Archives

Wafers of mass destruction

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Aug 17, 2008

Sigmund Freud reportedly said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But in the Catholic Church, a wafer ain’t just a wafer. Once blessed by the priest, it becomes the body of Christ. And if it’s not immediately consumed, the Eucharist can ruin Sunday mass. You could say it mutates into a wafer of mass destruction.

That’s what recently got a young Catholic dissident in big trouble — to the point of his life being threatened. Here’s a news report.

Now here’s the skinny: Webster Cook, a student senator at the University of Central Florida, vocally disagrees with school funds going to Catholic and other religious groups. Nonetheless, a few Sundays ago, he brought a friend to campus mass. The friend apparently had questions about Catholicism.

Rather than swallow the wafer that’s handed to him during Communion, Cook brought it back to his pal in the pews. At one point, Cook claims, a fellow parishioner used physical force to intimidate him into eating the now-holy cracker.

It didn’t work.

According to the local Church, Cook “kidnapped” the body of Christ and, um, held it hostage in a Ziploc bag. Word spread. The parish accused him of committing a mortal sin. Bloggers began pelting Cook with cries of blasphemy. I’m told that he even got death threats.

The following week, Cook returned the wafer along with a letter to parishioners. In it, he took the high road: “I want to thank the individuals who explained the emotional and spiritual pain my possession of the Eucharist caused them to experience. They have demonstrated that the use [of] reason is more effective than the use of force.”

I’ve blogged elsewhere about the rising aggression of the Catholic Church and how that’s linked to the “rights” increasingly demanded by organized religions, including Islam. I’ve also blogged about the humanity of which Catholic leaders are capable and what Muslims can learn from them.

In fact, I’ve often said that my favorite priest is Father David O’Leary, head chaplain at Tufts University in Boston. Father O is a Catholic refusenik. He embraces intellectual inquiry a la Augustine and Aquinas, while refusing to become a robot in God’s name. Not only does Father O challenge various Church edicts; he’s got the spiritual spine to question injustices in other religions — the hallmark of moral courage for any contemporary liberal.

That’s why Father O has gone out of his way to champion Muslim women as imams. His efforts demonstrate that Catholicism can be revolutionary when solid faith trumps insecure dogma.

So this column isn’t motivated by Catholic-bashing. Exactly the opposite: It’s about opposing violence. Period.

Which serves as a reminder for all of you to sign my anti-death threat petition. Its language singles out Islamism because the petition originates in a serious death threat that I and 11 other writers received from ummah.com. You’ll see that the petition advocates “freedom, equal opportunity, human rights and secular values for all.”

I’m happy to say that it’s already supported by nearly 3,500 people worldwide, with the most recent signatories coming from Syria, Argentina, Afghanistan, Australia, Venezuala, Indonesia, Portugal, Malaysia, Finland, Canada, the UAE, America and India.

Such vast global scope is appropriate: When the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head almost 20 years ago, most Christian and Jewish clerics stayed mute. They wouldn’t have threatened their own like this. Still, their silence revealed the universal appeal of dogma.

Wafers of mass destruction are only the latest example of dogma unleashed. I may be crackers for having faith, but my faith welcomes the presence of wafer-smugglers, doubters, even atheists.

God love ‘em all, especially when God’s self-styled emissaries don’t.

The making of a kafir

Posted in Q & A on Aug 11, 2008

I recently received this email from Azhar in Melbourne, Australia. It’s proof positive that reading The Trouble with Islam Today corrupts good Muslim boys and girls. I’m only sorry that I needed the help of a lousy airline. You’ll see what I mean. Enjoy:

“You are rude, arrogant, in-your-face, insane for doing it all, blunt, bitchy and how I love you!

You have brought to light realities that everyone including myself has always wanted to ask but never did. I am a ‘brown’ Muslim male from Kenya who recently finished studies in Australia.

It is really sad that I only got to read your book on my vacation back home and on the way back to Australia. (Can I just say that Kenya Airways sucks with common TVs and faulty headphone, so the book captured me throughout the flight with next to no sleep as I consumed page after page on that 13-hour trip from hell to Hong Kong.)

