The left cannot remain silent over "honour killings"
We have become complicit in this epidemic of abuse and violence by not doing more to challenge it.
By Sunny Hundal Published 04 August 2012 9:10
The murder of the teenager Shafilea Ahmed is likely to stand out in British history as a particularly gruesome example of what we now refer to as "honour killings". Shafilea had warned that her parents were trying to marry her off to Pakistan; others knew she had sustained injuries from beatings by her parents; she had even tried to commit suicide in Pakistan. But right until the end, her own life was fated to be out of her control - she went missing in 2003 and her dismembered body was found a year later.
Shafilea's case wasn't a one-off. It took eight years for the murderers of the Sikh woman Surjit Athwal - her own husband and mother-in-law - to be brought to justice in 2007. It took ten years for Mehmet Goren to be jailed, in 2009, for murdering his daughter Tulay, because she fell in love with an older man of a different Muslim sect. Last year Gurmeet Singh Ubhi was found guilty of murdering his 24 year old daughter Amrit because the Sikh girl was dating a white man. There are others too - Heshu Yones, Banaz Mahmod, Nuziat Khan - the list of women murdered in the UK over their "honour" is depressingly long.
Any decent person would be angry and sad when presented with these names. But it isn't enough to be sad: we have become complicit in this epidemic of abuse and violence by not doing more to challenge it. This should be a left-wing cause célèbre but instead there is an embarrassed silence. Left-wing activists robustly challenge racism and homophobia - so why isn't more being done to stand up to this social evil?
Perhaps it's because forced marriages and honour killings are fundamentally about a lack of cultural integration. They almost always happen when parents want to stop their daughters from mixing with British culture and life, instead of abiding by outdated cultural traditions. To these parents, mixing with other cultures or ethnicities has become synonymous with losing the "family honour".
In the past, most left-wing intellectuals and activists avoided the issue of cultural integration for good reason: it was usually a code-word for assimilation and conjured up images of whites telling others their way of life was inferior. But caught between attacks from the right on multiculturalism, and worries that speaking out would look racist, we have become paralysed. Meanwhile, these problems are set to get worse as more second and third generation children of immigrants come of age.
The Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (Ikwro) found last year that 39 out of 52 police forces across the UK had recorded at least 2,823 "honour" attacks over 2010. Some forces showed a jump of nearly 50 per cent in such cases from 2009. Horrifying stories of friends subjected to subjected to verbal abuse by parents for straying past cultural boundaries are far too common. One acquaintance of mine, under pressure to marry before she was ready, was repeatedly told she was being "too fussy" and would end up "left behind on the shelf". Her self-confidence was broken down with every barbed comment until she eventually gave in. Emotional blackmail is one thing, but the Crown Prosection Service estimates that on average one girl is murdered every month in Britain over "family honour" - while the number of forced marriages could be as high as 10,000 a year.
Jagdeesh Athwal, who fought for nearly a decade to get justice for his sister Surjit, told the Independent that Asian community leaders and religious groups "remain deafeningly silent when these killings happen". The author Sufiya Ahmed, whose book, Secrets of the Henna Girl, is about forced marriages, admits there is "a lot of denial" about the problem. "Aside from not wanting to acknowledge that it happens, there are even those who argue that the subject shouldn't even be talked about for fear of branding all Asians with the same brush."
There is a patronising attitude at work here, too: well-meaning liberals have been known to assume forced marriages and such abuse are an inherent part of Asian culture and therefore must be left alone. A few months ago, activist Jasvinder Sanghera's charity Karma Nirvana convinced a teacher in East London to put up posters at the school that said: "Forced Marriage is Abuse Not Cultural". But the posters were taken down and the charity was told the head was concerned they would upset Muslim parents.
A reluctance to offend will only encourage more silence. If self-appointed community leaders won't speak out, then Labour politicians and left-wing activists have a duty to. I'm not calling for a sneering attitude that says, "if you want to be British, you have to integrate into our way of life". Instead, we need an inclusive narrative about integration which is clear that we, as Britons, are equal regardless of religion, ethnicity or background. It has to appeal to both white and non-white Britons. It has to be about what it means to live in this country collectively and what we do tolerate as a society and what we don't. It would give us more confidence to stop the systematic abuse of thousands of women in Britain. Otherwise, we stay complicit in their fate.
