Looks like we have a trifecta folks! Islam takes the gold, silver, and bronze in the January 2007 ludicrous Olympics. This final winner takes us to the lovely land of Amman, Jordan where we find a Muslim father struggling with the love of his 17-year-old daughter and the honor of his family. Complete story here.
Like many fathers, this one just wanted his daughter to be a good girl and wait till after marriage to experience the joys of sex. Honestly I find nothing wrong with that as I too have a daughter. However, what does one do if their daughter doesn't wait? Better yet, how do you even know for sure that she didn't wait?
Now if you were Christian, at worst your father would yell and kick you out of the house or ground you for 20 years. As for Jews, probably the same response holds true except I'd imagine they'd unleash one hell of a guilt trip. But what if you're Muslim? What do you do?
This Jordanian father made it quite clear what happens when daddy's little girls misbehaves. Instead of yelling, grounding, disowning, or even beating, this man fired 4 rounds into his little girl's head. Needless to say she never recovered.
Think this is rare? Think again. This phenomenon is known as an "honor killing" and happens throughout the Islamic world. Muslim males perform these acts to restore the family honor after it has been disgraced. This was the first one this year in Jordan, but they average about 20 a year. Pakistan is also a big fan of this cruel and inhuman practice. You can read more here.
It should be noted that an autopsy was performed on the girl and she was still a virgin according to the pathologist.
Thank Joell for rounding out this Islamic marathon!
Related posts:
- Miss Israel Quits With Honour
- Muslim Cabbies Ditch Common Sense In Favor Of Islam
- ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad
- Take This Hijab And Shove It!
- The Case For Women’s Beach Volleyball–Listen Up Islam!
January 26th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Gasmonso, you made me feel profoundly sad. Not because you told the case, but you woke me up to a horrible reality and I’m feeling unable to do anything to change it. I’m a father too, and sometimes you may see one thing or another that upsets you about your daughter’s behavior (even more if she’s a teenager), but, for (Deity)’s sake, I would very upset to pay taxes to maintain that murderer jailed and alive.
The father/killer is a criminal, but even more criminals are those religious leaders who incite this kind of behavior in incult masses’ minds. Nothing against Islam per se, but there will be no peace while those masterminds of religious criminality (be them Islamic, Christian of whatever) stand in their posts.
January 26th, 2007 at 2:44 am
Ever notice how no men get killed for the same offense? I lived in Turkey for a year and saw this double standard nonsense all the time. There is no test to prove a man’s virginity, so he can do whatever he can get away with without suffering any familial shame. It’s always about the women in Islam…same reason women must wear an abaya in Saudi…the sight of women cause men to do/think awful sexual things..pfffft. Even the slightest rumor or thought of a daughter having sex outside marriage results in murder. I say it’s more about men being unable to control…their women or themselves. That makes muslim men extremely weak in my eyes.
January 26th, 2007 at 3:06 am
In my point of view honour is actually the Achilles heel of islam and the reason why muslims fail at evolving into something that can function rationally in a modern society. (Explanation follows)
The concept of honour was defined among cultures that had no means of upholding a law, or for some reason could not get the law to function properly. This is also why honour is regularly found among criminals (who can’t call upon the law when injustice is done among them).
At the base of it all one find that honour and law can not coexist. Law is based on rationality and that every breach shall be handled by an unbiased third party, honour is based on that the offended part shall regain his honour by some action.
As long as honour is a important aspect of islam they will and can not be expected to follow what a modern society sees as correct. If any muslim shall become a part of a modern society they need (as many muslims have done) abandon the concept of honour. As long as honour is the governing concept they will run into problems with any society governed by a law. Unfortunately once a culture of honour is established any sign of abandoning this concept is viewed as an act of dishonour. Such “honour murders†is therefore something we will experience as muslims try to pass into the modern society, and thereby “dishonouring†themselves and their family.
January 26th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Cláudio Pinheiro
You needn’t feel helpless my friend, you can do something about it. You could raise your own daughter with humility and respect for those less fortunate. She will influence those around her and create social change; hell, get in arguments with religious people more often to do more of the same.
Be a shining beacon of understanding and love that has no agenda, no purpose than happiness for yourself and others.
Religious peopl
January 26th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Cláudio Pinheiro
You needn’t feel helpless my friend, you can do something about it. You could raise your own daughter with humility and respect for those less fortunate. She will influence those around her and create social change; hell, get in arguments with religious people more often to do more of the same.
Be a shining beacon of understanding and love that has no agenda, no purpose than happiness for yourself and others.
Religious people are weak, and they need good role models to learn how to break free of their dependence on faith.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:02 am
“But attempts to introduce harsher sentences have been blocked by conservative lawmakers who argue that tougher penalties would lead to promiscuity.”
If they punish murderers too hard their daughters, sisters, women will have wild orgies.
There is only one thing I’m thinking right now: “Fucking Bastards”.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I am in agreement with what NewOne said. Honour is part of an older system that doesn’t fit with a legal-oriented society. Few really think a whistle-blower is honorable, and yet, the law tries to protect them so that they can help to protect the people when government officials do bad things. When I think of honour the biggest example I think of is the medieval system, where there were no transcendent laws and the ‘code’ was the only thing keeping knights in check. We’ve moved past that, however. At least, most of us have.
Seriously, what damage would the father have suffered if his daughter did have sex before being married? Is it worth killing your own child? (especially considering she was still in fact a virgin, which would seem to indicate he didn’t try very hard to discern actual truth).