I must confess that at times I felt like you were the CIA who had found some way of reading my mind as you continuously raised questions (and gave answers) to ‘forbidden’ agendas that have tormented my mind for years. People like you and Salman Rushdie have inspired me to step up and ask questions that I have feared all my life and for this I shall forever be endowed to you.

The ignorance, the blame game, the irrationality, the Desert Islam infestation and, most of all, the fear has poisoned this faith for far too long. It is people like you who breath new hope for the future…

On reading your book, I raised a debate back home and was actually shocked to find that educated men and women were outraged by my questions and support of the book. Needless to say, I went from ‘welcomed son’ to ‘kafir’ in no time!!!” - Azhar, Melbourne

Irshad replies: Then my work here is done.

Wanted: Reformist Muslims in Obama’s campaign

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Aug 07, 2008

Forget who he’ll pick for vice-president. Barack Obama first has to fill a different job vacancy.

That’s because his Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, has just resigned. I can’t say I’m disheartened. He’d been embraced by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, renowned for their conservative politics and “moderate” double-speak.

Because Obama’s campaign trumpets “Change We Can Believe In,” he needs reform-minded Muslims. I mean Muslims who recognize that the Quran has been left in a 7th-century tribal time warp. Its interpretations can and must be updated for the pluralistic context of the 21st century.

In my experience, most Muslim moderates won’t go there. They insist that “classical” interpretations are the answer. As if 10th-century Muslims dealt with exactly the same dilemmas that we have today.

Who, then, could Obama tap as his next Muslim outreach coordinator? Without having consulted either of them, I nominate two reform-minded Muslims…

Read the rest of my commentary on The Huffington Post. 

The love that dare not speak its name

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Aug 03, 2008

On this blog a few days ago, I wrote that many Muslims expect better behavior from Americans than they do from the traditional Islamic world. “That’s what you call a double-standard,” I added.

Some observers would go further, equating Muslim hypocrisy to blatant anti-Americanism. Not me. In seeking to understand, I’ve realized a dirty secret: Muslims who practice such hypocrisy actually love America.

Armed with this new comprehension, here’s my message to fellow Muslims.

Thank you for expecting so much more of the United States. Your great expectations disclose a deeper faith in America than you have in your own Muslim countries. Admit it or not, you respect the ideal of American leadership. I join you in embracing that ideal.

As I recently explained on CNN International, America is still the only country in the world with a universal constituency. Domestic politics in the U.S. have a profound impact in every corner of the globe, helping to determine immigration flows, shaping investment patterns, and even giving leaders and their presumptive heirs the excuses they need to blur the lines between God and government. “If America’s doing it,” goes the argument, “why can’t we?”

The same impact can’t be claimed about domestic politics in any other modern, multicultural state today. Not China. Not India. Not Britain. At least not yet.

In short, what happens in America doesn’t stay in America. It travels — and sets a precedent for many more nations.

My fellow Muslims, you may act resentful about this reality but it seems that the world welcomes the long reach of US culture. After all, there’s a concrete history of American innovations being voluntarily adopted elsewhere.

By “innovations,” I’m not referring simply to hip hop or fast food or iPODs or ladies’ panties that sport images of Bugs Bunny (which you can buy at any self-respecting souk in Damascus). I’m referring to something much more serious.

In a fabulous book entitled A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America, Anouar Majid writes about the Virginia act, “the first secular constitution in the world.” It became the basis of the US Constitution. But even before that, the Virginia Act was “immediately translated in French and Italian and spread throughout Europe.”