Latest tweets
More from New Statesman
- Online writers:
- Steven Baxter
- Rowenna Davis
- David Allen Green
- Mehdi Hasan
- Nelson Jones
- Gavin Kelly
- Helen Lewis
- Laurie Penny
- The V Spot
- Alex Hern
- Martha Gill
- Alan White
- Samira Shackle
- Alex Andreou
- Nicky Woolf in America
- Bim Adewunmi
- Glosswitch
- Kate Mossman on pop
- Ryan Gilbey on Film
- Martin Robbins
- Rafael Behr
- Eleanor Margolis
- Tools and services:
- Polls
- Predictions
- Archive
- Magazine
- PDF edition
- RSS feeds
- Advertising
- Subscribe
- Special supplements
- Stockists





















69 comments
Audio engineering is a promising job that presents immense chance in film, video creation, sound broadcasting and promoting. Audio engineers use a amount of recording units this sort of as large-tech microphones that are expected to document even the slightest variations of sound.
The general idea of engineering relates to creating bridges, buildings, roads and similar kind of function. Most persons do not imagine of audio engineering as a type of traditional engineering. However, it is one of the greatest paying out work and has quite a few thriving folks performing in the field.
Audio conferencing has under no circumstances had a technologies champion. The market place leader historically was the lethargic AT&T whose once modern Bell Labs dabbled with website technologies and then broke apart. The Child Bells carried on this tradition. As a result, the community has certainly not had an innovative advocate. A new breed of entrepreneurial innovators is start a populist revolution.
Actually it might be better if the left did remain silent. It's not their silence that's the problem, it's their talking that is.
i think the reason the mozzies do this sort of thing is cos they have very low i.q.s due to forced cousin marriage.
The Progressive/Left--
Criminal executions: not acceptable/evil
Late term abortions: acceptable
Honor killings: silence
Curious ideology--explaination?
"The left cannot remain silent over "honour killings""
This is how "the Left wing" in the Guardian have responded to this appalling crime:
First article by Barbara Ellen is immediately on the defensive: "Shafilea Ahmed's death was not the fault of liberal lefties" and concludes "Indeed, while political correctness is the most pathetically easy of targets, it is lazy and inaccurate to blame it for the tragic death of Shafilea Ahmed. Liberal bashing has no place here."
So head deep in bone-headed denial, the article fails to mention that there were several opportunites for the Social Services to have saved Shafilea but didn't because of "cultural sensitivity". She also fails to mention that there are 1000's of forced marriages in the UK and this may be just the very tip of the iceberg, let alone that there has never ever been a single prosecution for FGM in the UK eveen though the activity is widespread (compare this with the more pro-active prosecutions for this crime in secular France).
The Guardian then comission an article to be written by Jacquelline Rose. According to the comments "Rose is what the criminological theorist Steve Hall calls a catastrophist. For her, the demonization and stigmatisation of a cultural group in the name of modernity is the greatest crime we can commit, and thus all other crimes are lesser crimes."
She ends her article by writing "We can support those freedoms – and celebrate the justice Shafilea has now received – without using the case to stigmatise a minority community, or as proof that west is best. Rather than attribute a crime like this to backwardness, we would do better to see how deeply it is woven into the fabric of migration and modernity in which all of us are implicated."
So rather than blame those who actually comitted this vile crime because of their obsession with identifying themselves to their barbarically backward, infantile culture of misogyny we should blame ourselves and really we are all guilty - geddit?
No? That's probably because it is pure twaddle so you may want to ask why "a Left wing" newspaper paid money for these articles to be written?
If you're sincere and genuine then the very best thing you can do Sunnal to ensure that "the left cannot remain silent over "honour killings", forced marriages, FGM, misogyny or homophobia is to write an inspiring article for the Guardian taking both those articles to task and openly condemning the Cultural Relativism that motivated them.
Good luck with that...
"The left cannot remain silent over "honour killings""
Not only are "the Left" determined to turn a blind eye but they have already gone into the usual bone-headed denial as recent articles in the Guardian have clearly demonstrated.
"Any decent person would be angry and sad when presented with these names. But it isn't enough to be sad: we have become complicit in this epidemic of abuse and violence by not doing more to challenge it. This should be a left-wing cause célèbre but instead there is an embarrassed silence. Left-wing activists robustly challenge racism and homophobia - so why isn't more being done to stand up to this social evil?"
