When it comes to honor killings and honor-related violence, America had better start learning a few things from Europe.
On October 20, 2009, near Phoenix, Arizona, Noor Al-Maleki’s father, Iraqi-born Faleh Hassan Al-Maleki, ran over his 20-year-old daughter with a two-ton jeep.
He struck down her female companion and protector as well. His daughter died. Although she was seriously wounded, Amal Edan Khalaf, the other woman, survived. Just like Yaser Said, who fled Dallas after honor murdering his two daughters (and who has not yet been found), Faleh Hassan Al-Maleki also fled, first to Mexico, and then to England.
However, he was captured, extradited back to Arizona, and charged with first-degree murder.
Well done!
The case has been described, correctly, as an “honor killing.” Poor Noor did not want to remain in an arranged marriage and dared to find a fiancée on her own. When she died, she had been living with her fiancée and with her future mother-in-law. Now comes Arizona lawyer Billie Little, who is Faleh Hassan Al-Maleki’s lawyer.
Guess what Mr. Little told the judge? According to Arizona Central, because Andrew Thomas, the prosecutor in the case, is a Christian, Mr. Little actually wrote: “An open process provides some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs.”
Let me understand this. Mr. Little does not want the judge to view a murder as a murder because a Muslim committed that murder? Or because only a Muslim was murdered—and that somehow counts for less? From my own research, published in Middle East Quarterly, it is clear that honor killing is primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime. After all, Noor was a Muslim too. And, an honor killing is not like Western domestically violent femicide. Western fathers do not kill their young daughters. (And, by the way, does Noor have a mother? If so, where is she? Why is she so silent?)
Clearly, Al-Maleki became judge, jury, and executioner when he took the law into his own hands to punish his daughter because, in his view, she was too western and therefore not a good Muslim. What does that make him? A good Muslim? Or a really bad Muslim?
Perhaps Islam is not and should not be on trial here but Muslim customs, Muslim behavior surely is. It is the proverbial elephant in the room. How can the prosecutor not mention it? And, once mentioned, how easy it will be to gain pity for the poor, allegedly “racially profiled” murderer.
In addition, Mr. Little is demanding that his client be psychiatrically evaluated because “he does not understand basic court proceedings.”
I wonder: Is Mr. Little consulting with Muzzammil Hassan’s lawyer in Buffalo? He’s the Pakistani-born charmer who severely battered and then beheaded his lovely wife Aasiya. Hassan’s lawyer is arguing “extreme emotional disturbance.”
This is rather ironic since this kind of defense has been used, often unsuccessfully, on behalf of battered women.
Texas "honor" killing victims Amina and Sarah Said's brother, Islam, has been leaving these death threats and Islamic death to America comments on you tube. Who could possibly say Rifqa is not imperiled? She has a brother just like Amina and Sarah. As did Aqsa Parvez. Waqas Parvez has been charged in the honor killing of his sister.
Islam Said, whose poisonous bile has been covered at Atlas extensively, has taken to posting his latest violent threats to you tube. His Hitlerized channel page says it all.
Remember, it was Islam Said who brought his murderous radical Muslim father the gun that fateful New Year's day. It was Islam Said who has been threatening the Christian side of Amina and Sarah's family, the aunts who spoke for Amina and Sarah. I posted on his murderous threats here. Here's the audio of threats he made on Aunt Gail's voice mail last year: audio here.
Islam says today on you tube: "i will be in this week'. He has been in Egypt; perhaps he has returned to the States. .....He says "tell Gall". He can't spell because the spoiled little punk was not made to go to school. The whole Islamic primogeniture thing ...........Amina and Sarah were AP honor students and were treated like dogs.
Rifqa has a brother like Islam who was abusive, who meted out punishment, who took out her eye.
These vile comments were left on a pro-Amina and Sarah youtube channel that memorializes the murder victims and urges viewers to help track down the murdering rapist father -- join hunt 4 yasser [Said]. The son does not fall from from the decaying, sick, evil tree. Read more ...
