Recently in honor killing Category

Join us in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 29, the anniversary of the honor murder of Jessica Mokdad, for the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.

"Media whitewash yet another 'honor' killing," by Pamela Geller in WND, February 8:

Last Thursday, Fox News Detroit aired a revealing segment on my AFDI/SIOA Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on honor killing and Islamic law, which will be held on April 29 in Dearborn, Mich. The segment was originally supposed to air last Sunday, the day that the multiple first-degree murder verdict came down in the Shafia mass honor killing in Canada, but was inexplicably delayed. The segment focused on the fact that Mokdad family members, one in particular, are livid that we are using Jessica’s name in connection with “honor killing.” Various female Mokdad family members, including Jessica’s “stepmother,” Cassandra Mokdad, alleged that Jessica’s murder was not an honor killing, despite the overwhelming evidence that it was.

The report was typical for the mainstream media and unworthy of Fox, which, while not perfect, is generally much better than its competitors: Reporter Alexis Wiley doesn’t bother to give even a shred of the evidence that it was an honor killing, and instead gives the impression that it is something I am making up. She doesn’t mention that initial reports were quite clear – a shocking thing for the mainstream media – that her stepfather killed Jessica because she “wasn’t following Islam” (report from TwinCities.com) and was “not adhering to Muslim customs” (Star Tribune).

Arab American News reported that the last recorded dispute between Jessica Mokdad and her stepfather was over the wearing of the hijab (head scarf), which he originally forced her to wear (just as in the honor murder of Canadian teen Aqsa Parvez). Jessica didn’t want to wear it, thereby bringing shame on him and the family. Her stepfather, Rahim Alfetlawi, who murdered her, was pathologically controlling, after the pattern of honor killers. At one point Jessica called her father and told him: “Dad, I can’t live here anymore; he’s too strict. I can’t even go to the store to buy a pop if I want.”

Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Contaldo said: “He thought she was becoming too Westernized. I think this was a very nice young lady wanting to experiment with Western culture without control and without abuse.” The Detroit Free Press reported: “Mokdad’s mother told police that Alfetlawi felt so shamed by her daughter’s Western ways. He killed her in an honor killing, Warren Police Sgt. Stephen Mills said.” Alfetlawi was so concerned about her behavior that he even forced her to go to a mosque and marry her boyfriend.

The Daily Mail reported this from London: “Devout Muslim stalks his stepdaughter over four states before killing her for being too Western.” The Daily Tribune reported: “Stepfather charged with murder in Warren, upset victim didn’t adhere to Muslim customs.”

And Alexis Wiley’s own previous report for Fox Detroit reported it as an honor killing as well: Wiley reported, “He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious.”

 But last week on Fox and in the accompanying print report, Wiley gave no hint of the existence of these reports or her own. Why? Who is paying off Alexis Wiley? Or is it that she is scared, intimidated, afraid to “offend Islam”? Or is it that her political correctness makes it impossible to think of Muslims as anything but victims?

But in that case, why doesn’t Jessica Mokdad matter?

Apparently she doesn’t matter to her family, either. These family members’ apoplexy about the conference shows that they’re more concerned with offending Islam than with the honor murder of Jessica Mokdad. Jessica’s “stepmother” Cassandra, though just a few years older than Jessica, has been particularly vocal and vicious, with nasty Facebook comments, denials and cover for the honor killer. First Cassandra claimed that Saddam Hussein was responsible, then that the murder was an act of passion. Then in last week’s Fox report she said: “He wanted to have a relationship with Jessica as more than her stepfather. He wanted to have a more romantic relationship with her.”

Even if this is true, it doesn’t mean the murder was not an honor killing. He could have been angry with Jessica both for her Western ways and her refusal to wear the hijab, and for rejecting him. Islam expects women to be completely subservient and obedient – or else. If Alfetlawi killed her for refusing him, either way, the murder is a reflection of the attitudes of Islamic culture.

Read it all.

Politicians encouraging the integration of self-segregated Muslim communities must take note: they also need to step up to protect those for whom doing their part to participate in society could get them killed. "Twisted concept of honour shames any civilised society," by Ruth Dudley Edwards for the Irish Independent, February 5 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

You probably saw last week the terrible story of the Shafias. Mohammad Shafia was an Afghani, who -- after making money in property in Dubai -- emigrated to Canada.

With him he brought two wives. Rona Amir Mohammad, his first, had been unable to bear children and he had taken a second, Tooba (Muslims are permitted four), by whom he had seven children. Rona, who was passed off as a cousin, helped to rear the family.

In June 2009, Rona, 52, and her step-daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found drowned in a submerged car. Wiretaps later recorded Mohammad saying: "God curse their generation, they were filthy and rotten children."

Their crime, in the eyes of their parents and brother Hamed, 21, all convicted last week on four counts of murder, was that the girls had Western habits that shamed the family and Rona was sympathetic.

In the UK last year, there were 2,823 victims of 'honour-based' violence, a figure revealed by (limited) UK police statistics for 2011 obtained by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation through a freedom of information request: about a dozen killings happen every year.

Apologists wish us to lump honour killings in with domestic violence, to avoid having to ask any awkward questions about other people's values, but they are, in fact, very separate. In domestic violence, an individual (mostly men) batters or murders another individual. Honour killings and honour violence are a family matter.

These crimes are under-reported but annually the killings run into many, many thousands worldwide. From an in-depth academic study of 172 honour killings, based on information obtained from English-language media world wide, here are some striking statistics and conclusions.

Yes, it's a cultural rather than a religious thing, stemming from some nasty tribal customs of South Asia and the Middle East, but though Hindus, Sikhs and the odd Christian might be perpetrators, the blunt truth is that honour killings are mainly Muslim-on-Muslim (91 per cent worldwide, 84 per cent North America, 96 per cent Europe).

Worldwide, two-thirds of victims (93 per cent women) were killed by their families of origin: 49 per cent in North America, 66 per cent in Europe and 72 per cent in Muslim countries. More than half the victims died in agony, having been either gang-raped or burned or stoned or beheaded or stabbed many times.

Being 'too Western' did for 58 per cent: this includes being insufficiently subservient, rejecting Islamic dress, wanting a career, having non-Muslim friends or boyfriends, rejecting an arranged marriage or leaving an abusive husband. This criterion covers 91 per cent of North American murders, 71 per cent of European and 43 per cent in the Muslim world. Offences against sexual propriety (eg being raped or accused of adultery) were the justification for the other murders. [...]

... Forget cultural sensitivities. There are no excuses for domestic terrorism.

In "We must be honest about honour killings" in The Spectator, February 6, Michael Coren tells truths that the mainstream media is too clueless and/or compromised to tell about Islamic honor killings.

We are very happy and honored that Coren, award-winning television host and bestselling author, will be speaking at the first-ever human rights conference dedicated to exposing the plight of women under Islamic law in Dearborn, Michigan, on the anniversary of the honor murder of Jessica Mokdad: the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.

White guilt has terrible consequences. This was made profoundly clear in Canada during the three month trial of Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed. They were convicted a week ago of the first-degree murder of Zainab (19), Sahar (17) and Geeti Shafia (13), and 50-year-old Rona Amir. The three teens were Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Yahya’s daughters, Hamed’s sisters. Rona was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife. The four women had been drowned in their car in June, 2009. The killers had chosen a canal in Kingston — a university town half-way between Toronto and Montreal — because they assumed that the local police would be less sophisticated and able than those in a larger city. They had also researched murder techniques on the internet, and planned this honour killing long in advance.

The case has naturally shocked the country, but is in fact only the most recent of a dozen murders in the last twelve years, most involving Muslim patriarchs aided by sons, cousins, and wives, killing young girls who wanted to be horribly western by wearing nice clothes, dating nice boys, doing nice things. In the Shafia episode, the three daughters had refused to wear the burka, and one of them had even dared to wear a bikini. Rona Amir had been unable to give her husband children, so he had taken a second wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Canada. Although not the girls’ biological mother, Rona had loved them and tried to protect them. She had to die too.

Which brings us to the greater point here, with more long-term consequences than this single repugnant case. The authorities — be they police, politicians, social workers, media — are obsessed with appearing to be progressive and non-judgmental where Islam is concerned; partly out of a fear of being accused of Islamophobia, but also because they genuinely believe that the white, Christian West has more to learn from Islam than the contrary. The Shafia girls had pleaded with their teachers for help, and while front line social workers acknowledged that the situation was potentially disastrous, the concerns evaporated as soon as they reached middle management. So Mohammad Shafia — who had written of his daughters, ‘may the devil shit on their graves’ — was effectively permitted to commit mass murder.

Even now, commentators are embarrassingly, cringingly reluctant to link the crime in any way with Islam. Moments after the verdict was announced, the lead detective in the case told the public that ‘domestic violence is a terrible thing’. It is — but this wasn’t domestic violence. It was yet another example of a psychosis that has its epicentre in Pakistan, but extends to most parts of the Islamic heartland, and many in the Muslim diaspora. It’s a self-evident truth that not all Muslims behave so brutally, but it’s also undeniable that Islam teaches that a woman is the property of a father, then a husband. Most fathers and husbands are kind, but if they are not they are empowered by Koranic teaching and the prism of Sharia law to behave pretty much as they like. Quite simply, honour killing is not considered a crime in much of the Islamic world.

While it’s true that honour killings are not exclusively Muslim, Islam is the only faith that boasts textual defence and sacred justification for such grotesque acts. When 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was murdered in Canada in a 2007 honour killing by her Pakistani father and brother, CAIR Canada — an oft-quoted and worryingly influential Islamic group — told the gullible that, ‘It's important not to generalise. There are cases of violence across all faiths and all cultures’. That was rubbish; but worse than Muslim extremists hiding the truth are non-Muslims embracing lies without question. We saw this during the Parisian riots, when mobs of overwhelmingly Muslim youths beat and torched their way through the city, often screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’. Yet they were almost never described as being Muslim by the media. So different from when the Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, a freemason who wrote that he had no relationship with God and had not attended a church in fifteen years, was repeatedly defined as a ‘Christian fundamentalist’ on international television.

Read it all.

From Yahoo News:

NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Popular television host and bestselling author Michael Coren has been added to the speakers list of the first-ever human rights conference dedicated to exposing the plight of women under Islamic law in Dearborn, Michigan on the anniversary of the honor murder of Jessica Mokdad: the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference. Hosted by the prominent human rights organization American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program and the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force (VAST), the conference will be held in the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn on April 29.

Michael Coren hosts The Arena with Michael Coren on Canada's Sun News TV every week night at 7 p.m. ET, repeated at midnight ET. The best of the week's shows is also repeated 7 p.m. ET Saturday and Sunday. Coren's last TV show won numerous awards, both in Canada and the U.S. The Arena features some of the most exciting, original, and provocative guests from all over the world, with interviews in studio, and in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.

Michael Coren is also a weekly columnist, published every Saturday, with the Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg Sun and The London Free Press and in more than a dozen other daily and weekly newspapers across Canada. He is also a columnist for Women's Post, The Catholic Register, The Landowner and The Interim. He is the best-selling author of thirteen books, including biographies of GK Chesterton, HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. He has contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography and several other anthologies. He is published in many countries and in more than a dozen languages. He has received several honorary doctorates and awards for his writing and broadcasting. In 2005, he won The Ed Murrow Award for Radio Broadcasting, in 2006 The RTNDA Radio Broadcasting Award, in 2007 the Communicator Award in Hollywood and in 2008 the Omni Award for his television show.

The Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference will be held at the Hyatt Hotel in Dearborn. After bowing to Islamic supremacist pressure and canceling a speech by Pamela Geller that had been scheduled for a Hyatt in Nashville, Tennessee, the Hyatt reversed its stance, recovered its understanding of the American principle of free speech, apologized and offered AFDI space in a Hyatt for a future Conference to make it up to the human rights organization. Geller chose the Hyatt in Dearborn to stand in solidarity there with girls who are in danger of being victimized like Jessica Mokdad.

