PHOTO: Amina Said (L), 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead by their father Yaser at their home in Irving, Texas, in January 2008. Said was upset by his daughters' "Western ways" and was assisted in the killing by his wife, the girls' mother. The victims of honor killings are largely teenage daughters or young women. Unlike ordinary domestic violence, honor killings often involve multiple family members as perpetrators.
Phyllis Chelser, Middle East Quarterly
On February 12, 2009, Muzzammil Hassan informed police that he had beheaded his wife. Hassan had emigrated to the United States 30 years ago and, after a successful banking career, had founded Bridges TV, a Muslim-interest network which aims, according to its website, "to foster a greater understanding among many cultures and diverse populations." Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III told The Buffalo News that "this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," and Khalid Qazi, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, told the New York Post that Islam forbids such domestic violence. While Muslim advocacy organizations argue that honor killings are a misnomer stigmatizing Muslims for what is simply domestic violence, a problem that has nothing to do with religion, Phyllis Chesler, who just completed a study of more than 50 instances of North American honor killings, says the evidence suggest otherwise.
Background and Denial
Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family's domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents' wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family.
Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families.[2] This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders.[3] The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women's empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.[4]
There are very few studies of honor killing, however, as the motivation for such killings is cleansing alleged dishonor and the families do not wish to bring further attention to their shame, so do not cooperate with researchers. Often, they deny honor crimes completely and say the victim simply went missing or committed suicide. Nevertheless, honor crimes are increasingly visible in the media. Police, politicians, and feminist activists in Europe and in some Muslim countries are beginning to treat them as a serious social problem.[5]
Willingness to address the problem of honor killing, however, does not extend to many Muslim advocacy groups in North America. The well-publicized denials of U.S.-based advocacy groups are ironic given the debate in the Middle East. While the religious establishment in Jordan, for example, says that honor killing is a relic of pre-Islamic Arab culture, Muslim Brotherhood groups in Jordan have publicly disagreed to argue the Islamic religious imperative to protect honor.[6]
Yotam Feldner, a researcher at the Middle East Media Research Institute, quotes a psychiatrist in Gaza who describes the honor killing culture as one in which a man who refrains from "washing shame with blood" is a "coward who is not worthy of living .. as less than a man."
Therefore, it is no surprise that the Jordanian penal code is quite lenient towards honor killers. While honor killing may be a custom that originated in the pagan, pre-Islamic past, contemporary Islamist interpretations of religious law prevail. As Feldner puts it: "Some important Islamic scholars in Jordan have even gone further by declaring honor crimes an Islamic imperative that derives from the 'values of virility advocated by Islam.'"[7]
Islamist advocacy organizations, however, argue that such killings have nothing to do with Islam or Muslims, that domestic violence cuts across all faiths, and that the phrase "honor killing" stigmatizes Muslims whose behavior is no different than that of non-Muslims. For example, in response to a well-publicized 2000 honor killing, SoundVision.com, an Islamic information and products site, published an article that argued,
Four other women were killed in Chicago in the same month .. They were white, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian … Islam is not responsible for [the Muslim woman's] death. Nor is Christianity responsible for the deaths of the other women.[8]
In 2007, after Aqsa Parvez was murdered by her father in Toronto for not wearing hijab (a head covering), Sheila Musaji wrote in the American Muslim, "Although this certainly is a case of domestic violence … 'honor' killings are not only a Muslim problem, and there is no 'honor' involved."[9] Mohammed Elmasry, of the Canadian Islamic Congress, also dismissed the problem. "I don't want the public to think that this is an Islamic issue or an immigrant issue. It is a teenager issue," he said.[10]
Indeed, denial is rife. In 2008, after Kandeela Sandal was murdered for honor by her father in Atlanta because she wanted a divorce, Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told the media that "most South Asian communities in the United States" enjoy "wonderful" relationships within their families and said, "This isn't a rampant problem within South Asian communities.
What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities."[11] In October 2008, Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), dismissed any Islamic connection to a prominent Dallas honor killing, labeled as such by the FBI, arguing, "As far as we're concerned, until the motive is proven in a court of law, this is [just] a homicide." He continued, "We [Muslims] don't have the market on jealous husbands .. or domestic violence … This is not Islamic culture." [12]
Case studies suggest otherwise.
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“The only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam.”
The most sacred place in Islam is the Ka'ba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Ka'ba is a mosque (built by Abraham according to Muslim tradition) built around a black stone. The Prophet Muhammad designated Mecca as the holy city of Islam and the direction (qibla) in which all Muslims should offer their prayers. There is a small building two blocks up the street from the Ka'ba that would be a perfect size to start a Christian Church in.
