Letters to the Editor
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tragic..
that this young woman was killed by an ignorant, immature fool.
But also evolution in action. Not the woman. The father. Too bad this guy wasn't imprisoned for something before he fathered children. People as profoundly disturbed as this father shouldn't be having children, let alone raising them.
Too bad we can't breed stupidity out of the species.
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Eh...
Hijabs don't kill women, fanatically religious men fixated on female modesty kill women, eh? No, we can't ban head scarves or mandate how people dress, but it's still troubling that we're pretty much pretending that a religiously prescribed mode of dress aimed at ostensibly shielding women from men (patronizing, I'd think) is just another fashion choice with only the potential for oppression.
Sure, we can fight the Western patriarchy, but God forbid we trample on someone else's.
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can we get a consensus
that an examination of the beliefs of immigrants is legitmate and if they are wrong it is legitimate to bar their immigration?
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Oppression
But using her death to make a larger argument against the hijab seems willfully misguided and oppressive in its own right. If we were to proscribe anything with the possibility of being oppressive -- without making a distinction between actual and potential oppression -- we would have very little left in this world.
Her death makes an excellent argument that the hajib is a symbol of oppression. It is no more wrong to condemn the hajib for this than it is wrong to condemn a statement that "Christian women should graciously submit to their husbands". I wouldn't support banning the hijab -- that's interfering with a choice that many women do make willingly and knowingly. That doesn't mean that I need to refrain from arguing against it just because I'm in the majority rather than the minority.
It's also a slippery slope fallacy to talk about proscribing "anything with the possibility of being oppressive". We can restrict the discussion to things with a long history of being oppressive.
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What if you replaced 'hajib' in this article with 'burqa'
How does that then change things?
Just a thought.
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You're dead on right on this one, Tracy
It's not about the head covering, it's about parental abuse, and possibly extremist religion run amok (though I just can't believe even a strict Muslim father would actually kill his daughter over this, no matter what the media would have you believe).
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Before we learn any lessons...
Before we assume this story can teach us anything about any group, I feel compelled to point out that in Texas a couple beat their two-year-old to death for not saying "please." (See http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/12/baby.grace/ ). What lesson could we take from that? Don't let young Christians raise kids? Of course not.
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One idea
would be to wait for the investigation to be completed, then argue about the actual reasons this child was killed. We are to go on hints? WTF! Also, why would someone question whether a strict Muslim father would kill his daughter over refusing to wear a hijab? It is widely reported, there is video on the web, and family members have openly admitted to killing their daughters to retain the family's honor in certain Muslim-dominated areas. Get your head out of the ground.
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@jasonhendersontx
The lesson is that people in general are assholes, really.
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First of all
Damn straight Tracy is right on this one.
First of all, there are very few facts out there. What we know is this: there was family conflict, apparently principally between her and her father, with her brother taking her father's side. This led to her moving out, apparently with her immediate family's consent. Secondly, her teenage friends report that one of the sources of conflict was the Hejab. Third, she went hope to pick up her stuff. Fourth, her father phoned 911. Fifth, she was badly injured and subsequently died in hospital. Sixth, her brother apparently had some kind of confrontation with the police. Sixth, her father was charged with murder.
We do not know if the Hejab was the only or even the principal point of contention. We do not know what happened in the house (the police have refused to release any information about the cause of death or the statements of her father). We really don't very much at all at this point.
What I know from my professional experience, is that parent-adolescent conflict over retention of cultural values and behaviour in immigrant families is not exactly unknown. I have seen in Muslim families to be sure, but also with Hindus,with Africans, with Latin Americans, with Chinese, even with Eastern Europeans. The dynamic is very common: parent(s) see children drifting away from everything they hold dear, and in reaction insist on holding the line on every single little thing. In reaction to this stifling, the children rebel and act out.
The solution we have in professional practice is to bring support groups together of parents from the same background, and kids from the same background. Once they find other's in the same situation, they can talk it over and come to a much more rational consensus on what is negotiable and what is not.
Works far better than banning things or engaging in Muslim bashing.
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jasonhendersontx
Shoosh, that couple was just crazy and should be treated as an isolated case, not representative in any way of our culture. This isolated case of a Muslim family in a western country is clearly indicative of how their culture cannot assimilate in the slightest with ours.
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clearly an isolated incident of individual pathology
nothing like this happens in countries where Moslems aren't being subjected to pressures and disturbances from the outside world.
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Second of all
If we want to start banning hejabs or even burqas (it is ironic that after all the idiotic furor we have had recently in Quebec over Burqas and voting etc, in a province of what, 7 million or so, only 14 women who even possessed a burqa could be found), sauce for the goose/gander thing kicks in. I suppose adults can make their own choices, but children should not be forced, indeed since they are still children, forbidden, to wear Orthodox sideburns, whatever you call them, crucifixes, Mormon underwear, turbans, etc. If you are comfortable with the government micromanaging parenting that much anyway.
Secondly, the amount of ignorance being exposed is shocking. Like any significant object, a burqa can mean many things. In some contexts, wearing one can be seen as a profoundly feminist act. In others, a terribly oppressive one. The whole internal Muslim debate about it actually rather reminds me of the feminist sex-positive vs anti porn debate.
It is an important debate, I think, but one that Muslim women should probably have the primary voice in, not Anglo Saxon newspaper editors.