Honour killings, family values and "accommodation"

Maybe I don't speak for all Canadians or Americans, but I believe I speak for the majority when I say that our western family values do not include killing your spouse and/or children. Not under any circumstances. Not even when they show disrespect for your religion or your culture. Apparently these values are not shared by all those refugees, asylum-seekers and other immigrants whom we welcome into our country from the Middle East and south Asia.

Pictured is Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old recently arrived from Pakistan. Late in 2007, her dreams of a happy life in Canada were suddenly and permanently shattered ... by her father! Why? Because she chose to look like this! She wanted to fit into Canadian society, and chose to dress like a typical Canadian girl, which meant going against the repressive and misogynistic dress code imposed by her father and her Muslim religion. Aqsa Parvez had a choice: wear a hijab to please her devout family or take it off and be like her friends. She paid for her decision with her life.

Aqsa's father and brother -- devout Muslims both -- were charged with murder. Under our legal system -- not sharia law but Common Law -- they are presumed innocent. But don't bet on an acquittal. Click here for more details on the case and links to other blogs and articles.

Fast forward to June 40, 2009. A worker starting the day at a lock in the Rideau Canal near Kingston sees a large object at the bottom of the canal. It's a car, and inside are the bodies of three teenage girls and an older woman, four more immigrants who won't see another day in Canada.

They were part of a large family who had come to Canada about two years earlier from Afghanistan, the "country" where 125 Canadians have died trying to improve the status and rights of women, among other things.

It was all a terrible accident, said Mohammad Shafia, father of the girls and cousin (so he said) of the older woman. The eldest daughter was a rebellious sort, the mother said, and, sometime after midnight, had taken the keys to the car to go out for a drive. She was an inexperienced drive -- indeed she had no licence -- and perhaps took a wrong turn?! How the car might have managed to wind up in the canal, after passing through a gate, over a concrete barrier and through poles on a dock, all this without leaving any skidmarks, wasn't explained.

Sure enough, on Thursday police charged the father and mother and the girls' brother with four counts each of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Why would they do such a thing?! Police would not confirm that the deaths had been honour killings, as had been suggested

in reports in The Kingston Whig-Standard, they allowed as how "the culture issue" might have played a role.

Said a police spokesperson, "Whether that was a part of a motive within the family based on one or all of the girls' behaviours is open to speculation." They also said that, while the girls were Canadian teenagers, the family may have held "different values and different sets of views."

Indeed. Like having more than one wife at a time. It was alleged yesterday too that the older woman whose corpse was found in the car was not Mr. Shafia's cousin, but his first wife, whom he hadn't bothered to divorce before marrying his present wife and co-accused.

Please bear with me while I speculate about one more case, which has so far been described as a tragic accident. This past weekend police and emergency services were rushed to a resort in Ganaoque, Ontario, not all that far from Kingston. From the hotel's swimming pool they recovered the bodies of Naila Yasmin, 43, and her daughters, Kinza Kaianad, 14, and Sunaila Kaianad, 11.

Sanaullah Tarar has been identified as Ms. Yasmin's husband, but it is not clear if he is the father or step-father of the dead girls. According to a family friend, the two daughters had been living in Lahore, Pakistan, with Yasmin's parents for a short while, but returned to Toronto last year. "Naila made them come back," the friend said, "because she couldn't live without them."

In any case, Mr. Tarar says that while he and his two boys, ages 4 and 7, were sleeping, the girls decided they wanted to go swimming , and convinced their mom to take them to the hotel pool. Oddly, friends confirmed that neither the girls nor the mother knew how to swim. Mr. Tarar himself was quoted in The Toronto Star as saying that although the family first came to Canada 7 years ago, "They probably didn't even know what a swimming pool was."

So far, police are treating the deaths as accidental, but I wonder if other possibilities -- such as a murder-suicide -- are being investigated.

No matter what the real story in the latest case turns out to be, the common thread in all three cases is a failure or refusal of immigrants from certain parts of Asia -- the Muslim parts -- to adapt to Canadian culture and social norms.

When Muslims get it into their minds to leave their own countries, many choose to come to Canada or the USA. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why they don't run to other, closer Islamic countries. They want to get away from war, turmoil and religious oppression, so they choose the democratic countries where they can be free. But then, instead of embracing our western culture and family values, many try to change our society to suit the customs and values they bring from the old country!

We really have to let all immigrants know before they get "landed" what to expect in our culture, and that they really must try to adapt to our ways and values, not expect us to accommodate them. Western society, western culture and western religions are not like theirs! Most of us believe that everyone (including women!) has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Cultural accommodation? It's a perverse idea foisted on us by the human rights industry, the liberal media and politicians courting the ethnic vote. Last time I looked, the majority of Canadians and Americans still shared western, Christian values. If our values and customs offend Muslim or other immigrants, let them migrate to countries instead to countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan in which honour killings and other injustices are still part of the predominant culture.