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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; bride</title>
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		<title>Saved by Love from the Islamic State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/stephenbrown/saved-by-love-from-the-islamic-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saved-by-love-from-the-islamic-state</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/stephenbrown/saved-by-love-from-the-islamic-state/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2014 05:44:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bouzer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bride]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dutch]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Petalo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rescue]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246627</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dutch mother daringly rescues her daughter, and jihad-bride-to-be, from the claws of ISIS. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/nk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246671" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/nk-450x299.jpg" alt="nk" width="286" height="190" /></a>There is nothing stronger than a mother’s love. And Dutch mother Monique Verbert proved this adage recently when she rescued her 19-year-old daughter from the Islamic State (IS) after traveling there disguised in Muslim dress.</p>
<p>Verbert’s daughter, Sterlina Petalo, had previously gone to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadist, a former member of the Dutch military. Verbert’s safe return to Holland with her child, a feat of bravery in and of itself, also represents the first time that a girl who had voluntarily gone to the Islamic State to marry a jihadist has returned home safely to the West.</p>
<p>“She basically saw him as a sort of Robin Hood …that he was a nice man and fought against Assad,” Verbert said in an interview on Dutch television that was reported in <em>Die Welt</em>. “She said again and again: “Mum, look at that guy. Isn’t it good what he does?”</p>
<p>Petalo’s story is not an unusual one for the dozens of girls from Western countries who have travelled the same path to the Islamic State to wed a jihadist. <em>Die Welt</em> relates the Dutch teenager converted to Islam at age 18 during a spiritual quest and soon became radicalised. She started calling herself ‘Aicha’, covered her hair, shunned friends, and read the Koran and Islamic websites, “hardly leaving her room.” Petalo’s mother, who is separated from her father, said her “greatest scare” occurred when her daughter appeared for the first time completely veiled.</p>
<p>“Then I truly asked myself: ‘girl, what are you doing’?”  Verbert said.</p>
<p>But <em>Die Welt</em> reports that the “decisive day” occurred last January when Petalo saw her future ‘husband’ on a television program. She contacted him via the internet and subsequently decided to travel to him in Syria. Warned by a friend of her daughter’s intended departure, Verbert was able to prevent this first attempt to leave the country by contacting the police, who put Petalo’s name on a list of potential terrorists and took her passport away. Petalo, however, successfully left Holland for Syria on a second try, using different identification.</p>
<p>Finding the police and Dutch authorities powerless to help get her daughter back, Verbert took matters into her own hands, appearing on a television show in an effort to contact her. Later, Verbert discovered her child had separated from the Dutch jihadist and was now together with another IS fighter in Raqqa, the IS’s main city. Verbert then travelled to Turkey, but could not get over the border to Syria and returned home.</p>
<p>After receiving a call for help from her daughter, <em>Die Welt</em> reports Verbert decided to return to Turkey to try and reach her again. After locating her child, she crossed into Syria, completely covered in Islamic dress, and successfully brought her out and back to Holland safely. Details concerning how this was accomplished, however, are unknown, since Dutch authorities are remaining silent. Petalo is currently in custody, as she may still pose a security risk and may also face charges for aiding a terrorist organization.</p>
<p>French anthropologist Dounia Bouzar has studied the phenomenon of young people in France who are suspected of wanting to leave, or have already, like Petalo, left their families and country to join the Islamic State. Last spring, Bouzar set up a center to prevent such departures and was also hired by French police, seeking assistance in this area.</p>
<p>From her work with the 130 families that have contacted her, Bouzar published a book last October titled, “<em>Ils cherchent le paradis, ils ont trouve l’enfer” </em>(<em>They Are Searching For Paradise, They Found Hell)</em>. Of the youths at risk, Bouzar told the French newspaper, <em>Le Figaro</em>, that as many as 80 percent were atheists with many coming from atheistic homes, an astonishing 60 percent of their parents were teachers, and 90 percent came from the middle and upper classes. Bouzar estimates about a dozen females have made it to Syria from France, but French authorities are monitoring 90 families of girls in danger of leaving. About half of these girls are converts and even include Jewish girls among their number.</p>
