Magnifisyncopathological

The Guardian: 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.

There are people on this planet that are beyond the reach of reason. Whether they have abandoned their minds to monotheistic faith or for the immediate gratification of short-term goals, some people have chosen lives that are fundamentally incompatible with the modern, tolerant, peaceful, and prosperous society so many here in the west have assumed everyone else wants.

I can't believe how I could have not seen this when I was a supporter of the invasion.

She died a virgin, according to her closest friend Zeinab. Indeed, her 'relationship' with Paul, which began when she worked as a volunteer helping displaced families and he was distributing water, appears to have consisted of snatched conversations over less than four months. But the young, impressionable Rand fell in love with him, confiding her feelings and daydreams to Zeinab, 19.

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

'Death was the least she deserved,' said Abdel-Qader. 'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,' he said.

One of my more recent classes at St. Edwards was a required course on intercultural communication. I can be a pretty cynical person and it takes effort to maintain an open mind when I'm in situations when deep down I know the premises behind the situation are hopelessly silly. And this class had at its core two hopelessly silly premises that I should have stood up and challenged.

1. There is no such thing as objective morality and concepts such as right and wrong behavior are more the result of cultural preferences than anything else.
   
2. Tolerance for other cultures' differences will lead to greater harmony among our diverse humanity.

The second premise stands in stark contradiction to the first. The tolerance premise packs into it several presumptions, all of them ethical in nature.

It says people ought to be treated as individuals and regarded by their own actions. Otherwise, it would be OK to simply stereotype swaths of people.

It says people ought to be respected as human - a unique status from which we ought to derive special value when considering our actions. Otherwise, there'd be no prohibition against treating others as means for our ends.

It says people ought to use our rational faculties when evaluating someone's actions or life. Otherwise, lying about someone's nature or misrepresenting one's own would be acceptable.

Hopefully you can spot the problem. The first premise denies the existence of universal standards of human conduct while the second assumes them. This hair-tearing schizophrenia surfaced again and again in the class as the teacher tried her best to get the students to think outside the American framework. She'd warn us to avoid rushing to judgment against others on the basis of superficial knowledge within minutes of condemning current American culture...all within minutes of hinting that there really is no logical way to compare the value of one culture to another.

The folly of it all was heightened during our assignment to form into groups and select a foreign movie no one within the group had seen and answer several cultural questions about it.

'I don't have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends. Speaking with a foreign solider, she lost what is the most precious thing for any woman. 'People from western countries might be shocked, but our girls are not like their daughters that can sleep with any man they want and sometimes even get pregnant without marrying. Our girls should respect their religion, their family and their bodies.

'I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,' he said, his voice swelling with pride. 'My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.'

Abdel-Qader, a Shia, says he was released from the police station 'because everyone knows that honour killings sometimes are impossible not to commit'. Chillingly, he said: 'The officers were by my side during all the time I was there, congratulating me on what I had done.' It's a statement that, if true, provides an insight into how vast the gulf remains between cultures in Iraq and between the Basra police the British army that trains them.

With very few exceptions, the movies our class listed were stories about the suffering, exploitation, suppression, or otherwise terrible conditions experienced by foreigners. My group picked The Last King of Scotland, an excellent movie that nonetheless demonstrated in stark terms the danger of charismatic people coming to power in a nation largely populated by illiterate peasants.

I could see it in every group when it was their turn to discuss their answers to the rest of the class: how do we talk about how horrible some of the characters were without being judgmental?

I just wanted to scream.

Sources have indicated that Abdel-Qader, who works in the health department, has been asked to leave because of the bad publicity, yet he will continue to draw a salary.

And it has been alleged by one senior unnamed official in the Basra governorate that he has received financial support by a local politician to enable him to 'disappear' to Jordan for a few weeks, 'until the story has been forgotten' - the usual practice in the 30-plus cases of 'honour' killings that have been registered since January alone.

Such treatment seems common in Basra, where militias have partial control, especially in the districts on the outskirts where Abdel-Qader lives.

While government security forces and British troops have control over the centre, around the fringes militants can still be seen everywhere on the streets or at the checkpoints they have erected. And they have imposed strict laws of behaviour for all the local people, including what clothing should be worn and what religious practices should be observed. There are reports of men having their hands cut off for looting and women being killed for prostitution.

Homosexuality is punishable by death, a sentence Abdel-Qader approves of with a passion. 'I have alerted my two sons. They will have the same end [as Rand] if they become contaminated with any gay relationship. These crimes deserve death - death in the name of God,' he said.

At what time can someone point to a culture and declare it diseased, something just beyond redemption?

One of my guiding lights in any analysis of others is to try and separate the signal from the noise. Someone who lives inside the geographic boundaries of a dominant culture isn't necessarily someone who believes in and supports that culture. Some people are mentally incapable of honestly agreeing with something that abstract. Others, because they are unable to immediately leave, find themselves aping or mimicking that culture in order to not draw attention to oneself and maintain an existence for the time being. Still others may be an active cultural participant, but are secretly disturbed by what they see and host doubts about the culture within, who might not participate if it weren't for the bullying social pressure from others.

Despite their increasing degree of culpability, I'd never write off anyone from the above categories. While some may indeed be guilty of individual crimes, they aren't real believers. Forgiveness is possible.

He said his daughter's 'bad genes were passed on from her mother'. Rand's mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going. 'They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin's home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand,' she said.

'She was killed by animals. Every night when go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life,' she said, tears streaming down her face.

She was nervous, clearly terrified of being found, and her eyes constantly turned towards the window as she spoke.

Leila Hussein, the mother, was murdered a few weeks later:

Two men ran from their homes to help. They rushed Leila to hospital and a passing taxi took the other two. But Leila died at 3.20pm, despite several operations to save her. As she lay in her own hospital bed receiving treatment, Mariam said that she heard someone saying that Leila had been shot in the head. But there were other mutterings that were clearly audible. 'I could hear people talking on the corridors and the only thing that they had to say was that Leila was wrong for defending her daughter's mistakes and that her death was God's punishment.'

[...]

Police said the incident was a sectarian attack and that there was nothing to link Leila's death to her family. 'Her ex-husband was not in Basra when it happened. We found out he was visiting relatives in Nassiriya with his two sons,' said Hassan Alaa, a senior officer at the local police station in Basra. 'We believe the target was the women activists, rather than Mrs Hussein, and that she was unlucky to be in that place at that time.'

It is plausible. Campaigners for women's' rights are not acceptable to many sections of Iraqi society...

Since February 2006, two other activists from the same women's organisation have been killed in the city. One of them was reportedly raped before being shot. The other, the only man working for the non-governmental organisation (NGO), and a father of five who was responsible for the organisation's finances, was shot five months ago.

However, some things are not forgivable.

The Observer visited Rand's father and two brothers at their Basra home, but they refused to talk beyond Hassan proclaiming his father's innocence. When asked if he would be visiting his mother's grave, he shrugged: 'Maybe in the future.'

Some people are not forgivable.

Mariam has moved out of her home. But within hours of speaking to The Observer a close friend went to her new address to deliver a message that had been left for her at her front door. It read: 'Death to betrayers of Islam who don't deserve God's forgiveness. Speaking less you will live more.' She believes it was sent by Leila's killers.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Some cultures aren't, either.

Via John Derbyshire.