I'm not sure how I feel about the current coverage of the case of Aqsa Parvez, the Mississauga girl whose father beat her to death recently.
There has been a lot said about his killing her "because she refused to wear a hijab" and, I don't know, maybe he saw it that way. But the thing is that abusers will abuse their victims for any and no reason. No one seems to be blaming the victim, which is nice, but I'm not convinced that the blame can be placed at the feet of Islam much more convincingly.
It's just not that simple. On the one hand, there's no doubt that a society that condones the use of violence by men to keep their wives and children in line will contain more abuse than one that does not, and that officially or de facto theocratic societies are more likely to hold such attitudes, and, among individuals, I suspect that devout practice of a strongly patriarchal religion is at least somewhat correlated with increased willingness among men to beat their wives and children, but even if these correlations hold there's no reasonable way to claim to know the causal direction, if any.
Are Western Europe and Canada more progressive than some other countries because we are less religious, or are we less religious because we are more progressive? Could even the most devout of Muslim men, if he had no problems with power or anger management, possibly beat his daughter to death?
Abusers abuse for power, for kicks, because it makes them feel bigger and better than their victims, and while it's possible that religious teachings and social approval can allow some abusers to reach extremes they wouldn't otherwise, and while religiously motivated peer pressure can cause otherwise loving parents to behave abusively in limited ways, I just don't think, ultimately, that we can draw any conclusions about this case other than that Aqsa Parvez's father is a lowly, scum sucking child abuser and should rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life.