The mother who lured her two young daughters, Sarah and Amina, to their tragic deaths at the hand of their father, Yaser Said, now regrets what she did. Downplaying her own role, or rather, insisting that she is innocent, Patricia (“Tissy”) Owens calls the murder of her daughters an “honor killing” by an “evil man.” Despite years of paternal child abuse at home, “Tissy” now insists that she had no idea that Yaser was actually going to kill the girls whom he sexually and physically abused and whose “too Western” ways enraged him.
Sarah and Amina refused to marry older, unknown men from Egypt in arranged marriages. They had American ways, academic ambitions, and Christian friends, including Christian boyfriends. Unthinkable! And, like Rifqa Bary, they knew they were in danger and so they ran away. Their mother sweet talked them back home. They were dead within hours. Their father has never been found.
My guess? “Tissy” is angry that Yaser never sent for her—and that she has also lost her son, Islam, who has mainly been living with his paternal uncles or perhaps with his father. She is alone. She has no one. Perhaps she wants some attention—and the media is only to ready to provide “Tissy” with that for another fifteen minutes of infamous fame. Read more ...
Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a thoroughly unpleasant character with whom I have appeared on many radio shows (on which he invariably likens me to Osama bin Laden, although I have never flown any planes into buildings, beheaded anyone, or exhorted anyone to do so), attacks Rifqa Bary, the seventeen-year-old girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her home and father after he threatened to kill her (as she explains here), and her supporters in a contemptuous, dishonest, condescending and arrogant piece at the Huffington Post, "Rifqa, the Reverand [sic] and Apostasy" (August 18).
Hugh Fitzgerald and Andy Bostom have already weighed in on this utterly contemptible article, but I have a few things to add.
Al-Marayati is intent on impugning Rifqa's own testimony in favor of her father's protestations that he does not intend to kill her -- and indeed, it is her word against his, and the only price we will have to pay if al-Marayati turns out to be wrong is a murdered teenage girl. To support his case, al-Marayati makes essentially two points, both encapsulated in this sentence: "Mohamed Bary allowed his daughter to become a cheerleader and says she can practice any faith she wants -- clearly, he is not a fundamentalist."
His first point is thus that Mohamed Bary, by allowing his daughter to prance around in skimpy cheerleader costumes, clearly was not the sort to insist on the finer points of Islamic law like the death penalty for apostasy (which al-Marayati implies does not exist anyway, so it's hard to see why it would be a feature of "fundamentalism" in the first place). However, honor killing victims in the West have invariably been girls who have been Westernized, adopting Western non-Muslim mores to the growing dismay of their male relatives. Al-Marayati's point is that if Mohamed Bary were a "fundamentalist," he would not have allowed Rifqa to become Westernized in the first place. Real life, however, is not always that simple. Honor killing victims like Amina and Sarah Said in Texas and Aqsa Parvez in Canada appear to been quite Westernized for a considerable period before their relationships with their fathers reached a tipping point, and they were murdered. Rifqa Bary fled before that could happen, but the fact that she was a hijab-less cheerleader indicates nothing.
Amina and Sarah Said were murdered by their father, Yaser Said, on New Year's Day 2008, because they had non-Muslim boyfriends. Yaser Said has never been caught. Islam Said, the girls' brother, has apparently gone to Egypt, where he has been sending a series of unhinged comments to the blog Combatting Moonbat News, threatening to murder the girls' aunt, Gail Gartrell (whom the moronic boy addresses as "gall"). These are by no means the first of these murderous threats, but they are the latest, coming in last week:
kill gall fu.gall@yahoo.com 82.201.179.161
Submitted on 2009/03/13 at 10:01pm i will shot you gall like a dog your time is coming it may take years but you will diey by my hands we will show you a honor killing so smok your weed if you can i will get you all
kill all them
82.201.179.161
Submitted on 2009/03/13 at 10:16pm i will show you a honor killing gall will be shot frst i am in dallas going too a gun show i am buying gun and boms to get you all no one is going to step on us you think you can run but cant your time is come we will fight for yaser . all i can say fuck the u.s.a and kill them all this sunday you will see i will kill one of you god is god good. do not play games all the time Islam Said Will Not Defend Yaser Said
Pamela at Atlas Shrugs has details, plus extensive background on these horrific honor killings that continue to be largely ignored by the mainstream media.
