Public outrage yields progress in Syria, as the grand mufti condemns the crime as un-Islamic. But much remains to be done with respect to how the legal system handles such cases and sentences perpetrators, and ultimately concerning the generally permissive attitude toward violence against women supported by the sanction of wife-beating in Qur'an 4:34. By Rasha Elass for the Christian Science Monitor:
DAMASCUS, SYRIA - Sixteen-year-old Zahra Ezzo died at the hospital last month after a brutal attack. But it was her brother who confessed to killing her - and her family who appointed him to carry out the murder.
Some experts estimate that 200 to 300 honor killings like Zahra's occur every year in Syria. Most receive little or no attention. But Zahra's murder - in part because it happened in the capital and not a rural area - has compelled Syria's grand mufti, cleric Ahmad Hassoun, to publicly condemn the crime, calling for the first time for the immediate protection of girls at risk and for legal reform on the basis that such crimes are un-Islamic. President Bashar al-Assad has also promised to find a solution.
Among the public, too, debate is rising about the practice and the laws that protect men who carry out such killings.
A key question is whether the brother should go on trial for premeditated murder - the family had planned it for months - or as someone who had no choice because the clan's honor was at stake.
Syria's law is lenient on a man who kills or injures his female relative if he catches her in "illegitimate sexual acts with another," or in a "suspicious state with another." If Zahra's brother is tried under this law, he might get out of jail in three months.
"This is what we're trying to change," said Yumun Abu al-Hosn, a founding member of the Association for Women's Role Development, one of the few nongovernment organizations in Syria. The association runs the girls' shelter where Zahra took refuge in her final months.
"We may not be able to stop honor killings overnight, but at least if the crime is tried as premeditated murder, then Zahra and others like her will have some dignity in death."
Zahra's case is also compelling because of the events surrounding it.
According to Zahra before her death, say sources who spoke to her before she died, her father was having an extramarital affair. If the clan had discovered this, Zahra's father and his mistress might have both been killed. A friend of Zahra's father, a young man who took a liking to the then-15-year-old, threatened to tell all unless Zahra ran away with him.
She agreed. But when the clan discovered that Zahra had left, they decided to pursue both and kill them. But the police found them first. They put the man in jail, where he stands to serve a 15-year prison sentence for the kidnap and rape of a minor, and where he is safe from the clan's wrath. They put Zahra in the shelter.
But only for nine months. During that time, Zahra's family tried three times to regain custody of her, but the association refused, saying the family could not guarantee Zahra's safety.
The family then asked one of Zahra's cousins to marry her, which according to tradition would restore honor to the family. Fawaz hardly knew Zahra and was not in on the plot to kill her. He agreed to marry her first out of chivalry, then because he fell in love with her.
Her family and the family of her soon-to-be-husband all came to the shelter to formalize her marriage, and her father signed a sworn statement guaranteeing that neither he nor anyone in the family would harm Zahra.
So Zahra, whose name means flower, moved into her new husband's home, an apartment one floor below her new in-laws in Damascus.
But one month later, her brother came to visit. On the morning of his third day with them, when Zahra's husband went to work and Zahra slept in, Fayez stabbed his sister to death.
Violence against women is coming under growing scrutiny in the Arab world. Last year, the United Nations Development Fund for Women sponsored for the first time a study on it in Syria, concluding that 1 in 4 women suffers physical abuse, usually from a male relative.
But honor killings, which happen in many Arab and Muslim countries as well as in Israel and Western Europe, are a touchy subject. Local religious and political leaders are usually reluctant to become involved in a clan's family affair, and authorities in many countries rarely report a crime as an honor killing, making gathering statistics very difficult.
Activists say that lawyers in countries with leniency laws for such killings often advise a male client accused of murder to claim it was in the name of honor to avoid the death penalty.
This is what I truly despise about Islam: It allows, condones, and even encourages the punishment of spiritual or theological crimes. Killing apostates, stoning adulterers, killing for blasphemy, and more. Man should not be allowed to mete out this kind of punishment. This attitude toward non-Muslims is the foundation of jihad and these so-called honor murders.
