-By Warner Todd Huston
OK, I am wondering here if the hanging of a black Southerner by the KKK in the American south would be reported by the Chicago Tribune in the same kind of vague language of “cultural” murder as a recent Muslim murder in Georgia was treated? More likely, of course, the story would be immediately pegged to the racist, white motives that actually led to the murder. In essence that is how the Chicago Tribune mishandled their reporting of another so-called Islamic “honor killing” that occurred in Georgia this week. They wrote about the “culturally rigid Pakistani” immigrants and said that “honor killings” occur with “other South Asians” without ever once mentioning that this is more often than not a Muslin practice. Instead of pegging this murder to Muslim “culture” the Tribune makes it a vague and nondescript “culture” so that the reader is unaware of the connection with Islam.
The Tribune reports that 54-year-old Chaudhry Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant and pizza shop owner, strangled his 25-year-old daughter Sandeela with a bungie cord as they argued about the arranged marriage she was forced into. All the facts about the case were in the story but one: the connection to Islam.
The problem comes where the Tribune and other western news services are completely leaving out the fact that this is an Islamic custom. The Trib did its level best to avoid using the words “Islam” and Muslim” and replaced them with “cultural,” et al, throughout the story.
The problem of “honor killings” and other domestic violence after failed arranged marriages is spreading as some culturally rigid Pakistani and Indian immigrants settle in different parts of the country…
Even laughably comparing this barbaric custom to what “European royalty” had once done.
Such cultural unions serve as social contracts among South Asians and other communities, where a marriage agreement is more about families joining forces than about two people finding love—akin to the arranged marriages of European royalty…
Last I checked my history books common Europeans didn’t regularly go around killing their daughters for marrying “wrong” and neither did their ages old Monarchs. Sure there are examples of such stuff, but it was not endemic in the culture of the west as much as it is in Islam.
This sad tale is repeating itself all across the west as more and more Muslims stream into democratic countries and their girl children become acculturated to a world of freedom and modernity instead of the cultural oppression common in the Muslim world. As these kids begin to grow up acculturating themselves to our ways and as our own societies drift from our own practice of expecting immigrants to become westerners these clashes of cultures grow.
But, repeatedly, the western media is not reporting this as a Muslim centric crime and is merely treating the news as some sort of “cultural” habit. This refusal to give the whole story does a disservice to the reader and gives this murderous practice cover in the west by allowing it to hide in plain sight, invisible until the next young girl is murdered by a warped and evil family member. It keeps western citizens from understanding from where this practice comes and keeps law enforcement in the dark about the potential activity.
As the misnamed “honor killings” pile up one after another, keeping the public ignorant of why they are happening is a crime in and of itself.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Come now Warner. Let’s not offend anyone by pointing out one particular group’s penchant for violence. We don’t want some maniac from said group coming and slashing a sub-editor’s throat do we? That is why we have given the practice of filicide and the like the cute sounding name of “Honor Killing”.
Couching stories in non-offensive terms will protect the news media from suicide bombers and crackpot religious fanatics. It’s all right if they do those things in the streets but not in a news office.
So we don’t want to offend murderers and the like. After all, as the last line in the Chicago Tribunes story says: “There is a stigma in the wife wanting the divorce,”
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