Aqsa Parvez, left, Shemina Hirji, top right, Amina Yaser Said and Sarah Yaser Said, bottom right.
By Craig Offman
It is the grizzled face on a Wanted poster that usually catches the eye, but as the FBI realized late last month, the words matter, too.
In its initial poster seeking fugitive Texas cab driver Yasser Abdel Said – sought for the double homicide of his teenaged daughters – the bureau said he disapproved of their dating non-Muslim boys and stated that they were murdered "due to an ‘Honour Killing.'"
Though family members speculated that the father's Islamic belief motivated the crime, the use of the phrase "honour killing" incensed the local Muslim-American community, who argued that the accused's religion should not be linked to the double homicide, which left his two daughters dead in the back of his taxi.
After a public outcry, the FBI struck the offending words three weeks ago.
A Bureau spokesman explained that unlike a hate crime, there is no legal definition of an honour killing. "It's not our job to label this case anything other than what it is, what is from a criminal perspective," he said, apologizing that the writer did not see "the misunderstanding" the wording would create. Read more ...
The FBI removed all mention of the controversial term “honor killing” from the wanted poster of a double-murder suspect after FOXNews.com ran a story announcing the use of the term.
Yasser Abdel Said, wanted for the murder of his two daughters, has eluded authorities for almost a year. The bodies of the young women - Sarah Said, 17, and Amina Said, 18 - were discovered in the back of a taxicab in Irving, Texas, on New Year's Day.
According to family members, Said felt he was compelled to kill his daughters because they had disgraced the family by dating non-Muslims and acting too "Western."
The girls’ great aunt, Gail Gartrell, has always called the case an “honor killing.” And for a few days - until last Friday - the FBI publicly agreed.
“The 17- and 18-year-old girls were dating American boys, which was contrary to their father's rules of not dating non-Muslim boys,” The FBI "wanted" poster read early last week. “Reportedly, the girls were murdered due to an 'Honor Killing.'” Read more ...
A few days ago, as we discussed here, the FBI designated the murders of Amina and Sarah Said by their father Yaser Said an honor killing. The wanted poster for Yaser Said said this:
Yaser Abdel Said is wanted for murder. On January 1, 2008, Said took his two teenaged daughters for a ride in his taxi cab, under the guise of taking them to get something to eat. He drove them to a secluded park in Irving, Texas, where he allegedly shot both girls to death. They died of multiple gunshot wounds. The 17- and 18-year-old girls were dating American boys, which was contrary to their father's rules of not dating non-Muslim boys. Reportedly, the girls were murdered due to an "Honor Killing." Said may have fled to New York or Egypt.
But the intrepid Pamela has noticed that the wanted poster has been revised, and now says this:
Yaser Abdel Said is wanted for murder. On January 1, 2008, Said took his two teenaged daughters for a ride in his taxi cab, under the guise of taking them to get something to eat. He drove them to Irving, Texas, where he allegedly shot both girls to death. They died of multiple gunshot wounds. Said may have fled to New York or Egypt.
Almost a year after two teenage girls were found dead - allegedly executed by their father - in the back seat of a taxicab in Texas, the FBI is saying for the first time that the case may have been an "honor killing."
Sarah Said, 17, and her sister Amina, 18, were killed on New Year's Day, but for nine months authorities deflected questions about whether their father - the prime suspect and the subject of a nationwide manhunt - may have targeted them because of a perceived slight upon his honor.
The girls' great-aunt, Gail Gartrell, says the girls' Egyptian-born father killed them both because he felt they disgraced the family by dating non-Muslims and acting too Western, and she called the girls' murders an honor killing from the start.
But the FBI held off on calling it an honor killing until just recently, when it made Yaser Abdel Said the "featured fugitive" on its Web site.
"That's what I've been trying to tell everybody all along," Gartrell told FOXNews.com. "I would say that's a victory."
But some Muslims say that calling the case an honor killing goes too far.
"As far as we're concerned, until the motive is proven in a court of law, this is [just] a homicide," Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations in Dallas, told FOXNews.com.