Along with Michael Coren, the confirmed list of speakers includes ex-Muslim human rights activist Nonie Darwish; Sudanese ex-slave and freedom fighter Simon Deng; and James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Taskforce (VAST), co-host of the Conference. Also speaking will be David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics, a Christian group that is suing the city of Dearborn for covering up Islamic honor killings performed in the area - that cover-up, and the resulting suit, will also be a focus of the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference. View a video about the conference here.

Hosting the Conference and also speaking are AFDI/SIOA executive director Pamela Geller, publisher of the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog, executive director of AFDI and SIOA, and author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books); and AFDI/SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of Jihad Watch.

Jessica Mokdad was a 20-year-old Muslim woman in Warren, Michigan, who was brutally murdered in May 2011. Fox News Detroit reported: "Authorities say a Minnesota man killed his 20-year-old stepdaughter in Michigan because she left home and wasn't following Islam." Jessica's stepfather, a devout Muslim, tracked his stepdaughter over four states to murder her for bringing dishonor on her family.

Geller said in a statement: "Despite pressure from the media and members of Jessica's family who want to cover up the honor killing aspect of her murder, we are not going to change the name of the conference. Unlike those closest to her, we are going to honor Jessica's memory and stand up against the brutal practice that took her life." Several Mokdad family members have alleged that Jessica's murder was not an honor killing, despite the overwhelming evidence that it was. However, multiple news reports on the murder were quite clear that her stepfather killed Jessica because she "wasn't following Islam" (report from TwinCities.com) and was "not adhering to Muslim customs" (Star Tribune).

Arab American News reported that the last recorded dispute between Jessica Mokdad and her stepfather was over the wearing of the hijab (head scarf), which he originally forced her to wear (just as in the honor murder of Canadian teen Aqsa Parvez). Jessica didn't want to wear it, thereby bringing shame on him and the family. Her stepfather, Rahim Alfetlawi, who murdered her, was pathologically controlling, after the pattern of honor killers. At one point she called her father and told him: "Dad, I can't live here anymore, he's too strict, I can't even go to the store to buy a pop if I want."

Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Contaldo said: "He thought she was becoming too Westernized. I think this was a very nice young lady wanting to experiment with Western culture without control and without abuse." The Detroit Free Press reported: "Mokdad's mother told police that Alfetlawi felt so shamed by her daughter's Western ways, he killed her in an honor killing," Warren Police Sgt. Stephen Mills said. Alfetlawi was so concerned about her behavior that he even forced her to go to a mosque and marry her boyfriend.

The Daily Mail reported this from London: "Devout Muslim stalks his step-daughter over four states 'before killing her for being too Western." The Daily Tribune reported: Stepfather charged with murder in Warren, upset victim didn't adhere to Muslim customs.

And Alexis Wiley of Fox Detroit reported, "He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious."

Geller said in a statement: "We've named the Conference after her as part of our ongoing campaign to raise awareness and bring a stop to the phenomenon of Islamic honor killing. These girls have rights, too, they're human beings, and yet they're completely forgotten in our politically correct culture, in which speech that is offensive to Islam is increasingly forbidden. We're standing for the human rights of girls like Jessica Mokdad."

AFDI/SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Join the SIOA Facebook group here.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at writeatlas@aol.com.

The perpetrators' sense of entitlement to control in the name of Islam's strict separation of the sexes had been somehow challenged. The men's attitudes were surely informed by Qur'an 4:34's endorsement of the idea of violence (yes, violence) to control disobedient women, as they were also already beating their wives.

When violence doesn't "work" to the satisfaction of the one throwing the punches, it tends to escalate. The final result was a triple homicide. "‘Honour’ crime: Three women killed ‘for loose morals’," by Owais Jaffery and Tariq Ismaeel for the Express Tribune, February 5:

Kot Chuttha police have arrested a man who has admitted to killing his wife, Samina, her sister (his brother’s wife) and their mother in collusion with his brother in a Dera Ghazi Khan village.

Talking to The Express Tribune at the police station, Ismaeel said he did not believe he had committed a crime. “My wife and her sister (his brother’s wife) had loose morals. They deserved death. I can’t let my wife talk to other men,” he said. He said he had caught Samina (his wife) talking to a man over cell phone.

The suspect said he and his brother, Imran, had shot and killed Samina and Zarmina, their wives, and their mother, Kulsoom, on Friday night. “Their mother was to blame for it.

She had failed to raise her daughters in accordance with our traditions. I had warned her (mother-in-law) several times to control her daughters,” he said.

According to the FIR registered on a complaint filed by the father of the deceased sisters, Mukhtar, the suspects had came to his house on Friday night to ask their wives to return home with them.

Mukhtar said Samina and Zarmina had left their husbands’ home a week ago and had been living at their parents’ house in Basti Damraywala. He said his daughters had married the suspects about six months ago. He said whenever the deceased visited him they complained about their husbands’ behaviour. “They would always complain about their husbands beating them and quarreling with them,” he said.

During Friday’s visit, Mukhtar said, the suspects had started quarrelling with his daughters and their mother over their refusal to accompany them back home. “I was in a room next door and could hear the arguments,” he said.

Suddenly, he said, he heard gunshots and the women’s cries. “They had killed my daughters and wife. There was no way I could defend myself against them so I thought the best course was to escape and report the matter to the police,” he said. “I rushed out of the house by jumping over the back wall to escape,” he said.

Talking to the Tribune, several residents of Basti Damraywala said whenever the suspects came to visit their in-laws they would complain about their wives’ conduct.

SHO Malik Ramazan said a police team had caught Ismael on Saturday while he was trying to escape to the Tribal Area adjacent to Dera Ghazi Khan.

He said two police teams were raiding the nearby villages to arrest his brother.

Join us for the first annual AFDI/SIOA Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings.

Video courtesy Pamela Geller.

The superb Michael Coren excoriates the politically correct obfuscation of Islamic honor killings.

"Islam, honour, murder," by Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun, February 3:

I sat last Sunday watching television with a mixture of incredulity and anger as a police inspector stood in front of a camera and explained the evils of domestic violence.

He was discussing, of course, the Shafia case and the murder of four innocent women, some of them mere girls, by their Muslim father, their Muslim mother, and their Muslim brother.

The detective meant well, I’m sure, but this had nothing to do with domestic violence and everything to do with honour killings.

I then watched a Kingston Islamic cleric explain how this mass murder was not about Islam, and how “people of other faiths commit such crimes.”

Do they? Well, there have been some isolated cases within the Sikh community, but the only religion that produces such slaughters in countries throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, is Islam.

Yes, of course the vast majority of Muslims would never kill or harm their children, but what does Islam actually say about the place of women within the family, the community and society?

A woman is property within the Muslim faith, first of her father, and then of her husband. Often these fathers and husbands are loving and kind, but not always. And when they are not, they are empowered by teachings of the Qur’an and by Muslim tradition to act in a horribly barbaric and oppressive manner. Look, let’s be candid here. There are Jewish people who think their children dead if they marry out of Judaism. This is rare these days, but even when it occurs, there is never any violence and certainly not death.

The same might occur with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and there can be division and pain when a Hindu or Christian young person goes astray or even marries a non-Christian or non-Hindu.

But nothing like an honour killing. This is a product of the gender power imbalance intrinsic to Islam, just as was the polygamous marriage that was the context for this family. Two wives in this case, more in many marriages in our major cities.

For God’s sake, when are we going to grasp the nettle truth and ask genuine questions?...

When indeed?

Fox News Detroit ran an incredibly irresponsible, unfair and biased piece on TV last night (video above), along with a similarly flawed news article. The thrust of both is that the Mokdad family is angry about our Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, coming up April 29 in Dearborn, Michigan. They're insisting that Jessica's murder was not an honor murder, and Fox reporter Alexis Wiley gives the impression that the only person saying it was an honor killing is Pamela Geller. Wiley doesn't bother to present any of the evidence that it was an honor killing.

So Pamela Geller posted the facts here. She also went into the comments field of the news article and left some of that evidence. What happened then was quite revealing:

Pamela Geller · New York, New York

The evidence that this was an honor killing was left out of this story. The last recorded dispute between Jessica Mokdad and her stepfather was over over the wearing of the hijab (head scarf) (http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Community&article=4322), which he originally forced her to wear (just as in Aqsa Parvez's honor killing). She didn't want to wear it, thereby bringing shame on him and the family. This report is typical for the mainstream media and unworthy of FOX, which, while not perfect, is generally much better than its competitors: Alexis Wiley doesn't bother to give even a shred of the evidence that it was an honor killing, and instead gives the impression that it is something I am making up. She doesn't mention that initial reports were quite clear -- a shocking thing for the mainstream media -- that her stepfather killed Jessica because she "wasn't following Islam" (report from TwinCities.com reprinted here: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/05/jessica-mokdad-islamic-honor-killing-in-michigan.html) and was "not adhering to Muslim customs" (http://www.startribune.com/local/121175819.html).

The Daily Mail reported: "Devout Muslim stalks his step-daughter over four states 'before killing her for being too Western'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383603/Devout-Muslim-stalks-step-daughter-states-killing-Western.html#ixzz1lIMmyrp3.

The Daily Tribune Reported: News.
Stepfather charged with murder in Warren, upset victim didn't adhere to Muslim customs.

http://www.dailytribune.com/articles/2011/05/03/news/doc4dbff0f36037f544732591.txt

And Alexis Wiley's own report for FOX Detroit reported it as an honor killing as well: Wiley reported, "He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious."

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/alexis_wiley/20-year-old-woman-dead;-stepfather-charged-with-murder

But Wiley gives no hint of the existence of these reports or her own. Why? Who is paying off Alexis Wiley? Or is it that she is scared, intimidated, afraid to "offend Islam"? Or is it that her political correctness makes it impossible to think of Muslims as anything but victims?

Reply · 2 ·

· 13 hours ago

• 

  Kayla Chuba · Henry Ford Community College

  ok u need to leave her name out find another story! She meant alot to me and hearing this is just bull crap she is in heaven now just leave her name out of everything.You honestly have no clue what your talking about

  Reply · 3 ·

  · 13 hours ago
• 

  Pamela Geller · New York, New York

  Kayla Chuba You were her friend. You do know.
  
  FOX News, April 11, 2011 reported you saying the following:
  
  "He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious.
  
  "She just wants to express herself the way she wants and not what he wants," said friend Kayla Chuba.
  
  That's why her friends helped her escape.
  
  "She packed up all her stuff. She told me she put it in a bush. She acted like she was taking out the garbage so he wouldn't see all her stuff packed," Chuba said.
  

  Reply ·

  · 12 hours ago
• 

  Kayla Chuba · Henry Ford Community College

  yes i know what i said but of course they didnt put everything I said. There is more to the story and its not right to use her name. Jessy loved Islam and she was very proud to be a muslim. That girl meant alot to me and to alot of people and you are hurting her family and friends this is not right and I will fight for her no matter what.

  Reply · 2 ·

  · 12 hours ago

Why did Kayla Chuba change her story? And if "they didn't put down everything [she] said," what else could she have possibly said that would mitigate the fact that he was angry with Jessica for refusing to wear the hijab (which was also the immediate cause of the honor murder of Aqsa Parvez)? Did someone speak to Kayla Chuba and tell her she needed to change her story? And why was Alexis Wiley so compliant in putting together a story that exonerated Islam from any role in the killing -- even though her new story contradicts her old one?

“It’s not a crime to marry the person we want to. But back home, our elders think women are their property. We can’t do things we want to do."

"Insult and honour: Tribal predators hunting down newlyweds in Karachi," from the Express Tribune, February 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

KARACHI: Back home, Z and N saw their siblings dragged outside, shot in broad daylight, and buried at night without a funeral—so that their family could continue to live with ‘honour’ in the village and amid the clan.

