How do we cut down on honor murders in the West? According to some people, you do whatever it takes to keep the girls from dishonoring their families so that their families do not have to honor-murder them.
According to the New York Times, “home schooling” the girls in America, re-creating a feudal, rural, parallel universe in California in which girls and women are kept hidden and apart, is the sensible, merciful alternative to honor murders in The New World.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/26muslim.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Neil+MacFarquhar&st=nyt&oref=slogin
At a time when Islamists are at full jihadic throttle, The New York Times features a mild and lovely–a truly non-judgmental article about the proliferation of home schooling among Muslim communities in America.
How can anyone criticize home schooling? It’s a venerable, Super-American Back-to-the-Land and Back-to-the-Bible custom. Well, according to the article, this folksy custom might be under serious advisement since Osama Bin Laden’s American mouthpiece, Adam Gadahn, was himself home schooled in rural California.
But really: How can I criticize the tendency of immigrants to cling to their customs and their faiths? Isn’t America’s history one in which successive waves of immigrants retained their ethnic and religious identities–while their children and grand-children became integrated into American culture? And, don’t we still allow religious communities to keep themselves apart and to train their women to be docile, modest, family-oriented servants of both men and God?
Well yes, but I have always protested keeping women down in the name of religion, and have been quick to applaud the accomplishments of religious (and anti-religious) women who enter the modern professions, wage feminist battles against violence against women within their communities, and who also become leaders and authorities in their various faiths, both secular and religious.
So, why is the New York Times making so subtle and so powerful an alliance with Islamists against women?
The way propaganda works is through persistence, subtlety, and images. Every week, sometimes every day, the Times has a Muslim- or Islamist-friendly article, usually with positive color photos. The Paper of Record knows how to cover its considerable derriere. Thus, it is careful to have comments from “both sides of the aisle” as long as the critical comments are buried-in-the-balance and do not deflect from the bottom line propaganda having its way with us.
Ian Buruma writes an article that is so cleverly cobbled together than most readers do not understand that it is meant as a devastating attack on the heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Tariq Ramadan, the genetic and intellectual heir to the man who founded the Muslim Brotherhood is, again and again, glowingly profiled, reviewed, published, and shown wearing trendy western dress. Noah Feldman continues to condemn Orthodox Judaism and to extol the virtues of Muslim religious (Shari’a) law, not only for Turkey but for an unsuspecting West. Young, attractive women wearing headscarves are shown and they are quoted saying sophisticated, friendly things.
Steadily, slowly, inexorably, Western readers are being softened for the “kill,” seasoned and habituated to accept the subordination of women as an inviolate cultural and religious reality.
Take a look at the March 26th edition of the New York Times. Titled “Resolute or Fearful, Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling,” the article was five columns wide and featured two sympathetic color photos. Both show female teenagers wearing head-and-shoulder hijab. The larger photo resonates for Westerners who may have seen similar images in great paintings of the Middle Ages; the photo somewhat resembles a Vermeer. The domestic intimacy, symmetry, harmony is all there. We are meant to “like” the young and smiling girl in hijab who, according to the caption, is reading the Koran.
The article explains that many Muslim families in California have opted for home schooling for their daughters; forty percent of Pakistani and southeast Asian families “in the district” have done so. Why? Many possible reasons are given: So that Muslim children will not be teased or mocked; exposed to pork; “corrupted” by American influences –but mainly, so that their girls do not engage in behaviors that would “dishonor” their families and require that they be honor murdered.
For example, Hajra Bibi stopped attending public school and began home schooling when she reached puberty. “Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives…’Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes–they don’t think it is a good thing for girls… We don’t want anyone to point a finger at us, to say that we are bad.”
Because that might render them unmarriageable and as candidates to be honor murdered.
The smiling , Vermeer-like photo and the additional photo of three girls wearing heavy hijab and playing with their yo-yos, soften the blow that this information might otherwise elicit.
Why should American citizens or future American citizens, in California or elsewhere, be taught that girls must wear hijab or even niqab (face covering); that boys and men are entitled to boss girls around; that a minimal education and an arranged marriage to your cousin is all that an American female citizen needs? Why live in America if what you want to do is keep the girls culturally illiterate and down on the farm?
