She wants a western life—for shame! For shame!
Rejecting our beliefs, she wants to fly;
How dare she bring dishonor to our name.
Correcting her delusion soon became
Our sacred task—I can’t imagine why
She wants a western life—for shame! For shame!
But western news reports held us to blame,
And forced us to dissemble and deny!
How dare she bring dishonor to our name!
A daughter should be ours, to break or tame,
But no, she claims her rights—she dares to cry
“I want a western life”—for shame! For shame!
If her beliefs and ours are not the same
She is not fit to live, in Allah’s eye—
How dare she bring dishonor to our name.
Our honor was at stake! Such was our aim,
We had no other choice—she had to die.
She wanted western life—for shame! For shame!
How dare she bring dishonor to our name
British court convicts parents in ‘honor’ murder
The parents of a 17-year-old girl will spend at least 25 years in a British prison for the death of their daughter after the couple’s conviction Friday for killing her over her desire to live a Westernized lifestyle and become an attorney, a court spokeswoman said Friday.
Chester Crown Court Judge Roderick Evans sentenced Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed to life in prison. He said the couple, who were originally from Pakistan, must be imprisoned for at least 25 years before being eligible for parole.
The sentence came hours after the court found them guilty of murder in the death of Shafilea Ahmed. The girl’s dismembered body was found on a riverbank in February 2004, months after she disappeared in 2003.
Go read the whole thing. I don’t think I can report it here and stay coherent.
Quoting the judge:
Those… bags of excrement… murdered their daughter while the other children watched…
I am SHAKING with rage.
Now, if only EVERYONE who did this would get a minimum of 25 years in prison, maybe people wouldn’t do it so often.
And if only dirt was edible, maybe we could solve world hunger.
Fuck everything.
There are no words for such horror. This is as bad as it gets. And what I find myself wondwering is…
Where are those other four children now?
What has become of them? What will become of them?
There is no help now for Shafilea Ahmed. Her parents will (hopefully) die in prison. What of those other children? How old are they now? What have their lives been like, and what are their lives going to be like from now on?
And (oh no, no) do they believe their parents were right? Have these monsters infected the minds of their surviving children so that they will go and do likewise?
Oh, no. Please. No.
I’m not a mother but I can’t imagine what could cause that much disconnect from your own child, your own flesh and blood. Don’t believe in god but the devil seems realer than real sometimes. This is pure evil.
I’ll bet that right now there are Muslim parents beating the shit out of their children for exactly the same reasons. It’s what they do. They’ll never change. Allah be praised.
It’s not a specifically muslim habit, more an Indian sub-continent habit. Hindus do the same sort of stuff too.
I just hope these MONSTERS get every parole hearing they attend denied and rot in prison for the rest of their worthless, miserable lives.
“It’s not a specifically muslim habit, more an Indian sub-continent habit. Hindus do the same sort of stuff too.”
It is a human habit. Child abuse and domestic abuse happens in every culture and on every continent. It causes more PTSD than war. It is a war, a forever war. The difference is how broadly child/domestic abuse is tolerated or even supported. Heavily patriarchal cultures and religions reinforce beliefs and practices that lead to these types of crimes. But don’t think it doesn’t happen in the USA. Don’t think it doesn’t happen in Christian cultures, yes even in humanist households, in atheist families. Fill in the blank with Mormon/Scientologist/Pagan/Buddhist/Bahai/Jewish/New-Age-Crystal-Gazers. This happens everywhere.
But nobody wants to look too closely. Sure, if a parent has been blatantly beating their kid and we see evidence like broken bones, action will be taken. But only if the violence is so extreme that we haven’t the luxury of ignoring it. We might tsk-tsk and raise an eyebrow over bruises. But not all abuse leaves physical marks and mostly people turn their heads. It’s complicated to intervene, it’s sticky. Better to prattle on about family values and parental rights. If we can keep telling ourselves that mommy & daddy know best, it is so much easier for us. As a culture, we croon it to ourselves like a lullaby. No, no, nothing wrong here. So we can just go about our business and not trouble ourselves.
LA LA LA, it doesn’t happen here. LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!
And if abused kids reach out for help (which they rarely do because they have been raised in an atmosphere such that they don’t expect good things from people) they are, at best, ignored. More likely they will be shunned or punished. Certainly in the context of the larger family, often in broader contexts. We want to believe our system is happy and safe, that mommy/daddy/pastor etc… are good and safe (even if we don’t automatically think such good thoughts about teachers and coaches). Life is stressful and we just don’t want to deal. We want our illusions. We fight to maintain our illusions. And if we have to throw people under the bus, even children, to maintain whatever delusions, we have always been happy to do so.