Now in Karachi, the couple hides in a one-room house in a wholly unfamiliar neighbourhood. They fear a similar fate.

“My family declared us karo kari just because I married of my own choice,” said 23-year-old Z, bursting into tears. “We have come to Karachi for protection.”

Couples who choose to marry of their own free will and in return are declared untouchables for ‘defaming’ the family name, are leaving their hometowns in rural Sindh to seek refuge in the metropolis. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan states that during the last two months, around five married couples have fled to Karachi from Jacobabad, Larkana and Sukkur. Z who hails from Naudero, and her husband from Shikarpur, are the fifth couple, who came here earlier this month.

Their tale is not a typical love story. They did not fall in love in lush green fields but met only at family gatherings and talked occasionally on the phone. However, the decision to spend their lives together came abruptly when Z’s father decided to marry her to a 60-year-old man in exchange for a hefty amount.

On the night of January 12, Z escaped from home, boarded a bus and got married to N in Sukkur the next morning. “We sent our marriage certificate to our families hoping that they would be happy for us,” N says. “While my family reluctantly accepted, Z’s family called a jirga and declared us karo kari.” They wanted them to be brought back and killed.

Years ago, Z’s pregnant sister met a similar fate after she overslept on her train and missed her stop. The family accused her of running away from home with a lover. On the other hand, N’s brother, who was in the army, was killed only because he liked a girl from another clan.

Thus, for Z and N, the only choice they had was to come to Karachi, and file a petition in the Sindh High Court, seeking protection. But the danger is not over. They do not go outside as the people hunting for them have reached the city.

“It’s not a crime to marry the person we want to. But back home, our elders think women are their property. We can’t do things we want to do. At least in the city, we can breathe freely,” said Z from behind her burqa, perhaps the thinnest protection she has for now.

Taranum Khan of the HRCP says that almost all of such killings, which took place in the city last year, were of couples who had fled their villages. “If people think that they can be safe in Karachi, they are wrong. Their families hunt them down here and kill them,” she said.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2011, around eight men and five women were killed in Karachi for these very reasons. In Sindh, 227 people, 136 women, 125 men, and 13 children faced this rough form of tribal justice....

Mohammmad Shafia murdered his daughters and his first wife and then raged about his daughters: "God's curse on them for generations....There can be no treachery, no violation more than this. They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam."

Midday Monday I got this email, with the subject line "URGENT: NBC Nightly News Request":

Message: Hi there—

My name is Shannon Urtnowski and I work with NBC Nightly News. We are working on a spot for tonight about honor killings, and I understand this is on the rise in American, among other countries. We were hoping to speak with an expert who can tell us more about this today. IF you can please reach out to me just as soon as possible, I would
appreciate it.

Many thanks--

Shannon Urtnowski
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams

I emailed her back, and she responded: "We'd like to try to see if we might be able to set up a camera interview with you in a bit." We spoke on the phone, and I explained to her the information that you can find here: that Islamic law stipulates no penalty for a parent who kills his child, and several Muslim countries have relaxed penalties for honor killings, with Islamic clerics resisting attempts to stiffen those penalties. I also gave her information on other Islamic honor killings in the U.S. and Canada: Noor Almaleki, the Said sisters, Aqsa Parvez, Jessica Mokdad, etc.

Urtnowski took it all in and told me she would set up studio time for me to be interviewed on this. She even asked me for contact information for a nearby studio, which I gave her. But shortly thereafter, Urtnowski called me back and said that NBC had decided to go with an expert closer to the correspondent's Chicago location, and so I wouldn't be appearing after all.

I was not at all surprised by that, of course. Nor was I surprised when NBC's story aired and it contained no mention of Islam, despite Mohammad Shafia's own words, but instead spoke about "patriarchal societies" and the Shafias' "strict religious family," religion unspecified. See the Newsbusters report here.

There was nothing surprising in NBC's coverage of the Shafia murders at all. It was just another example of how the mainstream media routinely whitewashes Islamic violence, and essentially lies to the public about the nature, extent and magnitude of that violence. It is no wonder that the public is thereby rendered largely clueless and complacent, and that Islamic honor killings are occurring with increasing frequency in the West, with no one daring to challenge the Muslim community to work against the beliefs that give rise to them.

I appeared tonight on the Michael Coren Show on Sun TV and discussed the Shafia honor killings and the media whitewash of Islam's role in them.

Video courtesy Blazing Cat Fur.

Why shouldn't Mohammad Shafia have been arrogant and hubristic? It would have been more surprising if he had not been. Just look at how Islamic supremacist spokesmen in the West always deal with anti-jihadists: not with legitimate discussion, not with honest engagement with legitimate concerns, but with exceeding and almost incredible arrogance, endless torrents of abuse, and reflexive charges of "bigotry," "racism," and "Islamophobia." Just look at how the mainstream media and Western governments are endlessly compliant, endlessly accommodating to Islamic supremacist demands, endlessly turning a blind eye to Islamic jihad activity, violent and stealthy, with endless gullibility swallowing the ever more fantastic claims that underneath the behavior of Islamic jihadists who quote Qur'an to support their views and position themselves within the Islamic community as the exponents of Islamic authenticity, it really is a Religion of Peace.

If Mohammad Shafia had not been arrogant and hubristic, it would have been a miracle.

Join us for the first annual AFDI/SIOA Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings.

"How arrogance and mistakes led to Shafia’s murder conviction," by Timothy Appleby for the Globe and Mail, January 29 (thanks to Mark):

Even after murdering his daughters and his first wife a few hours earlier, the millionaire businessman haggled over the motel bill.

One view of the guilty verdicts in the Shafia “honour killings” trial is that they were the final act in a kind of morality play that pitted 21st-century technology against ancient, twisted concepts of right and wrong.

The other connecting thread in the police investigation was the almost unfathomable, small-minded stupidity and arrogance of the three Afghan-Canadian defendants, borne out of a lifelong sense of entitlement.

Mohammad Shafia, 59, was wealthy and had essentially bought his residency in Canada under the federal investor-immigrant program. He owned a $1.6-million mall in Laval, Que., and was having a big, custom-designed home built in Brossard, a Montreal suburb. He had cars, property, assorted business projects, and had travelled widely.

In sum, he belonged to a tiny minority of privileged middle-class Afghans, both before he and his family fled the advancing Taliban in 1992, and later abroad.

From the trial testimony emerged a portrait of the man he was at home: A crude, brutal patriarch who terrified his children including those he’s convicted of murdering.

He, his co-accused second wife and their eldest son Hamed were not only clumsy killers. They were also bad liars, offering the jury wildly conflicting accounts of what happened on the night the four victims died.

From the first hours of the investigation, the trio struggled to dig themselves out of the hole they were in, weaving an ever-less credible tangle of lies and obfuscation. Steadily the hole got deeper.

And yet, in his hubris, Mr. Shafia appeared convinced they could get away with it.

“You guys aren't hit men, you don't know how to cover your tracks,” Kingston Police detective Mike Boyles told 18-year-old Hamed Shafia, shortly after he and his parents were charged with the four murders in July, 2009....

Seldom has any mainstream media outlet ever presented such a full and honest presentation of Islamic honor killing. Bravo, Coren.

Join us for the first annual AFDI/SIOA Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings.

Video courtesy Pamela Geller.

Mohammad Shafia has previously said: "I would do it again 100 times"; "May the devil shit on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?" And "God's curse on them for generations. ... They betrayed Islam."

"Shafias all found guilty of first-degree murder," by Timothy Appleby for the Globe and Mail, January 29 (thanks to Mark):

Three Afghan-Canadians charged with murdering four relatives in a so-called "honour killing" have been convicted on all charges.

The verdict was reached shortly after 1 pm Sunday afternoon and delivered about an hour later to a packed courtroom.

In all, the seven-woman, five-man jury had deliberated just over 15 hours, spread over two days, sequestered on the second floor of the historic Frontenac County Court House in downtown Kingston.‬

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, husband Mohammad Shafia and son Hamed Mohammed Shafia are escorted to court in Kinston last month.

A police officer stands outside the Frontenac County Courthouse, where Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their son Hamed were undergoing trial for the murder of four family members, in Kingston, Ontario January 26, 2012.

‪The defendants face an automatic penalty of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.

There have been other murder charges involving so-called "honour killings" – homicides of women slain out of a perverse desire to "purify" families of disgrace created by supposedly immoral conduct – but not on this scale, and not involving parents who were willing to wipe out half their family for the sake of their honour, and then lie about it.‬

‪Charged with four counts of first-degree murder were businessman Mohammad Shafia, 59, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their eldest son, Hamed, 21.‬

‪They stood accused of drowning sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, aged 19, 17 and 13, whose bodies were found in a submerged car at a Rideau Canal lock, just east of Kingston, in June, 2009.‬

The fourth person in the vehicle was Mr. Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 53, who had entered Canada illegally, posing as his cousin, but who in fact was part of a polygamous marriage and who by every indication wanted to escape from it.

‪ All three defendants briefly addressed the court and proclaimed their innocence in what Mr. Justice Robert Maranger described as a “heinous crime.”

“We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust,” Mr. Mohammad said through a translater.

Ms.Yahya responded: “Your honourable justice, this is not just. I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother.”

Their son said, in English: “Sir, I did not drown my sisters anywhere.”

But the judge was unmoved.

“You have each been convicted of the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family...(A verdict) clearly supported by the evidence presented at this trial,” said Judge Maranger.

“It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime...the apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honour ... that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”...

Carrying on (allegedly) with "different men from the neighborhood": haram. Murdering with an axe the person so accused: halal.

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And so they continue, as no one ever challenges Muslim authorities to do anything to stop them.

"Honour killing: Suspect surrenders, ‘confident of acquittal,’" by Owais Jafferi for the Express Tribune, January 24 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

MUZAFFARGARH: Allah Bachaya has surrendered himself to Rohilanwali police after killing his sister in the name of honour but he is confident that he will be released in a matter of days.

Bachaya gave his arrest on Saturday after killing Alina* in an axe attack for alleged loose morals.

He told The Express Tribune that he was certain his brother-in-law would withdraw the case as it was a matter of family’s honour. “I have killed her because she brought disgrace to the family’s name,” Bachaya said.

“She had become a nuisance. I feel no remorse over my actions. I am backed by the family. They were in favour of my decision to kill her,” he said.

Bachaya said Alina* had eloped more than once with [different] men from the neighbourhood. On Saturday, he said, she had returned home after spending three days with a man.

Alina*, 25, was married to Muhammad Akhtar. The couple had three children.

Akhtar, who is the complainant in the FIR against Bachaya, told The Tribune that while he had filed a complaint in the matter he might withdraw it in a few days.

“I believe he (Bachaya) has not done wrong. Nothing is above honour,” he said. “I would have also taken similar action had my sister left her husband and eloped with someone else,” he said, “I filed the report so that the police are informed of the matter. I don’t plan on prosecuting him (Bachaya),” he said. He said he would soon inform the police in writing that he had pardoned the suspect.

“When she returned home on Saturday, I sat down with her and tried to make her realise the consequences of her actions but she kept straying from the topic,” he said.

Later, he said, Bachaya came over to his house on finding out that Alina* had returned. Following an argument, he said, Bachaya attacked Alina* with an axe, chopping both her legs. She died while she was being taken to hospital....

Poor Mohammad Shafia can't catch a break. First, his first wife and daughters die in a tragic accident that just happens -- pure coincidence! -- to show all the signs of an Islamic honor killing, and now this, which won't help his Poor Victimized Man of Peace act one bit.

"Shafia trial to resume after bomb scare prompts delay," from CTVNews, January 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The Shafia family murder trial in Kingston, Ont. is expected to resume Thursday afternoon with increased security after a bomb scare shut down proceedings earlier in the day.

People have started returning to the courthouse but police procedures, including checking for photo identification and using metal detectors, have made for long waits.

There is only one entry point into the building now.

