Police in the Dallas area are on a manhunt for a Muslim taxi driver who they believe murdered his two daughters and left their bodies in his cab in a hotel parking lot. His son is denying it, but the incident has the markings of an Islamic honor killing (for which the sons commonly defend their fathers anyway): The Egyptian man, Yaser Abdel Said, had been “upset with his daughters’ dating activities,” reports The Dallas Morning News.

FOX 4 News further adds that it “spoke with two of Said’s family members who want to remain anonymous. They say [the daughters] dressed in Western clothes and listened to pop music. They described Said as angry with his daughters for not acting like proper Muslim girls.” This MySpace page of the older sister, Amina, shows the 18-year-old, who called herself “semirockerchic,” and her 17-year-old sister Sarah in Western dress, with makeup and spaghetti-strap tops.

A friend of the younger sister’s told the News that Said threatened to harm the older sister when he discovered she had a boyfriend: “She said that one day when she came home — the day he found out about Amina’s boyfriend — he told Sarah, ‘I’m going to put a bullet through Amina’s head, and you better get used to her because she’s not going to be around much longer.’ ” But the girls’ brother says that Islam played no part. “It’s something else. Religion has nothing to do with it,” he told the News, but declined to say what.

Dallas-area Muslims haven’t reacted well to claims that Islamic fundamentalism might be at the bottom. They and the media in Dallas have an uneasy relationship anyway, most notably manifested with the News. The recent Holy Land Foundation trial — the culmination, which ultimately ended in a mistrial, of the FBI’s thick dossier on a group it claims has funneled $12 million to Hamas — hasn’t helped matters.

Dallasites are now reconsidering the prescience of a report by the Texas Public Safety Department released Dec. 6 about “sudden jihad syndrome” — sympathy for groups like al Qaeda from individual “wannabes,” who then carry out domestic terror attacks. The report cites an al Qaeda theorist named Abu Mu’ab al Suri, who claims the future of terrorism depends on individuals. Examples include a Palestinian-Jordanian Muslim’s attempt to drive his car into an Arizona Home Depot and kill everyone inside, or this Dec. 10 murder in Canada — one of the few confirmed honor killings in the Western Hemisphere — where a 16-year-old daughter refused to wear her hijab and was choked by her father, who was apparently also aided by his son.

Texas authorities continued a manhunt yesterday for a Muslim taxi driver accused of murdering his teenage daughters. The Washington Times reports:

Yaser Abdel Said, 50, was wanted on a warrant for capital murder after police say he shot the girls Tuesday and left them to die in his taxi, which was found parked in front a hotel in Las Colinas, a suburb north of Dallas…

Friends of Amina Yaser Said, 18, and Sarah Yaser Said, 17, described the girls to the Dallas Morning News as “extremely smart - like geniuses,” saying the slain sisters had been enrolled in advanced placement classes and were active in soccer and tennis at suburban Lewisville High School.

While police refused to discuss a possible motive for the crimes, family and friends told reporters that the girls’ Westernized lifestyle caused conflict with their Muslim father, who immigrated from Egypt in the 1980s…Two boys who said they had been dating the sisters told KXAS-TV in Dallas that Mr. Said was upset that his daughters were involved with non-Muslims.

If honor-killing proves to be the father’s motive, what do you think will be the effect on Americans’ perception of Islam?