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.

Dallas News

Atlas Shrugs/Pamela Geller

UPDATE: It is now one full week since the shocking and shameful Dallas honor murders took place. As of this writing, (January 8th, at 6:30pm est), the mainstream media continues to maintain its enormous and profound silence. The murderer remains at large and is suspected to be the father of the slain girls: Yasser Abdul Said. I have been told that both the AP and Fox affiliates put the story on the wire but it has not traveled beyond Dallas. Any ideas of what it might take to get this story to move? Are two corpses not enough? Is the fact that the alleged murderer is an Arab Muslim man too politically incorrect to print?

THE ORIGINAL PIECE BEGINS HERE:
The “story” is now also about the mainstream national media’s utter failure to cover the Dallas-based honor murders of two teenager sisters, Sarah and Amina Said–and it is also about their father Yasser, an Egyptian-born taxi driver, who has somewhat miraculously managed to avoid capture for five full days. As of this writing, he has still not been found.

Is there connection between these two stories? I fear there might be, at least in this sense: If Yasser Said’s photo had been plastered all across our television screens and on the pages of our morning newspapers maybe–just maybe–someone might have recognized him or maybe–just maybe–someone at a mosque might have been shamed by this dishonorable act and encouraged to mount a Muslim religious campaign to find and turn him over to the police.

Talk about whistling Dixie!

Where is Yasser? Did he shoot himself? If so, where’s the corpse? Did he flee the country after a well-planned murder? If so, what plane did he board and where did he go? What kind of powerful friends might a taxi driver have? Is he really only a taxi driver? Has he taken shelter in a mosque?

I have no inside information but I assume that the police are asking all these questions. Authorities have offered a $10,000.00 reward for Abdul Said.

As I’ve previously noted, on January 3rd, the New York Times did cover a daughter’s murder in Chicago–but wouldn’t ya know, the murder was committed by a drunken and abusive Hindu father which subliminally “proves” that non-Muslim fathers also kill their pregnant daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren. So there!

It’s not as if the mainstream media is quiet about Muslim Matters. In fact, the January 5th-6th issue of the New York Times Book Review is entirely devoted to Islam. Entirely. Completely. The lead “essay,” (to be distinguished from three non-opener essays and the twelve book reviews), is a sterling example of the subtle disinformation campaign being waged by the overly glamorized Tariq Ramadan and is titled “Reading the Koran.” Is this title a play on or a playful admonition towards Azar Nafisi’s best-seller Reading Lolita in Teheran–a far more comprehensible and literary piece of writing but one which is highly critical of Islamist Iran?

And just today, the Paper of Record has a piece about domestic violence in the Muslim communities but guess what the headline reads? “Abused Muslim Women in U.S. Gain Advocates. Sympathetic Clerics Ally With Activists.” All’s well, Islam is not the problem. Indeed, according to this article, one brave mullah (truly, peace be upon him) and some religious Muslims are “saving” abused Muslim women–not only from murderously violent Muslim men–but also from the female staff at domestic violence shelters (read: secularist feminists) who are too spooked by hijab and hallel eating requirements to be of much use. Or perhaps their modern ways spook abused Muslim women.

I am absolutely honored to be among the many internet bloggers and local Dallas media who broke this story on January 2nd and who have continued to write about it ever since. Let’s hear it for those who made the first two pages of Google which cites nearly 4000 such references: Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, Ron Dreher, at Crunchy Con; Robert Stacy McCain at the Washington Times in “Fishwrap,” (and who called it to my attention), Dymphna at Gates of Vienna, Robert Spencer at JihadWatch, LindaSog, Ace of Spades, Gateway Pundit, Hot Air, Scared Monkeys, NationalReview online (which reprinted the local Dallas coverage), Cheat-Seeking Missiles, Michelle Malkin, Debbie Shlussel–and of course , let’s hear it for the local Dallas media who have informed us of the following details:

Earlier today, the girls had two funerals: one was a large Christian Baptist-style funeral (!) at which a Catholic priest presided and the second took place in a mosque. (Is Mrs. Said a convert to Islam from Christianity or did teenage schoolmates wish to be consoled by a Christian service?) Mrs. Said and her teenage son have gone into hiding. The family was, allegedly, plagued by domestic violence. The deceased teenagers, (may Sarah and Amina rest in peace), had both been very smart and also afraid of their father. They had intellectual and professional ambitions and they had non-Muslim boyfriends. This is what passes for a capital offense in many Muslim families.

