Pesky family spats
Okay now let’s not get excited here. These things happen. Teenagers rebel, parents get cross, the fur flies, doors slam, windows shatter. It happens in the best of families – Christian, atheist, Buddhist, Scientologist, Free Silverist, you name it. It’s a terrible shame, but it doesn’t mean anything – it’s just like a spot of bad weather.
It’s a bitterly sad story, and if, indeed, her father killed her, nothing can excuse that. Aqsa might well have defied family values and parental rules, but nothing she did warranted death. Harsh words, perhaps, and even grounding, but there can be no tolerance for such violence.
Oh good – glad to know that killing a daughter for defying family values is not okay. Glad we got that straight.
Murdering daughters is no more an Islamic value than murdering estranged wives is a Western one. Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart. Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something – boyfriends, lipstick, short skirts, staying out late, dyed hair, body piercings, tattoos and any number of other age-inappropriate enormities.
How very true – and few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who don’t then go on to murder those adolescent daughters. Yes indeed, fathers murder their adolescent daughters by the thousands every day in every city on earth; it’s commonplace; it’s like jaywalking. There can be no tolerance for it of course, but all the same it’s terribly common. So nothing to see here folks, move on.
This time, OB, I don’t think your comment actually does justice to how awful this article actually is!
“Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something – boyfriends, lipstick, short skirts, staying out late, dyed hair, body piercings, tattoos and any number of other age-inappropriate enormities.
That such clashes can sometimes lead to violence and even murder is also not a phenomenon peculiar to Muslim families, as anyone who reads newspapers attentively can tell you.”
But ONLY in Muslim families is it deemed inappropriate for females to go around without the hijab. And ONLY Muslim males seem to think it appropriate to kill girls for this reason.
“To judge a faith and a culture on this one squalid incident is absurd.”
But it is NOT JUST ONE squalid incident. It is thousands.
This sort of posturing makes me sick.
Golly, I’ve never been accused of not being harsh enough; I’m so excited.
But yeah, it is awful, isn’t it. Understandable in a way – I’ve seen some nasty rants in comments on news articles about the case, and I’m sure whoever wrote the piece wanted to counter that kind of thing – but still sick-making.
Most of the honour killings I have seen reported are not related to hijab and a doughters decision not to wear it. THey tend to be ‘inapproriate’ relationships, or marrying someone not approved by the family; or getting pregnant.
Given the way humans can work at worst, I can’t help wondering how many of the latter involve rape by a brother or father, who then needs to cover up for himself.
The only upside I can see to this sad story is that this pretty young girls so called father will probably live out most of the rest of his life on the nonces wing of one of her Majestys prisons.
That’s not an upside. It’s not an upside or an advantage or a benefit or a useful by-product of a murder that the murderer goes to prison. In the absence of the murder (and the abuse and coercion that preceded it) there would be no benefit to this man’s going to prison. There is no upside to this. It’s bad, all the way down.
“Aqsa Parvez constantly removed her hijab, and then nervously walked around without it, half-expecting her older brother or her father to find her out.”
Recently, (for approximately a whole week on end) a young person, who looked about the same age as Aqsa frequented my local Internet cafe – she was observably Muslim as always before logging on to the webcam she took out of her bag, what seemed to me to be like Muslim headgear. I noticed her ceaselessly each night wrapping the said long black scarf wholly over her head and forehead before she began to converse with, (I think) people who (to me) looked like they could be her parents. She was beside me seated in the next seat – so I could not help but notice her. I was intrigued by this behaviour as I would have been attuned to her goings-on due to being at the same time logged on to B&W and being more than likely at the same time discussing the veil and all that the it entailed – in Islamic society. I saw the expression of freedom on her face afterwards as she yanked the scarf off her to reveal a head of long flowing curly locks. She smiled at me as if to say, ‘what a relief indeed.’ I smiled back as if to say ‘Yeah, I thoroughly understand from whence you are coming. That was for you a job over and done with for the day.’ It was the first time I had come into close contact with what I think seemed to me -to be like a rebellious young Muslim. Fair dues to her indeed.
Good luck to her. Let’s hope she has better relations with her parents, and a much more generous and loving father, than Aqsa Parvez had.
I’ve just been reading comments at a Facebook group saying she was slutty and got what she deserved. I feel slightly ill…
I hope you gave them hell O.B!
Very fair point about no upside O.B but as the murder and abuse have taken place surely this mans punishent must be a positive? I mean if he got away with it wouldnt that be a negative?
Richard of course I don’t want him to get away with it, but that still doesn’t make his punishment an upside or a positive. Cops shows and law shows often end that way – with people overjoyed because the perp was convicted; I’m always left scowling at that point, because the victim is still dead. I think it’s delusional to think that punishing the perp is somehow an upside; there just is no upside. A necessary evil is not an upside.
(I didn’t give anyone hell in that group; I didn’t want to touch it.)
Funny that. I have raised two daughters, now aged 29 and 20. We never did have any arguments about “boyfriends, lipstick, short skirts, staying out late, dyed hair, body piercings, tattoos and any number of other age-inappropriate enormities.” Maybe I was lucky, but their mother and I always worked on the theory that children learn more by seeing than by listening. Be reasonable, display reasonable behaviour and that’s what children will demonstrate in return. Of course we had minor dust-ups as every family does, but ‘inappropriate enormities’ never arose. Neither of them ever displayed the list noted – threats of purple hair never went past that, because we didn’t react in the ‘parentally approved way’ – we just smiled and ignored it!