Iraqi Girl Falls in Love with a Brit; Father Kills Her
A short Q&A on U.S. policy toward religious fundamentalism in Iraq…
Q: What is “honor killing”?
A: Anything a fanatic religious fundamentalist wants it to be as long as someone, somewhere, ends up dead.
Q: Isn’t it the policy of the Bush administration policy to promote and support a non-fanatic government, and enforce the “rule of law” in Iraq?
A: No. Fundamentally, Iraq is constituted as an Islamic, theocratic republic. Religious law trumps legislative law.
Q: So, a man can murder his daughter in Iraq, and get away with it?
A: Absolutely.
A 17-year-old Iraqi girl has been murdered by her father in an “honour killing” after falling in love with a British soldier in Basra.
Rand Abdel-Qader was killed after her family discovered she had formed a friendship with a 22-year-old infantryman she knew as Paul.
Rand was suffocated by her father and then hacked at with a knife. He called out that his honour was being cleansed, her mother said.
The father was arrested, held for two hours, then released without charge. “Not much can be done when we have an honour killing,” said Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police. “You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.”
Q: How can “democracy” flourish in this kind of an environment?
A: It can’t.
Q: Why is the Bush administration (and John McCain and the GOP, in general) still supporting this crap?
A:
A: in order to embezzle from the american taxpayer.
Richard, you know as well as everyone else that it was NEVER about “spreading Democracy”. Tell me what conflict have we been involved in the last 100 years where when we left Democracy took hold and not a despotic tyranny?
It was always about the $$$$ that could be syphoned off in the form of OIL and $$ that could be looted from our treasury.
Here are a couple ideas:
1. Why don’t we start economically boycotting countries that continue to treat their women like this and the companies that do business with them? We could do for women what the boycott of South Africa did for blacks when they were living under apartheid.
2. Why don’t we write to our representatives and leaders and demand that they withhold some meaningful portion of our aid to these countries unless and until they materially, measurably, sustainably improve their human rights track records?
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
2. Why don’t we write to our representatives and leaders and demand that they withhold some meaningful portion of our aid to these countries unless and until they materially, measurably, sustainably improve their human rights track records?
Withhold a meaningful portion of our aid to Iraq? Ellen, I thoroughly agree with you, but there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Basra of anything like that happening. The Bush administration has thrown in their lot with a pro-Iranian theocracy in Iraq. A little “honor killing”? There are those in the Bush Crime Family who wish that could happen in America. So, they have no problem with it happening in Iraq.