Another one in the where’s NOW now file?

Enter “honor killing” in the search window at the website for the National Organization of Women and you’ll get 3 — count ‘em — 3 hits that address that most feminine of problems. In chronological order, the results are as follows:

A press release type report from summer 2000, in which “the National Organization for Women joined Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for the introduction of H.R.362, a resolution to condemn “honor crimes,” the practice of burning, maiming or killing women who have been accused of bringing shame to their families.”

NOW’s 2001 annual report, which mentions that speakers affiliated with a World March of Women mentioned some of the horrors visited upon women, including genital mutilation and honor killings. Interestingly enough, the report writer, while mentioning how bad the Taliban were, shied away entirely from tying Islam together with these assaults on women.  (And yes I know that honor killing is more of a cultural practice, than a religious one, but it’s a hard distinction to make when one considers that those cultures that practice it are Islamic.  In otherwise, while all Muslims don’t commit honor killings, the majority of honor killings are committed by Muslims.)

NOW’s 2002 annual report, a 39 page document that, on page 17, uses precisely the same language used in the 2001 annual report to say that, at the World March of Women, speakers reported on how badly women are treated. It’s standard block and copy stuff.

If NOW wishes to be considered a reputable, or even a meaningful, organization protecting women, it might actually want to take a stand against the ever increasing number of honor killings world wide, because I have a little secret for NOW: Those being killed to preserve family honor are . . . shhhh, don’t say it too loudly . . . women. Another one took place in Britain, with a resultant conviction. As you read this, keep in mind the reference to the ever increasing numbers of these murders and to the tortures inflicted on these young women before their ultimate deaths:

A father who ordered his daughter brutally slain for falling in love with the wrong man in a so-called “honor killing” was found guilty of murder on Monday.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a boot lace, stuffed into a suitcase and buried in a back garden.

Her death is the latest in an increasing trend of such killings in Britain, home to some 1.8 million Muslims. More than 100 homicides are under investigation as potential “honor killings.”

Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother Ari Mahmod, 51, planned the killing during a family meeting, prosecutors told the court. Two others have pleaded guilty in the case. Two more suspects have fled the country. Sentencing is expected later this month.

The men accused the young woman of shaming her family by ending an abusive arranged marriage, becoming too Westernized and falling in love with a man who didn’t come from their Iraqi village. The Kurdish family came to Britain in 1998 when Banaz Mahmod was 11.

“She was my present, my future, my hope,” said Rahmat Suleimani, 29, Banaz Mahmod’s boyfriend.

During the three-month trial, prosecutors said Mahmod’s father beat his daughter for using hairspray and adopting other Western ways. Her uncle once told her she would have been “turned to ashes” if she were his daughter and had shamed the family by becoming involved with the Iranian Kurd, her sister 22-year-old Bekhal Mahmod testified.

Banaz Mahmod ran away from home when she was a teenager but returned when her father sent her an audio tape in which he warned he would kill her sisters, her mother and himself if she did not come home, her sister said.

She was later hospitalized after her brother attacked her, the sister told the court. The brother said he had been paid by their father to finish her off but in the end was unable to do it, said the sister, who testified in a full black burqa. She said she still feared for her own life.

***

Britain has seen more than 25 women killed by their Muslim relatives in the past decade for offenses they believed brought shame on the family. More than 100 other homicides are under investigation as potential honor killings.

Some Muslim communities in Britain practice Sharia, or strict Islamic law.

“We’re seeing an increase around the world, due in part to the rise in Islamic fundamentalism,” said Diana Nammi with the London-based Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organization.

The parts of the story that I omitted involve the way in which the British police repeatedly dismissed her fears, despite the increasingly savage punishment visited against her. I’m hard pressed to figure out their cavalier attitude. Is it the old-fashioned police attitude towards domestic violence? A fear of reprisal from Islamic fundamentalists? An unconcern for women? Who knows? Poor Banaz is dead in any event, and the ones who should care most, the organizations that are positively shrill in their concern that women get paid the precise number of pennies as men despite their different career choices, and who have elevated abortion to the ridiculous heights of a feminist sacrament, are silent.

Hat tip:  Don Quixote