He said he worries that terms like "honor killing" may stigmatize the Islamic community. “We (Muslims) don’t have the market on jealous husbands ... or domestic violence,” Carroll said.
The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women are killed worldwide every year in honor killings - mostly in the Middle East, where many countries still have laws that protect men who murder female relatives they believe have engaged in inappropriate activity. A U.N. report includes chilling examples of such cases.
“On the order of clerics, an 18-year-old woman was flogged to death in Batsail, Bangladesh, for "immoral behavior,” the report reads. “In Egypt, a father paraded his daughter's severed head through the streets shouting, ‘I avenged my honor.’”
But Islamic scripture in no way condones such actions, Carroll said.
"People have their own cultural nuances and norms from before they got their religion," he said. "This is not Islamic culture."
Regardless of whether religion itself is to blame, Gartrell said it is important that society recognizes the case as having a cultural element, just to prevent similar crimes in the future.
"That culture is so different," Gartrell said. "If people had been more educated about it, they would have known that when the girls told people, 'Dad wants to kill me' - they were serious."
Many of the threats against Sarah and Amina Said were known to their friends and classmates.
High school friends told the Dallas Morning News that the girls sometimes came in with welts and bruises, which they confided were inflicted by their father. One time, Yaser Said reportedly went into one daughter's bedroom waving a gun and making threats on her life.
After he threatened to kill one daughter in December 2007 - documented in text messages Sarah Said sent to a friend - the girls and their mother, Patricia, fled from their home in Lewisville, Texas, to Tulsa, Okla. But the mother soon had a change of heart and went back, leading to the tragedy on January 1. Some, including Gartrell, believe the mother may even have been complicit in the murders.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of several books, including "The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom," said that the case fits the description of an honor killing.
"The premeditation, the family collaboration, and the particular rules (set for the girls) make this consistent with an honor killing - not just domestic violence,” she said.
She said she hoped that calling the case an "honor killing" might indicate a shift in attitude at the FBI.
"I think this may suggest that law enforcement is beginning to realize that they may have to treat these incidents differently if they are to either prevent or prosecute," Chesler told FOXNews.com.
She noted that the United Kingdom has a special police unit to deal with “honor-related violence,” and said that she hoped that the situation in the U.S. does not get to the point where that becomes necessary.
But an FBI spokesman played down the significance of the listing, saying that the change on the wanted listing was simply due to more information coming out about the case since it was first listed and that it shouldn't matter what the case is called.
"We're just looking at how do we find the guy?" said FBI special agent Mark White, media coordinator in the bureau's Dallas office.
Irving Police Department Public Information Officer David Tull agreed. "We just look at the facts. The man killed his two daughters. This is a domestic violence, multiple-capital murder case."
Tull said that, unfortunately, there have still been no sightings or major leads - a fact that distresses Gartrell.
"I'm very upset about it," said Gartrell, who argues that the case needs special consideration. "This is not a typical murder case. When a family member murders another family member to protect [the family] name - that's different."
Nine months ago, Yaser Abdel Said disappeared after his two teen-age daughters, Amina and Sarah, were shot and killed on New Year's Day in Irving in what some believe to have been an "honor killing.'' Relatives of the two slain teens have also tried to keep the search for Mr. Said in the public arena. Now, the FBI has put Mr. Said on its web site as one of the agency's "featured fugitives.'' Authorities believe that Mr. Said may have fled to either New York or Egypt.
On January the first, my life was turned upside down. With one phone call, and the news of my great-neices (Sarah and Amina Said) murders, I was driven to explore the why's of thier deaths! In doing so, I was forced to face something so very foreign to me..."honor killings". Indeed, Sarah and Amina were murdered for the sake of "cleansing" the Said name! How did they dirty this name? Both girls, thought for themselves, they saw education as an open door to freedom and to a life they could only dream about! Amina, fought the idea of having to go to Egypt, after graduation, only to be married off to whomever daddy had chosen!