Christians have outgrown the fear and mistrust that caused so much trouble in the Middle Ages. We haven't burned a heretic, witch, or blasphemer at the stake in a looong time.
"Christians have outgrown the fear and mistrust that caused so much trouble in the Middle Ages. We haven't burned a heretic, witch, or blasphemer at the stake in a looong time." Posted by: Pelayo
I would also suggest ignorance of the Scriptures. The common man could not read or have a bible to study for himself when all that stuff was going on. When you have access to and can read the Bible, you learn that God is the one that will hold men accountable for their actions. The Lord Jesus Christ is the righteous judge Who has been given the role of judge because He knows how it feels to live in human skin and be weighed down by the sin-sick world around Him.
As a Christian, my God has the power and wisdom to bring judgement upon my fellow men. It's not my job. I agree, Pelayo, Christians have definitely progressed.
no, don't change anything. Muslim women are part of the problem as much as their male counterparts.
The western development happened also because of western women. Because they were western women.
Let me think:
thisisnotislam is synonymous with unislam right ? Both mean the same right ?clicketyclacketyyacketyyuckutty mackies and BOWING ( Oh Allat's brilliant Dent and Puncturing of morgaan harvardy promoted by garrison's elizabeth ) m.sinclairs would be able to see the light behind it.
Then getting slain on a mass scale is thisisnotislam. Yes.
I see no problem at all. why endless fauxtographical worrrrrisome rockingback and forth ???
"According to Zahra before her death, say sources who spoke to her before she died, her father was having an extramarital affair. If the clan had discovered this, Zahra's father and his mistress might have both been killed. A friend of Zahra's father, a young man who took a liking to the then-15-year-old, threatened to tell all unless Zahra ran away with him."
So , let me get this right, the father has an affair, the daughter tries to "save the father" and she gets killed by her brother!!!!! I imagine that the father was in on this whole murder plot. SICK!!!!!
WTF! As a female, I am so glad that I was not born into the insanity of islam. And I too, amstarting to think that the muslim females are just as bad as the men,if not worse,for allowing this to happen to their daughters, sisters , mothers etc....
The public outcry needs to be for the whole family to be punished, say, twenty years in prison apiece, NO EXCEPTIONS. And that piece of crap she called her father should be put through a branch shredder.
Mohammad must surely have hated women to have set them up like this. And he must surely have been a damned coward to make hiding behind them such a default practice.
Actually, it seems that their minds are screwed with. It seems they have the Mecca koran, wherein allah says one thing, and the Medina koran, where allah contradicts his previous laws, but both sets of laws are CONSIDERED TRUE AND LAWFUL.
Can you imagine?
Read the following:
http://www.civoc.com/society/2007/02/11/a-study-of-political-islam/
But honor killings, which happen in many Arab and Muslim countries as well as in Israel and Western Europe, are a touchy subject.
And who is committing these crimes in Isreal and Western Europe,it is not the Israelies or Western Europeans
Here is a clue
The mummified,darkened head of a Pakistan girl aged 15 was found on the London to Manchester rail track,having been thrown from a moving train.
Warning graphic
http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2006/06/fatherly-love.html
Shiva,
And that was a human being. Someone worthy of respect and to be loved. And someone worhty to make her own decisions, no matter what the Satanic worshippers of Allah say.
Ever since Islam "unveiled' came onto the scene, and can be seeen by us naked and unadorned, any ideas that humanity has progressed since the many dark ages all over the world must be abandoned.
The mores and practices of Islam are despicable. Moslems are beneath contempt. The whole bunch and their korans, "purity," and pretensions of spirituality and reverence are a sham. These are a lower order of human, not subhuman, mind you, but lower than zero.
Gotta give em credit. They're moving from the 16th century to the 17th century. Pardon, while I blow my cookies.
Honor killing. Can you say oxymoron? Only the muzzies can.
>>>>The mummified,darkened head of a Pakistan girl>>>>
AS YOU sow , SO SHALL YOU REAP...!!!
apologists and sympathizers BE ZAPPED !!!