HONORING THE FACTS
(In regards to Isabelle Novak’s Jan. 27 column, “Honor killings hit close to home.”)
First off, I must commend Ms. Novak for bringing attention to the honor killings that have taken place in the United States. It is a very important subject that the public must be aware of so that we can help prevent it from happening again.
As a senior at ASU, I have learned not to expect a lot from The State Press, however I would have hoped that the editorial board would have had the sense to fact check Ms. Novak's article.
The most glaring problem with her article is her claim that 5,000 of these types of murders take place every year in the United States.
According to the FBI, there were 13,636 reported murder victims in 2009. Seventy-seven percent were male. That means only 3,136 of the people murdered in 2009 were female.
Further more, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, there were approximately 2.5 million Muslims in the U.S. in 2009.
That means roughly one in 500 Muslim women is the victim of an honor killing every year. It's simply not true. According to a 2009 article in The USA Today there were six honor killings between 2007 and 2009.
Ms. Novak quotes an article by J. Grant Swank, Jr. that appeared in The Post Chronicle. The article in question is an editorial, and I would go as far as to claim that it was more of an anti-Muslim hate piece than an editorial.
My biggest problem is the way Ms. Novak targets Muslims worldwide, and especially American Muslims as bloodthirsty murderers by using grossly inflated numbers.
Matt Delgado Undergraduate