She spoke to one of her teachers about her fear but, truly, no one heard her words of despair! No one heard Sarah's words when she would freely speak of her fear of her dad! No one, listened to these girls except for the deceptive dad and the spying brother! In fact, Sarah had proclaimed that she was afraid of her uncles taking her away and yet, no comfort nor, security did she ever find! Not in this life!!
These two brilliant girls are in a grave this very day because of a terroristic family and not one single person to truly place trust. Instead, look at the photos of these girls and you will see that they shared more than a sisterhood...they shared pain, terror and eventually...death, together, at the hands of thier dad and others who helped him accomplish his "duty".
In my search for answers, I discovered things which have just broken my heart! Yaser Said, not only terrorized, sexually abused, and murdered his own children...he raped my youngest niece and molested another one as well! I was LIVID when I found this out! Especially, because my sister, the mother to these girls, NEVER said a word to me about these things! Why? I asked myself for months! Then, finally I was told why she could not tell me. She was afraid Yaser would kill one of them. If her husband had tried to talk to Yaser, she knew Yaser would kill him as, Yaser always drove around with a machine gun and he let them know this too. Had she informed the police, I am certain he would have retaliated. In other words, Yaser was terrorizing most of my sisters entire family! She died at the age of fifty, from a major stroke....now, I understand why! Her life was filled with the knowledge of what Yaser was capable of doing and on many occasions, she would voice her fears to me, "I am afraid that one day, Yaser will kill those girls and Tissy too"! Well, we certainly know that part of her fears have come to fruition! Read more ...
Amina, and Sarah were murdered by their dad on the first of this year...in an honor killing. They are my great-nieces and I wrote this poem for Amina's graduation.
Old News: The sisters, Sarah and Amina Said, are still dead; their father-murderer, Yasir Abdul Said, has not yet been found; the mainstream media continues its uncanny silence.
What's New: The reward for Said's capture has been doubled and Tissy Said, his wife and the mother of the two murdered girls, has been ejected from the home of her extended Muslim family. Her beloved son, Islam, (from whom she would not willingly part), has been sent away from her. The Said family presumably want him to be "around a man" (his paternal uncle in New York City) and not around his mother. According to Tissy's great-aunt, the brave, outspoken, Gail Gartrell:
"I feel Tissy is in grave danger from her own son. This is what I think his uncle is working through with Islam in New York. I fear his return. All the nieces and nephews in the Said family are accusing Tissy of this being her fault. They have turned on her. They blame her for allowing her daughters to see American boys. She has become the enemy. When I spoke to Tissy, she seemed more upset about this betrayal than about anything else. She told me she did not care if he (Islam? or Yaser?) killed her or not. Now, her spirit is broken since her Muslim family has walked away from her. Tissy told me that she wants to be buried next to her daughters." Read more ...
After Yaser Said murdered older daughter Amina in cold blood and then pumped nine bullets into his tiny daughter, Sarah Said, he intended to flee the country (which would explain why he parked so near the airport). What he did not count on was Sarah's super human ability to make a 911 call pleading for her life, identifying where they were. Yasir was forced to move the bodies and his plan unraveled from there.
When he moved the girls bodies to a deserted part of the Omni hotel parking lot, Yasir was covered in blood and too far from anywhere to travel on foot. Someone had to have come and picked him up. Who? Who helped Yasir that night? Who did Yaser Said call on his cell phone? Who? Have police checked those cell phone records?
Yaser Said made the lives of his wonderful, athletic, top honors daughters a living hell. This sexual sociopath raped them in their youth and beat them fiercely as a regular diet.
"Honor killer" Yaser Said and his three younger brothers are very close. They take care of each other. This is as much a religious mandate as it is familial. Muslims brothers take care of each other. I suspect it is Yaser's brothers who have set Yasir up in the Muslim underground. They have extensive connections and own real estate together in Texas, New York and even Indiana. Read more ...
Aunts of THE MURDERED GIRLS Amina and Sarah have set up an account with "Crime Stopper". They are trying to catch the murdering, torturing father that killed these sweet girls in an "honor" killing. Murdered Girls' Father Had Long History of Abuse.