<p>Also in the <em>Le Figaro </em>interview, Bouzar gave a detailed account of the radicalisation process Petalo probably underwent and what she likely experienced in Syria as a jihadist’s bride. Bouzar related the radicalisation of these girls, some as young as 14, is “like lightening hitting the house.” The majority are not of North African origin, France’s main source of Muslim immigration, and “have nothing to do with Islam.” But they are “passionate.”</p>
<p>“These are brilliant girls, who are getting ready to study medicine, political science or altruistic professions…,” Bouzar stated. “They had the misfortune of talking about this on Facebook. It’s as if the terrorists have psychological head-hunters who locate the personality profiles of those who wish to change the world and fight against injustice. One would say that they are specifically looking for the elite.”</p>
<p>The same holds true for girls of all classes. Even among working class or less privileged sectors of French society, the jihadist “head-hunters” search out only “very good students.” As for the boys, it is just the opposite. Bouzar says recruiters look for unemployed males who have adjustment difficulties in society.</p>
<p>After contact, Bouzar states the girls are then methodically manipulated mentally over a period of time by their recruiters to the point where, almost cult-like, they become the only ones, with whom they communicate. First, all confidence in adults, including parents, and society is removed. Then videos are received, telling the girls that they are being deceived and “secret societies are manoeuvering to kill people in order to hold on to their power.” Societies that only Islam can destroy.</p>
<p>“It’s the theory of conspiracy,” said Bouzar. “They ask them ‘Which side are you on? Are you going to let people be massacred? Wake up?’ They make them reject the real world.”</p>
<p>Next, photos are sent of brutally killed babies, claiming they were murdered by Assad, and the girls are told to leave school and come and rescue them. They are also told their parents are not the “elect of God” and not to watch television any more. Eventually, the girls targeted are cut off from all their former bases of reference and come under the control of the recruiters, or “bearded prince charmings,” as Bouzar calls them. The mothers, Bouzar says, describe their daughters as having been “robotised.”</p>
<p>“When one analyses their telephones, one sees they receive 100 messages a day,” Bouzar told <em>Le Figaro.</em> “This starts at five o’clock in the morning. Sometimes, they don’t sleep anymore.”</p>
<p>Like Petalo, the girls eventually don the niqab or jilbab. Bouzar says the girls call it “my security blanket, my best friend, or my comforter and use it like a cocoon, in a form of regression.” She adds that, when deprogramming girls prevented from leaving France, the most difficult part is getting them to shed the Muslim dress.</p>
<p>“I counsel parents to search under the beds, since these clothes are the first signs of danger,” Bouzar warns.</p>
<p>Also included in the radicalisation process, the French anthropologist says, are promises of marriage. And this promise, Bouzar states, is acted on almost as soon as the girls arrive in the Islamic State. With marriage, a girl becomes her husband’s “inheritance,” living with three or four of his other wives in a house, polygamy apparently the norm. Her only job now is to look after the children under the supervision of a “boss” or older woman who monitors her telephone calls home.</p>
<p>“It’s all an organization,” said Bouzar. “When they are not married, they are herded together. One knows of a house where 17 girls are waiting for ‘distribution’. For some time now, it is worse, since they get them pregnant as soon as possible. They say they will be less tempted to flee, if they have a baby”</p>
<p>But, according to Bouzar, this tactic of quickly impregnating the girls in order to ground them in the Islamic State may sometimes backfire. She told <em>Le Figaro</em> that becoming pregnant is one of the three things that sometimes serve to shake girls out of their cult-like mindset.</p>
<p>“One notices that the moment the baby starts to move, they (the girls) once again have a normal voice on the telephone,” Bouzar says.</p>
<p>The parents’ repeated evoking of childhood memories can also lead to their daughters “de-programming themselves,” and to feeling and thinking again. The third factor that can lead to an awakening from the brainwashing, Bouzar says, concerns the girls having personally witnessed, or heard talk of, “the slitting of a Syrian Muslim’s throat.”</p>
<p>“They begin to cry and want to return (home),” Bouzar says. “It is at this moment that they speak of terrorists and realize the difference between the talk and the reality. But here, it is too late. In truth, no girl has yet succeeded in returning.”</p>
<p>Until ‘Aicha’.</p>
<p>It is not yet known what made the Dutch teenager reach out to her mother and call for help. Like Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister and originator of the following quote, Petalo did not recognise “the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder.” Hopefully, she will be allowed to tell her story soon. Petalo’s testimony would serve as a valuable aid to parents and a powerful warning to other suggestible and vulnerable young people, opening their eyes to that hand. But if she is ever permitted, and desires, to help prevent such evil from hijacking other innocent lives, Petalo should always emphasize in her story how love saved hers.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss scholar of Islam <strong>Dr. Mark Christian</strong> discuss <strong>Islam’s Assault on Women’s Sexuality</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang:</strong></em></p>