The second most sacred place in Islam is Medina. Medina is a city in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, and serves as the capital of the Al Madinah Province. It is the second holiest city in Islam, and the burial place of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and it is historically significant for being his home after the Hijrah. Believe it or not, two blocks up the street there is a small building that would be a perfect size to start a Christian Church in.
Who would I contact in Saudi Arabia to find out about coming over to Mecca and then Medina to start the Christian Churches there? Our parish is looking forward to spreading the "Word" in Saudi Arabia. God bless. P.S. Say, you don't think we will run into any problems, do you?
Therapist M. Scott Peck, in "The Road Less Traveled," relates a discussion in marriage group therapy in a group that seemed to be making little progress. He asked the husbands what their wives' purpose was in the marriage. To take care of the house, the kids and his sexual needs, they said. The wives likewise answered that it was the husbands' purpose to repair the house and the car and earn money.
Peck offered to tell them what he thought his wife's and his purposes were to each other.
He said his purpose was to love and support his wife and encourage her growth and development toward being the best and happiest human being she could be, and hers was the same for him.
There you go.
In fairness, these were typical average traditional supposedly Christian American families. Dysfunctional.
A website about issues pertaining to Islam.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com /
Little of it is pleasant.
When our children disappoint us in nominally-Christian America by not wanting to be carbon copies of us and our beliefs, we may kick them out of the house, cut off their allowance, write them out of the will or cease to have any contact. We generally don't stab them, behead them or run over them. If someone does, it's premeditated murder and taken very seriously.
Look up "Asia Bibi" or "Asia Noreen." Pakistan, our supposed allies in the war on terror .
Her goat damaged a neighbor's goat's trough. That caused bad feelings in the village.
Later, she brought water to other women working in a field. They considered the water "unclean' because she is a Christian.
Offended, Asia said "Jesus died for mankind. What about Mohammed?"
They want to hang her for blasphemy, and the governor of Punjab was assassinated for asking for mercy for her. Muslim "scholars" who consider themselves moderate say sympathizers better not mourn blasphemers like her or they'll be next to die.
It is not (Islamo)phobia to fear cruelty, especially individual fanatical control-freak cruelty or organized, government-approved conform-or-die cruelty.
There is no such thing as an honour killing, it is murder. Everyone has a right to life and liberty.
Creeping Sharia in the United States
In some ways, it speaks of the goodness of America that we have had such difficulty coming to grips with the challenge of radical Islamists. It is our very commitment to religious liberty that makes us uncomfortable with defining our enemies in a way that appears linked with religious belief.
However, America's commitment to religious liberty has given radical Islamists a potent rhetorical weapon in their pursuit of sharia supremacy. In a deliberately dishonest campaign exploiting our belief in religious liberty, radical Islamists are actively engaged in a public relations campaign to try and browbeat and guilt Americans (and other Western countries) to accept the imposition of sharia in certain communities, no matter how deeply sharia law is in conflict with the protections afforded by the civil law and the democratic values undergirding our constitutional system.
The problem of creeping sharia is most visibly on display in France and in the United Kingdom, where there are Muslim enclaves in which the police have surrendered authority and sharia reigns. However, worrisome cases are starting to emerge in the United States that show sharia is coming here. Andy McCarthy's writings, including his new book The Grand Jihad, have been invaluable in tracking instances in which the American government and major public institutions have been unwilling to assert the protections of American law and American values over sharia's religious code. Some examples include:
In June 2009, a New Jersey state judge rejected an allegation that a Muslim man who punished his wife with pain for hours and then raped her repeatedly was guilty of criminal sexual assault, citing his religious beliefs as proof that he did not believe he was acting in a criminal matter. "This court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited." Thankfully, this ruling was reversed in an appellate court.
In May 2008, a disabled student at a public college being assisted by a dog was threatened by Muslim members of the student body, who were reluctant to touch the animal by the prescription of sharia. The school, St. Cloud State, chose not to engage the Muslim community, but simply gave the student credit without actually fulfilling the class hours so as to avoid conflict.
In a similar instance in November 2009, a high school senior in Owatonna, Minn., was suspended in order to protect him from the threat of violence by radical Islamists when he wrote an essay about the special privileges afforded his Somali Muslim counterparts in the school environment .
In order to accommodate sharia's prohibition of interest payments in financial transactions, the state of Minnesota buys homes from realtors and re-sells them to Muslims at an up-front price. It is simply not the function of government to use tax money to create financial transactions that correspond to a religious code. Moreover, it is a strategy to create a precedent for legal recognition of sharia within U.S. law.
Amazingly, there are strong allegations that the United States now owns the largest provider of sharia financing in the world: AIG.
