In a lesson about the danger of political correctness in the age of terrorism, the Germans now face an increasing wave of Muslim "honor killings," the practice of killing women who refuse to live under the thumb of male family members. Unfortunately, Germans feel restrained from investigating threats of such killings for fear of appearing racist. The issue has finally come to the fore after the brutal murder of a woman by her three brothers for the crime of leaving the cousin she was forced to marry at 15, but it hardly is the first such killing in Berlin:

Police records show that 45 "honour killings" have been committed within Germany's two million-plus Muslim community in the past eight years. Now that at least five have occurred in just four months in Berlin alone, the German authorities and local Turkish leaders are desperately trying to find out why.

Karl Mollenhauer, a Berlin police psychologist, blamed Islamic religious leaders for failing to address the problem. Last week, he also suggested that the German authorities were at fault for failing to intervene in case they were branded racist.

"We have silently allowed a parallel society to develop because of fears that we would sow hatred by talking openly about its injustices. The women have paid the price for this," he said.

Even worse, the problem appears to start with the indoctrination of Muslim children in Berlin. In one private Islamic school, the students were asked about their attitudes towards such killings as Sürücü's, and the responses are chilling:

Asked by teachers what they thought of the murder, several 13-year-old pupils are said to have implied that they thought Mrs Sürücü had "earned" her death. "Well, she lived like a German, didn't she?" remarked one. Mrs Sürücü got married in Turkey at the age of 15 but returned with her son to her birthplace, Berlin, more than five years ago. ...

In an open letter last week, the headmaster of the school publicly denounced the attitude of his pupils. Other head teachers in Berlin, however, said that they were not surprised by the children's reaction.

"This type of thinking is latent in their minds," said the head of another predominantly Turkish immigrant school in the district, who asked not to be identified. Their remarks, he said, reminded him of the spontaneous "victory dances" which immigrant pupils at his school had staged after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Germans have hate-speech regulations that deter criticism of Muslim practices, although not as strict as those in Sweden, but the political correctness has taken its toll on the protection of Muslim women. The Germans have allowed moral relativism to supplant the one-law construct that Western societies have gradually adopted since the sealing of the Magna Carta, creating a substructure of de facto shari'a to develop in its Muslim community with little pushback from the German government.

That PC instinct spells trouble for Germany in dealing with its Muslim population, and for any country that does not enforce its laws equally among its population -- as American history demonstrates more than adequately in its civil-rights struggles. Germany needs to decide whether it wants to remain a united social construct or allow itself to become balkanized internally, with various minority groups conducting their own law enforcement, legislative, and judicial functions independent of the elected German government. If they do not have the will to enforce German law in Muslim communities, they will have begun the process by which civil wars start. In the meantime, the primary victims of German PCism will continue to be Muslim women, at the hands of their own families.

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» Honor Killings and the PC Impulse. from Bloggledygook
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