The Orthodox Judaism that Noah Feldman spurns, does not practice honor murders. If a woman marries outside her fundamentalist faith, she may indeed be ex-communicated but then again, she may not. If a Christian woman marries outside her faith…but you get my point. The countless successive immigrant waves to America did not practice honor murders. Perhaps ugly, agonizing breaks took place; killing to enforce religious norms did not.
Can we just give it some time, wait and see, give the new-immigrant-on-the block a break? Well sure, but let’s remember that some third generation immigrants in the UK have become radical Islamists. Given the “politically correct” way in which the British coddled Muslim immigrants (I view this as racist, others would view it as simply incompetent), and the rise of the radical, global mullahs, the expected integration did not “take.”
There might be something different about contemporary Islam that does not lend itself to integration.
Why is the New York Times engaged in disinformation about such an important topic?
PJM Home
Woman's Inhumanity to Woman
The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom
Women and Madness
The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It
Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site
Letters to a Young Feminist
With Child: A Diary of Motherhood
Feminist Foremothers in Women’s Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health
Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness
Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M
Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody
About Men
Women, Money & Power
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
6 Comments
1. Louis Santacroce:No, we can’t wait. Home schooling is done with both sexes, remember, and while moslem girls may be in the process of being rendered culturally and functionally illiterate through home “schooling,” moslem boys may well be learning how to fly more planes into buildings or how to commit the “perfect” honor murder, in between memorizing verses from the koran. I’ve seen home schooling in my own area work so well that the daughter of some friends is, at 23, going for her Phd in nursing; I’ve also heard horror stories about kids who can recite memory verses ’til the cows come home, but can’t read or write. It’s not the IDEA of home schooling that bothers me, but what some of these kids may be taught that’s downright scary.
What to do about this? Well, for openers, how about a national standard for home schooling, one that requires periodic, independently-administered tests designed to measure whether home-schooled children are really being schooled in the accepted sense of the word? With such a system in place, it should be fairly easy to figure out who is learning reading, writing and ‘rithmatic and who is being taught to destroy America in the name of muhammad (piss be upon him).
Second, I don’t think we’d have any problem removing kids from a home where their parents sent them to a school, or home schooled them to a curriculum which taught hatred and killing of blacks or Jews (think of a “school” run by the Klan or the Aryan Nation), even if that school or schooling operated under the guise of a religion. Since the very nature and teaching of islam is to hate and kill the enemy infidel — i.e. anyone who is not a moslem — why are we, as a nation, allowing these kids to remain in abusive home environments? Why not remove them?
And if they don’t want their kids to be “corrupted by American influences,” why not move to Saudi Arabia or Iran? Why allow us to “infect” them? Because, as Phyllis points out, they’re people on a mission; they are here to soften us up for the kill. They’ve succeeded so well at this, in fact, that we allow stories like the one in the New York Times to be run almost (if not for Phyllis) without comment, to wash over us, almost beatifically and benignly. How many of us looked at those Vermeer-like photos (how hotly I resent using the style of my favorite artist to promote this travesty!), so artfully constructed to portray terrorists-in-the-making as normal American immigrant girls, and thought, “Aw…how cute.” Yes, until she yanks her robe open and we see the bomb strapped to her torso and her hand on the trigger.
Meanwhile, America stands by and does nothing. How many continue to ignore the fact that the DC police protect Arab embassies with almost as much zeal as they do the White House, that attempts at Arab-American “friendship” always seem to involve a “confession” of America’s “decadence” and “guilt” (what’s more decadent: a woman wearing a short skirt with a halter top, or a teen-aged girl who’s been hacked to death because she didn’t want to marry the 60 year-old “friend of the family” that her father has sold her to?), that — for some time — the biggest contributor to NPR (National Palestinian Radio) was the government of Saudi Arabia? They keep doing these things, in part, because we never seem to protest. To them, our silence indicates, not only our agreement, but our acceptance of the death sentence they’ve imposed on us and our culture (which, warts and all, is better than theirs).
Wasn’t there once a law providing for the expulsion of any immigrant who advocated the overthrown of the US? Is it still on the books? How about the one that allows us to deport alien lawbreakers? Oh, argue some; they might be killed if we send them back! Oh, I argue back; WE — or their children — will be killed if they’re allowed to remain.