Last month, police in Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Muslim population, arrested Christian missionaries for handing out copies of the Gospel of St. John on charges of "disturbing the peace." They were doing so on a public street outside an Arab festival in a way that is completely permissible by law, but, of course, forbidden by sharia's rules on proselytizing. This is a clear case of freedom of speech and the exercise of religious freedom being sacrificed in deference to sharia's intolerance against the preaching of religions other than Islam.
Shockingly, sharia honor killings-in which Muslim women are murdered by their husbands, brothers or other male family members for dishonoring their family-are also on the rise in America but do not receive national attention because they are considered "domestic disturbances." (A recent article in Marie Claire Magazine highlights recent cases and the efforts to bring national attention to this horrifying trend.)
Cases like this will become all the more common as radical Islamists grow more and more aggressive in the United States
Only Cowards Stone People to Death: An Islamic Religious Ritual
August 19, 2010 - by Phyllis Chesler
Yesterday, I appeared on Fox News’ The Strategy Room to discuss a recent stoning in Afghanistan and the issue of stoning in general. Kimberly Guilfoyle interviewed me both skillfully and graciously. The subject is a very distressing and somewhat mysterious one for most westerners.
What does it mean when a mob of men, numbering anywhere from 50 to 200, stone a female child to death — as happened in October of 2008 in Somalia? That poor soul was not only a 13-year-old child, she had also just been raped. Indeed, that was her sole “ crime ” and the reason for her torture-execution. She was forced into a hole and buried nearly up to her neck. She took a long time to die and kept crying out for her life. In addition to the 50 active stoners, 1000 more men cheered them on.
What does this tell us?
First, that barbarians are mainly cowards who do not view themselves as responsible for their actions. Everyone is the murderer and therefore, no one is the murderer. The group both absorbs and atones for any possible guilt or hesitation that even one individual might have felt. However, as we shall see, there is also another way of looking at this.
For a culture presumably so concerned with “honor,” so consumed with concepts of responsibility towards the family, clan, or “ummah” (Muslim people), those who stone a living being to death utterly shrink from any individual responsibility for carrying out their bloody deeds. Entire families become conspirators in an honor killing; village and religious councils collaborate to issue a death sentence; Muslim men sexually harass women in the streets (of Egypt) — and in large mosque-inflamed mobs (in Algeria).
In terms of stoning, which is primarily a contemporary Muslim-only custom, not only do cowardly men hide behind each other, clearly they lack the ability to act as individuals. That power is reserved for one man, one leader, one ruling cabal only. In Afghanistan, the Taliban hooligans threw the first stones.
This tells us something else that is important. The need for a mob is, in a sense, proof that the individuals who compose it are all being held hostage to the will of the psychopathic criminals who rule them. Oppose them, and you yourself might be stoned to death. Hostage-mobs also share the “guilt,” or rather, their leaders’ point of view. The leaders cannot be held accountable for their actions either — everyone did it.
In addition, sharing a so-called Muslim sinner’s blood, especially female blood, is yet another way to forge a blood-brotherhood that is based on male supremacism.
Stoning is practiced in contemporary Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria. In 2006, a poll conducted in “moderate” Indonesia found that 50% of Muslims there supported stoning in cases of adultery, however it is defined. Adultery might include: a married woman who is raped by a stranger, or a woman promised in marriage to one man but who chooses another. This is precisely what happened in the recent case in Afghanistan.
The Grand Torturer Khomeini brought stoning back to Iran. Uneducated mullahs in the provinces rather liked it. They also liked drugs, drug trafficking, forcing girls into prostitution and then jailing or hanging them for it; temporary “marriages”; forced veiling, etc. Although stoning is now under legal review in Iran, to date, eight men and three women await stoning execution.
In Iran, one woman, accused of adultery, was sentenced to be lashed 99 times — and then sentenced to be stoned to death. Due to an international campaign and due to the hard work of Iranian dissidents, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s sentence was delayed. But she was lashed 99 times and her teenage son was forced to witness her helplessness, humiliation, and torture — and, in a sense, forced to both share these emotions, second-hand with his mother. Her son’s presence before her nakedness was meant to shame them both and challenged him to become a very hard man as a way of avoiding an eventual nervous breakdown.
I am not sure whether there is any connection, but think about this. When Muslims go on pilgrimage to Mecca, part of their three day ritual includes stoning “The Devil.” Large groups literally throw stones at giant concrete pillars. This suggests that stoning is a Muslim religious ritual, not a tribal custom. Therefore, stoning a living human being is not only an act of human sacrifice — it is a classic religious ritual meant to glorify the stoners’ God.
A little like jihad if you ask me.