Earlier Thursday, journalists and spectators who had lined up hours before court was scheduled to begin were suddenly told by police they had to leave and court would resume in the afternoon.

Police would only say there was a "security concern," but a source told The Canadian Press that a bomb threat prompted the evacuation.

"I can neither confirm nor deny in regards to specifically a bomb, but we are just stating at this point in time it is a security concern," Const. Steve Koopman told The Canadian Press. "As you can see we're taking it extremely seriously."

Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.

They were evacuated from the courthouse Thursday in a police prisoner vehicle.

Koopman couldn't say if the security threat was directly related to the Shafia trial.

The trio is accused of killing teenage Shafia daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Shafia's first wife in his polygamous marriage.

The Crown began its final arguments on Wednesday and was expected to wrap up Thursday. It isn't clear whether jury deliberations will still begin on Friday, as originally scheduled.

Three defence lawyers presented their final arguments Tuesday and Wednesday.

The bodies of the four were found in June 2009 in a car at the bottom of a canal in Kingston.

The Montreal family had stopped in Kingston on their way back from a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont.

The Crown has alleged that the girls were murdered by their father, his wife and their brother, and that the killing was then made to look like an accident after the fact.

The Crown's argument is built on the premise that the girls broke the family's moral code and dishonoured their family by wearing clothing that was not conservative and having secret boyfriends.

"Not conservative" is media-speak for "not Islamic." In the media's world, "conservatives" are those who uphold Sharia, and also those who oppose it.

The defence, however, calls the argument preposterous and said the deaths were the result of a tragic accident.

Yeah, and the bomb threat was actually just a harmless movie review. Nothing to see here. Move along.

"Rehnaz was fired at with an AK-47 and received 30 bullets. Her family had termed her death as an accident."

"Honour killing: Victim’s body exhumed on court orders," by Muhammad Sadaqat in the Express Tribune, January 22 (thanks to Answering Muslims):

HARIPUR: The body of a teenaged girl who was allegedly killed in the name of honour was exhumed by a medical team on Saturday after the divisional bench of the Peshawar High Court ordered a re-investigation into the case.

The inquiry team, which included two medical officers, was headed by judicial magistrate Rashid Rauf Swati.

Rehnaz Bibi, 13, was allegedly shot dead by one of her cousins in September 2010. According to reports, Bibi left home to convince the boy she liked to marry her without her family’s consent. However, she was sent back home by his family, who lived in the same village, with the promise to send a proposal for her later.

When her family found out about the incident, her father, who was in Karachi at that time, allegedly asked one of his nephews to kill her.

According to an application filed in Haripur district and sessions court by a local activist Qamar Hayat, Rehnaz was fired at with an AK-47 and received 30 bullets. Her family had termed her death as an accident.

The petitioner claims the police closed the case and allegedly concealed facts pertaining to her murder.

Hayat and other social activists requested an inquiry and postmortem of the victim, upon which Haripur District and Sessions Judge Shaibar Khan ordered the area magistrate to conduct an inquiry through a medical board. However, the victim’s parents obtained a stay order from the court’s divisional bench.

Later, after hearing both sides of the case, the court ordered a re-investigation by an honest and competent DSP. The court also ordered to submit a report within 30 days....

Video courtesy Answering Muslims.

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And so they continue, as no one ever challenges Muslim authorities to do anything to stop them.

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And so they continue, as no one ever challenges Muslim authorities to do anything to stop them.

"Dad killed daughter in brutal axe murder," from The Local, January 13 (thanks to Twostellas):

A Swiss prosecutor has described as a "veritable slaughter" the vicious axe murder of a 16-year-old girl by her 53-year-old Pakistani father, who believed his daughter had tarnished her family's honour.

The charge sheet presented by prosecutor Ulrich Krättli suggests he will call for the accused to be given life in prison, the maximum sentence under Swiss law, when the high-profile case goes to trial on March 14th.

On May 10th 2010, 16-year-old Swera was picked up at a Zurich police station by both her parents. She had been held there by police after she was arrested for a minor theft.

Once back at their apartment in Höngg, on the outskirts of the city, a heated argument broke out between father and daughter, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reports.

The girl said she wanted to leave home permanently and started to pack her things. She then went down to the basement of the building to get a pair of shoes. While she was gone, her father allegedly retrieved an axe from the balcony and hid it in the bedroom he shared with his wife.

Once she was back in the apartment, the girl went into her parents' bedroom to pick up some of her belongings. When she bent down to get some things from the wardrobe, her father hit her with the axe on the back of the head, the prosecutor says. The man struck his daughter 19 times with the axe: 12 times with the blade and seven with the blunt end.

The teenager not die instantly, but lay on the ground in agonising pain for several minutes until her life finally slipped away.

The father left the axe between her legs, pointing to the feet, a gesture Krättli does not want to interpret, but that usually has sexual connotations and expresses the motives behind the murder, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reports.

After washing his hands, he left the apartment and called his wife to say he had killed his daughter. Fifteen minutes later, he called the police, who arrested him shortly after near his apartment.

In an interview with newspaper Blick, Swera's boyfriend explained that the girl's parents had strongly disapproved of her relationship with him, primarily because he was a Christian. The boy said she was desperate to get away from her parents and had already sought help from a local youth shelter.

According to the prosecutor, the defendant killed his daughter because she had violated his archaic values and had brought shame on the family. Krättli says the Pakistani man had planned the killing “in cold blood”.

The 53-year-old man has remained in custody since the girl's death. He will be tried in March not just for the brutal killing of his daughter, but also for allegedly trying to kill her three weeks earlier.

On April 20th, the pair had argued after the girl's father suspected she had been smoking marijuana.

Seizing his chance while she was in the bathroom, he pushed her into the bathtub, turned on the tap and threw a hairdryer into the water.

He wanted to electrocute her, the prosecutor alleges, but his attempt failed because of an in-built security system in the appliance to prevent electric shocks upon contact with water. On that occasion, the 16-year-old girl managed to get away before running to a friend’s home in her wet clothes.

This recalls how Canadian honor killing victim Aqsa Parvez was buried in an unmarked grave. The victims of this abominable crime are dishonored even in death. "In Sukkur, a separate graveyard for the ‘dishonourable’ ones," by Sarfaraz Memon for The Express Tribune, January 3 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

For some of the deceased in Sindh, there are no prayers for a peaceful afterlife and no on comes to put flowers on their graves. Those slain for honour are not spared even in death.

There is a separate graveyard for those killed under the pretext of karo-kari (honour killing) called ‘karan jo qabrustan’ (graveyard for the dishonoured) near Daharki. At this graveyard, built by the Shar clan, people are buried without last rites and men guard the graves so nobody can visit them and offer Fateha. Even in death, the punishment continues.

While the custom of karo-kari prevails throughout Sindh, some clans as Shar Bozdar, Pitafi and Jakhrani are particularly notorious for killing people under the custom.

Shar Bozdar and Pitafi clans are concentrated mainly in Ghotki and Kashmore, while the Jakhrani tribe is spread in areas over Jacobabad and Kashmore.

In these tribes, the custom of killing in the name of honour flourishes to serve many other ulterior motives. According to dictates of people from the tribes and other smaller communities, men manipulate this atrocious custom to get rid of their wives and marry a lover, to get monetary benefit or share in property among other things.

According to a Sindh-based, women’s rights NGO, Samaj Foundation, the number of women killed in Sindh was 284 in 2009, while in 2010 it fell to 266. The foundation has statistics until June 30 this year, where a total of 155 cases were recorded.

However, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 675 women and girls were murdered during the first nine months of the year for allegedly defaming their family’s honour.

Kiran Daudpoto, director of Samaj Foundation, has too many unfortunate stories to share. In June 2011, Arzana, a young widow, was killed and buried in her courtyard by her father-in-law and brother-in -law who wanted to sell her to an elderly man.

In another incident four years ago, 82-year-old Mai Bhagul was branded kari by her son who had used up her savings for Hajj instead of making arrangements for the pilgrimage. Such stories are many, some more brutal than the rest.

There are various explanations as to how this custom found its way in Sindh. Accounts of historians relate it to the pre-Islamic era.

They say the custom reached the sub-continent in the 17th century when some Arab descendants, who used to bury their daughters alive, came to settle in Balochistan. Killing young and old women in the name of honour was common practice for them. Later, when the British tried to prohibit the custom by announcing the death penalty for the perpetrators, people started throwing women in wells and claiming they were suicide cases. When the authorities discovered that this tactic was being used, poisonous snakes used to kill women instead.

Human rights activist Samar Minallah says the Sardars, elected representatives and influential people are to blame for the practice. “These people can stop such incidents as the decision of declaring people Kari or to barter girls and equal scores rests in the Jirga. But they don’t stand for justice so their voters don’t get angry.”...

A pilot study on honour killings by Maliha Zia Lari, an advocate, has revealed that some men are willing to sell off their wives, or kill them in order to get rid of them.

According to the advocate, the 2004 criminal law (amendment) has not had the desired impact. She said that since its implementation, honour killings had actually increased.

Lari carried out a study titled, ‘Honour killings in Pakistan and the compliance of law’ in collaboration with the Aurat Foundation’s legislative watch programme for women empowerment....

While studying the FIRs, she said that they were gender insensitive as the police preferred to report such incidents as murder instead of honour killings.

She explained the motive behind the authorities reporting karo kari as murder, and said that the reasons cited for murder were usually considered a negative reference to the woman’s character. Elaborating on her point, she said that these usually included details such as the woman leaving her husband or marrying without her family’s consent. She added that nearly 1,636 honour killings were reported in 2011.

The research also included detailed case studies, which according to Lari were easier to access at the high court than the district courts. She said that the Sindh High Court had a couple of recorded honour killing cases while there were no reported cases in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan. She added that the police did not usually arrest the suspects because of social pressure.

The police perspective

While talking about the authorities attitude towards honour killings, DIG Abdul Khalique Sheikh, said that according to one of their studies nearly 88% of police officers thought that there was no difference between murder and honour killings. He added that for a police officer, karo kari was a family matter.

The DIG said that it investigations for such cases was very problematic as the evidence was hidden and witnesses were unwilling to collaborate.

While talking about the status of an anti-honour killing programme in collaboration with the United Nations, he said that so far they had save 12 girls from getting murdered. He added the date from non-governmental organisations was misleading and exaggerated....

Aziz Yazdanpanah, a Muslim, didn't like his daughter's non-Muslim boyfriend and was exhibiting stalker behavior. “She couldn’t date at all until she was a certain age, but when he was going to let her date she couldn’t date anyone outside of their race or religion.”

Again and again we have seen honor killings in which fathers kill daughters who are dating non-Muslims or have supposedly besmirched the family honor by some sexual indiscretion. Lt. Todd Dearing says that motive isn't important -- which is generally only the case when Islam is involved.

"Neighbors horrified at news of family’s slayings in Grapevine," by Gloria Salinas and Scott Goldstein for the Dallas Morning News, December 26 (thanks to Steve):

GRAPEVINE — Aziz Yazdanpanah seemed to be losing control of his life in recent months — his wife left him, his house was in foreclosure, and his 19-year-old daughter was dating a young man he didn’t like.

Even so, the 58-year-old former real estate agent from Colleyville seemed to be holding it together. Neighbors say he would smile and wave as he drove through his middle-class neighborhood. Recently, he was seen raking leaves in his yard.

“He was very friendly, a very good neighbor,” said Carrie Stewart, who lives across the street. “He was out here often doing yard work and he even watched our house for us when we went to Colorado.”

A decent fellow indeed.

Yazdanpanah, a volunteer high school debate coach described as a doting father, is the focus of suspicion a day after a Christmas morning massacre in which a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six relatives and then committed suicide.

Grapevine police arrived at the Lincoln Vineyard Apartment Homes a few minutes before noon and discovered bodies sprawled among opened presents and wrapping paper. The victims were ages 15 to 58....

