Qandeel Baloch, a 25 year old Pakistani social media star and provocateur for women’s rights, was murdered the other day by her brother in a reported honor killing. Honor killings are just what they sound like – the murder of a family member (overwhelmingly a young daughter or sister) because her actions purportedly dishonored the family.

Apparently, such murders occur 500 times a year in Pakistan, and 5000-20,000 times a year globally. While a few such murders occur in Hindu and Sikh families, the vast majority are of and by Muslims.

I was curious to see how her death was covered by the segment of the press known for an attitude of apologia towards Islam, so I ventured forth into the wilds of the Internet to seek out coverage and opinion. Mostly, I found dispassionate news reports i.e. facts without opinion. Given how polarized news coverage is nowadays and how difficult it is to find news divorced from opinion, I wasn’t quite sure of what I was seeing at first. Then it hit me. “Oh, they’re actually reporting facts and events without spin or commentary. How quaint!” There was substantial coverage, including news reports at Reuters, NBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, Vanity Fair, and Rolling stone.

What opinion I did find was “local” in flavor, with one open letter acknowledging that Baloch’s deliberate provocations made many uncomfortable and that there was a generalized sense of happiness in Pakistan that she was dead. I also found an editorial by a young Pakistani woman who acknowledges and laments her death at the hands of the society Baloch was fighting to change, and I learned that, while murder is murder, Pakistani law allows the family of a murdered member to pardon the murderer. While it’s reported that the brother is on the run and that the parents have been taken into custody, I suspect not much punishment will be meted.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much for our perpetually aggrieved chattering classes to be outraged over an incident like this, given that it happened on the other side of the world. Perhaps American feminists feel that their efforts are best devoted to advancing their cause in their homeland (a reasonable position, if correct). So, I looked at domestic honor killings.

We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s a bit of a challenge to cull out honor killings from overall crime stats, given the incentive families have to hide them from the public and from law enforcement. Still, one report shows at least a couple dozen such murders are documented every year in the US, and another suggests that many more go unreported. The fact that such killings are not a headline-grabbing outrage is quite damning and an indictment of a press corps that trips all over itself whenever a young attractive woman goes missing or is murdered. In Baloch’s case, her brother drugged her then strangled her to death. Imagine the outrage if a progressive white social media starlet was drugged unconscious and strangled by her devoutly Christian brother because she shamed the family.

We have evidence that, in the grievance hierarchy, Islam gets greater deference than many other aggrieved groups, and much has been written about liberal apologia regarding Islam. It seems that every terrorist attack with roots in radical Islam acts as as dog-whistle for the usual suspects to immediately scold us. They remind us that Islam is a religion of peace, that atrocities carried out in the name of Islam are perversions, and that we must respect the beliefs of the 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. That deference is embodied in the Left’s attitude towards people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam and advocate for women oppressed by Islamic culture. Ali has a perfect pedigree to be a hero of the Left. She’s a black woman who suffered both mentally and physically, under a repressive patriarchal society, who escaped that society, shunned its ways, and speaks loudly and at great danger to herself on behalf of her oppressed brethren.

The fact that Ali dares tread in a space that makes liberals squirm trumps all, however. Ali has called for a reformation of Islamic values to do away with violence and to incorporate a few grams of liberty and deference to secular authority. Were she a Christian, calling for reforms that would do away with opposition to homosexuality, abortion and birth control, she’d most assuredly be a liberal hero. But, since she’s focusing on a religion that the Left trips all over itself to exonerate, she’s treated like an embarrassing family member at a barbecue, even though what she asks for is wholly reasonable. The Left is quick and righteous with judgments against the nation’s most common religion when bad acts are carried out in its name, but is quicker and more righteous with defenses and “tolerance” for a minority religion in the name of which far greater atrocities are carried out.

Those atrocities include the recent mass shooting in Orlando and the recent mass-murder-by-truck in Nice, France. Both were carried out by individuals who apparently “radicalized” in allegiance to the teachings and messages propagated by ISIS. Neither had any “connect-the-dots” traceability to the ISIS organization. The latter seems to have perplexed our domestic solons, who see the lack of hard traceability to some mastermind instruction-giver as sufficient reason to disassociate the actions and perpetrators from radical Islam, or from Islam in general. I can understand how people who are so used to thinking in statist, hierarchical and authoritarian ways (i.e. modern liberals, who think government should control almost everything) might be puzzled by someone showing independent initiative rather than going through channels, but failure to understand someone else’s thought process doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

We continue to fail to blame the obvious. Our leaders, pundits and scolds continue to try and bend reality to false narratives, and continue to insist, against mounds of available evidence, that the bad actors who do violence are not motivated by the ideology they themselves declare they support. It’s past time they stop with with pseudo-erudite obfuscations. It’s past time they stop excusing an ideology and a religion that’s fundamentally at odds with individual liberty and self determination. It’s past time they stop the tu quoque fallacies and moral equivalences, and come to understand that it’s OK to accept individuals’ religious beliefs but ALSO OK to criticize and condemn that which they belief. After all, they do it to other religions all the time, without taking pains to note that that which they criticize isn’t embraced by all those who adhere to those religions.

Yes, radical Islam is a virulent strain of the ideology, not the entirety of islam. But, it’s a persistent strain, and even as we hear of military successes and the droning-of-the-month, we bear witness to mass murders in our own lands perpetrated by individuals who were exposed to and enticed by that strain. Our response should not be handwringing, excuses and apologies to those who aren’t radical, but instead a demand that the silent majority own up to and take the lead in condemning and combatting what’s become an all-too-common theme.

A society rooted in liberty must accept and protect the right of its individual members to believe what they choose, and to embrace the teachings of whatever believe they choose. A society rooted in liberty must also demand of all its individuals that they understand that their rights are bounded by the equally protected rights of others. There is no religious freedom justification for harming another. There is no multiculturalist tolerance required for any ideology that rejects the principles of liberty. Our leaders, pundits and scolds need to open their eyes, unplug their ears, uncork their mouths, and face the uncomfortable reality that the ideology they work so mightily to defend and excuse is itself the problem.

If you want to be a [fill in the blank] in our free Western society, you are free to do so, and our free Western society will defend and your right to believe as you wish. You, however must accept that your beliefs do not override others’ individual liberties. You are free to associate with whom you wish, belief what you wish, say what you wish and do what you wish, but you don’t get to deny others the same freedom.

If we don’t press that message, we are dooming ourselves and our free Western society.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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