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		<title>At Last, Some Decent Israeli Films</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/at-last-some-decent-israeli-films/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=at-last-some-decent-israeli-films</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/at-last-some-decent-israeli-films/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:08:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahlam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amos Gitai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[archival footage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ari Folman]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[fifteen]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Hannah Brown]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=46783</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Film-makers emerge who don't care to please the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish crowd.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46785" title="filmreel" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/filmreel.gif" alt="filmreel" width="450" height="338" /></p>
<p>The Israeli film industry as a whole leaves little to the imagination and much to disappoint. It is dominated by political ideologues of a distinctly leftist slant who tend to see their country through the eyes of its enemies, favoring the Palestinian narrative, claiming to understand the policies and grievances of the surrounding Muslim nations, relentlessly critical of the army, the settlers and the so-called religious Right, and basking parasitically in the approval of the liberal elites who give out the international prizes and citations.</p>
<p>An excellent example of such opportunistic practices is provided by Ran Edelist who directed a documentary entitled <em><a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-135983867.html">Ruach Shaked</a></em> about an Israeli reconnaissance unit operating in the Sinai during the Six Day War. The film claims that the unit had killed 250 Egyptian prisoners of war, a revelation which caused a media firestorm and led to members of the Egyptian parliament calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and the suspension of diplomatic relations with Israel. Edelist has admitted that errors were made with regard to voice-over commentary and wrongly juxtaposed archival footage—in point of fact, the enemy casualties were actually <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/Fedayeen.html">fedayeen</a> trying to infiltrate into Israel and no POWs were executed. Such films, however, are pre-screened and it is hard to believe that such obtrusive blunders were overlooked, yet Edelist and Ittay Landsburg Nevo, head of the left-leaning Israel Broadcasting Authority, defended the production whose pejorative effect on the political scene could have been predicted with even the most rudimentary foresight.</p>
<p>Similarly, Israel’s cable TV Channel 8 and the Jerusalem Cinematheque have been willing to fund anti-Zionist filmmaker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyal_Sivan">Eyal Sivan</a>, a typical self-abnegating Jew who managed to avoid his military service, was a speaker at “Israeli Apartheid Week” in London in 2007, and signed a public document condemning “the brutality and cruelty of Israeli policy” during the summer 2006 war with Hizbullah. Israel’s Channel 2’s Keshet franchise has frequently aired the docudramas of <a href="http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=869">Motti Lerner</a>, who plays fast and loose with the historical truth and believes, according to a paper he delivered at Brandeis University, that Israeli society is diseased, suffering from an “inability…to empathize with the Palestinians.” Along the same lines, Shimon Dotan’s documentary, <em><a href="http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-reviews/hot-house-shimon-dotan/">Hot House</a></em>, funded chiefly by Israel’s New Foundation for Film and Television, sympathetically profiles female terrorist Ahlam Tamini who murdered fifteen people, eight of them children, in the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. Yet, speaking for the Palestinians, Dotan comments: “We owe them empathy.”</p>
<p>Then we have Ari Folman’s recent <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz_with_Bashir">Waltz with Bashir</a></em>, the recipient of many awards and critical accolades. Although an improvement over the general run of Israeli-bashing films, it nevertheless magnifies the strength and firepower of the enemy while appearing to stress the comparative weakness and fear of the IDF. Its effect is to demoralize. Israeli soldiers are portrayed as a cohort of flakes, freaks, wimps and anxiety-ridden semi-losers who have trouble reconciling the importance of their mission with the courage and resolution required of them—indeed, the central character is so traumatized he <em>cannot even remember</em> the operation and travels about interviewing his former comrades to fill in the yawning blank. And the entire context of the march into Lebanon, the reason it was deemed necessary by the Israeli high command, the years of indiscriminate shelling, incursions and kidnappings suffered by Israelis in the north of the country, is conveniently forgotten not only by the protagonist but by the director as well.</p>