The dhimmi, jihad loving press never gave this terrible crime the attention it deserved because they are terrified to say anything against Islam but this horrible "honor killing" in Texas should have been front and center in the media spotlight. Why didn't this gruesome murder get the same (if not more) than the sect in Texas that the media is currently obsessed with. Because it is Islamic in nature?
America is woefully ignorant of this crime and the growing trend of abhorrent Islamic practices into Western societies. Read more ...
Islam Said blames his sisters' deaths on their boyfriends. On March 8, 2008, the Lewisville High School celebrated the lives of the honor murdered Amina and Sarah Said. Local media was there. I watched as Islam grabbed the microphone and characterized his sisters' boyfriends as "gang member"s who "killed his sisters." He also said: "They pulled the trigger, not my dad. My dad is the victim here."
It is absolutely crucial for Westerners, especially Americans, to understand his mind-set. This is a cultural and political mind-set which has nothing to do with the color of one’s skin and everything to do with one's political ideology. Despite heated denial and much controversy, it is also a mind-set which is correlated with the practice of Islam in its current, highly politicized jihadic mode.
Thus, when anyone tries to describe the crimes against humanity which are committed in the name of Islam (the religion, not the man whom I quote above), both Muslims and politically progressive non-Muslim Westerners cry "racism." Read more ...
Lewisville High School students returned from winter break on Thursday to mourn the deaths of two classmates whose bodies were found in a taxi cab on New Year's Day.
The bodies of Amina Yaser Said, 18, and Sarah Yaser Said, 17, were found in their father's taxi cab in Irving on Tuesday evening. Both teens had died from multiple gunshot wounds. A capital murder arrest warrant has been issued for their father Yaser Abdel Said, 50, who remained at large.
Their deaths have shocked students and staff.
"That wasn't a car accident, this was a violent crime," that claimed the girls' lives, said Dean Tackett, a spokesman for the Lewisville ISD. "It's almost too much to handle."
Amina, a senior, and Sarah, a junior, were both smart and well-liked, he said. The sisters were enrolled in Advanced Placement classes, involved with student government and played tennis and soccer, according to interviews with a school official and classmates.
"They were extremely smart – like geniuses," said Allison Villarreal, a senior at Lewisville High.
Liz Marines, secretary of the Lewisville High School Student Council, had classes with both of the sisters and also remembers their scholastic abilities. "Amina was very nice with everybody," she said.
The sisters had been students at Lewisville High for about two years, Mr. Tackett said. He did not know where the family had moved from.
Students wore pink clothing to school Thursday because it was the sisters' favorite color. Grief counselors were also available to assist classmates and teachers. “The teachers are as upset as the students," Mr. Tackett said.
A public vigil was to be held at 6 p.m. this evening at Lewisville High School.
Police provided no clues about the motive for the killings. "There are several things we're looking into," said Irving police Officer David Tull. He said there have been some "domestic issues" with the family, but he did not elaborate.
Police did say they are looking into the possibility that the father was upset with his daughters' dating activities.
Officer Tull said at a news conference that the mother of the victims is cooperating with police and that she and her 19-year-old son are in a safe place. He believes the couple is married, but he didn't know whether they had been living together.
Lewisville police responded to a call at the residence on Dec. 26 on a report of a missing person, Capt. Kevin Deaver said. He did not know who was reported missing or what action was taken to resolve the situation.
Mr. Said, who is from Egypt, has lived in the Dallas area since at least the mid-1980s, records indicate.
Officer Tull said police have received no tips about Mr. Said's whereabouts but said numerous law enforcement agencies are involved in the search. "There's a long investigation ahead of us," he said.
Note: majority of users who have posting privileges on MASH blog are not MASH members.
Comments are slightly moderated. MASH does not necessarily endorse every opinion posted on this blog.
When it comes to honor killings and honor-related violence, America had better start learning a few things from Europe.
By Laurie Fox
Their deaths have shocked students and staff. 
A public vigil was to be held at 6 p.m. this evening at Lewisville High School. 
Lewisville police responded to a call at the residence on Dec. 26 on a report of a missing person, Capt. Kevin Deaver said. He did not know who was reported missing or what action was taken to resolve the situation. 
Posts
