Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Better To Wake Up Now Than Later

Jasvinder Sanghera, director of Karma Nirvana, a group that supports victims of ‘honour’-based violence, accused police of ‘fumbling in the dark’. ‘There is a lack of confidence among women that police will protect them,’ she said. ‘There is a misconception that forced marriage and “honour” killing is part of our culture - but these are criminal activities and they need to be treated as such.’

The elephant in the room here — as so often — is that ‘honour killings’ are largely a Muslim phenomenon. The reason the police failed to follow this up is because they are paralysed on two fronts. First, the doctrine of victim culture they now so lethally espouse ordains that minorities are always victims of the majority; so when the police are faced with evidence that a minority might be victimising one of its own (or anyone else, for that matter) they simply cannot deal with it and so look the other way.

Second, they are utterly terrified of doing anything that the Muslim community will take to be an assault on their way of life. And honour killings, the need to avenge the shame caused by a loss of honour, are rooted in values intrinsic to the way of life of many Muslims. There are the usual claims that they are in fact ‘un-Islamic’, but whatever the theology may say the brutal fact remains that honour killings — which do occur in other cultures —are most prevalent within the Muslim world, particularly in certain societies.


Source.

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