Citing public records and interviews with friends and neighbors, media reports Monday identified Yazdanpanah and others who had died: his estranged 55-year-old wife, Fatemeh Rahmati, their 19-year-old daughter, Nona Narges Yazdanpanah, and 15-year-old son, Ali Yazdanpanah.

Friends of the family said Fatemeh Rahmati’s 58-year-old sister, Zohreh Rahmaty, and her husband, Hossein Zarei, 59, and daughter Sahra Zarei, a 22-year-old pre-med student at the University of Texas at Arlington, also were killed.

Grapevine police Lt. Todd Dearing said investigators were working to piece together a timeline of the murders, but they may never know exactly what set off the gunman.

“Motive is not really the primary point right now,” Dearing said. “It’s more along the lines of what happened, how it transpired and making sure that who we believe to be the shooter is the shooter. Motive is what comes afterward for us if we can get it.”

He said a neighbor at the apartment complex saw the suspected shooter get out of his white sport utility vehicle dressed in a Santa outfit, including a full coat, pants, boots and belt. Based in part on that witness account, police believe the shootings occurred about the time a 911 call rang into the station at 11:34 a.m. Sunday.

The line was silent....

Grapevine police also searched the Colleyville home where Aziz Yazdanpanah had been living since he separated from his wife last spring. Public records show that the couple had filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and that the property was in foreclosure....

Yazdanpanah said he bought a gun after expressing concern that his daughter’s boyfriend was stalking him. He also insisted on picking up his daughter from her job at a phone kiosk inside Sam’s Club in Grapevine because of concerns about the alleged stalker.

The boyfriend has not been publicly identified.

Neighbors said the family was Muslim but had always hung Christmas lights on their home — except this year.

Terri Baum, who lives three homes down from Yazdanpanah, said she had seen him around the neighborhood in the last couple of weeks.

“They were pretty quiet, but kind, very kind,” Baum said. “They were sweet, good parents, and they loved their kids very much.”

Baum’s daughter, Allison, attended Colleyville Heritage High School with Nona, where the girls were part of an academic team focused on developing business leaders. They graduated together in May.

“Allison would take her to school from here, and then when they moved out she would pick her up from the apartments,” Baum said. “It’s unbelievable because of the people we knew them to be, and their children were good kids, very focused.”

Baum said she was horrified at the possibility the killings had been a murder-suicide.

“All I want to say is, it is so unbelievably shocking because they loved their kids,” Baum said.

Yes, loved them to death.

But a more ominous portrait emerged of Yazdanpanah in interviews with some of his daughter’s other classmates.

“She would come to school crying and telling us her dad was crazy,” said Lacie Reed, 18. “He wouldn’t let her wear certain things. He was always taking her phone away, checking her call history and checking her text messages.”

Friends said Nona’s father had installed cameras all around the home so he could watch the family’s comings and goings. Others said he nailed her bedroom window shut so she could not sneak out at night and see her boyfriend.

“She couldn’t date at all until she was a certain age, but when he was going to let her date she couldn’t date anyone outside of their race or religion,” Reed said.

Yiselle Alvarenga, 18, said Nona’s mother and brother seemed to come to her aid when her father punished her.

“He would take her phone away and her mother would give it back to her and her brother would let her use his phone,” Alvarenga said. “She was doing good. She was just excited that her life was going to start and she was going to have control of it.”...

If this seems to happen an awful lot, Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. Here, sadly, is another. "Muslim father beats daughter to death in Sri Lanka," from ColomboPage, December 25 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Dec 25, Colombo: A Muslim extremist style killing has been reported from Sammanthurai of Ampara district of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province, police say.

According to the police, a Muslim father has allegedly beaten his underage daughter to death yesterday evening.

The 17-year-old daughter was killed by father allegedly for having a relationship with a person belonged to another religion.

The suspect has been arrested by police.

Samanthurai Police have commenced further investigations into the incident.

It is rather astounding that hyperdhimmi England moved on this case, as "Islamophobic" as it would be to take any official notice of the risk to this child. But Muslims are responsible for 91 percent of honor killings worldwide, and that is no accident, since Islamic law stipulates no penalty for a parent who kills his child. Apparently sometimes even dhimmi officials can't ignore that. But no worries, mate: the adopting couple is, of course, Muslim as well. Placing the child in any other setting would have overloaded the British officials' "Islamophobia" meter.

"Muslim baby was at risk of 'honour killing,'" from Reuters, December 20 (thanks to Maxwell):

LONDON (Reuters) - A baby at risk of becoming the victim of an "honour killing" because she was born as the result of her unmarried Muslim mother's secret affair must be adopted to keep her safe, the Court of Appeal ruled on Wednesday.

Three senior judges rejected a bid by the one-year-old girl's natural father to have her live with him and his wife.

The child's natural mother is in favour of adoption so that her own family will not find out about the birth.

Lord Justice Munby, Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Kitchin said in a joint judgment the case involved "exceptionally difficult adoption proceedings," the Press Association reported.

The judges imposed unusually wide reporting restrictions banning the publication of all names and locations linked to the case because of the continuing dangers faced by mother and child.

The appeal court rejected an appeal by the father "F" against a decision last July refusing him a residence order allowing the baby to live with him.

The judge ordered that "baby Q" should be adopted by a couple, also Muslim, from the same country as the mother, but from a different community.

She found there would be "a very significant risk of two and two being put together" if the child went to the father because Q was quite obviously not the child of his wife, who had a child of her own.

If the child's maternal grandfather found out about the affair "it would be a matter of intense almost unimaginable shame to him and his family," said the judge.

The appeal court said on Wednesday: "It was plainly the judge's view that this might provoke action to preserve the family's honour."...

They're working hard in Pakistan to ensure the Muslim world doesn't slip from being responsible 91 percent of honor killings worldwide.

As this report notes, there is no law against domestic violence. Such legislation stalled out in the assembly in 2009 with resistance on Islamic grounds. It would run the risk of prohibiting something Allah made lawful: hitting (yes, hitting) "disobedient" women (Qur'an 4:34).

Islamic law is also inconsistent at best on whether parents face any penalty for killing their children. The relatives carrying out the killings clearly feel they are justified in what they are doing, and are confident they will not only avoid severe penalties, but earn respect for their brutality.

Behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated. "675 Pakistan 'honour killing' victims: commission," from Agence France-Presse, December 20:

At least 675 Pakistani women and girls were murdered during the first nine months of the year for allegedly defaming their family's honour, a leading human rights group said Tuesday.

The statistics highlight the scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are frequently treated as second-class citizens and there is no law against domestic violence.

Despite some progress on better protecting women's rights, activists say the government needs to do far more to prosecute murderers in cases largely dismissed by police as private, family affairs.

"A total of 675 women and girls were killed in the name of honour across Pakistan from January to September," a senior official in the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told AFP.

They included at least 71 victims under the age of 18.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is unauthorised to speak to the media, said figures were still being compiled from October to December, and that a full report would be released in February.

The Commission reported 791 honour killings in 2010 and there was no discernible decrease this year, the official added.

Around 450 of the women killed from January to September were accused of having "illicit relations" and 129 of marrying without permission.

Some victims were raped or gangraped before being killed, he said. At least 19 were killed by their sons, 49 by their fathers and 169 by their husbands.

Rights groups say the government should do more to ensure that women subject to violence, harassment and discrimination have effective access to justice.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP that the state's inability to enforce rule of law, leaving matters in the hands of tribesmen and local elders, was a major factor.

"We have a system in Pakistan where the state and judicial recourse are absent and the vacuum is filled by local elders," he said.

"A combination of legal reforms, exercise of administrative authority and social awareness can greatly help check the honour killings," he added.

Earlier this month, a Belgian court sentenced four members of a Pakistani family to prison for the murder of their daughter and sister, who defied them by living with a Belgian man and refusing an arranged marriage.

The usual Useful Idiots are very excited about this, but here again, deception is not reform. Samy Metwally says that "what’s called honour killing is not part of Islamic teaching or tradition, and in fact there is no honour in this killing at all." But that is simply not true. It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And Samy Metwally's soothing falsehoods will reinforce that false impression.

"Honour killings have no place in Islam: Ottawa imam," by Mohammed Adam for Postmedia News, December 11 (thanks to Prometheus):

OTTAWA — The imam of the Ottawa Mosque has condemned so-called honour killing, saying the practice speaks to a perverse sense of honour that is alien to Islam, and has no place in society.

Samy Metwally said Friday that it doesn’t make sense to think or believe that any religion will condone killing people to preserve family honour.

“What’s called honour killing is not part of Islamic teaching or tradition, and in fact there is no honour in this killing at all,” Metwally told the Citizen.

“It has nothing to do with religion and it has no backup either from the texts of the Koran or from the behaviour, sayings or deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, who is the model for Muslims.”

Metwally was speaking to the Citizen on the day of “a call to action” during which imams across the country delivered sermons against domestic violence, and to reiterate that Islam has no tolerance for violence against women.

“The purpose of this call to action is to raise awareness of Muslims that we are not allowed to do things like beating our wives or doing physical or emotional harm to them. The religion does not permit us to do these,” he said.

The nationwide sermons were triggered by the sensational trial in Kingston, Ont., in which Montreal businessman Mohammad Shafia, his son and wife are accused of killing his three teenage daughters and his first wife allegedly because their behaviour dishonoured the family. A Kingston imam, concerned that the deaths are being misrepresented as something to do with Islam, asked colleagues around the country to deliver special sermons on domestic violence and make clear Islam has nothing to do with so-called honour killings.

Metwally would not comment directly on the ongoing trial, but said there have been so many misconceptions about “honour-killings” that it is imperative that imams set the record straight....

In his sermon, Metwally urged a packed Ottawa Mosque to look to the examples of the Prophet Muhammad, who never hit or abused his wives in any form.

Muhammad b. Qais said (to the people): Should I not narrate to you (a hadith of the Holy Prophet) on my authority and on the authority of my mother? We thought that he meant the mother who had given him birth. He (Muhammad b. Qais) then reported that it was 'A'isha who had narrated this: Should I not narrate to you about myself and about the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him)? We said: Yes. She said: When it was my turn for Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) to spend the night with me, he turned his side, put on his mantle and took off his shoes and placed them near his feet, and spread the corner of his shawl on his bed and then lay down till he thought that I had gone to sleep. He took hold of his mantle slowly and put on the shoes slowly, and opened the door and went out and then closed it lightly. I covered my head, put on my veil and tightened my waist wrapper, and then went out following his steps till he reached Baqi'. He stood there and he stood for a long time. He then lifted his hands three times, and then returned and I also returned. He hastened his steps and I also hastened my steps. He ran and I too ran. He came (to the house) and I also came (to the house). I, however, preceded him and I entered (the house), and as I lay down in the bed, he (the Holy Prophet) entered the (house), and said: Why is it, O 'A'isha, that you are out of breath? I said: There is nothing. He said: Tell me or the Subtle and the Aware would inform me. I said: Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be ransom for you, and then I told him (the whole story). He said: Was it the darkness (of your shadow) that I saw in front of me? I said: Yes. He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you? She said: Whatsoever the people conceal, Allah will know it. He said: Gabriel came to me when you saw me. He called me and he concealed it from you. I responded to his call, but I too concealed it from you (for he did not come to you), as you were not fully dressed. I thought that you had gone to sleep, and I did not like to awaken you, fearing that you may be frightened. He (Gabriel) said: Your Lord has commanded you to go to the inhabitants of Baqi' (to those lying in the graves) and beg pardon for them. I said: Messenger of Allah, how should I pray for them (How should I beg forgiveness for them)? He said: Say, Peace be upon the inhabitants of this city (graveyard) from among the Believers and the Muslims, and may Allah have mercy on those who have gone ahead of us, and those who come later on, and we shall, God willing, join you. (Muslim Book 004, Number 2127)

Quoting statistics that he says show that one in three women are subjected to some form of physical, mental or emotional abuse, he said domestic violence has no religious boundaries. But he said Muslims have a special duty to refrain from abusing their wives because Muhammad, whose examples are supposed to guide them, not only refrained from the behaviour, but forbade it.