Yes, I wrote “many” and I mean “many.”

Only a few honor murders need take place in order to effectively intimidate and humble an entire generation and population of Muslim women. Honor murderers might be doing the “dirty” work for all Islam.

This might be one reason why Muslim leaders do not step forward to denounce honor murders and other acts of terrorism towards women and children. They fear they would be targeted by Islamist terrorists for doing so–but perhaps they also fear losing the “home court” advantage, so to speak. All Muslim tyrants–Osama bin Laden, taxi-drivers in Dallas–profit both psychologically and economically when women are willing slaves.

Neither funeral mentioned that the girls had been honor-murdered nor did the Dallas media initially focus on this as an honor murder. The liberal mainstream media did not cover the murders at all–only the conservative-leaning blog media did (as blogger Israel Matzav noted on Cheat-Seeking Missiles. )

Okay: I challenge the Muslim cleric who is heroized in the New York Times, Imam Muhammed Magid, of Falls Church Virginia, to take on honor murders as well as domestic violence.

And, while I’m at it, I challenge the mainstream media to cover the Dallas honor murders and to name them as such.

A girl can always dream. It might be in the funny mainstream papers tommorrow.

Today, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has taken a high-minded, utterly rational, and insanely expensive full-page ad in the New York Times and in the International Herald Tribune in which it denounces “Suicide Terror.” It calls upon the “world to act” against the “plague” of such attacks which have “murdered thousands of innocents,” and it displays the photo of the late Benazir Bhutto, whose claim to innocence has been widely disputed but whose assassination, in my opinion, was utterly tragic.

The ad is bravely naive. For example, it calls upon the United Nations General Assembly to hold a “special session to deal exclusively with the scourge of suicide terror.”

Why do I think this will not happen, that the United Tyrannies will convene 100 sessions to condemn Israel and the so-called Israeli Lobby before they dare focus upon suicide terror which is viewed as an only-fair Third World option? Given that the West has superior weaponry, the willingness to die in order to kill and terrorize is presumably the only affordable choice for a country whose poverty is allegedly due to Western colonialism, etc. The fact that most of the victims of suicide terror are other Third World people is an inconvenient fact that even the West dares not mention.

C’mon: Terrorist fiends routinely blow civilians up–then send another crew to blow up the mourners at the funeral afterwards. Although suicide terrorists have perfected this Dark Art mainly against Israel (and in Sri Lanka), the truth is that suicide killers mainly terrorize Third World civilian populations. Why would anyone think that most Third World UN diplomats who comprise the General Assembly really give a good goddamn about their own civilians? Most are loyal only to the tyrants who have appointed them and who hold their families hostage–and to their own families and clans.

The Wiesenthal ad also suggests that “suicide bombings should be designated Crimes Against Humanity.” I could not agree more–but the UN may sooner choose to stop the repeated public gang-rapes of women and children in Sudan, Kenya, and Congo before it will actually designate Suicide Terror as a universal crime. After all, the United Nuts (and their Western supporters) do not believe in universal human rights; over there, everything is culturally relative, although all things are equal. Barbarism=Civilization and anyone who challenges this is obviously a “racist” and a “Zionist.”

The ad further calls upon “Religious leaders to act. They can no longer ignore the fact that most suicide terrorists are believers.” Ah–what religion remains unnamed here and why? It must be Buddhism yes? Did the New York Times refuse to name Islam? Did the Weisenthal Center believe it would betray its own ethic of religious tolerance were it to name Islam?

Finally, we are all asked to sign a petition “urging the UN to take action against suicide terror.” You may sign the petition at www.wiesenthal.com.

Folks: Despite all my reservations (see above), I strongly recommend that you sign this petition. Let us be the wind beneath the sails of this noble sentiment. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I am not surprised that a Jewish group has launched this campaign. For some time now, it has been clear to me that what happens to Jews happens to all humanity; however, Jews have a long tradition, not only of pleading their own case but of pleading humanity’s case. The Wiesenthal Center knows what a Holocaust is and can do and, given the horrors of terrorism and the possibility of nuclear terrorism, is now pleading humanity’s case.

