MUSLIM AMERICAN HONOR MURDER
Documented Muslim American
Honor Murders
Friends speak out after apparent West Valley
'honor killing'
November 9, 2009
ABC15.com
GLENDALE, AZ -- Friends of a 20-year-old woman run over and killed in what
attorneys are calling an "honor killing" are speaking out for the
first time about the warning signs they saw.
Investigators say Noor Almaleki's father was behind
the wheel when she and another woman were struck in a Peoria parking lot last
month.
"She was a good person, and moral," said Sharlee Caudle, a friend of
Noor's. "Most parents would be glad to have a child like that."
Her friends paint the picture of an aspiring model and actress, working and
going to school.
Nicole Furugia worked with Noor at Applebee's, and
kept in touch with her until her death.
"She was strong, beautiful, really caring," said Furugia.
"She was always willing to help people."
But her employment there was short lived.
"She came in all frantic one day and asked me to cover her shift because
her father found out where she worked," said Furugia.
"She had to quit her job, and she had to move."
Furugia said she went with Noor to look into getting
a restraining order against her father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki.
"She was very determined on getting it," said Furugia.
"She was scared."
Other friends said Noor's father had taken her to Iraq under the pretense they
were visiting relatives, and married her off. They say Noor's family left
her to fend for herself and come up with the money to find her way back to
America, where she moved in with the fiance she
loved.
"He can kick her out of the house, he can disown her," said
Caudle. "But he had no right, no right at all, to run her down and
end her life."
Police say Faleh Hassan Almaleki
killed his daughter because she was "too Western." Only he will
be able to explain himself when he pleads his case.
Almaleki is expected in court Monday, where he may hear
new charges filed against him. He was originally charged with two counts
of aggravated assault and fleeing the scene of an accident, but police say
those charges will be upgraded since his daughter died.
The other woman, Amal Khalef, with whom Noor was
living, was also hit in the same incident. Her lawyer said she is
conscious and recovering in the hospital.
First Time FBI Calls Case an ‘Honor Killing’
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
By Maxim Lott
Fox News
Almost a year after two teenage girls were
found dead — allegedly executed by their father — in the back seat of a taxicab
in Texas, the FBI is saying for the first time that the case may have been an
"honor killing."
Sarah Said, 17, and her sister Amina, 18, were
killed on New Year's Day, but for nine months authorities deflected questions
about whether their father — the prime suspect and the subject of a nationwide
manhunt — may have targeted them because of a perceived slight upon his honor.
The girls' great-aunt, Gail Gartrell, says the
girls' Egyptian-born father killed them both because he felt they disgraced the
family by dating non-Muslims and acting too Western, and she called the girls'
murders an honor killing from the start.
But the FBI held off on calling it an honor
killing until just recently, when it made Yaser Abdel
Said the "featured fugitive" on its Web site.
"That's what I've been trying to tell
everybody all along," Gartrell told FOXNews.com. "I would say that's
a victory."
But some Muslims say that calling the case an
honor killing goes too far.
"As far as we're concerned, until the
motive is proven in a court of law, this is [just] a homicide," Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Council of
American-Islamic Relations in Dallas, told FOXNews.com.
He said he worries that terms like "honor
killing" may stigmatize the Islamic community. “We (Muslims) don’t have
the market on jealous husbands ... or domestic violence,” Carroll said.
The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women
are killed worldwide every year in honor killings — mostly in the Middle East,
where many countries still have laws that protect men who murder female
relatives they believe have engaged in inappropriate activity. A U.N. report
includes chilling examples of such cases.
“On the order of clerics, an 18-year-old woman
was flogged to death in Batsail, Bangladesh, for
"immoral behavior,” the report reads. “In Egypt, a father paraded his
daughter's severed head through the streets shouting, ‘I avenged my honor.’”
But Islamic scripture in no way condones such
actions, Carroll said.
"People have their own cultural nuances
and norms from before they got their religion," he said. "This is not
Islamic culture."
Regardless of whether religion itself is to
blame, Gartrell said it is important that society recognizes the case as having
a cultural element, just to prevent similar crimes in the future.
"That culture is so different,"
Gartrell said. "If people had been more educated about it, they would have
known that when the girls told people, 'Dad wants to kill me' — they were
serious."
Many of the threats against Sarah and Amina
Said were known to their friends and classmates.
High school friends told the Dallas Morning
News that the girls sometimes came in with welts and bruises, which they
confided were inflicted by their father. One time, Yaser
Said reportedly went into one daughter's bedroom waving a gun and making
threats on her life.
After he threatened to kill one daughter in
December 2007 — documented in text messages Sarah Said sent to a friend — the
girls and their mother, Patricia, fled from their home in Lewisville, Texas, to
Tulsa, Okla. But the mother soon had a change of heart and went back, leading
to the tragedy on January 1. Some, including Gartrell, believe the mother may
even have been complicit in the murders.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler,
author of several books, including "The Death of Feminism: What's Next in
the Struggle for Women's Freedom," said that the case fits the description
of an honor killing.
"The premeditation, the family
collaboration, and the particular rules (set for the girls) make this
consistent with an honor killing — not just domestic violence,” she said.
She said she hoped that calling the case an
"honor killing" might indicate a shift in attitude at the FBI.
"I think this may suggest that law
enforcement is beginning to realize that they may have to treat these incidents
differently if they are to either prevent or prosecute," Chesler told FOXNews.com.
She noted that the United Kingdom has a special
police unit to deal with “honor-related violence,” and said that she hoped that
the situation in the U.S. does not get to the point where that becomes
necessary.
But an FBI spokesman played down the
significance of the listing, saying that the change on the wanted listing was
simply due to more information coming out about the case since it was first
listed and that it shouldn't matter what the case is called.
"We're just looking at how do we find the
guy?" said FBI special agent Mark White, media coordinator in the bureau's
Dallas office.
Irving Police Department Public Information
Officer David Tull agreed. "We just look at the
facts. The man killed his two daughters. This is a domestic violence,
multiple-capital murder case."
Tull said that,
unfortunately, there have still been no sightings or major leads — a fact that
distresses Gartrell.
"I'm very upset about it," said
Gartrell, who argues that the case needs special consideration. "This is
not a typical murder case. When a family member murders another family member
to protect [the family] name — that's different."