Using several examples from the life of the Prophet and his companions in how they related to their wives, Metwally said Muslims have a responsibility to treat their wives with dignity, kindness and “equity.” He reminded them of one the most famous sayings on the subject from the Prophet: “The best of you are those who are best to their wives.”

The imam told the Citizen that one of the major problems in dealing with many issues, including domestic abuse, is that people often pull Koranic verses out of context and act on them. He said those who understand the religion know that texts should be read in conjunction with others, and with the teachings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad to get a proper understanding of the scripture.

Metwally reiterated that one cannot be a good Muslim and still mistreat his wife. He said people often try to find faults in their wives or partners, without looking in the mirror first.

“Look for your own faults before you see faults in others,” he said.

“The pious Muslim is the one who will never oppress his wife.”

AFDI/SIOA, VAST to Host Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference in Dearborn, Michigan at Hyatt Regency

NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2011 -- The prominent human rights organization American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program and the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force (VAST) will be hosting the first-ever human rights conference dedicated to exposing the plight of women under Islamic law in Dearborn, Michigan on the anniversary of the honor murder of Jessica Mokdad: the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.

The Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference will be held at the Hyatt Hotel in Dearborn. After bowing to Islamic supremacist pressure and canceling a speech by Pamela Geller that had been scheduled for a Hyatt in Nashville, Tennessee, the Hyatt reversed its stance, recovered its understanding of the American principle of free speech, apologized and offered AFDI space in a Hyatt for a future Conference to make it up the human rights organization. Geller chose the Hyatt in Dearborn to stand in solidarity there with girls who are in danger of being victimized like Jessica Mokdad.

Jessica Mokdad was a 20-year-old Muslim woman in Warren, Michigan, who was brutally murdered in May 2011. Fox News Detroit reported: "Authorities say a Minnesota man killed his 20-year-old stepdaughter in Michigan because she left home and wasn't following Islam." Jessica's stepfather, a devout Muslim, tracked his stepdaughter over four states to murder her for bringing dishonor on her family.

AFDI Executive Director Pamela Geller said in a statement: "We've named the Conference after her as part of our ongoing campaign to raise awareness and bring a stop to the phenomenon of Islamic honor killing. These girls have rights, too, they're human beings, and yet they're completely forgotten in our politically correct culture, in which speech that is offensive to Islam is increasingly forbidden. We're standing for the human rights of girls like Jessica Mokdad."

Geller added: "AFDI tried to place ads on Detroit-area buses offering help to people wishing to leave Islam and threatened by their families. Detroit SMART Transit refused the ads, and we sued on free speech grounds. We won, and the ads were scheduled to run, but Detroit SMART still refused to run them - and the same week they were supposed to run, Jessica Mokdad was murdered. Perhaps if she had seen one of our ads, she would be alive today. This underscores the cowardice of Detroit-area officials and the need for this Conference in Dearborn. We welcome women seeking help and resources to escape dangerous and misogynist households."

The confirmed list of speakers includes ex-Muslim human rights activist Nonie Darwish; Sudanese ex-slave and freedom fighter Simon Deng; and James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Taskforce (VAST), co-host of the Conference. Also speaking will be David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics, a Christian group that is suing the city of Dearborn for covering up Islamic honor killings performed in the area - that cover-up, and the resulting suit, will also be a focus of the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.

Hosting the Conference and also speaking are Pamela Geller, publisher of the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog, executive director of AFDI and SIOA, and author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books); and AFDI/SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of Jihad Watch.

Stop the Islamization of America is a groundbreaking new book offering the fruit of a veteran national activist's years of experience fighting back against Islamic supremacist efforts to erode our freedoms. In it, Geller offers the fruit of her experience as the national leader of the fight against the Ground Zero mega-mosque and of numerous other initiatives to defend freedom against the encroachment of Islamic law. She offers practical, tested, effective guidance on how freedom lovers can stop jihadist initiatives in local communities.

AFDI/SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

To register for the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, please email AmericanFreedomDefense@aol.com with your name, email address and number of people.

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And as long as that continues, we will see more and more murders like this one.

"New Jersey Father Suspected of Murdering Daughter, Son-in-Law in Pakistan 'Honor Killing,'" from NewsCore, November 25 (thanks to Wkujoy):

GUJRAT, Pakistan -- A New Jersey resident whose daughter and son-in-law were gunned down while on a trip to Pakistan was named as the chief suspect in their deaths.

Muzaffar Hussain is suspected of murdering his New York native daughter Uzma Naurin, 30, and her husband, Saif Rehman, 31, in an "honor killing," the Daily Mail reported.

Naurin and Rehman were shot dead Nov. 1 when their car was ambushed near the northeastern Pakistan city of Gujrat. The car's driver and several other passengers were uninjured.

The couple -- who were living in Scotland but planning to relocate to the US -- were in Pakistan to attend a family wedding which Hussain was also attending. Hussain has since returned to his home in Jersey City, N.J.

Pakistani police spokesman Nasir Butt said that the 58-year-old cab driver is being treated as the chief suspect in the case.

Members of Naurin's family were unhappy about her marriage to Rehman, a friend of the couple told the newspaper. Naurin was married previously, but her first husband committed suicide. Naurin subsequently refused to enter an arranged second marriage with her dead husband's brother.

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And as long as that continues, we will see more and more murders like this one.

"Jordan: Man cuts sister throat to cleanse family honour," from ANSAmed, November 16 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - AMMAN, NOVEMBER 16 - A man from the southern city of Tafilah killed his sister in public by slitting her throat for being involved in a romantic relation, police sources said on Wednesday.

The 18 year old man attacked his sister in the main bus station of the town, before being arrested, said the sources.

Eye witnesses said medics arrived when the girl was making her last breath as investigation continued to determine other culprits in the brutal attack.

The killer told police he wanted to kill his sister to cleanse the family honour after the victim admitted involvement with a man who wanted to marry her, said the police sources.

The death brings number of women killed in the name of honour to nearly 15 since the start of the year, say officials.

The government promised to adopt an iron fist policy with such cases following campaigns from human rights groups.

But activists say strict social habits make it difficult to eradicate such phenomena.

Killers are often handed a sentence between six months to one year for the murder, say activists.

Six months to a year. So you see.

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And as long as that continues, we will see more and more murders like this one.

"‘Honour’ killing: Man and his friends axe his wife," from The Express Tribune, November 10 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

RAHIM YAR KHAN: A man axed his wife with the help of his friends after declaring her to be a ‘kari’ on Wednesday.

Police officials have arrested the accused.

According to police officials, Sube Da city resident Allah Dewaya recently filed a written complaint detailing that his daughter Hajil Mai was murdered by her husband Mukhtar Ahmed. Dewaya told police officials that Mukhtar Ahmed, 22, used to torture and beat his daughter Hajil Mai. “He kept accusing her of having had an affair even though he usually kept her locked up in the house for the duration of their marriage,” he said.

On Tuesday, Ahmed allegedly announced to their neighbourhood that his wife was a ‘kari’ and had an affair with their neighbour, Waleed. Waleed is said to have fled after the accusation.

Ahmed and seven of his friends slaughtered his wife in the courtyard of their house with sickles, knives and an axe.

Police officials said that there were several eyewitnesses. “He announced what he was going to do and because he is a landlord, we were too scared to interfere. Someone called the police though,” said a local resident Ashraf....

"They betrayed Islam," he said, because they had boyfriends and didn't want to wear hijabs. This report also details the many occasions on which the child protection system failed to protect the victims through procedural bungling, including interviewing the children in their parents' presence after hearing of the parents' threat to kill them, and a general climate of denial about the seriousness of the situation.

"‘I would do it again’; court hears horror of alleged honour killing," by Christine Blatchford for the National Post, October 21 (thanks to Michael):

KINGSTON, Ont. — It’s the Canadian Maple Leaf that flies high over the picturesque locks at Kingston Mills near this historic city, but on the night of June 30, 2009, it might just as well have been the black-red-and-green flag of Afghanistan, with its sacred line proclaiming the greatness of Allah.

What happened at the locks that night, Crown prosecutors alleged in Ontario Superior Court Thursday, was a so-called “honour killing,” the culmination of a violent misogynist Afghan culture that had been transplanted holus-bolus years earlier into the heart of central Canada.

“May the devil s— on their graves,” Mohammad Shafia told his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 20 days after the bodies of the couple’s three teenage daughters and Mr. Shafia’s first wife were recovered from a car in the water at the locks.

Found dead by drowning in a black Nissan Mr. Shafia had bought just eight days earlier – the suggestion implicit that he got it for that very purpose — were Rona Amir Mohammad, the barren wife who had been presented to the children and outsiders both as an “auntie,” and rebellious daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti.

Charged with four counts each of first-degree murder are Mr. Shafia, Ms. Yahya and their oldest son Hamed, who was 18 at the time. All are pleading not guilty.

The ghastly conversation was captured on a Kingston Police wiretap, prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told Judge Robert Maranger and a jury.

In another snippet recorded by the device police had placed in a family car, Mr. Shafia told Ms. Yahya, “They committed treason themselves. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam. They betrayed our religion…they betrayed everything.”

He said whenever he saw the pictures taken by Zainab and Sahar on their cell phones – these were goofy shots of them posing in bras and panties, or with their forbidden boyfriends — “I am consoled.

“I say to myself, ‘You did well.’ Were they to come to life, I would do it again.”

In a detailed opening address of 90 minutes, Ms. Lacelle told the jurors they would hear from a variety of witnesses, including those to whom Rona Mohammad and the children had confided their fear of Mr. Shafia and Hamed.

In fact, what was most galling about the prosecutor’s overview of the evidence to come was how very openly the teenagers had rebelled against their parents — once, from a street corner in Montreal where the family lived, they begged a stranger to call 911 for them because they were so afraid to go home — and how little Canadian authorities and Canadian law helped them.

In fact, Quebec child protection authorities twice investigated complaints from Sahar’s school, once little more than three weeks before the four bodies were found.

In the first instance, Ms. Lacelle said, the social worker deemed the complaint to be “founded” – true, in other words – but closed the file anyway when Sahar wouldn’t talk to her once she learned that the worker would be obligated to tell her parents what she’d told her.

The next time she interviewed the girl two days later, “Sahar was wearing the hijab” and claimed things had improved at home.

In the second instance, though police in Montreal interviewed the children separately and had them open up about their maltreatment – including the fact that Mr. Shafia allegedly “often threatened to kill them” – the child protection worker interviewed the girls in the presence of their parents.

Unsurprisingly, they clammed up or recanted their earlier allegations, and the worker closed the file.

Though the family – Mr. Shafia, two wives and a total of seven children – left Afghanistan in 1992, they didn’t emigrate to Canada until June of 2007, with Rona Mohammad following six months later on a visitor’s visa.

She left a diary, found by police, which detailed the alleged beatings she suffered at her husband’s hands and the cruelty dished out to her by her fertile replacement, Ms. Yahya, who allegedly told her, “Your life is in my hands” and, “You are not his wife; you are my servant.” [...]

Though Mr. Shafia and Hamed may have appeared the picture of successful and Westernized men – the father was wealthy, owned a shopping mall in Laval and had contracted to build an upscale home, and the family had lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai – behind closed doors, they might as well have been back in Afghanistan.

The oldest son Hamed was the head of the household when Mr. Shafia was away. He had a driver’s licence and his own cell phone, used his father’s silver Lexus, and helped him in business.

The daughters, meanwhile, had phones registered to either father or son, and Zainab was kept out of school for a full year after the family discovered she had a boyfriend.

It was her running away, in the spring of 2009, to a women’s shelter which sparked the family’s downward spiral, Ms. Lacelle told the jurors.

