detection.

On March 31, an anti-female genital mutilation activist group named Daughters of Eve began hosting workshops in London to encourage men to stop this practice. The workshops, which will run for five weeks, include topics such as an introduction to female genital mutilation, its consequences and the laws surrounding it.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that more than 2,800 so-called honor attacks -- punishments for bringing shame on the family -- were recorded by British police during 2011. That data was compiled by the London-based Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organization (IKWRO), a registered charity that provides advice to Muslim women and girls living in the United Kingdom, who are often facing forced marriage, honor-based violence, female genital mutilation and domestic abuse.

Although the statistics provide the best national estimate so far, IKWRO believes the real figure could be five times as high. The highest number of honor crimes -- which include murder, mutilation, beatings, abductions and acid attacks -- was recorded in London, where the problem has doubled to more than five times the national average.

Elsewhere in Britain, the government says that effective in 2013, it will end the practice of paying multiple social welfare benefits to Muslim immigrants practicing bigamy or polygamy.

In September 2011, a British newspaper exposé revealed that tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants in Britain are practicing bigamy or polygamy to collect bigger social welfare payments from the British state.

Although bigamy is a crime in Britain punishable by up to seven years in prison, the rapid growth in multiple marriages has been fueled by multicultural policies that grant special rights to Muslim immigrants who demand that Islamic Sharia law be reflected in British law and the social welfare benefits system.

The United Kingdom also recognizes polygamous marriages where both parties were resident in a country in which the practice is legal before they moved to Britain.

The report shows how Muslim men can take a second, third or fourth wife (or in some cases five or more) from anywhere in the world, father any number of children with her, and have British taxpayers assume responsibility for this family's upkeep and care.

By having a string of wives living in separate homes, Muslim immigrants are squeezing tens of millions of British pounds from the state by claiming benefits intended for single mothers and their children.

Those women are currently eligible for full housing benefits -- reaching £106,000 ($250,000) a year in some parts of London -- and child benefits paid at £1,000 ($1,500) a year for a first child, and nearly £700 ($1,000) for each subsequent one.

The British government is also working on a new law that would ensure that meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic Sharia law cannot be sold to unwitting members of the public. The new measure would prevent schools, hospitals, pubs and sporting venues from serving so-called halal [permitted in Islam] meat secretly to customers.

The move will be welcomed by animal rights activists and many others, who argue that the traditional Islamic way of preparing meat -- which involves killing animals by drawing a knife across their throats without stunning them first -- is cruel and causes unnecessary pain.

In September 2010, an investigation by London's Daily Mail found that major supermarket chains, fast-food restaurants, even some hospitals and schools in Britain are serving halal food without telling those who are eating it.

Meanwhile, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) -- a key promoter of multiculturalism in Britain -- has refused to broadcast a screenplay about the threat that Islam poses to freedom of speech.

The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, says he will not air a play the National Theatre's controversial play called "Can We Talk About This?," which examines multiculturalism and how it has resulted in Britain being more divided than ever.

According to Thompson, there is "a growing nervousness about discussion about Islam." He also claims that because Muslims are a religious minority in Britain, their faith should be given different coverage than that of more established groups.

In 2005, Thompson famously ordered BBC Two to air an anti-Christian musical called "Jerry Springer: The Opera," which mocked God and presented Jesus Christ as a homosexual. At least 45,000 people contacted the BBC to complain about the show, which contained an estimated 8,000 obscenities. According to one observer: "If this show portrayed Mohammed or Vishnu as homosexual, ridiculous and ineffectual, it would never have seen the light of day."

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

This article appeared originally in GatestoneIstitute.org

Wed, March 28, 2012 'Muslim,' Islam' Not Mentioned in BBC Article on Honor Violence

Matters of profound significance to British society have been rendered undiscussable by politically correct multiculturalism.

A 700-word article by the BBC on the 47 percent rise of honor attacks in Britain failed to mention the words Muslim, Islam or Islamic even once.  The article managed to report and comment on the more than 2,823 attacks that were recorded last year, even noting that these figures came from only 39 of 52 police forces.

