“One in every five homicides in Pakistan is a so-called ‘honour killing.’”

Kenneth Hynek • 22nd Apr 2009 • Religion, Islam, Society, Men and Women, World News, Middle Eastern News, Health, Sex
Aga Khan University, honour killing, Islam, morality, Muazzam Nasrullah, North America, Pakistan, Robert Fulford, sexuality, World Health Organization

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Robert Fulford gets to the heart of the issue of honour killings and their relationship to Islam in many parts of the world…even (increasingly) North America:

Muazzam Nasrullah, who ran the study from Aga Khan University in Pakistan, compiled a total of 1,957 incidents from newspaper reports over four years. He thinks that number understates the problem. The World Health Organization suggests that 5,000 women are murdered every year by family members in the name of honour, probably also a low guess.

The great problem, for anyone attempting to eliminate this crime, is its status at the moral centre of many Muslim males. While some Muslims claim it’s a vestige of pre-Islamic societies, it’s now become ingrained in many corners of Islamic culture. A report from the Palestinian Human Rights Monitor notes (without explanation) that female sexuality dominates Arab morality: “The honour of a man is not related in any way to his own behaviour, it is related primarily to the behaviour of his wife, his daughter or his sister. A man who commits all the wrongdoings in the world is considered ‘honourable’ if his wife doesn’t deceive him by having an affair with another man. A man who is known as a wrongdoer is considered ‘honourable’ if his daughter safeguards her virginity.”

Legislation against “honour killing” is hard to pass and harder to enforce. Change will require an organized, strongly motivated and persistent campaign, which is nowhere in sight. Men who consider the killing of a daughter or sister an expression of virtue won’t give up their convictions without the most strenuous resistance. It would be like surrendering a part of their religion, at least as they understand it. When Chaudhry Rashid, a Pakistani Muslim living in Atlanta, acknowledged that he had strangled his daughter because she was having an extramarital affair and was seeking to end an arranged marriage, he did not indicate remorse. “God will protect me,” he said. “God is watching.”