But Sahar, too, was rebelling. She had a boyfriend. She loved makeup and clothes, like her big sister. She wanted to be a gynecologist, and was moved by the plight of her native sisters in Afghanistan.

Once, miserable at facing the prospect of having to wear a hijab, she tried to kill herself. According to Rona Mohammad’s diary, Ms. Yahya snapped, “She can go to hell; let her kill herself.”

But it was the little girl, Geeti, who fought her parents most ferociously and who begged most blatantly for help.

“She told her school,” Ms. Lacelle said. “She told the police. She told youth protection.” ....

Qur'an 4:34 allows for physical violence (yes, it says to hit) against "disobedient women." Islamic law is inconsistent at best on whether parents who kill their children face any consequences at all. It is no surprise, then, that Muslims commit 91 percent of "honor killings" worldwide.

Even in Canada, in an update on this story. "Family saw slain girls as treacherous for having boyfriends, court hears," by Allison Jones for the Canadian Press, October 20 (thanks to Kenneth):

KINGSTON, Ont. - A Montreal family couldn't bear the "treachery" of their three teenaged daughters having boyfriends, so they drowned them and the father's first wife, pushing a car into a canal and staging the scene to look like an implausible accident, court heard Thursday.

Days after the bodies were found the father was recorded saying, "There is nothing more valuable than our honour."

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.

Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Shafia's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged black Nissan Sentra discovered June 30, 2009 in the Rideau Canal. The family had stopped in Kingston on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls.

An expert will be called to testify about honour killings and how in extreme cases, killing can be seen in some cultures as a way to restore honour to a family, the Crown attorney said Thursday at the outset of the trial. Disobedience by a female member of the family can cause shame and taint family honour, she said.

Laurie Lacelle quoted police wiretaps made surreptitiously in the days after the deaths that show the family's concern for their honour.

"Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour," Shafia said. "Let's leave our destiny to God, and may God never make me, you or your mother honourless...There is nothing more valuable than our honour."

When police began to suspect the three were involved in the deaths, they told the family they were examining a camera near the scene for clues, in the hopes this would prompt discussion among the Shafias in their car, which the police had bugged. They scoffed and immediately suspected police were bluffing.

"If they had had any proof they would have come for us a long time ago," Shafia said.

Another wiretap recorded Shafia and Yahya talking about their daughters 20 days after they died.

"If we remain alive...we have no tension thinking our daughter is in the arms of this or that boy, this or that man," Shafia said on a wiretap. "God's curse on them for generations. May the devil ...(expletive) on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?"

"There can be no treachery, no violation more than this," Lacelle quoted Shafia as saying on the wiretaps. "They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam...They betrayed everything."...

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Celebrating death: Men dance around bodies after shooting 3 relatives," by Shamsul Islam for The Express Tribune, October 8 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

FAISALABAD: A man shot and killed his sister, niece and another relative and began dancing around the dead bodies in the limits of Police Station Langrana on Thursday evening.

According to eyewitnesses, the accused, Aqil dragged the three bodies outside to the street where he and his three accomplices began dancing around them and hurling abused at the deceased. “They were spitting at the bodies and congratulating themselves over having killed the women because they had rejected their demands,” said an eyewitness Mazhar.

According to locals in the area, Chak No.211-JB resident Mukhtar Bibi’s daughter Farhat Bibi had married her brother Aqil’s son Allah Raza seven years ago. Farhat Bibi has a six-year-old daughter Samreen, who was injured by her father. “Farhat came back to her mother fearing that her husband would kill her. She said that he beat her viciously and had pushed her daughter down the stairs and she had cut her head open,” a neighbour Babar told police. Accused Aqil repeatedly asked his sister Mukhtar Bibi to send his son’s wife back. “He said that she belonged to them and that if she didn’t send her back she would be punished,” Babar said.

Aqil admitted that he killed the women and celebrated their death. “My sister tried to set conditions for her girl’s return and she had no right to do so. Farhat was married and my son can do whatever he wants with her,” he told police.

Mukhtat Bibi refused to send her daughter and grand daughter back home unless her nephew Allah Raza promised to treat them well and never to beat them again. “They refused to agree to any conditions and threatened them instead,” Babar said.

On Tuesday night, Aqil along with three other accomplices Adial, Ulfat and Umar Hayat stormed into his sister Mukhtar Bibi’s house and demanded that she turn over her daughter to him. “He said he would take them home dead or alive but she refused and then he began firing,” said a servant at the house.

Aqil and Mukhtar Bibi exchanged hot words and Aqil all suddenly began firing due to which Mukhtar Bibi and her youngest daughter Mafi died on the spot, while Mafi’s husband Muhammad Aslam sustained serious injuries and died a few hours later. Farat Bibi survived the encounter after she ran and took shelter in a locked room with her daughter. “The men dragged the bodies outside into the street and began dancing around them and spitting at the corpses. Then they began throwing rubbish on them and jeering,” said an eyewitness, who called police. One of Aqil’s accomplices kidnapped Farhat’s daughter Samarran and escaped from the scene. Police officials have arrested Aqil and Ulfat and have registered cases against them.

Langrana police officials said that the men showed no remorse. “He boasted that he should have chopped up the bodies in little pieces and fed them to his dogs,” said Station House Officer (SHO) Shahadat Malhi. Police officials have registered a case on the complaint of Farat Babi daughter of Muhammad Aslam against the accused Adial, Ulfat, Umar Hayat and Aqil. SHO Malhi said that the police had already recovered Samarran.

As Marisol noted here, The Atlantic is running a piece on what has proven to be a rare exception in that dysfunctional culture known as Muslim-occupied India, AKA 'Pakistan' -- a family that refuses to murder their daughter who was raped. In this case, the exception proves the rule, and the rule is that Pakistan possesses a deeply-dysfunctional culture that is inimical to every value that underlie free, prosperous societies. No amount of jizya -- i.e. the billions that America, the IMF and others have handed over to Pakistan since 2001 -- can long placate nor erase this hostility. And while The Atlantic's article (of course) fails to mention it, Islam is one of the significant reasons why Pakistan's culture -- a culture that holds so-called honor killings in high esteem and viciously punishes any who refuse to carry them out -- is so irretrievably violent, coercive, intolerant and corrupt. "Refusing to Kill Daughter, Pakistani Family Defies Tradition, Draws Anger," The Atlantic, 28 September 2011:

KARACHI, PAKISTAN -- Kainat Soomro is a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who has become a local celebrity of sorts in her battle for justice in the Pakistani courts, a daring move for a woman of any age in this country, let alone a teenager.

She is fighting to get justice for a gang rape that she insists happened four years ago in Mehar, a small town in Pakistan.

We first met her in the office of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. A colorful traditional Pakistani shawl covered her head. Her father sat next to her as she recounted the 2007 incident.

"I was walking home from my school and I went to the store to buy a toy for my niece," she said, staring at the floor of the office. "While I was looking at things a guy pressed a handkerchief on my nose. I fainted and was kidnapped. Then four men gang raped me."

As she shared details of her days in captivity and multiple rapes, she kept repeating, "I want justice, I will not stop until I get justice." After three days, she was finally able to escape she said. As she spoke, her father gently tapped her head. He said he tried to get Kainat's alleged rapists arrested, but instead he was rebuffed by the police.

According to the Kainat family's account, the tribal elders declared her kari, (which literally means black female), for losing her virginity outside marriage.

In Pakistan, women and men who have illicit relationships or women who lose their virginity before marriage are at risk of paying with their lives.

"These are matters of honor and the leaders call a jirga and they declare that the woman or the couple should be killed," said Abdul Hai, a veteran field officer for the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. These acts of violence are most commonly labeled as "honor killings."

The most recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted that in 2009 roughly 46 percent of all female murders in Pakistan that year were in the name of "honor." The report noted that a total of 647 incidences of "honor killings" were reported by the Pakistani press. However, experts say that actual incidences of "honor killings" in Pakistan are much higher and never get reported to the police because they are passed off by the families as suicides.

Kainat said that despite the pressures her family refused to kill her.

"It is the tradition, but if the family doesn't permit it, then it won't happen. My father, my brother, my mom didn't allow it," she said.

And that defiance has left the family fearing for their lives. The family's new home in Karachi has been attacked a number of times.

But, according to Abdul Hai, Kainat is lucky: "The woman or the girl usually gets killed and the man gets away," he said. "Over 70 percent of the murdered victims are women and only 30 percent of victims of honor killings are male."

In Karachi, Kainat and her family are now sharing one room in a run-down apartment block, and they have to rely on charities to help them pay for food.

"We go hungry many nights," said Kainat's older sister.

But their fight might never pay off. A local judge has already ruled against Kainat in the case. "There is no corroborative evidence available on record. The sole testimony of the alleged rape survivor is not sufficient," the judge said in a written decision.

Another problem is that material evidence is usually not collected in rape cases in Pakistan since the police rarely believe rape victims and therefore don't order rape kits in a timely manner.

Without medical tests to corroborate her story, it remains Kainat's word against the alleged rapists. But even having lost her case at the local court, Kainat insists, "I am not giving up, I will take this all the way to the Supreme Court of Pakistan."

It is this Islamic-based culture that Muslims bring with them when they emigrate.

Needless to say, it is a sick, dysfunctional society in which not blaming the victim is a crime. "Refusing to Kill Daughter, Pakistani Family Defies Tradition, Draws Anger," from The Atlantic, September 28:

KARACHI, PAKISTAN -- Kainat Soomro is a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who has become a local celebrity of sorts in her battle for justice in the Pakistani courts, a daring move for a woman of any age in this country, let alone a teenager. She is fighting to get justice for a gang rape that she insists happened four years ago in Mehar, a small town in Pakistan.

We first met her in the office of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. A colorful traditional Pakistani shawl covered her head. Her father sat next to her as she recounted the 2007 incident.

"I was walking home from my school and I went to the store to buy a toy for my niece," she said, staring at the floor of the office. "While I was looking at things a guy pressed a handkerchief on my nose. I fainted and was kidnapped. Then four men gang raped me."

As she shared details of her days in captivity and multiple rapes, she kept repeating, "I want justice, I will not stop until I get justice." After three days, she was finally able to escape she said. As she spoke, her father gently tapped her head. He said he tried to get Kainat's alleged rapists arrested, but instead he was rebuffed by the police.

According to the Kainat family's account, the tribal elders declared her kari, (which literally means black female), for losing her virginity outside marriage.

In Pakistan, women and men who have illicit relationships or women who lose their virginity before marriage are at risk of paying with their lives.

"These are matters of honor and the leaders call a jirga and they declare that the woman or the couple should be killed," said Abdul Hai, a veteran field officer for the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. These acts of violence are most commonly labeled as "honor killings."

The most recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted that in 2009 roughly 46 percent of all female murders in Pakistan that year were in the name of "honor." The report noted that a total of 647 incidences of "honor killings" were reported by the Pakistani press. However, experts say that actual incidences of "honor killings" in Pakistan are much higher and never get reported to the police because they are passed off by the families as suicides.

Kainat said that despite the pressures her family refused to kill her.

"It is the tradition, but if the family doesn't permit it, then it won't happen. My father, my brother, my mom didn't allow it," she said.

And that defiance has left the family fearing for their lives. The family's new home in Karachi has been attacked a number of times.

But, according to Abdul Hai, Kainat is lucky: "The woman or the girl usually gets killed and the man gets away," he said. "Over 70 percent of the murdered victims are women and only 30 percent of victims of honor killings are male."

In Karachi, Kainat and her family are now sharing one room in a run-down apartment block, and they have to rely on charities to help them pay for food.

"We go hungry many nights," said Kainat's older sister.

But their fight might never pay off. A local judge has already ruled against Kainat in the case. "There is no corroborative evidence available on record. The sole testimony of the alleged rape survivor is not sufficient," the judge said in a written decision.

Another problem is that material evidence is usually not collected in rape cases in Pakistan since the police rarely believe rape victims and therefore don't order rape kits in a timely manner.