Quite right - so-called "cultural sensitivity" has never ever been an excuse or a justification for moral blindness and genuine liberals have always thought that it was self-evidently idiotic for people who pretend to be progressive (EG George Galloway) to ally themselves with the most socially conservative of feeble-minded reactionaries (anti-abortion, homophoics, mysgonistic, etc, etc,etc) who are militantly aggressive about promoting their backward little cultures over the liberal democracy they are supposed to integrating into.
The ideological dogma of Cultural Relativism (that all cultures have equal validity and one cukture does not have anymore legitimacy than another) is so widespread in teaching, schools, public services, local councils (hence the huge sums of taxpayer's money that is routinely wasted on "translation services") that it has directly led to public officials deliberately ignoring cases such as these out of fear of being branded "racist". Ironically, such cultural relativism ultimately leads to the logical conclusion that one couldn't even condemn the most racist culture of all, the Nazis (after, how could be so intolerant of the German's peoples chosen culture of intolerant nationalism and fatal fantasies of Aryan myths) .
Enough is enough and one good thing that may come out of this desperately sad story is that this stupid dogma is finally staked through the heart and every last one of the useful idiots who actually believe in it are systematically sacked from their posts.
You can start the ball rolling Sunnal by writing an article in the Guardian similar to this one but openly condemning the recent articles in the Guardian that have gone out of their way to muddy the waters in what really is a straight-forward case of brutal murder.
The left is almost compulsively anti-Christian and pro-Muslim. It makes no sense morally. Islam is more barbaric overall than Christianity. I guess it just goes along with the whole leftist anti- philosophy: anti-freedom, anti-free-market, anti-morality, anti-Western values.
Silence is consent.
There is no honor in the so called honor killings. Its murder plain and simple.
If a Christian teenager goes to a different church, or dates a person of color, Christians do not kill their children!!
The religions that allow this are not moral or good...
There is no honor in the so called honor killings. Its murder plain and simple.
If a Christian teenager goes to a different church, or dates a person of color, Christians do not kill their children!!
The religions that allow this are not moral or good...
Point of information here: Two of the honor murders mention is this article were committed by Sikhs. Sikhs are not Muslims.
Point of information here: Two of the honor murders mention is this article were committed by Sikhs. Sikhs are not Muslims.
A story for which Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied:
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
I have written in the blogs of both HP and NYT re honor killings and this one in particular, saying that we will not tolerate this. By "we", I mean all decent people in the world. At HP I was told I don't understand the culture, the culture where murdering your own children in the name of "honor" is OK. No, I neither understand nor accept this "honor." It is anything but honorable to murder anyone, much less one's own flesh and blood. Who cares about honor in the face of human life?
I'm not surprised by the responses you received from HP posters. Many of them also think killing an unborn child is normal and customary.
I post of HP quite a bit. Not sure why, as most of their articles are insanely biased, but perhaps b/c they are sometimes entertaining. I find that most liberals won't defend honor killings. Sure you get a few bizarre multicultural to the death type folks, but the majority are not going to defend that culture. I think the main problem is that people want to treat the 'culture' as if it's somehow separated from the religion. The problem with that, is that to a Muslim, your religion IS your culture. So if you belong to a sect of Islam (or any other religion) that is so strongly against women's rights, you will find honor killings. The worst thing you can do is to not talk about it. We don't like talking about it because we think we are protecting religious rights. In America, that seems to apply to Christianity , not Islam as we have a very small Islamic population. But you can see it here. We are careful not to criticize Christian beliefs, and if we do, you'll be on Fox News lickety split being insulted. In Europe this seems to apply to Islam. You can't say that they are a religion of peace and then cower whenever someone criticizes them, as if waiting for a bomb to suddenly appear and blow you up. I really worry about the state of Europe with this. I am a multicultural person in many ways. I don't believe in conforming everyone to a single culture, diversity tends to be a good thing. But what isn't a good thing , is murder and abuse protected by those words like ' multicultural' and 'different traditions'
It's a frustrating thing, more so in Britain I imagine.
You've got that absolutely right. The opportunity for sensible, considered dialogue about this issue is hijacked either by the professionally insulted left, or the extreme, brainless right.
