On April 29th in Dearborn, Michigan, history will be made. The Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings will be held at the Hyatt Hotel in Dearborn. Hosting the Conference and also speaking are AFDI/SIOA executive director Pamela Geller, publisher of the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog, executive director of AFDI and SIOA, and author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance, and AFDI/SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of Jihad Watch.
Dearborn law enforcement is on the receiving end of a lawsuit alleging a cover up of honor killings. The lawsuit challenges the official cooperation by the city of Dearborn, Mich., which has one of the largest populations of Muslims in the U.S., with Islamic interests: that under the recognized "Shariah" law in the city, there have been "honor killing" murders that have been "covered up."
The misinformation and lack of knowledge of sharia law and honor violence is part of the problem. Law enforcement should be pursuing not just the murderers but the accomplices, as often the entire family is involved. According to Laura Reckart, lead prosecutor in Arizona v. Almaleki, the Noor Almaleki murder trial was the first case in the U.S. where "honor killing" was successfully used to obtain a conviction of a father who murdered his daughter. but prosecutors were disappointed in the conviction of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. The prosecution believed Almaleki should have been convicted of first-degree murder. They had clearly proved premeditation.
We will address honor violence from the legal perspective, sharia law and American courts.
Jessica Mokdad was a 20-year-old Muslim woman in Warren, Michigan, who was brutally murdered in May 2011. Fox News Detroit reported: "Authorities say a Minnesota man killed his 20-year-old stepdaughter in Michigan because she left home and wasn't following Islam." Jessica's stepfather, a devout Muslim, tracked his stepdaughter over four states to murder her for bringing dishonor on her family.
Darwin Jiles, Jessica's close friend, said Jessica lived in abject terror. She feared she would be honor killed by her stepfather. She suffered in her father's household as well, pressured to subjugate herself and live under Islamic law.
Jessica did not want wear the hijab and "did not want to be of the Islamic religion."
Speakers:
Pamela Geller is the publisher of Atlas Shrugs.com and executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books) and The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America with Robert Spencer (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton), (Simon & Schuster). She is also a regular columnist for World Net Daily, the American Thinker, and other publications.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of twelve books, including two New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery). His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins (ISI). Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.
Nonie Darwish is the president of Former Muslims United and the author of The Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East (Wiley); Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law (Thomas Nelson); and Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror (Sentinel).
James Lafferty is the leader of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Taskforce (VAST). The mission of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force is to oppose and assist others in resisting the implementation of the radical, barbaric and anti-Constitutional Shariah law in Virginia or anywhere in America.
Michael Coren hosts The Arena with Michael Coren on Canada’s Sun News TV every weeknight at 7pm ET. He is also a weekly columnist, published every Saturday, with the Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg Sun and The London Free Press, and in more than a dozen other daily and weekly newspapers across Canada. He is also a columnist for Women's Post, The Catholic Register, The Landowner and The Interim. He is the best-selling author of thirteen books, including biographies of GK Chesterton, HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.
David Wood is a Christian activist and missionary. He has degrees in philosophy and biology and is currently pursing a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion. He is a leader of the Acts 17 Apologetics Ministry, which has sued the City of Dearborn for its free speech rights after the city endorsed Sharia restrictions on Christian proselytizing and arrested several members of his group for talking about Christianity with Muslims.
Magdi Khalil is a Coptic Christian political analyst, researcher, author and executive editor of the Egyptian weekly Watani International. He is also a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, London, a free-lance writer for several Arabic language newspapers, and a frequent contributor to Middle East broadcast news TV. Khalil has also published three books and written numerous research papers on citizenship rights, civil society, and the situation of minorities in the Middle East. He is one of the most prominent advocates of human rights in Egypt. He focuses in his writings on minorities, including Copts in Egypt.
Robert Muise co-founder and senior counsel of the American Freedom Law Center. He is an expert in constitutional law. The last twelve years of his law practice has been dedicated to defending religious liberties, the freedom of speech, and the right to life in state and federal trial and appellate courts all across the country. More recently, Mr. Muise has been involved in numerous cases defending American freedoms against the growing threat of sharia. Prior to starting his constitutional law practice in 2000, Mr. Muise served thirteen years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Darwin Jiles was a close friend of Jessica Mokdad who offers firsthand testimony to the fact that Jessica was a victim of Islamic honor killing.
Pamela Geller said in a statement: "Despite pressure from the media and members of Jessica's family who want to cover up the honor killing aspect of her murder, we are not going to change the name of the conference. Unlike those closest to her, we are going to honor Jessica's memory and stand up against the brutal practice that took her life." Several Mokdad family members have alleged that Jessica's murder was not an honor killing, despite the overwhelming evidence that it was. However, multiple news reports on the murder were quite clear that her stepfather killed Jessica because she "wasn't following Islam" (report from TwinCities.com) and was "not adhering to Muslim customs" (Star Tribune).
Arab American News reported that the last recorded dispute between Jessica Mokdad and her stepfather was over the wearing of the hijab (head scarf), which he originally forced her to wear (just as in the honor murder of Canadian teen Aqsa Parvez). Jessica didn't want to wear it, thereby bringing shame on him and the family. Her stepfather, Rahim Alfetlawi, who murdered her, was pathologically controlling, after the pattern of honor killers. At one point she called her father and told him: "Dad, I can't live here anymore, he's too strict, I can't even go to the store to buy a pop if I want."
Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Contaldo said: "He thought she was becoming too Westernized. I think this was a very nice young lady wanting to experiment with Western culture without control and without abuse." The Detroit Free Press reported: "Mokdad's mother told police that Alfetlawi felt so shamed by her daughter's Western ways, he killed her in an honor killing," Warren Police Sgt. Stephen Mills said. Alfetlawi was so concerned about her behavior that he even forced her to go to a mosque and marry her boyfriend.
The Daily Mail reported this from London: "Devout Muslim stalks his step-daughter over four states 'before killing her for being too Western." The Daily Tribune reported: Stepfather charged with murder in Warren, upset victim didn't adhere to Muslim customs.
And Alexis Wiley of Fox Detroit reported, "He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious."
Geller said in a statement: "We've named the Conference after her as part of our ongoing campaign to raise awareness and bring a stop to the phenomenon of Islamic honor killing. These girls have rights, too, they're human beings, and yet they're completely forgotten in our politically correct culture, in which speech that is offensive to Islam is increasingly forbidden. We're standing for the human rights of girls like Jessica Mokdad."
April 29th, 5pm to 8pm