<p>Israeli cineaste Hannah Brown, puffing what she calls Israel’s <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364558313&amp;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">smash hit</a> decade, revels in the acclaim flowing from the politically correct international festivals and derides individuals skeptical of this trend as right-wing “party poopers.” Regrettably, this doesn’t change the fact that “most directors are on the Left,” as she graciously allows, and that their partisan colors show through their productions. Any film by the widely celebrated, tediously pedantic and unfailingly depressing left-winger <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Gitai">Amos Gitai</a> renders this obvious. As <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&amp;cid=1261364476523">Seth Frantzman points out</a>, Israeli directors tend to make films about a Jewish woman falling for a Palestinian suicide bomber (Dror Zahavi’s <a href="http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-310/_nr-617/i.html"><em>For My Father</em></a>) or a Jewish woman falling in love with an Arab who murders her brother (Keren Yedaya’s <em><a href="http://cineuropa.org/trailer.aspx?lang=en&amp;documentID=108740">Jaffa</a></em>). What is the message of such films? Frantzman asks, and replies: “That Israelis should ‘love the other’ to the extent that they love murderers.” That seems to be about right.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there are some notable film-makers who are more concerned with telling the truth than with making a reputation for themselves by catering to the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish crowd. Eran Kolirin’s <em><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bands_visit/">The Band’s Visit</a></em> is a fine companion piece to Eytan Fox’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_on_Water_%28film%29"><em>Walk on Water</em></a> and Gidi Dar’s <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushpizin">Ushpizin</a></em>,<em> </em>all superbly directed films with fascinating characters, a non-ideological theme and a credible story about evolving relationships that bring people closer together rather than set them apart in resentment and intransigence. These are beautifully composed and warm-hearted movies that affirm Israeli life, for all  its warts, avoiding both sentimentality and the lurid, selective episoding of the mainstream <em>mishpoca</em>.</p>
<p>Now comes a new film that joins the Reform Cinemagogue of refreshing, untendentious and largely non-sectarian productions, altering the jaundiced tone and acerbic flavor of their majoritarian predecessors. <em><a href="http://www.film.com/movies/lemon-tree/19012819">The Lemon Tree</a></em>, directed by Eran Riklis, already famed for <a href="http://www.fest21.com/en/blog/sharonabella/interview_with_film_director_eran_riklis"><em>The Syrian Bride</em></a>, is a sensitive, bittersweet look at the Israeli/Palestinian imbroglio which tries to be reasonably fair to both sides in the conflict. The story turns upon the status of a lemon grove owned by Salma Zidane, a Palestinian widow whose family has tended the lemon trees for generations. Her peace and modest prosperity is shattered when the just-appointed Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Navon, and his wife Mira move into their new home on the Green Line, which abuts directly on the widow’s property.</p>
<p>The issue is security, for the lemon grove furnishes perfect cover for Palestinian terrorists who might be planning to attack the minister’s home. At the same time, the widow’s livelihood is equally at stake. The minister oversees the construction of a fence between the two properties, preventing the widow from tending to her trees, which begin to wither from lack of water. He then orders the lemon grove razed—a scenario based on a similar, real-life situation involving former Israeli Defense Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaul_Mofaz">Shaul Mofaz</a>. The emblem, of course, is unmistakable. The clash between the widow and the minister, between two homes, two narratives and two necessities, is obviously Riklis’ allegory of the Israeli/Palestinian standoff and of the “wall,” both physical and psychological, which divides them.</p>
<p>Plainly, the Israelis are not given a free pass. The minister is self-righteous, loud and aggressive, relishing his recent appointment, enjoying the perquisites of authority, and deaf to the legitimate needs of his Palestinian neighbor. The soldier who guards the Minister’s home is a good-natured idiot, who reflects rather poorly on the IDF. The Israeli military lawyer is a bully. To Riklis’ credit, however, the Palestinians are not depicted as romantic innocents who can do no wrong, or as the world’s chosen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29">Na’vi</a> struggling to regain their illusory Pandora. We are afforded a glimpse behind the politically-generated image. The widow has a brief affair with the young lawyer she has hired to represent her as her case moves through the Israeli justice system. For this breach of “honor” she is threatened by the local clan chieftain with certain unspecified but clearly menacing consequences. This is still a primitive and misogynous society, as we are meant to see, caged in tribal preconceptions. The lawyer is a sympathetic figure but eventually succumbs to the allure of PR glory for having won a partial legal victory—the fence will remain but only half the orchard will be cut down—exchanging his disheveled attire for a shiny new suit, his unprepossessing office for an upscale address, a commitment for a career, and his unpretentious self for the heroic persona of defender of “the people.” He is on the make, like most of the Palestinian nomenklatura.</p>