January 27th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I think you’re missing the point… killing your own daughter has nothing to do with what we would consider to be honor. Honor by our definition is about honesty, FAIRNESS, integrity, RESPECTFULNESS, etc. When you leave that meaning behind, honor simply becomes something like an excuse to save your own ass or do what you damn well please to do.
If you know anything about history, it’s not a new occurrence. Emphasis on this.
All of this can normally be avoided by having a society that places importance on simply taking personal responsibility for the implications of your beliefs, and not blaming the consequences of the actions you take based on those beliefs on something abstract like honor or god.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that doing away with honor isn’t the answer. Maintaining a sane definition of it and where it can and cannot apply makes a whole lot more sense.
To say something like “Honor has no place in the legal system” is just bullshit. If anything, we need more of it, and fast. Don’t get all confused just because some moron comes along with an unreasonable and harmful definition of honor and uses it poorly. That’s just foolish IMHO.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Honor killings are more of a Middle Eastern behavior than a strictly Islamic one, as Druze and Christians in the area do them too, though not as, from what I understand, often as Muslims.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Hi Arktis,
I find this a really interesting.
Honor is yet another english word that is “overloaded” with multiple meanings, one of which, the one you are using, equates to “virtue”. This is the usage most of mean these days, because it is the only one operational in our lives.
Go back a few centuries though, and the more significant meaning of “Honor” was that of the Code Duello - I guess these days your “Rep” or “Cred” - basically, don’t “Dis” me or I’ll bust a cap in your ass, and everyone knows it ’cause I did it last week to some other punk. Respect based on fear, based on a demonstrated readyness to kill. It’s what humans end up doing when forced to live without the protection of law, as in the ghetto.
A very old and wacky code of honor is the one practiced in Afganistan - Pashtunwali. Apparently it’s so backwards that, under the Taliban and Sharia law, womens rights actually moved *forwards*
Wikipedia is a bit sanatised about it, but there was a really good article on it in December’s economist - It would be worth stopping at your local library to see if they have it.
It is apparently quite ancient, and not much changed since Winston Churchil wrote the following during his time in Afganistan:
I think there’s a little something in that for all of us athiests, don’t you? :)
I found Churchil’s stuff here, and I don’t know which is better value - his own blind acceptance of the organised brutality of British colonialism, or the bizzare honor code of the Pashtun. Check this out:
——————–
Nor are these struggles conducted with the weapons which usually belong to the races of such development….. The weapons of the nineteenth century are in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age.
——————–
… Truth is unknown among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field boundary, it is customary for both claimants to walk round the boundary he claims, with a Koran in his hand, swearing that all the time he is walking on his own land. To meet the difficulty of a false oath, while he is walking over his neighbor’s land, he puts a little dust from his own field into his shoes. As both sides are acquainted with the trick, the dismal farce of swearing is usually soon abandoned, in favor of an appeal to force.
——————–
All are held in the grip of miserable superstition. The power of the ziarat, or sacred tomb, is wonderful. Sick children are carried on the backs of buffaloes, sometimes sixty or seventy miles, to be deposited in front of such a shrine, after which they are carried back — if they survive the journey — in the same way. It is painful even to think of what the wretched child suffers in being thus jolted over the cattle tracks. But the tribesmen consider the treatment much more efficacious than any infidel prescription. To go to a ziarat and put a stick in the ground is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of a wish. To sit swinging a stone or coloured glass ball, suspended by a string from a tree, and tied there by some fakir, is a sure method of securing a fine male heir. To make a cow give good milk, a little should be plastered on some favorite stone near the tomb of a holy man. These are but a few instances; but they may suffice to reveal a state of mental development at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.
——————–
Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood — “Mullahs,” “Sahibzadas,” “Akhundzadas,” “Fakirs,” — and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of “droit du seigneur,” and no man’s wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley’s plays, “they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters.” They are “safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach.”
——————–
January 28th, 2007 at 10:46 am
here in the middle east Honor(for women)=Virginity, Honor(for men)=strength
Simple isn’t it?
January 28th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Does it matter what you do with the strength? Or just that you are dangerous to the other guy?
January 28th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Of course it does. Bullying people and threatening people when they ask you nicely to do something…
I remember a group of bedwi(moslems) people here killed a biotechnology professor in a nearby village because he complained about their driving…
January 28th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Alright, I think I figured this one out. ;p
I’ve got it down to an overly simplistic statement:
Honor in the noun form is bad, honor in the verb form is good.
In other words, to honor somebody by conducting yourself appropriately towards them = verb form = good, whereas to do something in the name of honor (respect, reputation) = bad = noun form.
I leave it to whomever to tear that apart and see if it works or fails. Try adding more conditions/caveats to prop it up, etc. Just for fun, guys.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:48 pm
how dare you people belittle this article to a discussion of semantics!!! honor is honor is shooting a girl in the head.
in my opinion after reading this article, the word honor should be stricken from human thought. to use the word honor is to agree with this mans actions. end of story.
January 31st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
You, sir, dishonor us.
July 30th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Perhaps you want to change your wording. “Islam” does not take the gold, silver and bronze…”Muslims” do. Islam does not condone killing except out of self-defense, especially the killing of women. Parents who raise daughters are given high regard by Allah, so why would someone kill a daughter in His name? This misguided man may have thought he was killing to preserve honor, but in reality he doomed himself to hellfire. Not exactly what I’d call a great payoff..
October 13th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
That Looks Like The Pakistani Flag =P