Mark Steyn: The stranglehold of political correctness

Thursday, December 13, 2007

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

Aqsa Parvez in a photo from her Facebook account.

The stranglehold of political correctness [Mark Steyn]

Michelle Malkin has a post on the strikingly evasive coverage of Aqsa Parvez, the young lady from the Toronto suburbs strangled to death allegedly for refusing to wear a hijab. The Washington Post headline?

Canadian Teen Dies; Father Charged

Which at least is blandly indisputable. Faced with an honor killing in a Toronto suburb, much of the rest of the coverage adds insult to fatal injury. Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress and the man currently accusing me of "hate crimes", "human rights" abuse and "Islamophobia", is predictable enough when he says:

I don't want the public to think that this is really an Islamic issue or an immigrant issue... It is a teenager issue.

Kids today, right? It's like Bye Bye Birdie - The Director's Cut. But much of the media have rushed to echo him. Canada's Number One news anchor went to weirdly contorted lengths to avoid the word "strangle":

Her neck was compressed, to the point she couldn't breathe.

And a strangely insistent editorial in the Montreal Gazette declares:

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...

Hmm. A Canadian reader sent me the following observation:

If the allegation is true, his unquestioning obedience to a culturally enforced dress code overrode the natural love of a father for his daughter to the extent that he strangled her to death to enforce it. Again, if the allegation is true, it is difficult to imagine an act more diametrically opposed to Western values; more filled with hatred and contempt; or an act more damningly illustrative of violence arising from systemic discrimination against women.

The key word here is "systemic". See also this story, and this excellent post by Lisa Schiffren on the declining expectations of Muslim women. "Honor killings" were something we assumed took place on the fringes of the map - the Pakistani tribal lands, Yemen, Jordan. They now happen in the heart of western cities, and western feminist groups are silent, and western media rush to excuse it as just one of those things, couldda happened to anybody. The underlying message the press coverage communicates is horrible and heartless: the murder of Aqsa Parvez is an acceptable price to pay for cultural diversity.

12/13 09:03 AM