This story out of Dallas is an awful one. The mainstream media has certainly failed their task but so did the local police and social service agencies–at least according to the (still only local) report published yesterday in the Dallas Morning News and picked up today only by Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.
In 1998, when they were 8 and 9 years-old, these slaughtered girls accused their father of sexual abuse. Their mother swore it was true. The girls then said that they had lied. The authorities believed them.
The same authorities never intervened against this father who, according to unnamed family members, “was given to fits of violence, threats and gun-waving rants about how Western culture was corrupting the chastity of his daughters.”
No one saved these girls, no one stopped the life-long violence against them, no one arrested their father–because he was only violent towards his wife and daughters. He was not violent towards anyone else. He did not disturb the peace. Thus, he was allowed to prey on his own flesh and blood.
We are talking about America, not about Egypt–where Yaser Abdul Said came from and where he may be hiding now. We are talking about America where American feminists have revolutionized our understanding of domestic violence. The police, the judiciary, and social services have tried to keep up–but it is a huge problem. Even feminists have been cautious when it is Muslim men who are domestically violent. Speaking out about it might be seen as “racist.”
Still, there are some real American heroes who have saved Muslim women who were being quite literally tortured. Often, they had to put such victims into federal witness protection programs because nothing else will stop the entire Muslim family from coming after them. I write about this in my most recent book “The Death of Feminism. What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom.”
Yasser Abdul Said was a violent man who used brutal force against his wife and daughters. People in Texas knew about it. People cared about it but no one cared enough–or were willing to risk death by daring to come between a man and his prey. Battered wives who are held hostage long enough are reluctant to press charges, have been too beaten down to feel they can start life on their own; some come to identify with or to serve their tormentors. It is called “Stockholm Syndrome” when the hostages taken are strangers.
Yes, this happens in non-Muslim families all the time and people rarely stop it. Usually, the beaten-down woman is the one who alone finally decides to try and save her own life–or the lives of her children. Often, when wives leave violent men, that’s when they are killed. Or, if they kill in self-defense, the women often get life sentences, often with no parole. I used to know of cases like this in Texas.
According to the Dallas paper, the father, who is still missing, has a long history of family violence. He married his wife, Patricia, when Patricia was only fifteen years old. Patricia’s sister, Connie Moggio, “said his controlling and violent nature gripped the family from the start.” According to Moggio, “once, he shot out the tires on his wife’s car to keep her home.” Another time, he blocked Moggio’s car when she was trying to help Patricia and the children escape. Amina was seen at school with red welts and bruises and she once confided that her father had kicked her in the face. Everyone knew about the threats. He threatened to kill her.
According to the Dallas paper, the day after Christmas the girls ran away–and they ran away with boyfriends who were, perhaps, trying to save them. Their mother talked them into returning; to this day, their brother, Islam, and their mother, Patricia, insist that what happened has nothing to do with Islam (the religion) or with the Arab Middle East (the culture).
Why would anyone in America believe that?
America failed these two daughters, bright with promise. Did we fail them because we don’t care about dark-skinned Muslim (girls)–or because we are so afraid of interfering with any dark-skinned man’s religious and cultural right to subordinate, torture, and ultimately sacrifice “his” women that we choose to look the other way?
Why is the mainstream media still silent? Perhaps if one of the many, many Presidential candidates would comment about this case, the media would follow suit.
Below: Are the links to the Dallas Morning News piece and to Pamela Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugs, which draws upon the local coverage.
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4 Comments
1. David Thomson:“…or because we are so afraid of interfering with any dark-skinned man’s religious and cultural right to subordinate, torture, and ultimately sacrifice “his” women that we choose to look the other way?”
I can easily imagine the police officers and social workers assigned to deal with the father concerned about severely damaging their careers. The MSM is especially reluctant to address this crisis during an election year. It only helps to elect conservative Republicans. Democrats and politically correct George W. Bush Republicans shy away from these “family matters.” They don’t know what to say.
Jan 10, 2008 - 7:47 pm 2. George Jochnowitz:As you wrote, Phyllis, “Yes, this happens in non-Muslim families all the time and people rarely stop it.”