<p>The film’s intentions are noble but, if it has a weakness, it concerns precisely the controversial nature of the fence, or “wall,” which, in the political and military framework of the hostility between two peoples, is the direct result of the Palestinian intifadas. The Minister may be a rather disagreeable figure, obstreperous and peremptory, but he surely does not deserve his wife’s growing estrangement over the raising of the fence and her decision to leave the marriage. The fence is meant to protect her too, despite her vicarious identification with the beleaguered widow. More importantly, the fence that Navon has ordered built, aka the “separation barrier” condemned by much of the world, and the partial lopping of the orchard, are not the product of personal caprice or of a policy of invasive sequestration. It is Salma’s own people who have made it inevitable, indeed who may be said to have built the fence on their own initiative by unleashing a campaign of terror against Israeli civilians.</p>
<p><em>The Lemon Tree</em> skirts the central issues of Israeli security and Palestinian responsibility, and in this way partly conforms to the “progressivist” and post-Zionist bias that actuates much of the Israeli intelligentsia, the media and the so-called “peace” faction. It does not in this regard bear adequate witness to the true situation that prevails in the country. The fact that it was co-written by Israeli-Arab <a href="http://www.a2palestinefilmfest.org/filmmakers.html">Suha Arraf</a>, a former journalist for the left-leaning <em>Haaretz</em> newspaper, might explain this partial skewering of reality. And yet it must be admitted that <em>The Lemon Tree</em> distinguishes itself from the general run of Israeli anti-Israeli films and “documentaries,” treating its characters in the round, introducing an element of human tenderness, leveling criticism on both parties to the conflict—a welcome departure from the norm—and thus constructing at least a theoretical fence between itself and the majority of one-sided cinematic lemons that have it in for Israel.</p>
<p><strong>[Editor&#8217;s note: To order a copy of David Solway&#8217;s new book <em>Hear, O Israel!</em>, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hear-O-Israel-David-Solway/dp/0973406534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1256122893&amp;sr=1-1"><em>click here</em>.</a></em>]</strong></p>
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		<title>“Honor” Horror In England &#8211; by Stephen Brown</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/stephenbrown/%e2%80%9chonor%e2%80%9d-horror-in-england-by-stephen-brown/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=%25e2%2580%259chonor%25e2%2580%259d-horror-in-england-by-stephen-brown</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/stephenbrown/%e2%80%9chonor%e2%80%9d-horror-in-england-by-stephen-brown/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:04:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bedroom floor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bride]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clothesline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commodity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daughter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disappearance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[England]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enigmatic smile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[father]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[form]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[goren]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gulen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Halil Unal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hands and feet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hanim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[home]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[honor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[husband]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[male members]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[man]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mehmet Goren]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mehmet Gornon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mother]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Murderer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nuray]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[older sister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pain and suffering]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[price]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prison sentence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[restraints]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[schoolgirl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sentence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[testimony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tulay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uncles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[week]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Western European]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[witness box]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Father convicted in 15-year old daughter’s disappearance ten years ago.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42623" title="honormurder" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/honormurder.gif" alt="honormurder" width="450" height="505" /></p>