I have written in the blogs of both HP and NYT re honor killings and this one in particular, saying that we will not tolerate this. By "we", I mean all decent people in the world. At HP I was told I don't understand the culture, the culture where murdering your own children in the name of "honor" is OK. No, I neither understand nor accept this "honor." It is anything but honorable to murder anyone, much less one's own flesh and blood. Who cares about honor in the face of human life?
I have written in the blogs of both HP and NYT re honor killings and this one in particular, saying that we will not tolerate this. By "we", I mean all decent people in the world. At HP I was told I don't understand the culture, the culture where murdering your own children in the name of "honor" is OK. No, I neither understand nor accept this "honor." It is anything but honorable to murder anyone, much less one's own flesh and blood. Who cares about honor in the face of human life?
I have written in the blogs of both HP and NYT re honor killings and this one in particular, saying that we will not tolerate this. By "we", I mean all decent people in the world. At HP I was told I don't understand the culture, the culture where murdering your own children in the name of "honor" is OK. No, I neither understand nor accept this "honor." It is anything but honorable to murder anyone, much less one's own flesh and blood. Who cares about honor in the face of human life?
Amazing: the writer states that "We need an inclusive narrative about integration which is clear that we, as Britons, are equal regardless of religion, ethnicity or background" which indicates to me the war is already lost. The Brit and Euro elites have sold out Western civ as inferior/racist/imperialist, &c, and have invited in the barbarians as penance; you're harvesting the fruit of this folly now. There's zero courage to call it like it is. Instead, more mealy-mouthed lefty hand-wringing, liberal guilt and timidity. Can't offend the Muslims, that would prove we're racist/imperialist, etc. How about this: murder your kids and we'll string you up quick, on a tall tree with a short rope. I'm guessing that would put an end to it pretty quick. But forgive me, I know that's bloody well barbarous, know we can't go back to forms of justice that actually work and that reflect a moral compass that honors victims. Let's just go on prating about narratives, I'm sure the radical imams in your country will pay the closest attention to your discourses, they're after all paragons of judicious ratiocination with a known taste for postmodern literary theory and analysis. Convert now and get it over with.
The rootless looters of the Left, communist, fascist, socialist, progressive, and Liberal have all made common cause with Islamo-supremist Muslims. The animating spirit of both is identical, dictatorial control of the world's goods through terror.
Well said,Porco,well said.If only those whom you list would agree with you!
Well said,Porco,well said.If only those whom you list would agree with you!
'multiculturalism' isn't the issue. The evil that needs to be fought is the primitive, savage murderous ideology of Islamism much of it imported into the UK from the racist apartheid state of Pakistan.
The reason is straightforward, left-wingers and liberals regard discrimination and prejudice against men as more important than that against females. There can be no other reason for the dominant position of racism and homophobia over sexism in their agenda.
Take the Rochdale rape and sexual exploitation cases, all we heard about in its wake was potential discrimination against Asian men because of racism, practically nothing about the actual discrimination and prejudice already being inflicted on girls and women.
This despite the fact that sexism is by far the most widespread and lethal form of discrimination in the country.
Liberals need to get gender equality back on the map.
The Liberal "map" is full of groups demanding equal (ie: "special") treatment. This is not done because liberals have an interest in the group or the issue. It is done in order to obtain their votes (and for NO other reason). Too many splinter groups and sooner or later, the gravy train is over-booked and the splinter groups have conflicting agendas. Everyone can't ride in the front seat.
"The reason is straightforward, left-wingers and liberals regard discrimination and prejudice against men as more important than that against females"
Erm...bollocks
That's a lazy and ignorant characterisation resulting from a stupid conflation of 'left wing' with 'liberal'. You're the type of knobhead who'd doubtless describe the Guardian as a left-wing newspaper. It isn't. It represents the bourgeois preoccupations that allow the 'progressive middle class' to feel good about themselves while stoking up the pension fund, consuming like there's no tomorrow, paying to make sure their kids get a big head start over the working class and wallowing in lifestyle colour supplement porn yet maintaining clear water between themselves and the nasty Tories.
