It's been a while, and I didn't want anyone to think I'd abandoned my fixations. It's just not like me to do that.

Speaking of fixations, the word applies in spades to the legitimate concerns which Muslim fathers here and abroad maintain concerning the conduct and appearance of their beloved daughters. Sometimes they are obliged to harm even adult daughters in order to teach them a lesson about respect for Al-lah, and a woman's place in the world.

America the great Melting Pot prides herself on embracing diverse customs and rituals observed by persons of all nationalities, ethnicities, and creeds. Phoenix, Arizona now joins the growing list of lucky American cities which have been privileged to witness what is known in Muslim culture as an "honor killing". Muslims are above all people of honor, to the point that they will openly and proudly kill for their faith.

Doting traditional-Muslim father Faleh Almaleki, 48, ran over his 20 year-old daughter Noor and Noor's boyfriend's mother with his two-ton jeep in a suburban parking lot last week, by his admission because of the unseemly "Western" manner in which she dressed (displaying skin) and behaved (shopping; actively seeking a career outside the home). Noor has just died of her injuries. Almaleki's relatives say there is no truth to reports he himself regularly frequented strip clubs and consumed alcohol, and Islamic clerics confirm it has little bearing on the rectitude of his honorable act undertaken to cleanse his daughter's taint upon Islam.

Displaying the well-known principled consistency and selfless courage of the modern Muslim male, Almaleki fled to Mexico immediately after the honor killing, abandoned the death vehicle, boarded a plane, and tried to enter the U.K., where he believed, based on recent British displays of hands-off accomodation for the requirements of Islamic diversity, that he might better fight extradition to America and thereby avoid facing the consequences----or enjoying the accolades, one of the two---from his bold act of religious piety. Britain inexplicably declined to receive him, and Almaleki sits, newly unrepentant, in an Arizona jail.

I hesitate to call it xenophobia or cultural bigotry without further evidences, but it's difficult to shed those labels when we consider the almost total major-media blackout on this story, a newsworthy cultural event of national significance, but yes, involving Muslim Americans. Even typically-vocal Muslim advocacy groups like CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, have somehow been "persuaded" to forego their familiar clarion calls under dramatic circumstances like these for vigilance against anti-Muslim ignorance and hatred. Muslim civic and religious leaders, local and national, have declined to appear in support of Almaleki, or for that matter to express any public opinion on the honorable ritual one way or the other.

A quick check of the ever-comprehensive Google News pages, extended to their very limit, reveals only limited local coverage of Mr. Almaleki's supreme sacrifice, and some chattering from the usual right-wing "news" sites and extremist blogs. Small solace, to be sure, but we did see prominently featured on the Google News front page today that the U.S. government has reached a million-plus dollar settlement with a few Muslim men who were mistakenly and rather roughly detained by authorities in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 bombings.

On to wall-to-wall national coverage of the trials of Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn and abortion-doctor killer Scott Roeder, wherein the deadly consequences of inhumane religious ideology can be properly and fully deplored without giving offense to our honorable Muslim citizens. It looks like the same good judgement and sensitivity will be employed to bar all but local coverage of the proceedings against the jihadist murderer of the Arkansas military recruiter, contemporaneously, as of course we all recall, to the killing of the heroic Dr. Tiller.