Jan 10, 2008 - 8:33 pm 3. greenconsciousness:I am reminded of the case of Joel Steinberg, who lived at 14 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, in a beautiful brownstone building bearing a plaque informing us that Mark Twain had lived there. He regularly abused his partner, Hedda Nussbaum, and the two children who lived with them, who had never been legally adopted. On November 2, 1987, Joel threw his non-adopted daughter, Lisa, against the wall, killing her. Signs of abuse had been noted before, but somehow nothing was done. Hedda never complained. Joel served his sentence and is now free.
Insanity and violence cross racial and religious lines. On the other hand, wife beating is mentioned and not condemned in the Koran. Honor murders happen all too frequently in the world of Islam. Neither individual depraved violence nor culturally condoned violence should be tolerated. Violent cultures, however, which involve many people, are necessarily more dangerous than violent individuals.
I am reading this post and the one above on Ms together as one story. I am seeing connections.
I am thinking of the rape and murder of women and girls becoming once again an acceptable epidemic in this country. The latest being the 20 year old pregnant marine, raped by her superior, who made a rape complaint and was betrayed by the Marine Corps, her fellow soldiers, her adopted mother, the local police and left to the vengeance of her rapist. I am thinking of all the disappeared women killed by police officer husbands, their complaints ignored by the husband’s friends on the force. I am thinking of the women in Family Court trying to escape abuse.
As women are silenced now, censored for naming the degrading practices of Islam, the rights we have won after long struggles are being rolled back. We are unsafe when we try to oppose patriarchal force in this county. No woman will find shelter when the courts force her to turn her children over to an abuser as she tries to divorce him. No shelter will have the courage to hide her in the face of a court order demanding she return to honor the abuser’s right to his children. I saw women forced tom produce the children of batterers from shelters where they had fled for protection. How can we think we can protect Muslim women when we cannot protect any woman as our shelters have become ineffective.
Women are betrayed first by “feminist” organizations who adopt doublespeak and denial, techniques written about by Mary Daley in “Gynecology” and Phyllis Chesler in ‘Woman’s Inhumanity to Women” and “Death of Feminism”.
Do you know that Gender Equity at the University now means trans-sexual rights? Women’s discrimination funds have been diverted to men who want to be accepted as the worst stereotype of women at the expense of all the other women’s issues, such as the lack of representation, the sexualization of children and violence against women.
When I say lack of representation, I mean the absence of our voice and our reality in curriculum and text. For instance, if women judged which society or social order was best for women, would we choose Hammas or Hezbolla over the political system in Israel? Why is MS afraid to make that comparison? Why is that analysis absent in women’s studies or political science courses? That is what I mean when I say OUR voice has been silenced. When we who made domestic violence a political issue are silenced, the teachers find it easy to ignore the welts on the faces of the crazy man’s girls, and the social workers find the complaints “unfounded”.
Silenced from defining middle east patriarchy, silenced in foreign policy, silenced in immigration policy and silenced therefore in our own political and personal life in the US. What comes around goes around. My hands are empty.
Phyllis – keep writing – your voice is our sword and a shield against the darkness. I fear, like the great tribes, we feminists are ghost dancing on the eve of extinction.
Like some wave will women recede back into the traditional roles? What woman will stay in the Marine Corps? Where are the women electricians, plumbers and carpenters? Where are the female auto mechanics? Who will enter male dominated fields when there is no protection from male violence and retaliation? When women learn within the family that there is no protection, what will become of us all?
Will we lose this battle with the police and child protective agencies to effectively prevent and prosecute domestic violence? Is our refusal to protect middle eastern women and children even when they are in the U.S. foreshadowing the loss of our ability to protect any of us?
At least we will not disappear without our great writers documenting how it happened for women to read and understand. To leave a record in the face of overwhelming power is something important. Write on, Phyllis.
Jan 12, 2008 - 12:22 am 4. May Pelletier:I live in Vancouver Washington. The DSHS system is so corrupted by an in group who covers for each other. We have been the victim of and we have friends whose character is destroyed by these people. But the tragedy is, blackballed good foster parents are systematically denied to be caregivers, while the liberal, arrogant caseworkers doom children who have no place to go to poor or non help. The children are the losers. This is a left overs from our present governor, Christine Gregoire, who left the DSHS in this state of a mess. The ingrained institutions do not help most children… It is a big joke, here.
Nov 23, 2008 - 1:43 am