'The whore is dead now' Fadima Sahindal was killed by her father for "dishonoring" her family. Let me excise the parts of the story from the New York Times that I feel are most painful and relevant:

She spoke fluent Swedish, had a Swedish boyfriend and believed that foreigners should adapt to Swedish culture. Last year, she spoke passionately in Parliament about the difficulties of being a young Turkish woman pressing for Western-style independence against the wishes of her deeply traditional parents. .... Neither he nor his wife learned to speak Swedish. Instead, they clung hard to their Kurdish identity, living as part of a patriarchal clan of some 400 emigrants from the same region. Authority was vested in a network of male relatives, and the concept of honor — to the family, and to tradition — was all-important. The wishes of individuals, and especially women, were considered far less significant than the wishes of the group's elders. .... Television cameras recorded, too, how Mesud Sihandal, Fadime's brother, tried to attack her during a break in the trial. The father was ordered to pay a fine; the brother, 17, got a suspended jail sentence .... In the subsequent trial, Mesud, who had a criminal record, testified in court that Fadime was "a whore." "I asked him in court, `You say that Fadime has dishonored the family, and what have you done — you have stolen and used drugs,' " Mr. Ericksson said. " `Doesn't that dishonor your family?' And he said, `I've broken your rules, but Fadime has broken our rules, and our rules are much more important.' " .... "At the hospital, the doctors said that Fadime was dead," Mr. Ericksson related. "At that point, one of her older sisters phones a male member of the family, in Songul's presence, and says, `The whore is dead now.' "

What can I say? I'm a product of the immigrant culture myself-and I've seen many women be married off to some yokel with bad teeth for the sake of family honor. I've even seen many of the women smile like cows and express their happiness with the fact that their lives are seen as simply extensions of their family's existence. To each their own. Those who wish to bow their heads to the graven image of another's will may do so. And yet, this sort of terror, I can't say I have seen it personally, but I do know of women that live in fear of their family's finding out their true lifestyle. Women in denial-who go to great lengths to maintain their image for the "sake of the family." Father's who get into paroxysms of rage over any interaction with males-for how dare their property be defiled by the touch of infidels, men with Ph.D.s and M.D.s, engineers at IBM and Microsoft. In the end, they are but men. They are creatures of their culture and their genes, and the two go hand in hand in this case. Evolution guides, culture ratifies and crystallizes. Patriarchy is part of all of our heritage, we shouldn't deny that. There are differences of degree, but I agree with evolutionary psychologists that assert than feminist utopias of the past that were matriarchies reflect more our own yearnings that any truth about the past. But here we are in the 21st century-and women have de jure equality. The barbarism of the past is behind us, no? At least in the lands that were once Christendom. Women can breath free knowing that their bodies-their lives, belong to them. Their shames and sins are their own business. They are not property, simply the daughters of cruel hard men who's honor is wrapped up on the actions of their seed. So we hope. Look hard all those who dance to the joys of multiculturalism. Yes, Islam can mean peace. But it can also mean submission. The Jews have a prayer, "I bless you, O Lord, etc, who has not made me a gentile. I bless you, O Lord, etc, who has not made me a slave. I bless you, O Lord, etc, who has not made me a woman." (thanks for the correction Scott) I'm afraid to say that sometimes I agree with the last. Afterthought: I understand that many who read this blog have a different life experience than I do-so let me tell you of something I just learned on my last visit home to my parents in Seattle. I have a younger sister-age 12. She informed me that my mother had explained to her that she would have to go to junior college and live at home. Of course, I went to a four year college and lived in dorms in the next state-while my younger brother is also finishing his undergraduate studies and will be going to grad school on the east coast. I have another brother, age 10, and he asked if he too would have to live at home and go to a community college, and my mother was aghast at such a suggestion. I'm lucky I didn't have a full stomach when I heard this-my mother would have been enraged if I threw up on her carefully clean suburban carpeting. Understand that my family is rather lax in their religious beliefs and pretty liberal-no one wears a head-covering and they are the Muslim version of Easter Christians. My father has even been known to disapprove of women that do the black head-to-toe purdah because of their ostentatiousness. So-I sometimes imagine, what would my sister be telling me if my father was a cab-driver and they lived in a curry-barrio somewhere in New York City? As it is, she can look forward to lowered expectations and an extended childhood in the Seattle suburbs. Another thing I must add is that though I make no bones about expressing my revulsion for any beast who would treat his daughter or sister as possessions that must be disposed of if soiled-the female relations of "dishonored" women are as great of a problem. Sequestered from the greater society to an extent their brothers are not, some of these women have bizarre conceptions of Westerners and their righteous contempt echoes the most extreme of Victorian gossips. And these women often will encourage their men-folk to dispose of their sisters happily-because if they are not married their sister's actions might be having a negative effect on their own prospects. Let me state again-the cows are free to make their own decisions, or allow others to make them in their stead, the problem occurs when the cows egg on the coercion of their sisters and daughters who wish to make their own choices-for good or bad. An example of what I mean-read this article about the mobilization of a herd of cows to protest abominations such as the equalization of divorce law. Some children never wish to grow up I suppose....