The Times Discovers Honor Killings

There are many eye-opening passages in Peter Schneider's excellent New York Times Magazine account of large numbers of Turkish immigrants living in the heart of Berlin and other German cities. I'm quoting the most salient paragraphs here — they speak eloquently for themselves — since the Times article is hidden behind a subscriber wall.

Schneider's facts go a long way toward explaining how the Germans, like the Dutch, the French, the Danes, and other Europeans, are abandoning immigrant girls and women by not daring to criticize the patriarchal excesses of the Muslim culture that oppresses these females. Especially in leftist circles, such criticism is simply not done, as it would violate the sacred Western European tenet of "tolerance."

The results are clear and wide-ranging. The same girls whose strict Islamic parents do not allow them to go to gym class become the young women who are forced into arranged marriages, and who are then at increased risk for "honor killings," like the one that claimed Hatin Surucu (previous Nobody's Business link here).

Anyway, read 'em and weep.

For a German of my generation, one of the most holy legacies of the past was the law of tolerance. We Germans in particular had no right to force our highly questionable customs onto other cultures. Later I learned from occasional newspaper reports and the accounts of friends that certain Muslim girls in Kreuzberg and Neukölln went underground or vanished without a trace. Even those reports gave me no more than a momentary discomfort in our upscale district of Charlottenburg. But the books of the three Muslim dissidents now tell us what Germans like me didn't care to know. What they report seems almost unbelievable. They describe an everyday life of oppression, isolation, imprisonment and brutal corporal punishment for Muslim women and girls in Germany, a situation for which there is only one word: slavery. [Book author and activist] Seyran Ates estimates that perhaps half of young Turkish women living in Germany are forced into marriage every year. In the wake of these forced marriages often come violence and rape; the bride has no choice but to fulfill the duties of the marriage arranged by her parents and her in-laws.  ...

There have been 49 known "honor crimes," most involving female victims, during the past nine years — 16 in Berlin alone. Such crimes are reported in the "miscellaneous" column along with other family tragedies and given a five-line treatment. Indeed, it's possible that the murder of Hatun Surucu never would have made the headlines at all but for another piece of news that stirred up the press. Just a few hundred yards from where Surucu was killed, at the Thomas Morus High School, three Muslim students soon openly declared their approval of the murder. Shortly before that, the same students had bullied a fellow pupil because her clothing was "not in keeping with the religious regulations." Volker Steffens, the school's director, decided to make the matter public in a letter to students, parents and teachers. More than anything else, it was the students' open praise of the murder that made the crime against Hatun Surucu the talk of Berlin and soon of all Germany.  ...

Growing unemployment in Germany (now 4.8 million people, roughly 12 percent of the work force) hit the Muslim immigrants doubly hard — especially the youth, who frequently drop out of school before obtaining a diploma. "Seventy percent of the newcomers," according to Otto Schily, a former minister of the interior, referring to the period since 2002, "land on welfare the day of their arrival." Whole enclaves sprang up consisting of extended families living on the dole. Necla Kelek asked a group of "import brides" who had been living in Germany for years how they had actually prepared for their future in Germany. Their answer: incredulous laughter. Prepare? How and for what? "But how can you stand living here?" Necla Kelek went on. "You don't have anything to do with this country, you despise its culture and the way people live here." But we have everything we need here, was the answer; we don't need the Germans.  ...

For more than 20 years the Islamic Federation of Berlin, an umbrella organization of Islamic associations and mosque congregations, has struggled in the Berlin courts to secure Islamic religious instruction in local schools. In 2001 the federation finally succeeded. Since then, several thousand Muslim elementary-school students have been taught by teachers hired by the Islamic Federation and paid by the city of Berlin. City officials aren't in a position to control Islamic religious instruction. Often the teaching does not correspond to the lesson plan that was submitted in German. Citing the linguistic deficiencies of the students, instructors frequently hold lessons in Turkish or Arabic, often behind closed doors. Since the introduction of Islamic religious instruction, the number of girls that come to school in head scarves has grown by leaps and bounds, and school offices are inundated with petitions to excuse girls from swimming and sports as well as class outings.

What depresses me is that all this primarily describes emigrated Turks, who are considered the more moderate of the Muslim faithful. Imagine what goes on in the homes of their stricter brethren! And imagine what Europe is in for if Turkey becomes a member of the E.U., and suddenly finds Europe's borders even more wide open to its 70-plus million inhabitants.

Comments

[George Arndt]

Part of the problem here is that many Europeans give rights to cultures and not individuals, at least when it comes to immigrants.

I notice is honor killing isn't happening in the US quite as often. Here, Muslims have integrated better.