Islamist family values

Michelle Malkin continues to follow the story of Sarah and Amina Said, allegedly murdered by their father, Yaser Abdel Said, an Egyptian emigre, in an apparent honor killing:

Sarah Said's final phone call rang into the Irving police dispatcher about 7:30 p.m. on New Year's Day: "I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying ..."

About an hour later, a man walked up to an orange cab parked at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving. He discovered carnage – the bullet-shredded bodies of 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina Said, honor students and athletes at Lewisville High School.

Almost immediately, police issued an arrest warrant for the girls' father, 50-year-old Yaser Said, an Egyptian-born cab driver who family members said was given to fits of violence, threats and gun-waving rants about how Western culture was corrupting the chastity of his daughters.

The entire story reads like Sleeping with the Enemy. There is evidence of a pattern of physical and mental abuse of the girls by Yaser:

In the week since their murders, friends and relatives on Patricia Said’s side of the family say they have been haunted by that final phone call, a cry for help that went unanswered for years. They say Mr. Said physically and emotionally abused his children.

In October 1998, when Amina and Sarah were 9 and 8 years old, they accused their father of sexual abuse.

The allegations were reported to the Hill County sheriff’s office, where the girls told a detective their father had been touching them inappropriately. Amina told authorities she had been penetrated at least once.

Their mother swore in an affidavit that the allegations were true.

In early January 1999, the two girls told authorities that they had lied about the allegations because they didn’t want to attend rural Covington schools and wanted to go live with their grandmother. A district judge later dropped the charges of aggravated sexual assault against Mr. Said.

Apparently the mother tried to run away with the girls, but came back for vague reasons.

There is additional evidence that the victm's brother Islam may have been complicit in that abuse and/or the murders:

The son named Islam is reportedly responsible for persuading the girls to return after attempting to leave their abusive father. One friend received a text message from Sarah Said that read: “Me mina and my mom r running away! ..My dad found out abt mina and is goin to kill us….B4 he tld me that he was goin to put bullet thru her head…today he tld me to get used to my sis bc shes not goin to b w us lng.”

Malkin links to an e-mail to Debbie Schlussel from a relative of the victims, agreeing it was indeed an honor killing.

The mother and son, named Islam, disupute that the Muslim religion had anything to do with the murders. Rod Dreher responds:

My contention, though, is that it's vital to understand the cultural context in which a murder took place. Obviously men who are not Muslim or Arab kill their daughters. But however much it embarrasses contemporary Muslims, traditional Arab Muslim culture (and not only Arab Muslim culture) has certain views of women, of honor, of sexuality and of violence that, taken together, weakens or removes the taboo we in the West observe against violence against women. Understand what I'm saying: violence, even deadly violence, against women is (sadly, outrageously) a universal phenomenon. But it's far more acceptable in traditional Arab Muslim culture.

Comforting thought: this happened not in Pakistan, but in Dallas.

Another comforting thought: Yaser Abdel Said is still at large.

But this isn't about Islamic culture. Nothing to see here. Move along. That's right. Just go back to your simple little lives. Forget this ever happened. Forget. Forget.