Aqsa Parvez, the latest teen victim of "honour" murder in the West

Aqsa Parvez's Facebook photo (source: Michelle Malkin).

On Dec. 10, Aqsa Parvez (16) was strangled to death by her father Muhammad in Mississauga, Ont., Canada, "apparently after a dispute with her family over her refusal to wear the hijab" (source: Michelle Malkin).

"Friends of the teenager, a Grade 11 student at Applewood Heights high school, said Monday they were shocked by the attack on the outgoing, likeable girl, but said she had been threatened by her strictly religious family before.
Ebonie Mitchell, 16, a friend of the victim, said the conflict with her father over wearing Islamic dress came to a head at the beginning of this school year. “She just wanted to dress like we do,” she said. “Last year, she wore like the Islamic stuff and everything, the hijab, and this year she’s all western. She just wanted to look like everyone else."

Fellow students of Aqsa’s spoke to the National Post. Said one:
‘‘She wanted to live her life the way she wanted to, not the way her parents wanted her to. She just wanted to be herself, honestly she just wanted to show her beauty, and not be pushed around by her parents telling her what she has to be like, what she has to do. Nobody would want to do that.’’— Krista Garbhet"

Now, the public reactions. Robert Spencer comments at FrontPage Magazine:

"Aqsa Parvez is dead, and the main thing that many analysts want you to know about her death is that it had nothing to do with Islam. Aqsa Parvez was sixteen years old; her father has been charged with strangling her to death because she refused to wear the hijab. Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, declared: “The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to colour or creed.” Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario, agreed: “The bottom line is, it’s a domestic violence issue.” Nor was this denial limited only to Muslims. Lorne Gunter said in the Edmonton Journal: “I see nothing uniquely Muslim in her death. If, indeed, her father killed her, her death is his doing, not Islam’s.” "

Michelle Malkin is even sharper: "What is it with our craven mainstream media? They simply cannot give you the news straight when it comes to bloody sharia and bloody jihad. A Muslim girl was murdered over her refusal to wear a hijab, for crying out loud, and this is how it’s headlined: Canadian Teen Dies; Father Charged. Meantime, the Canadian press is pulling out its “Broad Strata” card again. Five Feet of Fury and Halls of Macadamia spotlight the press quoting spin doctor Mohamed Elmasry, President of the Canadian Islamic Congress, claiming it was a “teenager issue.”... Dhimmi journalists wield the whitewash brush over Aqsa Parvez’s dead body."

If you want another example of dhimmi Canadian journalism, check Antonia Zerbisias' commentary in The Star. She gives quotes from Bible about the inferiority of women, then writes, "Violent disagreements between parents and kids happen irrespective of race, religion or culture... It's a patriarchal world. Parvez was victimized in and by it. Patriarchy crosses virtually all religions... Make no mistake: Aqsa's murder isn't about Islam, except tangentially."

Zerbisias and the other appeasers of murderous doctrines are so busy to pat themselves on the back for being very enlightened and prejudice-free that they are unable to mention even the most glaring logical errors. Following their "logic", one could argue that Communism had no relation to Gulag because innocent people have been imprisoned also in non-Communist countries, and that Nazism had no relation to the Holocaust because Jews were persecuted also in other societies.

Unfortunately, Aqsa Parvez's murder is just the latest one in a row of "honour" murders of Western-born girls by their Muslim fathers and other family members. Here are some earlier ones which I have remembered after reading very brief notes about them in papers:

In 1993, Nazmiye Ilikpinar (15), a French girl of Turkish origin, was murdered by her family: "She did not wear a headscarf and swam in the local pool. She was the daughter of a factory worker, who had chosen a Turkish boy for her future husband. Nazmiye resisted her parents' wishes, because she was in love with a Moroccan boy. When her older brothers discovered the relationship, the parents’ reaction was violent. Nazmiye petitioned a social worker and a judge to place her in a children’s home for protection…[but] she missed her Moroccan boyfriend and returned...Soon after that she was found dead in a ditch. 'She had either been smothered or strangled,' [the newspaper] Le Monde reported. A year later, one of Nazmiye's brothers was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder, and the parents and a cousin received 20 years."

Again in France, "a young woman named Sohane Benziane was burned to death in October 2002" (source: Unknown Country).

Also in 2002, Sonay Mohammed (14), a Danish girl of Iraqi origin, was murdered by her father "because he found her lifestyle and behaviour too westernised. Sonay’s body, which bore marks of violent treatment, was found floating in Praestoe harbour, 100km south of Copenhagen... The prosecution compared Sonay’s killing to a recent case in neighbouring Sweden, where a Kurdish girl, Fadime Sahindal, was murdered by her father. " (source: KWAHK).

John Kim devoted a poem to Nazmiye and Sohane, let me quote a part of it:

"With One's Eyes Closing, Thousand's Open

Pull the vale over my eyes,

Wrap me in a sheet of lies,

Suffocate me in the bonding ties,

but I am determined. I will survive.

Hide me behind thick black thread,

Chain me to my marriage bed,

Dull the knowledge in my head,

butI will overcome. I have my own path to tread..."

I hope that, despite the attempts of Islamist and dhimmi propaganda to shut people's eyes, they will indeed open. This will help to prevent more precious young lives from being extinguished.

Update: I advise you to read this UT's post: Psychology of Men's Honour and Women's Sexuality, about the conflict of values in families of Mideast immigrants to Canada.