Of course, as I hinted above, American behavior can also set a negative example for the world. In another exceptional book, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, philosopher Susan Neiman lets us in on how Nazi Germany justified its atrocities by exploiting US segregation:

“When criticized for his racist policies, Adolf Hitler liked to mention the number of lynchings that regularly occurred in America. In 1939, the SS Journal put out a poster quoting FDR’s reaction to Kristallnacht: ‘I couldn’t believe that this kind of thing could happen in twentieth century civilization.’ But rather than showing the bloody Jewish bodies and smashed windows of the German pogrom, the poster depicted black men hanging from Southern trees…

In the short run, Hitler’s comparison worked, as similar comparisons do today. Already, repressive measures in China, Egypt, and Malaysia have been defended by local officials who point to the Patriot Act or Guantanamo…”

To their visionary credit, America’s founding fathers saw this manipulation coming — and warned all Americans to be mindful. Thomas Paine, the 18th-century revolutionary who prepared the masses for Independence, was explicit: “He that would would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

My conclusion? The much-maligned idea of “American exceptionalism” doesn’t mean that America is excepted or excused from high standards of conduct. Exactly the opposite: America’s duty is to live up to the highest standards of all because the globe turns to the US as its role model. That’s the burden, and beauty, of American leadership.

My fellow Muslims, understand this: When you announce that American leadership has disappeared in the age of Abu Ghraib, you’re contradicting yourselves. You’re invoking Abu Ghraib instead of, say, Darfur because Abu Ghraib happened at the hands of America, and America remains the measure of our own potential.

Let me finish by returning to the philosopher Susan Neiman, an American who lives in Europe after teaching in the Middle East. She notes that the “evil of Abu Ghraib” lies in its consequences for idealism. It could make a new generation suspicious, if not cynical, about the very struggle to achieve human rights.

“When you torture and kill in the name an ideal, it’s the ideal that suffers most. Those who excuse the abuses at Abu Ghraib as better than other abuses, and necessary to win the war on terror, have forgotten an old refrain. Remember when the evils of socialism were better than the evils of capitalism, and in any case, necessary to the final struggle for liberation?

If the ideal of human rights is destroyed by the violations that were said to be needed to realize it, our children will pay the price. Many of them are already paying, for they believe in next to nothing.”

How ironic — no, tragic — that the country most ardently dedicated to a proposition might leave a legacy of nihilism. Not because of its own indifference but because all of us, everywhere, neglected to tell Americans the real reason that we’re hardest on them.

The reason is: We have more faith in Americans than we have in ourselves.

To be understood, first seek to understand

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jul 30, 2008

This is a memo to my fellow Muslims. There’s something about Americans that you need to know: They love to be liked.

Maybe that’s why, for all my travels throughout the world, nowhere do I experience a deeper desire to understand others than I do in America. Especially in the “heartland.”

Recently, I received two emails that capture this point. The first comes from Frank:

“I am a 40-something white male living in the Midwest. I just watched your interview about the Pakistani-American father in Georgia who allegedly killed his daughter out of ‘honor.’

I was impressed by your very clear and concise explanation of the reason this man feels he is not guilty. Perhaps more important was your explanation of how his thinking in this matter is culturally based and not religious in nature. Adding even more to your credibility is that you stated in this country, this is murder even if it is not considered so in other countries.

In only a few minutes, your information gave me a clearer understanding of Islam than I have ever had and actually left me wanting to understand more.

As in so many instances, fear of something is often a result of lacking knowledge. I think in the United States that could not be more true as it relates to Islam or for that matter some other religions too.

I thank you for presenting a clearer picture for me and all those watching.”

Now to an email from Fred:

“I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with ijtihad.

Every 10th grader should know the ‘Cradle of Civilization’ is at the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the Fertile Crescent. Every 10th grader should know that if it wasn’t for the libraries in Moorish Spain, the knowledge of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and the other Ancients would have been lost forever at the hands of the Roman Church.

Muslims seem to be in their own Dark Ages. No thought, no opinion, just submission. That’s what it was like in Medieval Europe. Zillions of serfs were ordered to keep tilling the land, pay your taxes, and do what you’re told. The big pay-off was in the ‘next’ life, where ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first.’ Today that’s called The Mushroom Theory, you know, keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em bullshit.

Good luck with ijtihad, you’ll be saving zillions over the next thousand years from an impotent, dreary, lifeless existence. Thanks for your efforts, from a member of the Planet.”

It makes my heart soar when non-Muslim Americans learn about ijtihad and cite its transformative potential. Or when they say that young Americans should be taught how Islamic civilization saved Western civilization a millennium ago.