Without medical tests to corroborate her story, it remains Kainat's word against the alleged rapists. But even having lost her case at the local court, Kainat insists, "I am not giving up, I will take this all the way to the Supreme Court of Pakistan."

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And as long as that continues, we will see more and more murders like this one.

This one also manifests the contempt and hatred Muslims have for the "People of the Book" their Western spokesmen profess to respect: the girl had supposedly besmirched the family honor by dallying with a...Christian.

"Girl strangled to death in name of honour," from the Daily Times, September 15 (thanks to Block Ness):

LAHORE: A 15-year-old girl was allegedly strangled to death by her uncle in the name of honour in Shera Kot Police limits on Wednesday.

The deceased was identified as Anam, daughter of Ramzan, resident of Ghousia Park. Police said that the deceased’s uncle, Talib Hussain, who was residing at his brother-in-law’s house, suspected that Anam had illicit relations with a Christian youth of the same area.

On the day of incident, Talib entered the house and strangled Anam to death and managed to escape from the crime scene. She was taken to a local hospital where the doctors pronounced her dead. Police, after being informed, reached the spot and shifted the dead body to a city morgue. Police registered a case against the accused on the complaint of deceased’s father, Ramzan....

In some countries, Shafilea Ahmed's parents might have faced little or no punishment under a legal system informed by Islamic law. In Britain, they could not hide forever.

Unfortunately, authorities did miss opportunities to help Shafilea. In 2003, she reported to them that she was in danger of being pushed into a forced marriage in Pakistan. After defying her parents, she disappeared, and was later found dead.

An update on this story. "Muslim parents of 'honour killing victim' schoolgirl, 17, charged with her murder eight years after she vanished," by Jaya Narain for the Daily Mail, September 7:

The parents of suspected honour killing victim Shafilea Ahmed have been charged with their daughter’s murder – eight years after she disappeared.

Shafilea, 17, went missing from her home in September 2003 after complaining that her parents were trying to force her into an arranged marriage.

A massive hunt was launched for the bright A-level student who had dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

Her decomposed body was found in February 2004, hidden near a river in the Lake District.

A coroner ruled that the Muslim teenager had been the victim of a ‘vile murder’.

Iftikhar Ahmed, 51, a taxi driver, and his wife Farzana, 48, were initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping their daughter in December 2003.

They were questioned by police but were released in June 2004 without charge when the Crown Prosecution Service ruled there was insufficient evidence against them.

The couple were re-arrested on suspicion of murder in September last year but have always denied any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance or death. [...]

The charges are believed to have come after fresh evidence was handed to police by Shafilea’s sister, Alisha, who was two years younger.

She was arrested by police for allegedly masterminding an armed robbery at the family home.

Alisha, who is in the witness protection programme, admitted the charges and is awaiting sentence.

The 22-year-old is believed to have made new claims about her parents’ involvement in Shafilea’s death.

Shafilea, from Warrington, Cheshire, went missing after complaining she was being forced into an arranged marriage.

Police investigating her disappearance discovered she had travelled to Pakistan for what she thought was a family holiday.

But once there she was allegedly told an arranged marriage had been organised for her.

The A-level pupil drank bleach in an apparent suicide attempt while in Pakistan and returned to the UK to continue studying.

Weeks later she disappeared. She was reported missing by a teacher.

After her body was found on the banks of the River Kent in Cumbria, an inquest ruled she had been murdered and a pathologist stated she was likely to have been smothered or strangled.

The coroner said at the time: ‘Shafilea was the victim of a very vile murder and there’s no evidence before the court as to who did it. There are things people know that have not been told to this court....

As we noted in a prior report on the risk of honor killings and rape in Libya, this is the population from which a tolerant, pluralistic civil society is supposed to spring forth now that it's no longer hindered by a lone autocratic weirdo. A democracy is only as good as the values that inform its participants, and therein lies peril for human rights in Libya in the near future.

The National Transitional Council's draft constitution enshrines Sharia as the source of legislation. Despite the law's brutal and specific punishments for other acts it defines as criminal, a parent who kills a child may face no penalty at all under Sharia.

It is all too likely that the NTC will kick the can down the road on women's rights to avoid specifics on the issue, saying it has more pressing matters to attend to, just as Egyptian women were told "their concerns were not urgent in the aftermath of the uprising." "Father slit throats of three daughters in 'honour killing' after they were raped by Gaddafi's troops," by Liz Hazelton for the Daily Mail, August 30:

A father slit the throat of his three teenage daughters in an ‘honour killing’ after they were raped by Gaddafi loyalists during the siege of the port city of Misrata.

Allegations of the shocking executions are contained in a report by the respected Physicians for Human Rights group into war crimes and atrocities in the embattled city, which faced two months of being cut off from the rest of Libya.

The father is said to have carried out the ‘honour killings’ because of his humiliation and shame at the rape of the sisters – aged 15, 17 and 18 – in Tomina, on the outskirts of Misrata. The victims were not named. [...]

A stable society is not possible where killing is acceptable to relieve "humiliation and shame."

Richard Sollom, who was the lead author on the report, concluded that no one had evidence that rape was widespread - but the fear of sexual assault was endemic.

The assailants know the girls' and women's lives are over after they have been raped. They are essentially killing them twice.

Researchers also heard reports of suspected honour killings - including the murder of the three sisters by their father.

But PHR also noted that 'some in Tomina have stood up against this practice, including a well-known sheik who has publicly advocated for raped women and girls to be seen as brave and bringing honor to their families'....

Common sense sometimes prevails over the brutal idiocy of punishing the victim, but the nature of future laws in Libya could make it more difficult to challenge the status quo.

Wednesday at American Independence Park in Israel we had the dedication of the Aqsa Parvez Memorial Grove, dedicated to her memory and those of all victims of honor killing. This was the first public declaration anywhere by anyone that we will not allow these girls to be forgotten, and will keep speaking out against this barbaric practice until law enforcement authorities take decisive action to stop it spreading further in the West.

Video thanks to the generous and indispensable Shai.

Pamela Geller has photos and more details here.

Join us at American Independence Park near Jerusalem today for the dedication of the Aqsa Parvez Memorial Grove. Pamela Geller has the details here. One key point she makes there is this: "the point of the memorials does not end simply with the memorials themselves. The memorials show that we have not forgotten and will not forget these girls. And the memorials are just a part of a larger determination to show the Islamic world that we simply will not allow this barbaric practice of Islamic honor killing to stand in the West."

More details in her article, "Stand Against Honor Killing," in Big Government, May 31:

On August 24th, we will be dedicating the Aqsa Parvez Grove in American Independence Park in Jerusalem, Israel. If you can be in that part of the world, join me.

Non-Muslims have begun to take note of the victims of Islamic honor killing, and to serve notice to their killers that the victims will not be forgotten, or their murders ignored. Americans have seen a spike in the brutal murder of Muslim girls under Islamic law.

Remember Aqsa Parvez? She was brutally murdered by her father and brother in December 2007 for refusing to wear the Islamic headscarf. But that was only the beginning: the abuse and dehuminaization of this girl continued. She was buried in an unmarked grave. Her family refused to acknowledge her life, as she had “dishonored” them. In defiance of her devout father and brother, she had refused to live under the suffocating dictates of Islamic law. The eleventh grade student began taking off her hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf, when she went to school, and would put it back on when she returned home. Her dad would go to her school during school hours and walk around trying to find her, trying to catch her not wearing Islamic garb, talking to boys or hanging out with “non-Muslims”. “She wanted to dress like us,” said one friend of Aqsa. “To be normal.” For this, her family prefers that she be forgotten — unknown, unloved, unmourned.

In December 2008, when I read that Aqsa lay in an unmarked grave, I was beside myself. I started a memorial fund at Atlas to get her a headstone. But I had no idea how difficult and ugly it would be simply to honor a teenage girl in Canada who just wanted to live free — and how eagerly Western non-Muslims would aid and abet the family’s efforts to dishonor her in death as they did in life.

Readers of my weblog, AtlasShrugs.com, opened their hearts and their wallets, and contributed $5,000 for a headstone for Aqsa. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch joined the effort, and we approved a design for a headstone that read, “In loving memory of Aqsa Parvez, Apr. 22, 1991-Dec. 10, 2007 — Beloved, remembered and free.” All was going according to plan until, after much silence, Meadowvale Cemetery in Brampton, Ontario, where Aqsa is buried, advised me that the family (yes, the family that murdered her) had refused to “sign off” on the headstone. The director of the cemetery said: “The family wants changes and is planning on coming in to see me. They did not book an appointment yet but I hope to see them soon.”

Of course, the family never came, and when we inquired as to purchasing a plot near Aqsa’s body, we could not. Not a tree. Not a rock. Not a bench. All the plots were owned by the Islamic Society of North America. I tried to contact the family at that time, but they would not take my calls — I spoke to the them once, but they pretended not to speak English. And they were adamant: the family refused to allow the headstone to be put on Aqsa’s grave, and according to the cemetery, could remove it if it were placed there by others.

But those of us who had contributed to the Aqsa Memorial Fund were determined to make sure that Aqsa would be memorialized. We checked into other locations, made plans, only to see them canceled at the last minute out of … fear. We checked into the arboretum at the University of Guelph in Ontario, but a university official wrote me to say that “no matter how worthy, a memorial to Aqsa Parvez would draw much public attention and would thus be inconsistent with current use of The Arboretum.”

But not everyone was ready to cower before Islamic anti-woman violence.

Considering the fact that Islamic honor killings were a global problem (over 90% of honor killings worldwide are Islamic), I approached the JNF and worked to plant the Aqsa Parvez Grove in American Independence Park in Jerusalem, Israel, where the plaque before the grove will read: “In Loving Memory of Aqsa Parvez and All Victims of Honor Killings Worldwide.” I loved the idea of a grove of trees that would continue to live and grow for decades in their name.

The memorial in Jerusalem is recognition of this horror and the first indication that in the Free World we are not going to stand by silently while the Islamic world brutalizes women and treats them as property and worthless trash. It is but a small, respectful step toward widespread resistance against honor killing in the West and elsewhere.

Read it all.

That quotation was missing from this report, and sheds considerably more light on why authorities feared Noor al-Maleki's family might try to finish in the hospital what her father started when he ran her down with his Jeep. It also further explains why the police detective called the mother a "sick individual."

"Disturbing Details Emerge in 'Honor Killing' Case," from Fox10, August 6 (thanks to Andrew):

PEORIA, Ariz. - Her murder shocked the valley and the nation.

A young Iraqi girl from Peoria was run down by her own father in what police called an honor killing

We're now learning some very disturbing details about her family.

Man [sic] people wondered how could a father do this to his own daughter?

The question of motive..did the 50-year-old Iraqi immigrant kill his daughter because she disobeyed him, because she didn't stay true to her culture and customs, or was it an accident as he claimed?

Conversations between members of the Almaleki family and police shed new light on that subject.

Faleh Almaleki admitted to running down his daughter Noor with his Jeep in the fall of 2009, ultimately leading to her death, but the motive dominated the trial which lasted into the early part of this year.

In a conversation with Peoria Police immediately following the hit and run, Seham, Faleh's wife, seems to sanction her husband's actions.

"Who said my husband..maybe it's not my husband..this woman, she's a liar because she's dirty," she said.

Detective Bill Laing then asked her, "..if it's not your husband, then where is he?"

Sayim replied, "I don't know."

Laing said, "Your daughter is about close to dying...she's in critical condition."

Sayim said, "Oh..okay..tell her thank ou [sic] Amal..thank you, that's what she needs."

"You are a sick individual," said Laing.

During the trial, the prosecution pushed the idea that this was an honor killing using Almaleki's own words against him.

But when the verdict came down, even the defense team seemed shocked by the result.

Almaleki was ultimately convicted of second degree murder. The jury did not believe the Glendale truck driver planned on killing his daughter that day....