Georgia Honor Killing Update: "Dad charged with murder in bride's 'honor killing,'" from CNN, July 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A Pakistani man is charged with killing his 25-year-old daughter in Georgia because she wanted out of an arranged marriage, police said.
Somber and tearful, Chaudhry Rashid, 54, of Jonesboro, an Atlanta suburb, made his first court appearance Tuesday in connection with the death of Sandeela Kanwal.
He was advised through an interpreter of the murder charge, and of his legal rights.
He was arrested early Sunday, after his wife called police at about 2 a.m. She reported that she had been awakened by screaming but couldn't understand the language, a Clayton County police report said. She said she was afraid and left the house to call police.
Officers found Kanwal dead in an upstairs bedroom of the home, according to the police report.
Rashid's wife told authorities Kanwal recently had been married in Pakistan -- an arranged marriage, she said. The young woman's husband was living in Chicago, Illinois, police said, but Kanwal remained at her father's home and worked at a metro Atlanta Wal-Mart for a brief time.
"The victim was not interested in marrying, nor remaining married to her husband," the police report said, citing information authorities received from Rashid's wife. "This was causing a great deal of friction between the victim and her father," so much so that the two had not spoken in two months, the report said.
Police found Rashid sitting behind a vehicle in the driveway, and he seemed "distraught and possibly mournful," the report said. He told police, "My daughter is dead." But when asked how she died, Rashid did not answer -- "he just dropped his head."...
CNN then bravely considers the possibility of whether this is a...you know...a "South Asian" thing:
"My immediate reaction was that this is an anomaly in the South Asian community," Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told CNN on Tuesday. "Most South Asian-American families enjoy wonderful relationships within their families."
"I think there's ways that we can rationalize it and make sense of it, particularly in thinking about new immigrant communities in the U.S. and thinking about some of the struggles that they face and the generation gap and the cultural differences that children do face," he said. "I think there are some issues there, but by and large, this isn't a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities."
Domestic violence does indeed cut across all communities. But honor killings are not a "South Asian" problem -- they're an Islamic problem, and CNN's courage somehow falters when it comes to even considering that. Yet nowhere except in Islamic communities is it seen as something that has religious justification. Jordan's Parliament has rejected on Islamic grounds attempts to stiffen sentences for honor killings.
Nair said he believes a "significant human rights campaign" is needed to address such killings....
You can say that again, Nair.