Yea, we need to defend the "Anointed One" since his ratings are going in the hole in the sand, how do you say? Oh, toilet. So we will just let the infidels call it " domestic violence "? Let the fillthy ones call it whatever they want. Never mind that my daughter wanted to change religions? It is like when we told the stupid Americans that our Muslim scholars says it supports airline safety , but it is "deeply concerned" about the use of airport scanners that show nude images of the human body. How ignorant the Americans are. Now, lets get back to work , this white wire here goes to the detonator.......
It's true, not all Muslims perform honor killings. But isn't it ironic that all honor killings are performed by Muslims? Every religion should be banned in my opinion. All of them [religions] should be illegal and shunned by society and extricated from our midst.
Of course, this is wishful thinking, but until religion is treated as it is, mythological fallacy, these things will continue to happen. How does one go about killing a child you reared for so many years? How do you do it? How do you ever justify this? Religion can actually help someone pull this off.
As humans, we are a long way from enlightenment.
There is no justification for murder unless under direct threat of death . Everyone of these terrible people that believe murdering someone will solve problems need to banished from society . It is an abhorrent idea.
Everything I do, I do it for you.
It is a fascinating aspect of the current debate that many Muslim advocacy groups are arguing that honor killings represent either an exclusively domestic violence issue or a simply cultural one - it is 'not part of Islam'.
Whether or not this is the case (and I would argue that there is some justification for debate - one could discuss Quranic verses such as 4:15 and 4:34 - however I am by no means an expert and as such do not want to venture any authority on the matter) I think this line of argument really misses the point.
Whilst I can sympathize with many Muslims who may feel they are being unfairly targeted in the post 9/11 climate of 'Islamophobia', I find myself equally frustrated by advocates who turn the 'Oriental' discourse on it's head to avoid any type of criticism.
It is true that honour killings are not an exclusively Islamic phenomenom, as it is known that as many as 5000 women per year in India are victims of honour killings. However I am certain many of the Muslim spokespeople are aware of the subterfuge of painting religion and culture as mutually exclusive.
The culture/religion dichotomy is academic -honor killings predominantly occur in Muslim world. This is undeniable. Moreover, they are frequently committed in rural areas amongst undereducated and illiterate communities, and frequently implicate fathers, mothers, and children as young as 11. They often occur in public places, as was the case in Sanliurfa, Turkey, where a 17 year old girl’s throat was slit by her 14 year old brother in the centre of the city marketplace.
These people are not experts in Islam – many cannot read and aren’t referring to specific verses in the Quran to justify their killings. However, they live in communities which are predominantly Islamic, and within which honour killings are seen as socially acceptable. Whether or not it is justified, people who commit honour crimes are committing murders on the BELIEF that their religion condones the practice. This is reinforced within a cultural framework wherein Islamic family traditions uphold the superiority of male power and patriarchy.
Furthermore, honour killings are occurring in societies where legal systems are legally sanctioning the behavior – for example within the Jordanian penal code mentioned above, where the notion of provocation borrowed from Western legal systems has been skillfully re-worded to protect people who kill for the notion of ‘honour’.
While I am far from an advocate of the provocation defense often evoked by perpetrators of domestic violence in Western countries, the legal definition of provocation aims to distinguish premeditated killings from those occurring in a climate of ‘loss of control’.
Honor killings, on the other hand, do not exhibit this key element of ‘heat of the moment’ behavior. They are frequently clearly premeditated, and tragically often the youngest members of the family are manipulated into committing the acts (murderers have been young as 11).
Whether misguided or not about what is allowed in Islam, hundreds, if not thousands of honour crimes are being committed every year in cultural environments where the behavior is viewed as socially acceptable. It’s counterproductive to argue that widespread killings are not occurring in a climate where they are culturally viewed as a right, but rather they are isolated pockets of domestic violence no different to what we witness many places worldwide. The social climate deems the behavior acceptable, and Islam plays a significant part of the lives of the people within that society.
Whether or not people committing honour crimes properly understand Islam seems irrelevant – family life and patriarchy is established around a social structure which people deem to be guided by Islamic principles. Islam is by no means the only factor, but it seems to be a significant one.
I am not going to simplify my criticism to a statement such as ‘the Muslim world needs to have a good look at itself’, however I feel it is counterproductive for Muslim advocates to deny any link between honour killings and moral and social codes within culture where Islamic belief plays a major part, which may be reinforcing social and gender hierarchies that allow such killings to occur.
Recognising a highly patriarchal problem may exist (perhaps not with Islam, but with the way people understand Islam) and responding to it through education, reform and legislation seems a more responsible reaction than to deny that Islam, which undeniably plays a significant force in the lives of many men who commit honour killings, could possibly be a major factor in shaping cultural values. As in any society, culture, and religion/morality/dogma are inextricably linked.