Remember the case in which Faleh al-Maleki, an Iraqi-American father brutally ran over his daughter, Noor, in Arizona, then attempted to escape but was apprehended in Britain and returned to face justice?

Guess what's just happened? The Arizona prosecutors have been scared off seeking the death penalty. Public defender Billie Little raised the specter of "How will it look for Christians to execute a Muslim?"

I kid you not.

Billy Little asked the judge to "take special precautions to ensure the County Attorney's Office wouldn't wrongly seek the death penalty because Almaleki is a Muslim." Little called for an "open process (to) provide some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs," referring to County Attorney Andrew Thomas' Christian faith.

Whoa!

Words fail me here. Are Christian lawyers, by definition, hopelessly biased against Muslims? This is a fact not in evidence. Is the public defender Christian? Why should this matter in America? What if the judge is Christian? Does Billy Little understand that Muslim judges do not usually prosecute men who honor murder their wives, sisters, or daughters?

But prithee pause. Allow me to take another approach. If Billy Little is that concerned with not shedding Muslim blood: Faleh al-Maleki is a Muslim who also killed a Muslim; he rode right over his daughter with a two-ton jeep. Is her female Muslim blood cheaper than his male Muslim blood? And, let's not forget: Al-Maleki attempted to murder another Muslim woman who was sheltering his daughter.

Little also rattled his sword about the importance of keeping "religion" out of the proceeding…while simultaneously using the defendant's religion to insist that his life be spared! In any event, even most Islamists insist that Islam has nothing to do with honor killings, that it is a tribal custom, one that existed long before Islam arose. (And, I must add, a custom which all-mighty Islam has been unable or unwilling to abolish).

Fine. Keep religion out of it if you must. Call it a dirty tribal custom. But let's be honest. You just don't see many Buddhists, Jews, or Christians killing their daughters because they refuse to remain in arranged marriages or because they want to lead independent lives. This was precisely why al-Maleki killed his daughter.

Why have the prosecutors backed down? Has the same politically correct culture that has so fatally infected the American military (Fort Hood, etc.) infected the prosecutor's office as well? Are Arizonians unconsciously guilty about living on indigenous Apache and Navajo land and see al-Maleki as a symbol of indigenous cultures?

I am not a huge fan of the death penalty; it is applied in racially biased ways. And yet: Do the prosecutors really believe that being sentenced to life in prison (as an "honorable" man) will deter the next dishonorable honor killer in our midst, to whom his miserable, misogynist concept of "honor" is more important than life? Certainly, far more important than female life.