Aqsa was killed by her father, assisted by her brother. The family had immigrated from Pakistan some years previously, and Aqsa's heinous crime against the family honour was wanting to fit in with her Canadian schoolmates. She didn't want to wear the hijab. She wanted to hang out with the other kids, maybe even date a local boy, like the other kids. And she paid with her life.
The Parvez case was echoed last year in the now-infamous Shafia case, another example from officially multicultural Canada. You could say the Shafia case is four times worse than the Parvez case, in that three rebellious teenage daughters were murdered, along with their father's first wife. The perps were the father, his second wife -- it's OK for a Muslim to have up to four wives -- and their son.
This year we have another echo, this time from Britain. Earlier today, a jury in northwestern England found the Pakistani parents of a teenage girl guilty of her murder. According to the girl's sister, who gave evidence for the Crown, her mother and father suffocated Shafilea Ahmed, aged 17, with a plastic bag for "being too western".
Here, according to the Daily Mail, is what the judge said: "Your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than the love for your daughter." Like the Shafias, Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed were sentenced to life in prison with no parole for a minimum of 25 years. The Ahmeds are expected to appeal... like the Shafias.The Crown prosecutor told the court that Shafilea was only 10 when she began to rebel against her Muslim parents’ strict rules. Like Aqsa Parvez, she would change into western clothes at school, and change back before her parents picked her up. She often went to school crying, he classmates said. Her mother used to slap her and throw things at her, Shafilea told them.
It got worse. As she got older, Shafilea began seeing boys, which prompted her parents to keep her at home more. Between November 2002 and January 2003 the assaults increased in number and intensity. Then, in February 2003, she ran away with her boyfriend -- as did the eldest Shafia daughter -- and asked the town council for emergency accommodation as her parents were trying to force her into an arranged marriage with her cousin.
In the same month, her parents took her to Pakistan where she drank bleach in protest against the arranged marriage. When she returned to Britain in May 2003, she was admitted to a hospital because of damage done to her throat. Later that year, her parents beat her, stuffed a thin white plastic bag into her mouth and held their hands over her mouth and nose until, as her sister testified, "she was gone".
Did I mention... did I need to mention, that the Ahmeds are Muslims? The highest incidence of reported forced marriages in Britain is in Muslim communities. AP reports that British authorities investigated hundreds of cases of forced marriages last year. Some of the cases have ended up in so-called honour killings where relatives believe girls have brought shame on their families -- sometimes for refusing marriage, other times for being too westernized.
So we could say that the Ahmed case is not an isolated incident. Nor were the Parvez and Shafia cases. Honour killings are all too common in the "south Asian community". Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs immigrate to Britain, Canada and the USA, and are told that we value multiculturalism and diversity and they are entitled to keep their heathen religions and barbaric customs and cultures.
"Told" is the wrong word in that last sentence. I should say the "south Asians" are encouraged to bring to our countries the prejudices and problems of their homelands. Then we profess to be surprised when these "problems of cultural adjustment" manifest themselves.
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