Unfortunately for the rest of society, they reinforce this distance by adopting attitudes and policies which have no direct bearing on their day to day existence. Instead the impact is born by the working class and the poor women of certain minority groups who suffer indignities which liberals deem inviolate due to their cultural sensitivity. This is not down to the left. It's the pseudo left; the 'left' that abandoned economic justice and threw themselves instead into identity politics; the 'left' that chucked solidarity and commonality in favour of individual validation; the 'left' that is, in short, a degenerate brand of liberalism informed by apolitical post structuralist posturing; precisely that left for which Sunny Hundal's been a spokesman for bloody years; a left that's condoned all kindsa injustice on cultural grounds just to maintain a delusional moral distance from the Tories and a mythical 'white van' majority; a 'left' whose only raisin d'être is condescension and sixth form irony; a 'left' that regards Laurie Penny as a radical thinker.
By all means go ahead and tear this 'left' a new a***hole; Christ knows they've got it coming. But please stop referring to them as left wing. 'Liberals', ' bourgeois dilettantes', 'trust fund radicals', 'hand-wringing muppets', 'identity gobshites' etc convey a far more accurate sense of what they're all about.
It's clearly not bollocks.
The proof is starkly demonstrated by the fact that while all the forms of discrimination that could potentially affect men: racism, homophobia, disability discrimination, religious discrimination, are in the anti-hate legislation, the main form that affects women is mysteriously entirely absent.
How do you explain that if not by sexism right at the heart of the equality agenda?
While anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic literatureis illegal, misogynist media abounds and increases.
It's obvious why this happens, it's because men make noise, they riot, they cause civil disobedience, they cause crime, they are expensive and politically difficult to handle. Their needs must be met. Women on the other hand are dreadfully reasonable, cheap and eminently ignorable.
Nobody was worried about teenage girls rioting as they were roundly and dangerously stereotyped afte the sex abuse cases finally got public attention, everyone was far far more concerned to avoid the hint of stereotyping the men involved because they very well might.
Erm...ok. But did you read past my first line: ie "bollocks."?
My post...and I've read it again...was about the conflation of 'the left' and 'liberalism'. You seem to have somehow upbraided me on the failure of my post to acknowledge the misogynist character of rights and hate legislation. This is something I'm not gonna dispute as my post just wasn't about that. And please don't think I'm dismissing your point. I completely agree.
However, I'm confident that if you ever hope to remedy the situation to your own satisfaction, then you need to give identity politics, relativism and anybody who espouses..for want of a better phrase...a 'feminist epistemology' a f**king major body swerve. And while we're at it, I'd also give the same treatment to any 'discourse' which claims any sort of exclusivity. Personally, and at the risk of invoking Godwin's law, I'd lend them the same credibility as I give to the notion that there's a distinct ''Jewish Physics".
Wow, I rubbing my eyes, well Said Sunny, at last a moment of Clarity from someone who the left might take seriously. When anyone else says highlights anything remotely factual or truthful about Islamic Culture we get called Islamaphobes or Bigots.
When will the left continues to GROW UP and confront and explore the global Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jew Hatred, , Islamic demonisation of Israel , Islamic Gender Apartheid, Islamic Terror, Violence and Hate all inspired by the Koran. i
Lets be clear, 91% percent of honor killing around the world are committed by Muslims. This is no coincidence since :
"A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.
"The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."
Julia.... The ardent lefties can't handle the truth this divisive creed of multiculturalism has been a monstrous mistake..
I have to admit to ignorance here, but the phrasing in the article and some of the comments has me confused.
Honor killings by asians . . . ALL? The Japanese, and etc.
Or, is this a code word for the cultures in a "more or less" asian direction that we can't identify explicitly w/o being labelled racist?
Someone please explain.
Asian is a term used by Muslim-fascist apologists within our British political-correct elite when describing people responsible for the latest outrage. It wasn't a Muslim that did the dirty deed the Asian did.. that makes it all better.. In their twisted world...
Well I had an Asian takeaway for my dinner. Thai Chicken Balti Foo Yung Sushi and a portion of prawn poppadoms.
Sounds enjoyable...... but your point is?.... Female exploitation and violence against women should never be ignored or belittled... it's just not nice. To all you so called feminist in liberated England. "spare a thought" for your Brown and Black sisters less fortunate than yourselves. English feminism as gone awfully quite too quite for far to long.
