Silent screams and stifled statistics
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By Douglas J. Hagmann, Director
4 November 2009: Twenty year-old Noor Faleh Almaleki of suburban Phoenix died Monday, becoming the latest non-statistic in a rising number of honor killings taking place across the U.S. by Muslims. These honor killings are perpetrated by practicing Muslims against their own family members who believe such action is sanctioned by (Islamic) Sharia law. In the case of the young Ms. Almaleki, her Iraqi-born father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, has been charged with running over his own daughter and her boyfriend’s mother with his vehicle for allegedly engaging in behavior considered “shameful” under Islam. It is interesting and relevant to note that although Faleh Almaleki admitted his actions to police, authorities have steadfastly declined to release any information about what the suspect actually said during police questioning.
While the murder of Ms. Almaleki is itself significant, murder and other crimes of violence taking place in the U.S., Canada and throughout the West by Muslim adherents of Islamic jurisprudence should be ringing some very serious statistical alarm bells within the law enforcement community, prosecutorial agencies and judicial venues. Instead, the exact opposite is taking place due to carefully crafted influence exerted on and within the United States Department of Justice. That influence is well over a decade old, but gained significant ground with the creation and implementation of “outreach programs” at the federal level following the attacks of 9/11.
It is not merely enough that murder and other domestic crimes of violence as a result of the religious and cultural tenets of Islam are not being publicly acknowledged, they are not being statistically identified. Consequently, the adverse impact by the adherents to fundamentalist Islam on our society and to our culture is not being routinely addressed. Further, the threats to non-Muslims as “collateral damage” in Muslim honor killings, as clearly illustrated in the Almaleki case, are not being properly disclosed.
Moreover, violent domestic crime that is directly related to the Islamic culture that continues to be imported into the U.S. is easily downplayed in the absence of any reliable justice department statistics showing otherwise. Not only is this practice deceptive by design, it has the potential to create more victims like Ms. Almaleki. Left unchanged, it will.
One of the more recent, high-profile cases where the lack of crime statistics played a role is that of Rifqa Bary, a 17 year-old girl who fled from her Ohio home to Florida due to her alleged fear of falling victim to the ultimate punishment under Sharia law at the hands of her family. During a lengthy, frequently convoluted and often emotional process of court hearings and legal maneuvers, it was ultimately ruled that the minor Rifqa must be returned to the custody of her parents.
As an investigator with substantial field and courtroom experience, I followed that case closely, and it is indeed my professional opinion that there is a legitimate threat to the life of Rifqa Bary. Although I believe that there was a failure of the judiciary to give adequate weight to the testimony of lay witnesses, I do not believe that the judge should shoulder all of the blame in this case. I make that statement with complete knowledge of its potential unpopularity, but base it on an evaluation of direct, non-anecdotal evidence accessible to the supporters of Rifqa.
Bloggers in support of Rifqa were emotionally charged and contributed to an almost circus-like atmosphere outside of the courtroom at the Florida hearings. They can hardly be blamed for their emotional reactions to a system that relies more on bureaucratic agencies that have been infiltrated and co-opted by Islamic interests disguised as “PC speak” than reality. This is the same “politically correct” system that is presently being forced upon every mind-numb American by the so-called progressives to the ultimate peril of our freedoms, our culture and ultimately our nation.
In the case of Rifka Bary, wars of words erupted and degraded into shouting matches between shills for Muslim advocacy groups and Rifka’s supporters while an ambivalent and bemused media watched. Many valid points in support of Ms. Bary’s petition were made, but the bureaucratic machinery that most often holds the most weight in such legal machinations, although functionally incompetent, prevailed.
Perhaps if the team of well-intentioned proponents of Rifqa Bary were able to cite currently non-existent crime report statistics illustrating the existence of a clear and present threat, combined with other direct evidence, the case might have turned out differently. Instead, the emotional outcries overshadowed any possibility of delivering even the slightest bit of coherency which, of course, is exactly what the media reported. The legal system, hobbled by the strong lobby of progressives – Islam’s current bed partners – failed Rifqa.
To the peril of every non-Muslim in the West, specifically in the U.S. and Canada, our respective justice departments, law making and law enforcement agencies have been effectively neutered through infiltration or marginalized by operatives of refined, well orchestrated and heavily bankrolled Islamic advocacy groups. The most notable of these groups of course, is the Council on American and Islamic Relations (CAIR) and CAIR Canada, whose rabid pro-Islamist operatives have managed to gain positions or exert influence inside a variety of law enforcement agencies on all levels. Perhaps the most insidious infiltration of all, however, is within the U.S. Department of Justice.
