Beaten because of the veil, Italy like Kabul
sabato 18 agosto 2012 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, August 18th, 2012She was feeling too hot, just too hot. She was pregnant, too. Walking with her husband through Porto Empedocle, in the province of Agrigento, not quite Cortina D'Ampezzo [an Italian high end location on the mountain], under such a scorching heat having to wear a hijab that covers up your head, your forehead, your neck, on top of your “modest” dress that envelops your legs, your arms, all of your body, is just not possible. Even more impossible is to violate Islam's, i.e. her husband's and her father's Law, so as soon as the young wife could not bear it any longer, she said she wanted to take that thing off her head, her husband started yelling and abusing her. However the young woman, an Italian citizen born to a Tunisian man, who lives in Turin with her very young Egyptian spouse,even if willing to live in a religious manner, she could no longer bear that diktat. A pregnant woman is already affected by several physical disturbances, not to mention such a vehement heat, so our girl took off her veil, earning herself a shower of punches and kicks. The end is known, it is a notorious movie: it is titled violence against women, we never seem to get enough of it. The people around her tried to rescue her from her husband's hands, they called an ambulance and the police. She is at the hospital, whereas he is behind bars for the time being.
Whose fault is it? It is our fault, because we do not manage to make common knowledge good sense, as well as our Italian and Western ban of violence within families, especially in Islamic ones, that under different mores and customs only mean an unacceptable oppression of women to the extent of beatings and “honor” killings by their fathers and husbands. The young wife in Porto Empedocle might have been killed because she was feeling hot: that should not happen under any circumstances. We do not care they call it a “different culture”. In our country women are entitled to dress as they wish, also to date whom they wish, to have the job they wish, also to get engaged and married to whom they wish, then to raise their children, their daughters in particular, in an environment of freedom, in observance of the most basic human rights.
You will argue these points are not relevant, but it is instead! As a matter of fact, according to all available studies such families, requiring the wear of the veil, would not simply limit themselves to covering the poor girl up according to tradition, but they also impose segregation, obedience to the males of the family, who also get to decide which friends she has to meet, they also dictate their upbringing, sexual mores, in a nutshell an entire set of censored behaviors which preclude an individual choice. The punishment varies, but it always dreadful, ranging from beating and confinement, to often death.
According to statistics at least 5,000 women a year are killed within the immigration environments for reason of “honor”. In England, where Muslim presence hence the women-related customs, are more extreme, in 2010 22 women were killed in four months (the number is estimated to be lower than reality), and 2283 related crimes were reported, plus 500 minor ones. The list is full of known names and the initial accusation is always the same: excessive integration in the Western customs, the murdering fathers are sometimes helped by mothers who repeat this at their turn as an unconscious gloom of ominous devotion to a lost world, to a paradise that never really existed.
In Italy nobody can forget the names of Hina and Sanaa. Hina Saleem, a twenty year old Pakistani girl, got killed in 2006 by her father in Sarezze, in the province of Brescia, and Sanaa Dafari, a 18 year old Moroccan girl was slaughtered by her father, Kataoul Dafani, a cook, because she dared dating an Italian guy. Readers know however these are just a couple of the stories that are increasingly soaring in our country as well across Europe. On May 28th an Indian mother of a 5 year old got killed because she had a Western dress code; last April in Brescia police rescued a Pakistani girl, called Jamila, from her home, as her family had sentenced her to total segregation because they reckoned her education at school was too Western-like. On October 3rd, 2010 a Pakistani man stoned her wife to death in Novi Ligure because she dared defending her own daughter, who opposed an arranged marriage with a Pakistani man; in the same year another Egyptian father tried to choke his daughter with a plastic bag upon the belief she was no longer a virgin... The list is long, the issues are virginity, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, as if we had gone back two hundreds years.
We should take the courage to realize that this is the matter, it is not an interesting proposal by another civilization, but a backward position that kills all achievements earned with tears, sweat, and blood by our society, and we are not willing to pay the price. And please, do not mention islamophobia, this point of view has nothing to do with it, on the contrary Islam has got nothing to do with it. It is from such cowardice, from the denial of reality so common nowadays in Europe, that our responsibility toward the killed girls arises.