The islamofascists insist that the BBC and Guardian use the term 'Asian' to camouflage the fact that the vast majority of child rapes are committed by Islamists of Pakistani origin. I'm not aware of a single Hindu or Sikh 'Asian' involved in such serious crime. What right does the Islamist-supporting media have the right to defame law-abiding, respectable Hindu and Sikh Britons who also are devoid of any race hatred against Jews, oppressive behaviors against women or Gays?
"Or, is this a code word for the cultures in a "more or less" asian direction that we can't identify explicitly w/o being labelled racist?"
If it's a code, I think you've cracked it. Mind you, it hardly required a Bletchley Park style feat of cryptography. But it's still a bit disappointing now Sunny's finally grasped the nettle that he's unable to be specific and still has to play around with lame euphemisms.
I'm not surprised this article brought the racists out of the woodwork. It is typical of liberals to veer left and right, ultimately landing further right than most would place themselves politically. This article sees what happened to Shafilea Ahmed as over there, foreign, Muslim; it considers honour killngs as something only Muslim men do; as if silence in the face of violence is Pakistani; as if abusive parenting is a cultural thing. Many white British parents abuse their children too. Many white British men beat their wives, girlfriends and daughters - and they do so because their "honour" has been challenged. They might not say it when they show their anger at her "showing them up" but it's about their honour. According to Women's Aid 1 in 4 women will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime – many of these on a number of occasions; one incident of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute and on average, 2 women a week are killed by a current or former male partner. Domestic violence is defined as " physical, sexual, psychological or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship".
What happened to Shafilea is vile but it did not happen because her parents are Pakistani, because her parents had links with Islam (as I understand it they were't practising Muslims) - it happened because her parents are violent, abusive people: some white British parents are too and the news is full of them every year. Perhaps rather than isolating "cultures" we should defend all women against domestic violence. That way women like Shafilea will get the help they truly need - not the liberal point-scoring and racist scapegoating we're seeing now.
OK, you keep your head in the sand if you want to.
You're an apologist for a culture who's belief systems are miles away from a secular society like the UK's. For that statement you will cry "racist" because you are afraid to face up to the fascism of the liberal left.
If people of any race, colour or creed seem unwilling to live within our culturally accepted norms, then one has to wonder what their motivation was to come to the UK in the first place.
@Charlieb:
You wrote: "...it considers honour killngs as something only Muslim men do; as if silence in the face of violence is Pakistani; as if abusive parenting is a cultural thing. "
But as another commenter so aptly pointed out, Muslims commit 91% of all "honor" murders worldwide. As this commenter further pointed out, near universally accepted (by Muslims) Islamic law makes murder of one's own children and grandchildren not-punishable.
Could there be a connection here? Hmmmmm....
What utter garbage. Next you will be telling us that it's not Moslems who stone women to death, hang Gays and murder Jews and ethnically cleanse Christians - its the Swedes!!
Not all Muslims adhere to thevalues you list. Just as not all Christians stand on street corners with placards saying "we hate fags". This is simply a case of not generalising entire groups of people by one incident. It's really not very complicated.
Of course violence against women is prevalent in all societies and in all cultures... this goes without saying, but let's pose a question.... If some working class white parents had murdered their daughter because they disapprove of her mixed race relationship and this outrage became mainstream news.. what would be the liberal-lefts reaction be?
The liberal lefts reaction would then be to judge them they way they demoise all white working class parents - such as Karen Matthews - who prove to be poor parents. I genuinely believe the so-called cause of the murder would not be as discussed as this is now. Shafilea's parents have an excuse ... don't all murderers justify their actions?
"I'm not surprised this article brought the racists out of the woodwork. It is typical of liberals to veer left and right, ultimately landing further right than most would place themselves politically. "
Oh FFS. Unreal.
1) You claim the article brought out the 'racists'. But judging by the reasoning delineated in the rest of your post, surely you'd class the article itself as racist...or do you consider that the meaningless platitudes in the last paragraph exonerate it? Or do you regard Sunny as incapable of racist sentiments either because of his race or status as a renowned progressive?
2) You seem to be blaming the 'liberals', yet the fact that your entire argument rests on a classic piece of whataboutery, bolstered by a set of tendentious, contentious and self-serving statistics, you emerge as the epitome of the handwringing useful-idiot-liberalism.
3) Incidences of domestic abuse and violence take place across racial and cultural lines. Are you suggesting that a further particular incentive to violent coercion inspired by degenerate notions of family honour should be ignored until all other problems of domestic abuse are eliminated?