As a result, all statistics involving Muslims, from hate crimes to honor killings have been deliberately and dishonestly skewed. Facing the possibility of protracted litigation from predatory lawsuits over religious discrimination and civil rights violations, as well as the unpopular political fallout such actions would create, top administration officials could not succumb fast enough to the metastatic growth of political correctness that is running a gauntlet for Islamic interests. Their acquiescence traded our individual and collective security for the illusion of fairness, and abandoned intellectual honesty to appease special interests.
It has never been more obvious than in the sad case of Noor Faleh Almaleki, who could effectively serve as “Exhibit A” for the “next” Rifqa Bary.
“Hate crimes” & “Honor Killings”
Every year since 1929, annual crime statistics have been compiled from the records of police departments across the United States. Those statistics comprise the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Since 1930, the FBI has been publishing annual crime statistics in a comprehensive report known as Crime in the United States (CIUS). That report currently reflects statistics collected from 17,876 police departments across the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Of the 17,876 departments, 13,241 law enforcement agencies participated in the UCR Program’s hate crime data collection in 2007. That same year, there were 7,624 incidents classified as “hate crimes” submitted by 2,025 agencies, according to 2007 Uniform Crime Report of Hate Crime Statistics.
Investigation and research by this author into the documentation that comprises hate crime statistics for 2007 (the figures for 2008 will be available through the FBI on November 23, 2009) found that the parameters used for “hate crimes” against Muslims are exceptionally broad and artificially inflated as a result. These expanded parameters are, in many cases, the direct result of CAIR officials demanding certain dubious questionable events to be included in anti-Muslim hate crime statistics. Examples are plentiful, and include unverified reports of minimal, if not insignificant property damage at mosques and Islamic centers. A trampled flower bed at a mosque, as one example, was listed as an anti-Islamic “hate crime” statistic.
In 2007, crimes classified as having their motivation in anti-Muslim bias amounted to about 9 percent of all hate crimes. By contrast, crimes against Jews, or those having an anti-Semitic motive amounted to nearly 70% during that same period. Despite those figures and the obvious disparity, there has been a continual and vociferous demand for special considerations within law enforcement on behalf of Muslims due to the deceitful embellishment of post-9/11 anti-Islamic bias. Although the statistics for 2008 are not yet published, a review of available reports indicates that the anti-Islamic motivated crimes have dropped significantly. Nonetheless, claims of anti-Islamic bias have risen exponentially during that same period.
Meanwhile, statistics of crimes by Muslims against Muslims, specifically those involving domestic violence, from Sharia sanctioned spousal abuse to “honor killings” are not maintained. The omission of this statistical classification is not due to its rarity, but by deliberate omission. Although the raw statistics exist within the comprehensive CIUS report, they are not properly categorized within the UCR Program’s hate crime data collection. Therefore, they remain a statistic that does not officially exist, except for the victims of such crimes.
To obtain a better perspective regarding honor killing, consider that the results of an epidemiological study recently published in the European Journal of Public Health identified that one in every five homicides in Pakistan is an “honor killing.” Even as alarming as that number might be, that figure is considered to be much lower than the actual number due to cultural and reporting factors, according to the author of the study.
Unsurprisingly, statistics regarding honor killings and other forms of domestic violence among Muslims from over half of the Muslim nations researched found numbers to be consistent with those of Pakistan or higher. In those cultures, women are not only unequal to men, but husbands may beat their wives in Sharia compliant venues. At its most extreme, honor killings are accepted and sanctioned under Sharia law. Considering the number of Muslims who have moved to the U.S. and Canada who remain adherent to the tenets of Sharia law, it would be unreasonable and intellectually dishonest not to address this issue.
One should not expect officials of CAIR or CAIR Canada, including those who are involved in shaping policy at justice department levels, to endorse the compilation of statistics regarding domestic crimes in Muslim families in the U.S. or Canada. Despite their self-described depiction as an advocate of Islamic civil rights and contrary to their public position, some CAIR officials and leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood associated with CAIR have endorsed all of the aspects of Sharia law, including those that accept or tacitly approve of Sharia justice. Do not let CAIR, the media, or any government agency or official tell you otherwise.
If we continue on this same path, there will be many more victims like Noor Faleh Almaleki, and more court rulings placing young women in peril like the case of Rifqa Bary. Changing direction will require changing policy. And policy change can only happen when those who have the power to make such changes accept the facts about Islam not only as a religion, but as a culture and political process – and have the courage to stand up and speak out.
Otherwise, the statistics that scream out for disclosure will be drowned out only by the screams of cultural Islam’s next victims.
