This article on “honor killings” of Muslim women — in Germany — is generally shocking. There are many important points there, for instance:
One of the unsettling truths about Hatin’s death and the plight of many Muslim women is that it took the comments of three Turkish boys and the outrage of a male school director to get people to notice. When the murder first happened, it sent no shock waves through the mainstream German press. It only became big news when a group of 14-year-old Turkish boys mocked Hatin during a class discussion at a school near the crime scene. One boy said, “She only had herself to blame,” while another insisted, “She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German.” The enraged school director not only sent a letter home to parents, but also to teachers across Germany. The letter ignited a media fury. Less known, however, is that the letter also hit a nerve among educators. “Teachers from across the country wrote back saying they had had similar experiences,” Boehmecke said. They reported Turkish boys taunting Turkish girls who don’t wear headscarves as “German sluts.” . . .
“People were afraid they would be called Nazis if they dared to bring up issues of human rights in the Turkish community,” said Serap Cileli, a Turkish author and filmmaker who at 15 was forced into an arranged marriage. . . . She has written prodigiously about her experiences and now helps Turkish women escape oppressive families. For the greater part of a decade, however, Cileli was unable to find a publisher for her work. “Everything I wrote from 1994 to 1999 was rejected, even by newspapers,” she said. “They told me I was writing about a minority issue and they were afraid of appearing racist.” . . .
But this paragraph struck me as particularly troubling (thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer) — “demented” (from the quote below) and “death cult” (from the comments of others) are apt terms:
In many cases, fathers — and sometimes even mothers — single out their youngest son to do the killing, Boehmecke said, “because they know minors will get lighter sentences from German judges.” In some cases, these boys are revered by their community and fellow inmates as “honor heroes” — a dementedly skewed status they carry with them for the rest of their lives. Currently, six boys are serving time in Berlin’s juvenile prison for honor killings. “In a way, these boys are victims, too,” she said. Sometimes they are forced to kill their favorite sister.
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