just plain evil

A couple of weeks ago, Konservo had this to say about the tragic murder of a 17 year-old girl at the hands of her father.

There’s not much to say about a situation like this. Obviously this was a result of cultural practices and ways of thinking that date back to pre-Islamic times which have since been crystallized by Muslims for whom it is unthinkable to innovate the traditional customs and practices.

I’m not saying that all Muslims practice Islam the same way, that would be false and absurd. I’m just saying it’s tragic to hear of occurrences like this, where the people involved still put “religious laws” or their “Muslim society” above all else.

The Observer now has an interview with the despicable man that poor girl called a father.

‘My daughter deserved to die for falling in love’

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse. [emphasis mine -ed.]

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said. [emphasis mine -ed.]

Somehow, I fail to see what is honorable about stamping on, suffocating, and stabbing one’s teenage daughter.  Perhaps, being a woman, I just don’t know what honor is… or perhaps I’m not a monster.

Rand, who was studying English at Basra University, was deemed to have brought shame on her family after becoming infatuated with a British soldier, 22, known only as Paul.

She died a virgin, according to her closest friend Zeinab. Indeed, her ‘relationship’ with Paul, which began when she worked as a volunteer helping displaced families and he was distributing water, appears to have consisted of snatched conversations over less than four months. [emphasis mine -ed.] But the young, impressionable Rand fell in love with him, confiding her feelings and daydreams to Zeinab, 19.

An infatuated teen girl brutally slaughtered for the “shame” brought on the family…  the shame of being a teenager with a crush, guilty of nothing more than conversation.

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand’s two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust. [emphasis mine -ed.]

Her father, uncles, and brothers do not deserve to live.  I cannot begin to imagine how her mother must feel.  The conduct of the males of the family are just too despicable for description.

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said.

Sitting on a chair by his front door and surrounded by the gerberas and white daisies he had planted in the family garden, Abel-Qader attempted to justify his actions.

‘I don’t have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends. Speaking with a foreign solider, she lost what is the most precious thing for any woman. ‘People from western countries might be shocked, but our girls are not like their daughters that can sleep with any man they want and sometimes even get pregnant without marrying. Our girls should respect their religion, their family and their bodies.

‘I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,’ he said, his voice swelling with pride. ‘My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.’ [emphasis mine -ed.]

I can think of many things he deserves, blessings are nowhere on the list.

Abdel-Qader, a Shia, says he was released from the police station ‘because everyone knows that honour killings sometimes are impossible not to commit’. [emphasis mine -ed.] Chillingly, he said: ‘The officers were by my side during all the time I was there, congratulating me on what I had done.’ It’s a statement that, if true, provides an insight into how vast the gulf remains between cultures in Iraq and between the Basra police the British army that trains them.

I would just love to know how it’s impossible to avoid choking and stabbing a teenage girl, one’s own daughter.  Call me a cultural imperialist if you’d like.  Some cultural practices are not worthy of respect… and neither are the people who condone these barbarous acts.

Homosexuality is punishable by death, a sentence Abdel-Qader approves of with a passion. ‘I have alerted my two sons. They will have the same end [as Rand] if they become contaminated with any gay relationship. These crimes deserve death - death in the name of God,’ he said.

He said his daughter’s ‘bad genes were passed on from her mother’. Rand’s mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going. ‘They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin’s home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand,’ she said.

‘She was killed by animals. [emphasis mine -ed.] Every night when go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life,’ she said, tears streaming down her face.

Leila, Rand’s mother, now volunteers helping other Iraqi women while trying to raise money to leave the country.  Other workers from Leila’s organization say that the only difference in Rand’s case from those of at least 30 other girls/women in Basra this year is that she fell in love with a Brit… a Brit who did not seem to reciprocate those feelings.  He merely complimented her for her intelligence and beauty.

Rand’s beauty has been defiled by the hands of her male family members.  Her intelligence choked out like the air in her body.  There will be no justice for Rand.  Everyone knows who the murderers are.  That police apathy in her case would be an improvement is incredibly sad and unfortunately true.

If it honors Abdel-Qader’s religion to brutally murder innocent girls, then his Islam is not worthy of respect from any person with any decency in their character.

~ by melo on May 11, 2008.