Our religion and the beheading in Buffalo

Susan Jacoby -- responding to the beheading 37-year-old mother-of-two Aasiya Hassan by her husband -- issues a call to conscience:

Of course there is a general relationship between patriarchal religion and domestic violence, and the more rigid and traditional the form of patriarchal religion, the stronger the relationship. Whether this particular murder by beheading in Buffalo was an "ordinary" instance of domestic violence or whether the Pakistani-born Muslim husband was animated by a sense of entitlement derived from his interpretation of Islam, or by his upbringing in a society in which "honor killings" are often winked at by law enforcement authorities, I do not know. [ . . . ] But the official skittishness and media evasions surrounding this case are part of the grand American tradition of pretending that religion has only good effects on individuals and society.

Read her honest, complex and disturbing piece here.