What makes my heart sag is that I never hear traditional Muslims express an interest in understanding American customs. Too many simply reduce Americana to materialism, consumerism, or decadence.

That’s revealed in a new book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. (A billion Muslims?! With a sample like that, you can see that I’m not taking my conclusions exclusively from personal experience.)

I debated the book’s Muslim co-author recently, and was struck (but not surprised) by one of her more cavalier assumptions: namely, when mainstream Americans fail to fathom traditional Muslims, it’s Americans who must change. Full stop. But when Muslims misunderstand Americans, it’s not Muslims who must change. It’s not Muslims who must take responsibility to educate themselves about the complexity and nuance of American life. Nope. It’s Americans who must do all the heavy lifting to improve perceptions about themselves.

That’s what you call a double-standard.

Let’s be honest, people: Reconciliation between “Islam” and “the West” can’t happen without reciprocity. Understanding, by definition, has to be mutual.

Even the Quran promotes Muslim introspection, wisely reminding us that “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” That’s Chapter 13, Verse 11. When applied to both America and the Islamic world, it just might be a 13:11 solution to a 9/11 problem.

I can already anticipate the objections to my argument. One of them will be that America wields a hell of a lot more power than the Muslim world, and therefore deserves to be held to a higher standard.

Normally, I’d fight this counter-argument by exposing the racist premise that Muslims aren’t capable of acting as civilized as Americans.

But this time, I’m humoring the counter-argument. More than humoring it, I’m reflecting on it. Because I seek to understand.

And new heights of understanding are helping me appreciate that, far from hating America, those who treat the US as The Problem subconsciously love America.

I’ll explain in my next blog entry.

“Other” people’s business — not

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Jul 24, 2008

Irshad with Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority, which alerted America to the Taliban’s human rights abuses. (Photo: Talton Gibson)

As I explained in my previous blog entry, so much moral and legal confusion is infecting humanity’s shared journey to justice because of artificial notions about “us” and “them.” Sad thing is, many these notions are coming from my tribe — progressives.

Take the idea of cultural relativism. It’s the belief that there’s no universal standard of human dignity or human decency and consequently what “other people” do is none of “our” business.

Western feminists are especially vulnerable to this idea because they want to be seen as culturally sensitive to minorities. But should they stay silent when the traditions and norms of any minority reinforce the patriarchy that feminism is meant to oppose?

Are Western feminists being imperialists by speaking out about the oppression of women in societies beyond their own?

In an interdependent world, is there such a thing as “other” people’s business?

These are among the questions I addressed in a speech to America’s largest gathering of feminists, the National Organization for Women. Here are highlights:

It’s a privilege to be living in a democracy, where we have the precious freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged. As feminists, we know the power of voice. My question to you is: Will we make the choice to do more with our voice?

What I’m about to say might leave some of you uncomfortable. It might even leave some of you angry. Fine. Being unified is not about being uniform. Unity is about working for a common goal yet feeling free to express diversity of thought in pursuit of that goal.

And what should our common goal be today? I propose defending the universality of human rights. Why do I emphasize “universality”? Because around the world, a contest is raging between the rights of individuals and the so-called rights of cultures.

In Sydney, Australia, the Catholic Church has the won “right” not to be offended this entire month.

Throughout July, Sydney police have new powers to arrest and punish anybody who causes annoyance to participants of the Vatican-sponsored World Youth Day, even if annoyance is inflicted merely by wearing a T-Shirt with an irritating message. Penalties include partial strip searches and fines of more than $5,000. All in the name of cultural rights.

In Britain, Muslim lobbyists — egged on by a handful of non-Muslim church leaders, judges and politicians — are quietly seeking to introduce Sharia law, or Islamic law, also in the name of cultural rights.

Three years ago, a campaign to introduce Sharia almost succeeded in my own country of Canada. The first people to speak up against this manipulation of multiculturalism were Muslim women.

But they found that too many non-Muslim women were afraid to join them. Afraid, that is, of being called racists for getting involved in “other” people’s business. Remember when that was said about domestic violence — that it’s other people’s business?