That’s what Jews do, some say it’s why we’re still here after so many thousands of years.

UPDATE ON THE PETITION: The Center has informed me that as of early this morning, they had already received “a couple of thousand signatures from over 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Bahrain, Spain, Sri Lanka, and Australia.” They are expecting many more signatures. Stay tuned right here for updates.

They have dishonored our shores for quite some time and more keep coming our way.

I am talking about honor killings in North America. In The Death of Feminism, I write about honor murders in Missouri, Ohio, and in parts of New Jersey, New York, and Canada which took place during the last quarter-century.

Just yesterday, an Egyptian Arab Muslim father in Dallas, Texas allegedly shot his two beautiful teenage daughters to death because he disapproved of their American-style ways. Their names were Amina and Sarah Said and their father’s name was Yasser Abdul Said. The girls looked sassy and full of life; they looked like Dallas teenagers. They were 17 and 18 years old and their friends considered them “geniuses.” Abdul was a taxi driver. (In parts of Europe, taxi drivers are known to aid and abet honor murders).

Perhaps how Amina and Sarah dressed, and how they thought, shamed their father Yasser. He was no longer in control of his women–a mark of shame which provoked his need to kill them. Perhaps their flowering sexuality enraged him because it made him desire them–and from this he concluded that other men might desire them too and if he could not have them, no man could.

The blogs and the local Texas media (the Dallas Morning News) were all over this. Hot Air, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, were too. The only national coverage of this story was contained in the Washington Times. SEE HERE Why did the national and international media so far shy clear of this story? Perhaps they chose to dig deeper first or maybe they were waiting for an arrest to be made. But one also wonders: Were they afraid of being accused of “Islamophobia” if they reported the truth? Did they not want to use the word “Arab” or “Muslim” lest they be attacked as “racists”?

As of 4pm est on January 3rd, the mainstream media had still not covered this honor murder or the ongoing manhunt for the alleged killer–their father. Robert Stacey McCain of the Washington Times, just published a piece with some more details. Apparently, Amina and Sarah not only had “boyfriends,” their boyfriends were non-Muslims! They told their friends that their father was angry with them for “not acting like proper Muslim girls.”

Thus, these beautiful and now murdered sisters feared for their lives. They told people that their father was threatening them. Their own mother has now led police to the father as the probable murderer.

They could have been saved if a school or police official had been trained to pre-emptively recognize and rescue all such girls and women in danger of being killed by their families in honor killings.

NEWSFLASHES:

Earlier today, on January 3, 2008, the hardcopy edition of the New York Times carried a story about a presumably non-Muslim honor killing in Chicago, in which a father, Subhash Chander, killed his pregnant daughter, son-in-law and 3 year-old grandson “because he disapproved of his daughter’s marriage” to a lower-caste man. All the protagonists are from India or are of Indian origin. So far, I can find no coverage of the Texas honor killing by a Muslim father in the pages of the Paper of Record.

Yasser Abdul Said has now made the Most Wanted List. However, I am told that the police have described the murder as senseless, baffling, puzzling, etc.–as opposed to as an obvious, old-fashioned honor killing. Perhaps I’m wrong, but has anyone thought to look for him in a mosque?

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It was snowing in Teheran when they hung the twenty seven year-old mother of two children earlier today in the notorious Evin Prison. From the moment she was arrested, she had not been allowed to ever see her children again. Her name was Raheleh Zamani and she had been married off when she was only 15 years old. The political campaign to halt or commute her execution failed.

This tragic story could easily be one of the tales in Marjane Satrapi’s film, Persepolis.

Raheleh had endured years of savage battering at her husband’s hands. He was a typical batterer in that the beatings intensified during her pregnancies. After giving birth two months ago, Raheleh was suffering from severe postpartum depression. And, her husband had begun to medicate her with mind-altering drugs. Listen to her describe what led up to her murder of her husband.

In court, Raheleh explained: “On the day of the incident, I got home and I saw a strange woman (there), who, upon seeing me, ran off into the bathroom. Shocked about this woman’s presence in my home, I confronted my husband. Mohamad yelled at me and told me that I was no longer of any use to him as a ‘woman’ since I had had two kids and he no longer found me attractive. When I got upset, Mohamad began beating me and threw me out of the house.”

