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On Sunday night, ABC TV news reported the “honour killing” of Pakistan’s provocative social media celebrity Quandeel Baloch, skillfully avoiding mention of the practice as an application of Islamic law. It’s a small thing, but a big red flag to the ABC’s refusal to name and shame Islam for the atrocities perpetrated in its name.
Baloch, 26, set out to challenge what she termed “deeply conservative Muslim Pakistan” by posting photos and videos on her Facebook and Instagram pages. She had more than 120,000 Instagram followers, mostly young girls who yearned to break free of traditional societal restrictions. The pictures would scarcely raise an eyebrow in Western countries, but were regarded as so offensively raunchy in Pakistan they led to death threats and appeals for government protection. Baloch knew what she was doing, saying on her Facebook account she was “trying to change the typical orthodox mindset of Pakistan.” Whether she recognised the threat from her own brother is not known.
The ABC’s news item concluded (emphasis added): “Hundreds of women are killed in Pakistan every year by family members. It’s usually a punishment for breaching the strict cultural rules governing women’s behaviour.”
It’s far worse than that. In 2015, some 1100 women are known to have been killed by relatives in what Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission declares were premeditated murders. While murder is punishable by law, punishment is suspended 
if the family forgives the murderer, who after all, is one of their own. In the case of Baloch (pictured at left in one of the poses that cost her life), brother Waseem expressed no regrets when caught, saying he had to defend the honour of the family. No doubt he will walk free. Farzana Bari, Director of Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, says there has been a complete failure of the state and society to deal with honour killings.
But these atrocities continue to prompt a conflict of emotions for the ABC. Its bubbling feminist outrage is anxious to expose honour killings, but its complacency on Islam must mute the Muslim aspect of the crime. So we see the News Division resorting to the phrase “strict cultural rules”, a deliberate religio-political bowdlerisation of the fact the crime was ordained by strict application of Islamic law, faithfully observed by many tribal groups.
Over the years, the ABC’s Editorial Guidelines and Code of Practice have been so watered down that it is now almost impossible to ping such distortions. But it could still be argued that the ritual suppression of references to Muslims and Islam breach Standards 4.1 on due impartiality, and 4.4 because it misrepresents the true perspective of practices in Pakistan.
Yes, it’s a minor matter, but part of the ABC’s larger problem: its reluctance to acknowledge Islamic responsibility for terrorist acts, the practice of many of its broadcasters to sneeringly disparage commentators who draw attention to problems emanating from Islamic teachings, and its general refusal to discuss openly the subversive teachings of Islam as a threat to Australia and the West.
It has to be said: the ABC runs protection on Muslims and Islam. It puts the Islamic name on its crimes only when it is no longer possible to avoid doing so.
Geoffrey Luck was an ABC journalist for 26 years
I wonder if Wally Witless the Wonderful Wizard of Weasel Words will weave a woeful wexcuse?
It’s not really a serious matter worth much time or news space as she is just a dead, decaying female and therefore of no importance. Moving right on to sport and global warming weather next.
It’s a form of racism by the ABC and others. The ultimate aim of “multiculturalism”, so beloved by the ABC, is to keep the “foreigners” in their ethnic boxes where they can look after themselves in a mini apartheid state. If they do something that does not accord with Australian values it is written off as “culture”, and of course we must not IMPOSE our values on other cultures. Hello, we have a culture too, and that needs respecting, particularly as we have invited these others to come and share our culture, and most of whom are happy to do so but are restrained from doing so not only by the fruitcakes in their own “communities” but also by racist ABC types.
Should that be:-
Moving right on to “climate change” and sport next?
Climate Change is Strategy, Weather is Tactics.
The prophesies of the profiteer pseudo-science cultists survive neither in the long, nor the short term.
I don’t think you can call the ABC ‘racist’, padraic, they are after all the ABC, an entirely unbiased organisation. We are the racists for calling Islam an intolerant religion, are we not?
Isn’t interesting, our being so accomodating towards multiculturalism, an accomodation Malcolm Wormpill so lauds: and it is readily transplanted to Saudi Arabia, to Pakistan and Bangladesh, Northern Nigeria and Somalia, where tolerance of Christianity and Zoroastrianism truly touches the heart.
The first thing we should do is to stop adopting their recent redefinition of the word ‘racist’. It plays right into their agenda.
I agree with pgang. I used the word ‘racist’ because the ratbags who toss it around with gay abandon don’t have the mental capacity to understand what it really means. They are applying it to a religion full of different races, for God’s sake. Even in the past it has been misused to describe ethnic entities within the same racial group or as defined by skin colour. We need a new word – why not “ratbags”? Any other offers?
No need to go overseas to witness barbarity towards females. We have the situation in Australia where Aboriginal women are many, many times more likely to be subjected to domestic violence than women of European extraction. The ABC [and most of the media] ignores this, perhaps because of ‘cultural sensitivity’ or maybe because it doesn’t fit the mythical ‘noble savage’ narrative first put forward by Rousseau. This violence is not a new phenomenon, I remember old history books with quotes from Arthur Phillips diary, outlining how Arthur Phillips was appalled by the treatment of aboriginal women by aboriginal men. He even hanged a few for their killing of aboriginal women. No such books would be printed now regardless of how accurate they are, or that Phillips was merely outlining what he saw and that it was written before the era of political correctness and the censorship that P.C. entails.
Similarly, we saw this selective outrage with the Royal Commission into child abuse. Only Christian organisations were investigated and a blind eye was turned towards the many of the real areas of current child abuse i.e. on remote aboriginal communities and the Muslim community with their incidence of female genital mutilation.
The Left will have it’s day. As a friend of mine used to say, “every dog has his day – and a bitch has a week”!!!
It is a fascinating fact that the honour of muslim families lies with the women, not the men. Where we would say that ” he is a man of honour” for someone who exhibits great character, bravery and care for the defenseless, muslims believe that their men do not have those traits. So the luckless females are made to be the scapegoat for the poor behaviour of men. A woman is raped, she not the perpetrator is punished. A woman goes to work to support her fatherless children and her son kills her for ” honour”. A young woman speaks out against the prohibitions on girls getting an education and she is nearly killed for her impudence. What we would call callous, cowardly behaviour is called honourable by the religion of peace.
When I look at the feminists of today I shudder to think what those brave women who fought and sometimes died to get them the lives they have today would think of them.
Well said Geoffrey Luck:”The ABC runs protection on Muslims and Islam”; and they do it on the public purse.
Ironical to see that it is Pauline Hanson of One Nation who is largely alone as an elected representative to shoulder the task of alerting the public to the unprecedented danger of non selective immigration. As letter writer Fabio Scalia said in The Australian [18/07] “You can’t win a war while continuing to import the enemy”.