Islamic law forbids Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men, although it allows Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women. The idea is that the Muslim community is always expanding, while the non-Muslim community is always in decline.
Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar, 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. In this case the victim was the murderer’s daughter, a victim to the culture of violence and intimidation that such laws help create.
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.”
Until the encouragement Islamic law gives to honor killing is acknowledged and confronted, more women will suffer.
“Girl, 17, found with bullet to head,” Newsday Trinidad and Tobago, January 28, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
A 17-YEAR-OLD girl was found with her hands bound behind her back and a single bullet wound to the back of the head in bushes near her home at Calvary Trace, Arima shortly after 11 am yesterday.
The victim was identified as Celine Thomas. Her boyfriend Carlyle Hamilton, 33, was hours earlier shot and critically wounded.
According to reports, Hamilton was at home at 9.30 pm on Thursday when he was attacked by gunmen as he turned and ran out of the house, gunshots were fired and Hamilton was struck several times. He sought assistance from neighbours and was taken to hospital where he was treated and warded in stable condition.
At 11 am yesterday, residents of Calvary Trace found Thomas’ body with her hands bound and a bullet wound to the back of her head. Officers of the Arima police as well as homicide officers were called to the scene and the body ordered removed to the Forensic Science Centre….
Thomas attended classes every Thursday at Al-Jabbal Mosque, Branch Road in Calvary. She left home just after 4 pm and she usually got home by about 7 pm, her mother, Cindy Cipriani said. Cipriani said her daughter attended Servol in Sangre Grande and was studying to be a nurse. She just had three more months to go before graduation.
The woman said when she awoke at 5.30 am yesterday, her daughter was not home. “She has a friend who had a baby and I thought when she did not come home she had stopped by this friend. My daughter never stayed out, she never partied, never drank or smoked and was a staunch Muslim,” Cipriani said.
“My daughter was a straight Muslim, she did not go anywhere.
She was killed because she was seen with Kali (Hamilton),” Cipriani said adding that Thomas – contrary to what was being said – was just friends with Hamilton as he was seeing someone….