Even police forces seem to be intimidated. The BBC quotes the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organization (IKWRO) in the article who explain that,” A quarter of police forces in the UK were unable or unwilling to provide data, and communities have often been reluctant to talk about the crime.” Information for the BBC article was provided by IKWRO who obtained the data from a freedom of information request.

“This is how societies go down: When matters of the profoundest significance to their character, and potentially their very existence, have been rendered undiscussable by the people that set the terms of public debate, “says Robin Shepard, owner and publisher of The Commentator.

Shepard goes on to say that even though the writers and editors of the article should be fired, it is clear that they won’t be because “the mind-numbing, multiculturalist narrative that demanded censorship of the salient evidence is effectively institutionalized as the dominant narrative across the BBC … “

However, ignoring the problem or accepting that the quality of discussion about the problem will be severely stunted is not so simple, Shepard comments. “You reap what you sow. It would be nice to leave it at that on the grounds that these people are too narrow and boring to be bothered with. Unfortunately, we can’t because the BBC is the most powerful media outlet in the English-speaking world and it sets the British news agenda.”

A case in point is the fact that SKY News, who picked up the BBC’s story and ran it multiple times, also did not mention that these honor killings occur only in the Muslim world. Even the Daily Telegraph, described as the Britain’s flagship, right-leaning newspaper followed the lead of the BBC and made no mention of Islam in its article on the subject.

Shepard continues, “So you can see the problem. The power of the BBC is such that it is not only capable of influencing what is said, it can also influence what is not said. And, when the whole organization has been captured by politically correct ideology, that means that it’s not just a problem for the BBC, it’s a problem for Britain as a whole.”

 

Wed, February 1, 2012 Media Avoids M-Word in Reporting Canadian Honor Killing Verdicts [with VIDEOS]

Murders conveniently reported as result of a "culture clash."

The recent trial of the honor killing trial in Canada has garnered an abundance of media attention. In that trial a wealthy businessman, Mohammad Shafia, 58, a Muslim native of Afghanistan, and his second wife, Tooba Yahya, 42, were convicted of killing their three daughters (two shown, left) and the girls’ aunt (who was also Shafia’s first wife and sister to his second wife).  Their 20-year old son Hamed was also found guilty of first-degree murder in the case as well.

Media coverage of the trail and its verdict were extensive but noticeably missing in most mainstream media coverage (NBC, AP, CNN) was any mention that the Shafia family was Muslim and that such killings are sanctioned by Sharia law.  

For example, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the killings were the  result of a “culture clash” involving  a “strict religious family.”

 NBC’s Anchor Brian Williams reports:  “A verdict has been reached in a murder case that's gotten a lot of attention because it involved so-called honor killings of family members by family members. In this case an Afghan family living in Canada. It is a culture clash getting a lot of attention to our north. NBC's Kevin Tibbles has the story.”

Reporter Keven Tibbles: “Three teenage sisters murdered because of how they wanted to live their lives. Dress like westerners, use the internet, meet boys. Also killed, their father's first wife, by a strict religious family that felt it had been disgraced.”

In fact, the only time religion is mentioned in the report is to tell us that one of the girls had a Christian boyfriend.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

The CNN reporter, on the other hand,  sounded shocked that the jury convicted the three and that it took only 15 hours to deliver its first-degree murder charge.  It is clear from her tone that she questioned the validity of the jury’s judgment.

“I mean … that’s not a lot of time … There were 12 counts. That means that they must have spent just slightly over an hour on each count. What does that tell you? This means that the prosecution basically did make their case as far as this jury is concerned.”

 She wondered why they didn’t consider the lesser charge of second-degree murder, since the three convicted family members held to their story throughout the trial that they were all innocent and didn’t point the finger at each other.  She sounded amazed that the jury believed that two biological parents would murder their own children.  She called it “a stark verdict. “  

Never mind that the prosecutor had rock-solid evidence to the contrary, including wiretapped conversations of the father. The evidence never made it to CNN’s report nor did the mention of which faith allows honor killings. 

As to the girls brother, also convicted of first-degree murder, the CNN reported mused  that, since he was “just 21-years old,” an appeal will probably made on these “extenuating circumstances.”

 

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