An organization in Britain dedicated to protecting women from so-called honor crimes has reported a massive increase in the practice, noting that Muslims and other religious minorities committed more than 3,000 such crimes in Britain in 2010.
Although a police spokesman offered the politically-correct statement that “honor crimes” cross all religious and cultural boundaries, statistics show that Muslims commit the vast majority of them — which are often honor killings. Honor killings are becoming increasingly common in the United States as well.
An honor criminal may lash out for any number of reasons, but the crimes typically involve a woman or girl accused of dishonoring her family by refusing or leaving an arranged marriage, dating someone who is not Muslim, becoming “too Western,” or even receiving a love note from a school chum.
Unsurprisingly, police are reluctant to explain the problem: Islam.
The Numbers
IKWRO [Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation], a group dedicated to protecting Iraqi, Kurdish. and other women from honor violence, used Britain’s Freedom of Information law to procure information about the problem from every police force in the UK. Of 52 forces, 39 responded, reporting 2,823 honor crimes. The group estimates that the 13 forces that did not respond would have likely posted another 500 crimes, bringing the total to more than 3,000.
According to an IKWRO spokesman:
These figures demonstrate that “honour”-based violence is not a minor problem but a very serious issue which affects thousands of people each year, many of whom will suffer high levels of abuse before they seek help.
Twelve of the police forces also provided statistics for 2009, and nine of these showed an increase in “honour” crime between 2009 and 2010.
The overall increase across the twelve forces was 57%. In London, “honour” crime has doubled to more than 5 times the national average, and in Northumberland it has tripled in a year.
The breakdown for the most dangerous places, when it comes to honor crimes, is shocking: London posted 495 such crimes. Numbers for other areas are West Midlands — 387; West Yorkshire — 350; Lancashire — 277; and Manchester — 189.
London’s Daily Mail offered more detail:
Cleveland recorded 153, while Suffolk and Bedfordshire saw 118 and 117 respectively, according to the figures. Between the 12 forces able to provide figures from 2009, there was an overall 47 per cent rise in honour attack incidents.
Police in Northumbria saw a 305 per cent increase from 17 incidents in 2009 to 69 in 2010, while Cambridgeshire saw a 154 per cent jump from 11 to 28.
A quarter of police forces in the UK were unable or unwilling to provide data, IKWRO said.
The total, some 3,323, adding the 500 IKWRO estimates that police did no report, means that more than nine such crimes were committed every day of the year.
The full report does not appear to be available at IKWRO’s website.
PC Policing Rules
Diana Nammi, a spokesman for IKWRO, told the BBC that politically-correct police are afraid to attach Islam to the names of the culprits because of the obvious. Noting that what IKWRO uncovered is just the “tip of the iceberg,” she declared, “I can say that we have got a policy in the UK [of] political correctness which sometimes is politically wrong and it’s happened within how … to deal with issues happening within the Muslim community.”
Nammi said the vast majority of honor criminals are Muslim, but that Sikhs and Hindus also commit honor crimes.
“Wrong is wrong; crime is crime within any religion,” she told the BBC.
As well, she related, “The perpetrator will be even considered as a hero within the community because he is the one defending the family and community’s honour and reputation.”
She also said the police often help victims for only a short time even though such violence is a lifelong menace. “The problem is that there is no systematic training for police and other government forces in the UK, such as social services, teachers and midwives,” Nammi told the network.
Nammi observed that such violence is an “organised or collective crime or incident.” As this reporter has written elsewhere, even women — including mothers and mothers-in-law — participate in honor killings.
As for the police, a spokesman for the Metropolitan squad in London, famously known as Scotland Yard, offered this opinion of honor violence, the Mail reported: “Honour-based violence cuts across all cultures, nationalities and faith groups — it is a worldwide problem.”
That political correctness prevents authorities and journalists in the West from discussing the problem frankly is shown in this quote from a Turkish woman, who escaped an arranged marriage and tried to tell her story in Germany: “Everything I wrote from 1994 to 1999 was rejected, even by newspapers,” she told Der Spiegel. “They told me I was writing about a minority issue and they were afraid of appearing racist.”
In June, London’s Telegraph reported that British police hide Muslim crime.
Honor Killings
However, only the second half of the statement from police is true. Honor crimes do not “cut across all cultures, nationalities and faith groups.” They mainly cut across one culture, Islam, and the nationalities that comprise its co-religionists.
But honor violence is a worldwide problem, and is becoming increasingly common in the United States, as The New American has reported.
In May, Rahim Alfetlawi, 45, turned himself in to police claiming he accidentally shot his step-daughter in the head. Police believe it was an honor killing. The girl’s mother explained the suspect to Fox News:
“He was too overbearing, over controlling — things I thought that were just normal, strict parenting really. Now, when I look back, I say no, it was too much,” Wendy Alfetlawi said.
He forced [his stepdaughter] to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious.
Fox reported that the girl’s friends attempted to help her escape her stepfather’s Islamic tyranny.
That killing was at least the second in Michigan since 2009, a busy year for honor killers in the United States. A Muslim man in Sterling Heights, Michigan, butchered his wife, while a Muslim man in Arizona mowed down his daughter in a car.
In Buffalo, N.Y. that year, the founder of a Muslim television station — which was created to dispel stereotypes about Muslims — beheaded his wife after she filed divorce papers. Though evidence showed that he had subjected her to years of beatings and terror, he actually claimed his wife had beaten him.
And in April, a jury in Louisville, Kentucky, convicted a Muslim of beating his wife with a hammer and slashing the throats of his four children. The bloody crime scene sickened hard-nosed detectives.
Those Muslims who justify honor killings and other violence against women turn to verses in the Koran, such as Sura 4, Verse 34:
Men have the authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.