LA LA LA! IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE!
I call bullshit.
It takes some seriously twisted thinking to kill a child. That family system was insane. I don’t doubt that the religion fueled the fire and was the source of abuses that focused and intensified the parents’ behaviors. But these people were going to abuse their kids anyway. The thing is to not allow a culture of support for it. The thing is to not allow people to secret their families away from a larger society which can provide checks and balances. Because the behavior of many personality-disordered people is influenced by the culture and community in which they live. Not all abusers are flat-out sociopaths. There are narcissists and borderlines who, while they are no picnic as parents, will respond to cultural mores at least to some extent.
The thing is to pay attention and to keep parenting in the light. As crappy as public schools can be, I’m against home schooling. And I would, oh yes, infringe on the rights of those parents who could do a better job of schooling their children. I’d do it for the sake of children whose parents aren’t fit to be parents, let alone capable of providing a education. I would insist that students spend at least a partial day in a public schooling system so that those children who have abusive parents have at least some life line, some small chance of getting help. Because it is harder to starve your child or beat her or kill her, if people can see her.
This is so NOT just a Muslim thing.
This is not a Muslim thing. It’s not a South Asian thing. It’s not non-Christian, non-American thing (see here).
It’s a human thing. (It may be stronger with those religions that preach absolute obedience, but then again, that’s most of them.) It comes from the notion that children are their parents’ property instead of human beings in their own right. That’s the issue that needs resolving.
Should be 125.
Carpenterman@3
The second eldest daughter, Alesha, is why this conviction finally happened. 2 years ago she helped organise an armed robbery of her family home, and during police questioning over that she told the police that her sister had been murdered, and was willing to testify in this trial (not for any reduction in sentence in the armed robbery case either). More details on the family here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/03/shafilea-ahmed-murder-background
The difference between so called honour killings and the version we see amongst those raised in North American cultures is that the perpetrator is more likely to kill themselves as well after killing their spouse/kids/other family members. A good example would be the Josh Powell case, where Washington state resident Powell blew up his house, killing himself and his two sons. His wife disappeared on a camping trip in December of 2009, and he was considered a “person of interest” for obvious reasons.
This is a case that deserves “an eye for an eye” punishment.
The two will be locked away until they are old and after their remaining childen grow up, out of their influence. At least it’s a real sentence, not a slap on the wrist like a soldier got for hazing and murder.
Yeah. We see how that worked for your daughter, sir.
I’m glad they were convicted.
By all that is NOT holy, people like this have the most warped idea of love. Dismembering your child is unfathomable to me. How parents could do that is beyond comprehension. I’m speechless.
This all happened in Warrington, which is literally down the road from where I used to live in Merseyside. I’d like to say it’s shocking that something like this could happen so close to me, but it really isn’t.
True.
True.
True.
False.
Where are the Japanese parents routinely murdering their daughters for bringing “shame” on the family?
False.
What do Russian Orthodox Old Believers do with a daughter who abandons her faith and her community for the sake of her happiness?
In a sense this is true – but it’s not the Western notion of “owning” your kids until they’re adults, but rather the pre-Islamic Middle Eastern notion of “namus”, or family honour, which the men of the family are to guard against female indiscretion, coupled with Islamic intolerance of dissent and apostasy.
In Japan they’d be more likely to shame her into committing suicide than doing the deed themselves.
Isn’t this what they believe? Who are we to interfere with what Muslims believe?
Jon: If a Christian parent let their kids starve to death because after all Jesus said ‘take no thought for the morrow’ and if God can feed sparrows he can feed children, would you come on here with your ridiculous question?
Or do you only hate Muslims for what you think they believe?
@18 This isn’t what Muslims believe. It’s namus, which is a Middle Eastern pre-Islamic patriarchal tribal ideal that persists in the Middle Eastern and South Asian basin of the Islamic world.
Honour killings are rare amongst indigenous Islamic communities in the Balkans, Pacific, and Central Asia, but are practised by people in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and their diasporas regardless of their religion. There was another honour killing in the UK a few years back involving a Sikh father who murdered his daughter because she got engaged to a British soldier; there was also one in Iraq involving a Kurdish Yezidi community who stoned a 16 year old Yezidi girl to death because she was involved with a Sunni Muslim boy.