Latest Updates: Honor Killings RSS

  • johnpi 12:44 am on December 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Honor Killings, , , ,

    On Monday, USA Today published a feature article on ‘honor killings.’ I won’t bother to excerpt the article here, but it will suffice to know what the tone of the article was by naming the writer’s three major sources of expertise on the subject: Robert Spencer, Phyllis Chesler and M Zudhi Jasser.

    For those who are new to the debate and aren’t familiar with these names, Robert Spencer was identified as one of the most prominent Islam-bashers in the US according to the website smearcasting.com; Phyllis Chesler has made a series of bizarre comments about Islam and Muslims (see here and here); and M Zudhi Jasser showed he was preposterously ignorant and misinformed about ‘honor killings’ when he told Fox News that slain Bridges TV cofounder Aasiya Hassan was a victim of one.

     

  • johnpi 11:49 am on November 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Honor Killings, , ,

    Ottawa Muslim community leader and city council candidate gets a year in jail for ‘honour’-related harassment.

    Daughter says leaving marriage, refusing to wear the hijab, were the reasons. Father says, “listening to expert evidence on honour crimes was like hearing about a ‘different world’ — he’d never, he said, lived in that world or held those beliefs.”

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 11:27 am on November 7, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Honor Killings, , social conservatism

    AP covers family and friend’s response to Noor Almaleki death. More details about her relationship with her father, and her “marriage.” Also of note: The media is continuing to be responsible in its coverage and not bring in religion.

    Marcella Andregg, a friend for seven years, described Noor as independent, but far from rebellious and always respectful of her parents. She said Noor just wanted to live her own life, but that her father wouldn’t let her.

    “His whole persona was very controlling, very strong-minded in the ways he wanted it for her,” Andregg said. “He talked down to her very much, made sure she knew she wasn’t good enough and brought a lot of dishonor to the family.”

    Meanwhile, she said, Noor “just wanted to be a normal teenager,” and later, wanted to finish college, marry the man she loved, and have children.

    and

    In 2008, friends say Almaleki took Noor to Iraq under the guise of visiting family. Actually, he had picked out a husband for her and told her she couldn’t return to Arizona unless she married him. Noor married the man and returned, and friends say he was in the process of trying to move here, too.

    As with Aqsa Parvez, there is a move afoot to make her an “honor killing” martyr.

     

  • johnpi 8:15 am on November 3, 2009 | 22 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Honor Killings, , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Chechen leader champions ‘tradition,’ makes Sufi Islamism the state religion to counter influence of Salafi Islamism.

    Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.

    At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.

    And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.

    Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.

    Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.

    “Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”

     

  • johnpi 6:48 pm on November 2, 2009 | 8 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Honor Killings, , ,

    Prosecutor cites “cultural aspect” of honor killing inside and outside of the family in asking for high bail at Arizona father’s hearing.

    The prosecutor called Noor Almaleki’s attempted (now completed – she died today) slaying an ‘honor killing,’ and expressed concern in court about the community of supporters behind her father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, who helped in his attempted escape. The Almalekis are from Iraq.

    At the link above, you can watch the father’s first appearance in court where he is read the charges and the prosecutor makes the case for not allowing him bail, or setting his bail very high.

    Here’s my transcript of part of what the prosecutor says the state believes about his attempt to escape:

    We can’t be naive and not admit that there is a cultural aspect to this, and there may be people that would support him – including his family – but also others who share his beliefs. This was an attempt at an honor killing.

    The defendant tries to hide behind his moral convictions, and yet he also fled. The state has serious concerns that this defendant would attempt to flee if he were to be released and that he does have the resources and others that would be willing to help him, as they obviously did.

    If the prosecutor keeps talking about culture and the “cultural aspect” to the case this could get sensationalized into headlines like “Culture of honor killing goes on trial in Arizona” or some such thing.

    Noor Almaleki’s friends and other who knew her have been communicating at this thread here at Talk Islam.

     

  • mirelle 8:25 pm on October 26, 2009 | 38 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Honor Killings,

    Update on the Noor Almaleki case, where her father Faleh Hassan Almeleki is accused of running her down:

    The brother of Noor Almaleki, whom police say was run over by her father last week, has told a local television news station that the father and daughter have been in conflict the past couple of years.

    Peter-Ali Almaleki told CBS 5 News that his sister went “out of her way to disrespect” her traditional Muslim father.

    Noor Almaleki had married a man in Iraq but returned to the United States and moved in with a boyfriend and his mother in Surprise. The father was furious about the arrangement, according to the brother.

    In addition to allegedly running down his daughter, Faleh Almaleki is alleged to have run down the mother of the boyfriend in the same incident. Noor Almaleki is still basically in a “life-threatening condition”; the boyfriend’s mother is “improving.”

    I’m having to bite my tongue to keep from spilling out with some pointed commentary about men who think that their family honor is wrapped up in their daughters’ sexual behavior, to the point of attempting murder.

    And this, this doesn’t make any sense to me:

    Peter-Ali Almaleki said he loves his sister and that should she not have to be suffering her injuries. But he added that the family lives by different cultural values.

    “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he added.

    No, Peter, murder is murder, no matter what culture it’s in. You want to talk, I’m in the Phoenix phone book. I’m not that hard to find.

     

  • johnpi 5:47 am on October 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Honor Killings,

    Long jail term for Jordanian ‘honor’ killer.

    A 21-year-old Jordanian man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for killing his married sister over an alleged affair, court officials said.

    He was charged with premeditated murder for stabbing his 18-year-old sister 26 times with a kitchen knife last year. He claimed he wanted to restore his family’s honour.
    ….

