How Islam Made a Difference

Robert Spencer writes:

Aqsa Parvez was sixteen years old; her father has been charged with strangling her to death because she refused to wear the hijab. Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, declared: “The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to colour or creed.” Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario, agreed: “The bottom line is, it’s a domestic violence issue.” Nor was this denial limited only to Muslims. Lorne Gunter said in the Edmonton Journal: “I see nothing uniquely Muslim in her death. If, indeed, her father killed her, her death is his doing, not Islam’s.”

Gus Van Horn:

To see a bunch of Moslems and multiculturalists so eager to comply with Western law is rather odd -- until one realizes that by doing so, they hope to stop the investigation of a murder before it becomes apparent that in the sense I just indicated, Islam is one of the killers, and multiculturalism an accomplice.

Quite right. I focused on the Islamic aspect here.

Comments

[Alex]

As much as I disagree with the idea of "hate laws", I think this case would be a great opportunity to use them. A Muslim man murdering a girl for refusing to obey his interpretation of the Quaran? For, in effect, following her own ideas about her religion? If that's not a hate crime, I don't know what is!

[Cafe Alpha]

It's not Islam so much as the remains of the institution of familial sex-slavery, wives-for-money. Islam is 100% compatible with that institution, but it can be separated from that institution as well.

I think that Muslim societies could end "honor" meaning the importance of a family's reputation for chastity without changing Islam.

The only ways that Islam stands in the way are:
1. Its hostile attitude toward adultery "show them no mercy" the Koran says.
2. Its completely heartless attitude in general. If compassion is the basis for morality, then morality is incompatible with Islam.
3. Its insistence on the oppression of women and their sexuality.

So the problem, for once, isn't that Islam calls for murder, but that it destroys compassion and the concept of individual rights or freedoms.

It allows for no moral concepts that would support change. It does not allow for intellectual reasoning that would support change. But it does not mandate this sort of violence directly.