I was talking to my Dad last night and he told me that Kathleen Parker had a good column out about how women in Afghanistan are still being treated badly which he thought I’d like. This got my attention as I am not in the habit of agreeing with anything Parker says. Better never late, the column was in my local paper this morning (they printed Ellen Goodman’s Mother’s Day column the following Tuesday, we just like to travel a tad behind the pack around here). The gist of the column was that the Afghans had no right to get excited about the alleged flushing of the Koran given that,
“The same people foaming over a reported act of blasphemy didn’t flinch while executing women for stepping outside sans burqa. I’m afraid my moral outrage in favor of the morally outrageous is all tapped out.
She spews on, “While the world was reacting in righteous indignation to the Newsweek report, another story was circulating about Turkish women in Germany being executed by family members in “honor killings” sanctioned by certain interpretations of the Quran. Their offense? Acting like Western women. Or, in the pithy words of a 14-year-old Turkish boy who was justifying an execution: “The whore lived like a German.””
First of all, why Newsweek retracted the story is not clear since it has been confirmed by numerous other sources and as General Richard Myers has made clear, the rioting was a happening event, roto-rooter event or not. Grasping at straws, Parker is dismissive of the notion that you can even flush a Koran down the toilet to start with. Apparently she does not have children. trust me, it’s doable.
But snippy humor aside, you gotta love that we are once again using The Burqa Excuse. Because we ousted (well sort of) the Taliban, and put the warlords with rape rap sheets back in power, and the daily terrorism against women continues unchecked, we can therefore be abusive at Guantanomo???
That ‘Honor Killings’ are still taking place is not the issue. They take place in this country too. Every day, women are killed by the men in their lives. They are beaten, they are raped. Why, because they were perceived by their assailants as a threat to their sense of control, power, and honor. It doesn’t matter whether you call it honor killings or domestic abuse. Women are dead.
A report just came out documenting 1700 reports of sexual assault in the U.S. military. One wonders whether Ms. Parker would advocate burning the Bible or bombing ourselves?
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