Fear produces not just a lack of feminist unity, but also a lack of feminist integrity. How can we stay quiet about the abuse of women under most forms of religious law, including Sharia law? If feminists still view patriarchy as global (and I think we do unless I missed a memo), then differences in culture should not compel us to hit the mental mute button whenever Muslim men start speaking…

Another example of human rights getting trounced by culture: honor killings. The United Nations reports 5,000 honor killings worldwide every year — and that’s just the documented ones.

In 2006, I spoke at a major gathering of Amnesty International members. There, I met with Pakistani delegates who showed me, through case reports, that in their country alone, in the preceding year alone, at least 1,000 women had been killed for allegedly violating their family’s honor.

One thousand! As a Pakistani delegate pointed out to me, that’s twice the number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Non-Muslim feminists have been outspoken about human rights abuses at Gitmo. Honor crimes have not generated nearly so much condemnation.

Why?

Even serious speeches need fun moments. (Photo: Liz Newbury)

Too many of us are scared of being labeled “outside agitators” — you know, imperialists — for getting involved in “other” people’s business. And to rationalize our fears, we’re creating a religion of our own: the Church of Cultural Relativism.

The doctrine of this Church insists that there’s no universal standard of human decency or human dignity. Therefore, anything goes as long as it doesn’t affect me or my children.

But in an interdependent world, there’s no such thing “other” people’s business. What happens thousands of miles away sooner or later catches up to our children.

In September 1996, the Taliban began amputating the hands of women merely for flashing a patch of skin as they tried to pay for meat over a butcher’s counter. Back then, such amputations amounted to “other” people’s business.

A few morally courageous women and men, including some in America, tried to stop the Taliban. But they didn’t receive nearly enough help from the privileged. Us. Myself included.

Exactly five years later — September 2001 — “other” people’s business became our business…

Please understand, I’m not trying to over-dramatize the already dramatic. I’m trying to learn from the history of social justice.

Martin Luther King Jr. himself was labeled an “outside agitator” by eight liberal clergymen in Alabama. In his now-famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which he addressed to these clergymen, Rev. King confronted the realities of interdependence.

He said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea.”

Since Rev. King wrote those words, citizenship has become that much more global. So let me suggest an additional nugget of King-like wisdom for our time: Never again can we live with the assumption that just because human beings are born equal, cultures are too.

Cultures are not born. Cultures are constructed. Which means there’s nothing sacred about cultures and therefore nothing sacrilegious, blasphemous, or unthinkable about seeking to reform the most oppressive aspects of cultures.

Will we offend? Yep. Is our offense a source of tension? You bet. Is tension the price of justice? Ask Rev. King.

In that same Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he wrote that the greatest barrier to African-American liberation is not the transparent racist; it’s the tepid progressive. It’s the person who fancies herself forward-looking, but who prefers what King called “negative peace,” which is the absence of tension, over “positive peace,” which is the presence of justice.

This point, made in the context of the battle for domestic civil rights, has stunning parallels to today’s struggle for universal human rights.

For more about my commitment to universal human rights, read up on my work with the European Foundation for Democracy.

Justice or “just us”?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jul 21, 2008

How’s this for irony: In the name of defending egalitarian values, French courts are taking cues from conservative Islam.

Judges in France recently brought down two landmark verdicts. One decision lets a Muslim man divorce his wife because she isn’t the virgin she claimed to be.

A second court decision denies French citizenship to a veiled Muslim woman because her version of Islam is at odds with gender equality and other essential principles of the republic.

Problem is, the husbands of these women are getting off scott-free. Yet they’re complicit in upholding a culture that insists women’s worth is measured by their hymens or their dress.

As my fellow Muslim feminist Mona Eltahawy wonders, “why not also go after the Muslim men” who live according to the retrograde principles of women-only chastity and women-only modesty?

By punishing women and women only, French courts are adopting the tribal norm of “honor,” which places the burden of accountability exclusively on one gender: females.

And, says Mona Eltahawy, “that’s cultural relativism at its worst.”