Of course, expelling Moslems from the US wouldn’t solve the whole problem. They could still mount an attack from overseas, and they would certainly continue to mutilate and honor murder their women, execute their gays, and kills shi’as (if they’re Sunis) Sunis (if they’re shi’as), Kurds, and anyone else who’s not exactly like them. And, if we’re really interested in freeing the oppressed, we should continue to fight them at every opportunity. But, let’s protect our country and our people first. If we can’t put them all on a ship bound for Saudi Arabia, let’s at least start by making sure their idea of home schooling doesn’t involve lessons in slavery, bomb-making and murder.
Hang together, or be honor-murdered separately.
Mar 27, 2008 - 3:56 pm 2. Stephanie G.:My question is, why in the world are they living in a country with cultural and moral issues so evil and sickening? Oh wait, I forgot, those educational opportunities that seem to only be available to their sons. Do as I say, not as I do.
These poor girls are being groomed for slavery and future sexual labor for ignorant cousins in third world conditions. No matter how the Times spins this, they still couldn’t hide the fact these choices are being made by those looking to make a profit from the females in their family.
The attempt to “soften the blow” for a new wave of immigrants will not happen from merely staring at a smiling face in hijab, no matter how happy she looks. We know the score, and unfortunately, Muslim women are currently on the losing end. Until women are given their liberty, no American worth their salt will read this propaganda and turn a blind eye. At least this one won’t.
Mar 27, 2008 - 5:28 pm 3. heather:it’s like ‘human rights’ originally propounded to stop violent racist speech, and now being used to silence anti-Islamic discussions…. and homeschooling, used by many/most to give their children a better education than that offered in public schools.. and now used to ensure that Islamist mindset is preserved in the USA. Jewish and Christian schools are one thing, but Islamist ones are quite another. Islam is DIFFERENT, my friends, inimical to everything the West holds dear (and takes for granted, I might add).
My real problem is that this spreading islamism will affect the standing of my own female descendents. Women fought hard for legal and social rights, and from what I can see, those are being given up by today’s multicultural leaders.
Pajamasmedia’s Jacobsen’s story of Harvard and its sex-segregated gyms (given the huge ‘donations’ from the UAE and Saudis, should we be surprised??) is not peculiar to America’s “greatest” university. Segregation of public facilities is being imposed officially and unofficially in Australia and Europe.
A columnist in Canada is blowing this whole thing off as low-level gangsterism, easily dealt with by our police. The Brits have accepted this analysis, and are turning Britain into Orwell’s Big Brother society with thousands of security cameras and huge increases in its secret services. It is not a pretty picture.
Mar 28, 2008 - 2:42 pm 4. Nancy Kobrin, Ph.D.:Besides the fact that the nyt repeatedly fails to give an accurate picture of the Middle East and what is going on within Muslim communities in the US, Europe and else where, there is the pressing need to monitor home schooling as well as when girls “disappear” from school as in the UK.
Charter schools need to be monitored as well because according to all the Muslim women memoirs such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Waris Dhirie, Nonie Darwish etc. the kids are fed a steady diet of anti-Semitism. This is never discussed in mainstream media. Just as Memri has shown that Palestinian and Saudi textbooks are filled with such vile content, one can imagine what is being taught here in our own backyard. It’s a form of child abuse to brainwashing children with the need to hate. It is a human rights issue. The teachers should be prosecuted as such.
Mar 29, 2008 - 12:12 pm 5. Nancy Kobrin, Ph.D.:Besides the fact that the nyt repeatedly fails to give an accurate picture of the Middle East and what is going on within Muslim communities in the US, Europe and else where, there is the pressing need to monitor home schooling as well as when girls “disappear” from school as in the UK.
Charter schools need to be monitored as well because according to all the Muslim women memoirs such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Waris Dhirie, Nonie Darwish etc. the kids are fed a steady diet of anti-Semitism. This is never discussed in mainstream media. Just as Memri has shown that Palestinian and Saudi textbooks are filled with such vile content, one can imagine what is being taught here in our own backyard. It’s a form of child abuse to brainwashing children with the need to hate. It is a human rights issue. The teachers should be prosecuted as such.
Mar 29, 2008 - 12:13 pm 6. Neil MacFarquhar on Muslim Homeschooling « Homeschooling Research Notes:[...] make Muslim homeschoolers look insular and sexist. Others see this articles as part of a subtle pro-Islamist conspiracy at the New York Times. My own interest, however, is to place the phenomenon of Muslim [...]
Jun 27, 2008 - 5:23 am