4) Given your wish to avoid 'isolating cultures', it's interesting that you repeatedly refer to 'white British' people and only ever in relation to domestic violence. Why didn't you point out the prevalence of such violence in other non-Muslim groups? I know how keen you are to avoid scapegoating.
5) How many instances of parental violence do you know of which involve young 'white British' women's refusal to marry foreign men they've either never met or actively dislike? And how many result from the young women's refusal to conform to expectations which should properly be regarded as discriminatory and misogynistic?
There's an widespread issue here which is culture specific and distinct from other culturally universal incidents of physical and sexual abuse. Yet you can't accept this because of a groundless and untenable ideology which posits all cultures as equally immune to any form of criticism...except perhaps 'white British' judging from the evidence of your post. Further, you have the nerve to call anyone who doesn't subscribe to this ideology as racist. You need to take a good hard look at yourself matey.
You haven't read what I've said properly. I't is clear I'm not saying white British people can be judged and no one else. You then continue a list of questions, generalisations and my imagined responses so, to be frank, sound like you're arguing with yourself. I think I'll leave you to it. Suffice to say, I think anyone who is violent towards a family member should be judged and harshly - not for their colour, not for their justification of that violence and not for their religion but for the act they committed: just as Shafilea's parents have been.
"You haven't read what I've said properly. I't is clear I'm not saying white British people can be judged and no one else. "
I didn't imply you said any such thing. However, despite domestic violence being a universal feature of every society and culture across the globe, you chose only to mention 'white British' people...three times; unprompted. I simply thought it a little odd. Although to be honest, it's a phenomenon I've seen before, especially among a self-elected metropolitan liberal elite whose worldview seems to lay virtually every 'evil' at the door at a racist, misogynist, deluded working class led by the nose by an uberclass of corporate capitalist patriarchs.
Now even supposing this were the case, wouldn't the solution be a move to build working class solidarity, unionisation and a coherent opposition? Why instead is the 'liberal left consensus' that's what's needed is a fetishisation of the 'individual' and a politics based on affirming identities, single issues and an absolutely incomprehensible belief that every culture (WWC excepted, natch) is equally deserving of admiration and exempt from criticism and censure. Some aspects of every culture are seriously f**ked up. Why shouldn't it be possible to say so?
Now, I don't presume FOR ONE SINGLE SECOND that you share this liberal prejudice, but why do you think that a particularly harmful and immoral practice largely concentrated within Muslim culture should be immune to criticism? If I read you properly, your reasoning rests upon a variation of "yeah, but what about..."; where the 'what about' is in fact a universal feature of humanity. By that standard we'd be justified in never acting to change anything, since there's always a "yeah but what about...?" just waiting to be plucked from the ether.
In order to speak out against honour crimes & forced marriage you do have to state explicitly that coercion against individuals when they choose to exercise their freedom of conscience and freedom to choose who they wish to marry and how to live their life is utterly immoral, wrong, and goes against the most basic fundamentals of British culture and society.
How will the Left manage to grow the spine to do that when it is engaged in a never ending debate on how 'Britishness' doesn't actually mean anything, when it is engaged in cultural self-loathing and screams hysterically whenever anybody wishes to point out that some cultural practises and assumptions within minority groups are inimical to our culture?
"Instead, we need an inclusive narrative about integration which is clear that we, as Britons, are equal regardless of religion, ethnicity or background."
Nope. It doesn't need a 'narrative'. A narrative is a version of events. We've had too many narratives; too many 'local' truths; too many 'culturally specific discourses'. What we need is a legal framework which people are expected to abide by or suffer the consequences, and we don't need excuses, extenuating circumstances or special pleading proffered by groups on the basis of their race, religion, gender, sexuality or belief systems.
Nor does it need to be 'inclusive' in the sense I presume Sunny means; it only needs to be inclusive in the sense that everybody is included under the provision of the law. If Sunny intended 'inclusive narrative' to be read this way then fair enough; but somehow I doubt it.
I think that, rather, he means: "shit, I'd better speak out after this case...ignoring it would make me look a complete hypocrite...but I still reserve the right to assume some moral authority by claiming a debate is needed and, unless I get to frame the terms of that debate , I want to retain my prerogative to shout 'racist' any time I like."