Please understand: Raheleh had absolutely no recourse. Men are allowed to beat their wives. Men also automatically receive custody of their children when they divorce; for this reason, many Muslim women remain married despite serious abuse, other wives, and other lovers. Any normal human female reaction to such injustice or heartbreak would be seen not only as a female psychiatric problem, but also as a crime. Raheleh continues:

“I was extremely upset, but after a few hours I returned to my house and again asked Mohamad about the woman. Not only did Mohamad refuse to apologize for his actions, he actually threatened to kill me if I said anything to anyone about his extra-marital relationships. I was a mess. I could never have imagined that my husband would cheat on me or beat me so brutally only a month after I had given birth to our son. I was an emotional wreck; I was severely depressed; so when Mohamad gave me some pills that he said would calm my nerves, I took them.”

The pills apparently caused some kind of psychotic break. Raheleh found a steel pipe and began beating the “demonic monster” with it. It seemed that the “monster” kept on “coming after” her so she “fought back.” In that state, she still thought that the dead Mohammed was a “live demon who would repeatedly attack and abuse me.”

Despite all and any evidence of Raheleh’s altered state due to both postpartum depression and to Battered Woman’s Syndrome, Raheleh was found guilty of pre-meditated first degree murder and sentenced to death.

According to one report, “her in-laws watched the grim proceedings as she was hanged along with eleven other human beings.”

Until quite recently, America was not much more advanced than Iran in this area. Even today, most battered women who kill in self-defense are given life without parole; some are still sentenced to death.

However, in the 1970s, great progress was made in this area–all due to feminist activism. Let me recount four seminal cases that made headlines and case law. These stories are all but forgotten today.

In 1972, in Washington State, in her own home, Yvonne Wanrow, shot and killed an intoxicated man, William Wesler, who was also an alleged child molester. She was found guilty and jailed but was eventually freed by the Supreme Court of Washington State in a landmark decision about a woman’s right to self-defense.

In 1974, in California, in response to having been gang-raped, Inez Garcia shot and killed one of the men who had held her down–but she did so an hour later. She, too was first found guilty but was then freed by virtue of “insanity.” (Sometimes, a normal human response to being raped is considered “insanity.” That’s really crazy!)

Also, In 1974, while in jail in her North Carolina jail cell, Joanne Little, killed her jailor, Clarence Alligood, with his own pick-axe for trying to rape her. Little was acquitted.

And, in 1977, in Michigan, Francine Hughes, a battered woman, set her sleeping husband on fire. She was charged with murder. Her story was eventually made into a movie which was titled The Burning Bed, which starred Farrah Fawcett. (Hughes was found not guilty by reason of insanity–not an ideal conclusion but one that might have been true and one which saved her life.)

Each of these cases led to public feminist crusades, civil-rights political activism, (two of the women on trial were women of color who had killed white men), and to new case law. Americans learned, very much against their will, that a “reasonable” woman could not be expected to physically defend herself against a man who was armed with a weapon, or with military or police training, who was also a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than she was. In such cases, the courts would have to spell out different, gender-based standards for what constitutes self-defense.

We also learned that rape constitutes a psychiatric trauma with severe and long-lasting consequences and that women could rightly view rape as life-threatening and as such, were entitled do what they could to prevent it–even if it meant killing someone who had not yet–or who had just–raped you.

The Francine Hughes case taught us that, in their own homes, battered women are battered the way political prisoners are battered in police custody in a totalitarian state; that some battered women die from their physical injuries; that, surprisingly, battered women are in the greatest danger when they actually escape captivity. That is precisely when batterers most often kill their victims. Scoff if you will, but the cognoscenti now know that the only chance that a savagely battered woman might have of saving her own life is if she kills her batterer when he is helpless e.g. sleeping.

Sounds crazy, I know but there are so few shelters for battered women–the beds are always taken; and witness protection programs are not available to most battered women. Orders of protection are made of paper and do not stop speeding bullets.

Let me commend those Iranians who tried to save Raheleh’s life. As they say:

“May this be a reminder that these cases are indeed in need of our intervention. Hopefully, we can gather more support for those whose cases are still classified as urgent to avert a repetition of this horrific and tragic ending to a precious life.

May she now rest in eternal peace.”