A murder trial overseas generally doesn’t generate much attention in the U.S., but there’s one every American should be paying attention to.
Two Syrian brothers are facing decades in prison in the Netherlands, charged with cooperating with their father in the murder of their sister — an 18-year-old who rebelled against the family’s strict Muslim lifestyle.
The young woman, Ryan Al Najjar, was ultimately killed over a TikTok video that embarrassed her father, prosecutors said.
The killing took place in May 2024, when brothers Mohamed al-Najjar, 23, and Muhanad al-Najjar, 25, took their sister to meet with their father, Khaled Najjar, after picking her up at a home in Rotterdam, Holland, according to a January report by the British network GB News.
“The teenager was allegedly murdered by her Muslim male relatives for adopting a ‘Western’ lifestyle, which involved not wearing a headscarf, interacting with men, and using social media,” GB News reported.
Her body was found “drowned in a swamp,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
A teenage girl in the Netherlands was just murdered by her father and brothers after refusing to wear a hijab.
Ryan Al Najjar was just 18 years old.
Her family bound with tape and drowned in a ditch because she wasn’t following a “Muslim lifestyle” and had decided to stop… pic.twitter.com/okdzjwFD5T
— Samantha Smith (@SamanthaTaghoy) November 29, 2025
Her hands were bound and her ankles taped together, according to the Metro, a national newspaper in the U.K.
“The immediate cause of her death appears to be a live video on TikTok, showing Ryan without a headscarf and wearing makeup,” prosecutors said in a statement on Friday, according to Fox News.
“The video seriously embarrasses the family, according to their posts, as it does not fit within their traditional views.”
As horrifying as the charges are, the fact that the father has confessed is even worse — but he only did it after fleeing the Netherlands to avoid the consequences of his actions.
He also tried to clear his two sons of responsibility.
“The reason for the murder is between me and the judge, I will read that out to the court. The Dutch courts are fair and don’t treat anyone unfairly,” he wrote to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Should migration to the US from Muslim nations be severely limited?
He was reportedly in Istanbul, Turkey, by that point, and on his way to a new life in Syria, where he is apparently living. Prosecutors called his decision to flee “cowardly,” according to the New York Post.
Understandably enough, Dutch prosecutors aren’t buying the idea that the sons are innocent while the man who is confessing is conveniently beyond the reach of Dutch law at the moment.
He will be tried in absentia, according to the U.K.’s Metro.
A verdict in the brothers’ trial is expected in January, according to Fox.
It’s a story that’s sickening, of course. But it’s also a story Americans, or citizens of any Western country, should be paying attention to.
There’s no doubt that immigration has been a great thing for the United States in its long and storied history. But immigration needs to be controlled — not an invasion — and it needs to be handled with the understanding that those who are immigrating are truly ready to assimilate into their new society and leave behind ways of the Old Country that cannot be transferred.
And here’s a news flash: In the West, women live far freer lives than they do in the hidebound Islamic cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. (All those young American women who like to call themselves “progressive” might want to think about that once in a while.)
In the West, young women go to school, have jobs, and even wear makeup and make TikTok videos. Of course, they sometimes embarrass their fathers — but they don’t get killed over it.
Leftists who want to import the globe’s population into the most successful and affluent societies the world has ever known refuse to acknowledge they are also importing the world’s problems.
And some of the world’s biggest problems are rooted in the Islamic countries and cultures that have been essentially at war with the West for a millennium or more.
Regrettably, the sad case of Ryan Al Najjar and her murderous father is not unique. In January, an American-born girl of 14 was killed while visiting Pakistan for behavior similar to Ryan’s.
In a notorious case from Texas, Yaser Abdel Said, a Muslim immigrant from Egypt was convicted in 2022 of murdering both of his teenage daughters in because they were dating non-Muslims.
Like Khaled Najjar, Said tried to escape the consequences of his crime and remained on the lam for 12 years after murdering his own daughters in his taxi in 2008. But justice eventually caught up to him and he was sentenced to live in prison, as CNN.
Since its founding, the United States has been a beacon for immigrants seeking a better life — but that better life comes with the tradeoff that immigrants need to accept Western laws, if not the Western lifestyle.
A disturbingly high percentage of immigrants from Mulsim countries appear too unwilling unable to make that tradeoff, with consequences not only to themselves and their own families, but also to the society that took them in.
(Just ask the taxpayers of Minnesota about their Somali newcomers.)
Progressives don’t want Americans paying attention to incidents like the brutal murder of a young woman in the Netherlands last year.
Americans can’t afford not to be watching.
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