How sad, really, that American activists, who have paid absolutely no attention to the exclusion of women and children from "bias crime" protection now wish to agitate for it because these particular victims are, in addition to being women, minority women.  This is also why they will fail -- because bias laws as they are selectively enforced in the U.S. have actually worked to naturalize and normalize gender violence against women -- by design.  

Reminds me of the Mark Anthony Lewis case -- raped nine women, was charged with eight hate crimes in Chicago: seven "anti-Asian" ones for raping Asian women, one "anti-Asian" one for raping an Hispanic woman he thought was Asian.  The ninth victim was a white Serbian immigrant, and so her rape wasn't prosecuted as hate.  

I guess it was just sort of a neutral sexual assault.  Lukewarm, perhaps.  

But much as I sympathize with Ahmed, and I do a great deal, there is a lesson here for demanding new, specialized laws rather than the enforcement of the laws that apply to everyone -- here, the law against murder.  You mystify the crime and empower defendants who will claim that such prosecutions are suspect because they are themselves a form of bias -- and so it goes on and on.  

Look at L.A.  Many Hispanic-on-black gang murders are being counted as hate crimes while black-on-Hispanic gang murders are not.  So in addition to the bloodshed in the streets, you have veritable war raging between black and Hispanic activists and politicians.  Of course, when the crime is Hispanic-on-black, it's counted in data collection as white-on-black because Hispanics count as a victim category but are recorded as white when they're the offender (you can't make this stuff up).  But more to the point, bias crime law enforcement certainly isn't increasing the incidence of spontaneous outbursts of Kumbaya at council meetings.

At least there's one good thing. 

"the enforcement of the laws that apply to everyone -- here, the law against murder."

Do you people even get the concept of aggravating and extenuating circumstances?

 Yes, in fact, I do understand the law of sentencing enhancement.  Also the policy and practice, often very different things.  And when I criticize somebody's comment, I sign my name.

Bias crime laws are quite different from other types of penalty enhancement because they attempt to codify punishment based on political or social views.  They're not simply another flavor of premeditation that applies to all criminals.  They represent a tremendous departure from all other elements determined to be aggravating or mitigating factors in punishing crime. 

And that is merely the law on paper.  The real impact of these laws -- and the point at which they justify a relative valuation of human suffering from the victim's perspective that is really quite morally grotesque, occurs in enforcement.  It should come as no surprise that a set of laws designed to appease special, political interest groups would open the door to pandering to special, political interest groups in their application -- a vicious circle that most frequently backfires on women in particular.  I predict that based on former routine subjectivity in the application of these laws, efforts to single out honor killing for enhancement may actually open the door to stronger defenses of the practice in the courtroom, not the opposite. 

But I must reiterate that I support the cause of pressuring the justice system to investigate and prosecute honor killings to the fullest extent of the law.  I have worked on behalf of this cause in the past.  I personally sponsored the Iranian women's group who came to Atlanta to protest the inclusion of their government's team in the 1996 Olympics because of my opposition to the Iranian government's abuse and oppression of women.  So when I say I am an ally, I mean it.  What I am offering here is an opinion about a legal strategy that is morally questionable and, in practice, has backfired terribly on women in every single application in the United States, Canada, and in many other countries.