Conservative> Debra Saunders> There Is No Honor There S Only Killing

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There Is No Honor; There's Only Killing

The Council on American-Islamic Relations sent out its usual roundup Tuesday of news stories alleging the mistreatment of Muslims in America. There was a story critical of the FBI harassment of Muslims in Queens, N.Y., in the wake of the arrest of a suspected terrorist. Another story concerned calls for an investigation into an FBI shooting that left Detroit Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah dead. There were also notices of CAIR banquets.

There was no story about Noor Faleh Almaleki. Her father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, has been arrested for running down his 20-year-old daughter, as well as the mother of her live-in boyfriend, on Oct. 20 in an Arizona parking lot with his 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. On Monday, Noor Almaleki died, in what is considered the latest "honor killing" in America.

According to news reports, the father, who moved his family from Iraq in the mid-1990s, was angry because his daughter had become "too Westernized." Before Noor Almaleki died, a local prosecutor described the crime as "an attempted honor killing."

After the incident, Faleh Almaleki fled across the border to Mexico, then London. He was extradited and charged with two counts of aggravated assault on Saturday. The judge then assigned him an attorney. He has yet to enter a plea on the charges, which are likely to be upgraded to include murder or manslaughter.

Before the 20-year-old died, prosecutor Stephanie Low told a Maricopa County court that, "By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame upon him and his family."

So where is CAIR, which bills itself as "America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization?" Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told me, "We tend to deal with things that are related to Islam and the Muslim community."

Hooper added that CAIR does not "believe there's any so-called honor in an honor killing.

These things occur. They're completely against Islamic beliefs. There's no justification." And: "Horrible things happen all over the world. Domestic abuse among families goes along religious lines," based on false justifications.

In short, CAIR will make a stink when (male) imams are not allowed to board a Minneapolis plane, but don't expect the organization to make an issue of honor killings.

The Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy, however, released a statement that mourned the young woman's death and called on the Muslim community to abandon its "denial that honor killings are an issue."

The group's founder, M. Zuhdi Jasser, who practices internal medicine, suggested that while groups like CAIR may want to paper over the cultural Islamic roots of honor killing, they do exist. And: "If you identify the pathology wrong — in an incorrect fashion — you will never treat the disease."

Hooper told me that "the hate bloggers are trying to insert Islam" into Noor Almaleki's death. But the true haters are those who want to disguise honor killings as pious and selfless, when they are in fact brutish and cowardly.

Or as Low noted when she argued for high bail, "The defendant tries to hide behind his moral convictions, and yet he also fled."

E-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Ma'am;...You seem to want to bathe in the light of morality, but I cannot let you... We look at the behavior of many peoples coming to this land with as much clarity as through the bottom of a bottle...The easiest way to explain the situation is this: Those people are living in honor societies, and we are living in money economies... Our society, and our money economy are very corrosive to their economies and socieites... When people do not have money they also do not have police, and prisons, and law courts... If you were to live in such a community and found it necessary to leave to seek a living elsewhere, then you would need to trust those you leave with your family and belongings... Honor is essential to trust, and trust is essential to every relationship.... Yet, where money is dear, honor is cheap, and a man may find that what he has spent his whole life preserving has been bought for very little money... You must understand that all people have come out of honor societies... This was true of the Greeks, and the Romans, the German tribes, the American Indians, and the Irish...It was not Helen that launched a thousand ships, but a common oath that brought a war to Troy... Even in the Genisis we have Abraham telling his servant to put his hand under his thigh in order to take his oath to a distant land to find there a wife for his son....The Muslim children of Abraham are bound to their religion by an oath... We make oaths with little of care or consequences, but they could not be members of their community without their honor... We find money is essential, but our society is new, and is already decrepit by comparison... We fool ourselves to believe we can live without honor... They stand fast, and fight to the death in defense of land, and family, and rights, and religion; and with very little of resources are beating us...If you look at the death, damage, and destruction that has come out of western society you must ask how long can we go, and how long the world will let us continue to exist, as we have, making money the equivalent of all value...I am hardly your typical American... I am little educated, and well read...I have stood in defense of my honor and suffered a terrible price for it... Yet; I realize that personally and socially there is no substitute for honor... Those people we invite here with open arms should be made to understand the changes they must accept to remain as citizens having equal protection of the law... They must accomplish- over night- a change that has taken us a thousand years, and as Shakespeare shows, we were still struggling with five hundred years on...No man could manufacture honor as money is manufactured, so that one having honor is required to hold on to it, and defend it... Cruel though it may seem, the father who killed his daughter was preserving something he thought he could never live without, and for that reason mercy should be shown...As Othello said: He who steals my purse steals trash...Money by comparison is trash, and honor is essential; and in spite of the trapping of honor we hang about our political offices, it is money which molds our future, and casts all votes... Under such circumstances, we are suffering social decline and death..Give up the appeal to morality...There is nothing immoral that is not dishonorable, and nothing honorable that is not moral....Thanks...Sweeney

Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Nov 5, 2009 5:37 AM