February 21, 2007
I disappointed my Dad, too.
Ian at Benevolent Misanthropy posts this sad story, noting that it is neither surprising nor unique.
A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle, an inquest heard yesterday.Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages.
Their lives are not yours to take, Sir. That is the fundamental bankruptcy of that belief system.
Sorry for the flippant headline. My father was indeed devastated when I left school to pursue a musical career. But he knew the wise words of the Lebanese poet Kalil Gibran, "Your children are not your children."