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So far, the Turkish community has been sluggish in its response to such data and even to the question of honor killings. But last week -- about three weeks after Hatin's death and under heavy pressure from activists -- the Turkish Association of Berlin and Brandenburg held a round table discussion about the plight of Muslim women. At the talks, the group issued a 10-point plan calling for a "zero tolerance" stance on violence against women and encouraged other Turkish and Islamic organizations to "actively recognize" and address the problem.

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Astonishingly, the first extensive data the German government collected about the lives of Turkish women was published last summer, as part of a study done by the Ministry for Family Affairs. The study showed that 49 percent of Turkish women said they had experienced physical or sexual violence in their marriage. One fourth of those married to Turkish husbands said they met their grooms on their wedding day. Half said they were pressured to marry partners selected by relatives and 17 percent felt forced into such partnerships.

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It seeks to highlight a human rights based framework in seeking to address "crimes of honour" rather than taking a culturally relativist approach

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John Glenn (DEMOCRAT) said this ----- It should make us all think a little:

There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.  In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, tell them the following:

FDR (DEMOCRAT) led us into World War II.

Germany never attacked us; Japan did.  From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ... an average of 112,500 per year.

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There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.  In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

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A state in denial needs reality checks
By Alasdair Palmer
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 18/05/2008

It’s a failure easier to recognise in other people than in yourself – but everyone, if honest, will accept that they have occasionally fallen into a “state of denial”, that well-attested psychological phenomenon that consists in refusing to recognise the truth of a piece of information because it suggests that your own views are wrong.

That the failing is common does not justify it. It simply makes it all the more important that procedures for making decisions, especially by authorities, should carefully guard against it: people in a state of denial make irrational, stupid and oppressive choices.

The most charitable interpretation of the reaction of Anil Patani, the Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, to the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque is that he was in a state of deep denial.

The programme recorded preachers at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham making remarks that were not only bigoted and full of hate but also bordered on incitement to murder. Abu Usamah, one of the main preachers, was shown saying: “Osama Bin Laden, he’s better than a thousand Tony Blairs, because he’s a Muslim”; “Allah has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect is incomplete”; and advocating that homosexuals should be “thrown off” mountains. Mr Patani’s reaction? To refer the programme makers to the Crown Prosecution Service for inciting racial hatred.

He also referred the programme to Ofcom, the TV regulator, sending out a press release as he did so. Mr Patani’s press release claimed that “those featured in the programme had been misrepresented” and that it had “undermined community cohesion”. Those claims were blatantly false, as the Ofcom investigation itself made crystal clear. But why on earth did Mr Patani make them?

He had no authority to censor the media, nor to assess whether it had done its job properly. Channel 4 had shown Abu Usamah the relevant parts of the programme before it was broadcast: he did not deny what he had said, nor did he try to get the programme prosecuted for being “misleading”. It was only Mr Patani who took that step. It is difficult to understand how Mr Patani could have persuaded himself that the programme makers were the problem – difficult until you recognise the power of the state of denial that he was in.

No context could make Abu Usamah’s remarks anything other than bigoted and hateful, something that should have been particularly obvious to Mr Patani, who had seen all 53 hours of film that had been shot in the making of Undercover Mosque. Now he and his force have been made to grovel, as well as pay out £100,000 to settle the libel suit that Channel 4 discovered was the only way to get West Midlands Police to stop claiming Undercover Mosque had distorted the views of innocent, peace-loving preachers. But then Mr Patani is by no means the only person in authority to suffer from denial on this topic.

His denial is very widely shared – which is why Mr Patani remains in his job, and why he won’t even be disciplined. The alarming truth is that much of Government policy towards radical Islam is based on Mr Patani’s delusion: if we pretend that radical Islamic preachers do not exist but are rather a creation of Islamophobic journalists, they will just go away. That sort of denial is extremely dangerous.

But since the procedures of Government decision-making fail to guard against it, our only defence against denial is programmes such as Undercover Mosque. Without that kind of check, denial would take over Government policy completely. And it is not difficult to imagine what a catastrophe that would be.

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Murder in the Family: Honor Killings in America

When she was just 19, Sandeela Kanwal traveled from America to Pakistan for an arranged marriage to a cousin twice her age.

Less than six years later, she was dead — strangled — and her father, Chaudhry Rashid, was arrested by police as the suspect for what some have called an "honor killing."

After their marriage, Kanwal had lived in the United States apart from her husband, who remained in Pakistan. She was reunited with him in April at her family home in Atlanta, but he moved to Chicago days later, leaving her alone once again.

On July 1, Kanwal filed for divorce, a prospect her father, a 52-year-old immigrant from Pakistan, would not entertain. Investigators say that after an argument on the night of July 5, he strangled Kanwal with a bungee cord. He could not accept the "disgrace" a divorce or affair would bring on his family, according to police.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 5,000 women are murdered in such honor killings each year for offenses like immodesty or refusing an arranged marriage. They may be on the rise in the U.S., as seen anecdotally in Kanwal's death and a handful of other prominent attacks:
• Fifty-year-old Yaser Abdel Said became the focus of a massive manhunt after he allegedly killed his teenage daughters Sarah and Amina — for dating boys against his will. Relatives say he tried to marry off Amina in his native Egypt when she was 16, and he hasn't been seen since the girls were shot to death on New Year's Day.

• Zein Isa, a Palestinian terrorist who lived in St. Louis, was convicted of killing his daughter Palestina in 1989. Investigators say he was furious she had a black boyfriend, went to a school dance and got a job at Wendy's. Palestina's mother held her down as Isa plunged a 9-inch knife into his daughter's chest, actions the FBI picked up on a microphone as they investigated Isa for his terrorist ties.

• Waheed Mohammad, a 22-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan, was shamed by his sister, who he thought was a "bad Muslim girl." At his mother's behest, investigators say, he tried to "stop" his sister, stabbing her multiple times, though she survived and spoke to FOX News.

To see more on honor killings in America, watch FOX News' special documentary, "Murder in the Family: Honor Killings in America," airing 8 p.m. EDT Saturday, July 26, and 8 and 11 p.m. EDT Sunday.