<p>“Mum, don’t untie me. I want to die.”</p>
<p>These heart-rending words from beyond the grave helped last week to convict Britain’s latest “honor” murderer, Mehmet Goren, 49. The father of four brutally killed his 15-year-old daughter, Tulay, ten years ago for having fallen in love.</p>
<p>“You did all this simply because you regarded it as unacceptable that she, rather than you, should choose the man she wanted to marry,” the judge told the murderer, whom he described as having an “enigmatic smile.”</p>
<p>Instead of experiencing a schoolgirl’s joy for life, shortly before her death a bound and helpless Tulay was lying face down on her bedroom floor, her hands and feet having turned a black and blue color from the clothesline restraints her father had tied her with. It was in this terrible state of pain and suffering that Tulay addressed these pitiful words to her mother, Hanim Goren, who wanted to free her but was prevented by her husband.</p>
<p>Police believed Tulay was drugged, tortured and killed the following day. But first he had Tulay’s eight–year-old brother kiss his sister goodbye for the last time. The 15-year-old’s body has never been found. First buried in the family garden, it was later dug up and removed to an unknown site.</p>
<p>It was Tulay’s grieving mother, finally finding the courage to tell the truth ten years after her daughter’s 1999 disappearance, who delivered this devastating testimony during her husband’s ten-week trial in London. Nuray Gulen, Tulay’s older sister, also gave valuable testimony that ended in her father receiving a 22-year prison sentence, at one point shaking her fists and screaming at her him from the witness box in Turkish.</p>
<p>Tulay’s death followed a familiar pattern regarding honor murders. When her father discovered she was no longer a virgin (she had told a friend she may even be pregnant), he and her family’s male members regarded her as a “worthless commodity.” Tulay’s two uncles were also charged in her death but were acquitted, although they were part of the family council where the decision to kill her may have been made.</p>
<p>In Islamic cultures, a wife is often acquired like a piece of property by means of a contract after negotiations between two families, in which a “bride price” is paid to the bride’s family in the form of money, real estate or other gifts. In such cases, marriage is simply a commercial transaction. The bride, and sometimes the groom, often has no say in choice of partner, as they have never been allowed to establish an individual identity outside their families, clan or religion.</p>
<p>One of the conditions for such “arranged” marriages, however, is that the bride must be a virgin. The highest appellate court in Turkey emphasized this last month when it allowed a man to divorce his wife because she was, supposedly, not a virgin on their wedding night. A woman’s purity, the court ruled, is a prerequisite for marriage.</p>
<p>If a woman is not a virgin when she marries, or is discovered to have engaged in some other form of behavior regarded as improper, no matter how slight, with a male before, or after, marriage, she may then become the target of an “honor” murder. Only the blood from her death, the family believes, will cleanse its shame and restore its “honor” in the eyes of the community.</p>
<p>Other reasons exist for this depraved form of misogyny that has resulted in too many young women’s deaths. They range from the female victim living too Western a lifestyle (re: independent), to wanting a divorce, changing religion, leaving the home to escape family violence, to simply having a boyfriend. Staying a night away from home or moving out, Western European social workers say, is often a death sentence for these women.</p>
<p>Tulay’s family also did like the fact her boyfriend, Halil Unal, was from another branch of Islam. But what apparently disturbed Tulay’s father the most was that he would not be receiving any bride price money after his daughter had run away to live with Hilal, also a Kurd from Turkey.</p>
<p>The wife testified at the trial her husband had sent her to demand a $10,000 bride price from Unal to cover the “shame” he had caused their family honor, but she returned home empty handed. Hanim indicated her husband probably wanted the money for gambling, testifying he was an avid gambler who would gamble away the family’s social benefits in Turkish cafes. It was Hanim Goren who later persuaded her daughter to return home, not knowing she would be killed.</p>
<p>A week after Tulay’s disappearance, Unal himself became the target of an honor murder. Mehmet Gornon tried to kill him in an axe attack that put Unal in hospital with a serious neck injury. Gornon and his two brothers were also charged for that assault.</p>
<p>There are about a dozen reported honor murders every year now in England. How many remain unreported is unknown. After each new act of such savagery, though, the English are left asking what is happening to their once civilized country that gave the world the Magna Carta and parliamentary democracy.</p>
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