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.
The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. 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.”
“Parents ‘murdered their Westernised teenage daughter in front of her sister because they thought she was bringing shame on the family,'” by James White for the Daily Mail, May 21 (thanks to Mick):
A teenage girl was murdered by her parents because she had become ‘Westernised’ and no longer obeyed their strict rules, a jury heard today.
The parents of Shafilea Ahmed are accused of attacking her in a killing allegedly witnessed by their other daughter, before dumping her body by a river.
The decomposed remains 17-year-old Shafilea were discovered in Cumbria in February 2004.
Today, as her parents Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed went on trial for murder, prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told Chester Crown Court they had killed her because she refused to obey them.
Opening the case against the Ahmeds, Mr Edis told the jury of seven men and five women: ‘The defendants, having spent the best part of 12 months trying to really crush her, realised they were never going to be able to succeed and finally killed her because her conduct dishonoured the family, bringing shame on them.’…