    Jordan has been criticised in the past for giving lenient sentences in so-called honour killing cases.

    But this time, the court refused to reduce the sentence despite pleas for leniency from the man’s family.

    “The court did not find any reason to commute or reduce the sentence, especially as the convict had previous knowledge of the affair and decided to plan the murder,” a court official was quoted as saying by AFP.

     

  • razib, murtad fitri 8:30 pm on September 26, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Honor Killings

    more craziness from the 10/40 window, In northern India, village elders order ‘honor killings’:

    In late July, three months after Maun married Banwal, he was lynched by residents of her village. They hacked at his body with scythes and farm tools until he moved no more.

     

  • johnpi 3:33 pm on September 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Honor Killings, ,

    Rod Dreher tells the story about when he discovered one of his relatives – a “kindly old man” – had helped kill someone in the name of “honor.”

    On his deathbed not too many years ago, a relative of mine confessed to having been part of a white lynch mob in the 1930s, which strung up a black man after he was caught having sex with a white woman. She accused him of rape. The sheriff led the lynch mob. There was no need for a trial; what a black man did to a white woman was considered so horrifying that nobody could wait for a trial and a verdict. After the black man was murdered, the guilt-stricken white woman confessed that the man had been her lover, and she called him a rapist to protect her honor.

    None of us ever knew this about my kinsman, until in his dying days, he admitted it because it tortured him. It had been on his heart all his life. I pray that his repentance in the face of eternity helped him find mercy. It unnerved me, though, to think that that kindly old man had once fallen under the sway of race hatred to that degree, a race hatred that was part of the society into which he was born and raised. It still does, because that world seems like a thousand years ago. But it only seems so far away because many people worked too hard — and some even gave their lives — to drive those demons out.

    Seems like a lot of people will go into the fire on Judgement Day in the name of “honor.”

     

  • johnpi 9:53 pm on August 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Honor Killings, ,

    A full nearly seven minute video of a frightened, tearful Fathima Rifqa Bary has been posted to youtube by Pamela Gellar. Bary is the 17-year-old Sri Lankan teenager who ran away from her Muslim family in Ohio to live with a Christian preacher in Florida, claiming her family might commit an “honor killing” because they found out she converted to Christianity. Such a killing would be required for her family “to show love for Allah,” she explains to reporters.

    There is something really weird and distorted about this. She has apostasized, but there have been no assertions about issues arising from her apostate status. She and those around her have exclusively harped on the buzz word ‘honor killings,’ with her attorney declaring, “She could be killed in an honor killing. Unfortunately it happens every day in the U.S.”

    As Richard Bartholomew has pointed out, she has an odd description of ‘honor killing:’

    The girl gives a rather strange interpretation of what an “honour killing” is for; rather than being the remedy for a perceived dishonour suffered by a family, she tells the journalist that to kill her would be an especially ”great honour” because she is the first Christian in her family for “150 generations” and it would show her family’s love for Allah (Lorenz concurs with a “yes” at 5:03). This seems to me to be a garbled “Christianized” understanding of the phenomenon, making it into something like a human sacrifice. Her claim that Muslim converts to Christianity in Sri Lanka (where Muslims are a minority) are confined to a mental hospital is not one that I have seen reported anywhere else.

    Here’s a local news report that includes interviews with her family members.

    The parents attorney has issued a statement that included this:

    If this case is perceived as a clash of religions, it is because Mr. Lorenz [the preacher] recklessly and without authorization put someone else’s child in front of television cameras to publicly renounce her previous faith.

     

  • johnpi 9:39 pm on April 12, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Bedouins, , , Honor Killings, ,

    A Jordanian man confessed to stabbing to death his sister who was five months pregnant. “Police familiar with the case said the woman had moved back in with her family after an argument with her husband six months earlier. The brother believed that she had then started seeing other men.”

    One revealing observation about this story is how frequently the word “conservative” appears in it:

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 11:33 am on January 21, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Honor Killings, ,

    An instance of using a domestic violence accusation to persecute an Arab man, or an honor killing averted, or something else?

    Bay County Assistant Prosecutor Richard I. Dresser alleges Fawaz M. Ghaith threatened to kill 18-year-old Hanan Ghaith [his daughter], her mother and Hanan’s grandparents in a Sept. 2, 2008, phone call to the grandparents’ home in Gibson Township.

    Ghaith’s lawyers claim police targeted the Jordanian-American truck driver due to his Middle Eastern descent.

    “If Fawaz’s name wasn’t Fawaz – if Fawaz’s name was Jeff, and we had this same factual situation – would we be here in this situation?” Jeffrey M. Day, one of two lawyers representing Ghaith, asked jurors in his opening statement.
    ….

    Day said Hanan Ghaith “has much to gain” if a jury convicts her father. Hanan wants to remain in the U.S., and Day added “it’s going to be a lot easier with her dad out of the way, and that’s going to be the result – perhaps – of this trial.”

     

  • abunoor 8:31 am on December 30, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Honor Killings, ,

    News from the neocon paradise, the magical secular pro-American Kurdish areas of Iraq:

    ‘Honor killings’ are among the primary causes of unnatural deaths among women in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq, and a number of reports are also documenting the practice of female genital mutilation. Medical personnel operating in Iraqi Kurdistan and women’s rights activists report that incidents of self-immolation are on the increase, with at least one case reported daily and many more remaining either unreported or concealed as accidents.

    May Allaah (swt) and the righteous believers protect and defend all our sisters.

     

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
esc
cancel