These days, among the biggest barriers to human rights is cultural relativism — the doctrine that states there’s no universal standard of human dignity or human decency. Therefore, the oppressive traditions of minority groups don’t need to be reformed. That’s just the way things are for “them.” As long as their traditions don’t apply to “us,” we’ll be fine.

But who’s “us” and who’s “them”? In an age of mass migration — read: an interdependent world — is there really such a thing as “other” people’s business?

That’s the theme of a speech I gave this month to the National Organization for Women, America’s largest feminist group. In my next blog entry, I’ll post highlights of the speech. Stay tuned.

Why Obama should thank his satirists

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jul 16, 2008

My latest column deals with the controversial magazine cover satirizing right-wing claims that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and his wife is a not-so-secret Black Panther.

Unlike those who are excoriating the New Yorker magazine, I say this: “the cover from hell should be treated as manna from heaven. In shocking people with these fierce images, the New Yorker has handed the Obama campaign a chance to score three timely victories.”

Read my entire commentary in The Globe and Mail.

Agent of moral courage: Jesse Jackson Jr.

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jul 13, 2008

When your name’s “junior,” the pressure’s on to respect your daddy. All the more so when your daddy’s a national figure in the fight for social justice.

But when your father betrays his stated values, what are you supposed to do? If you have moral courage, you buck the blood ties and call papa on his hypocrisy.

That’s exactly what Jesse Jackson Jr. did after the elder Jackson got busted sneering on Fox News that he’d like to “cut [the] nuts off” of Senator Barack Obama.

Immediately after the news broke, Jesse Jr. spoke out against his father’s crude, lewd remarks:

“I’m deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson’s reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama. His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee — and I believe the next president of the United States — contradict his inspiring and courageous career.

Instead of tearing others down, Barack Obama wants to build the country up and bring people together so that we can move forward, together, as one nation. The remarks like those uttered on Fox by Reverend Jackson do not advance the campaign’s cause of building a more perfect Union.

Reverend Jackson is my dad and I’ll always love him. He should know how hard I’ve worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.”

Jesse Jr. missed only one beat: to remind his father that the castration of African-American men has a sordid history alongside lynching. Other than that, way to go, kid.

“But wait!” you might be tempted to blurt. “Jesse Jr. is co-chair of Obama’s presidential campaign. Of course he’s going to condemn any attack on his candidate. That takes no moral courage whatsoever.”

Not so fast. Jesse Jr. stood up to more than family fealty. He also confronted the groupthink fostered by identity politics. Here’s what I mean, courtesy of The Huffington Post’s comments section:

“As an A.A. [African-American], you should be more loyal to those who have paved the way for you. Jesse Jackson, with all his faults, is one of those people. He has been a voice for people of color and women and unions as well as an instrument of peace in the world. You don’t really know what kind of America you would live in without Jesse Jackson because he’s always been there.

You need to stop dissing your people because they make mistakes or show themselves to be imperfect. Jesse Jackson had a role in the black community and in the world, but his role has changed and I think that is what he is having difficulty with. You can certainly understand that.”

Welcome to the laziness of identity politics. It’s the kind of tribalism that lets boneheaded thoughts go unchallenged if they come from “your people.” So much for Martin Luther King’s dream of judging each other by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.

Jesse Jackson Jr. defies such laziness. As a son of privilege, he doesn’t have to. He chooses to. Raising a man like that is one of the things his daddy did right.

“Honor killing” comes to America

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jul 09, 2008

Muslim women tell Irshad that “even if one girl” suffers an honor killing, that’s “one too many.” (Photos: Ann Snyder)

First, tribal Arabia. Then Africa. Next, South Asia. After that, Europe. Last year, Canada. Now America. “Honor crimes” have arrived in the land of the free and the home of the brave…

On the outskirts of Atlanta, a South Asian man has been charged with killing his daughter. She reportedly wanted to leave her arranged marriage. But under the code of “honor” — an ancient cultural tradition by which hundreds of millions of contemporary Asians, Africans and Arabs live — divorcing your husband means shaming your entire family.

That’s an act of “dishonor.” And that’s a crime worthy of severe punishment, including death.

Read the rest of my commentary in The Huffington Post.

Pages (19): [1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next ... Last »