Noor Almaleki, whom I wrote about over the weekend, has died, the latest Western victim of a Muslim honor killing. If there were a Matthew Shepard murder every few months, Frank Rich et al would be going bananas about the “climate of hate” in our society, but you can run over your daughter, decapitate your wife, drown three teenage girls and a polygamous spouse, and progressive opinion and the press couldn’t give a hoot. Indeed, as The Atlantic notes, it’s merely an obsession of us right-wing kooks.
During the IRA’s long campaign against Her Majesty’s Government, British officials had a cynical phrase about containing Northern Ireland to “an acceptable level of violence.” I wonder what the silent U.S. media will settle on as the “acceptable level of violence” against Muslim women. Ten honor killings a year? A couple dozen? A hundred?