Honor Killings in the New Year

Below are listed just a handful of stories about honor killings that have taken place so far this year. Some of them offer glimmers of hope for Muslim women, but sadly most do not.

Pakistani Minister Zilla Huma Usman was shot through the head for being a female leader in a Muslim nation, because she campaigned for the emancipation of women, and because she did not cover herself to the extent that Muslim law requires.

http://www.americandaily.com/article/17788

Hamda Abu-Ghanem’s bullet filled body was discovered in her parents home in Israel. She was likely killed by her brother and cousin for bringing dishonor on the Muslim family by seeking help from battered women’s shelter. She was the eighth woman to dishonor the Abu-Ghanem family and meet such a fate in the past six and a half years.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829395.html

A 19 year-old Jordanian boy was given a reduced sentence of just three months for slaughtering his 22 year-old sister after his family requested the charges be dropped. The woman was brutally murdered after her brother learned she may have taken a lover out of wedlock. The boy’s original sentence for the honor killing had been only 6 months.

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070201-063624-9274r

Dhimmi Ray Hanania of the Chicago Sun News Herald taught us that honor killings are as much a Christian and Jewish phenomenon as they are a Muslim Phenomenon.

http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_content/2007/02/022007rh_honorkill.php

Sixteen year-old Zahra Ezzo was killed by her brother in Damascus because she had allowed herself to be raped.

http://www.aina.org/news/2007021494913.htm

A 17 year-old Turkish girl talked her brother out of fulfilling the hit her family’s elders had put on her.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=66084

Nazanin Fatehi was released from an Iranian Prison where she had spent two years for the unforgivable crime of fighting off rapists. Had she not fought them off she would have been killed for allowing them to rape her.

http://www.leadercall.com/cnhi/leadercall/opinion/local_story_037101057.html?keyword=secondarystory

Two brothers bricked their sister and her lover to death in Multan, Pakistan.

https://www.azcentral.com/my/zage.php?referer=http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201HonorKilling01-ON.html

The Turkish Daily News reported that 1,806 women where killed as a matter of honor over the past 5 years in Turkey.

http://www.leadercall.com/cnhi/leadercall/opinion/local_story_037101057.html?keyword=secondarystory

A Jordanian father shot his 17 year-old daughter because she may have had sex.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,246712,00.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0701260123jan26,1,1200281.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

The fifth anniversary of Fadime Sahindal’s death passed in Sweden. Fadime, a Kurdish immigrant, had been an outspoken advocate of Muslim women’s rights until her father shot her.

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyhetssidor/artikel.asp?ProgramID=2054&Nyheter=&artikel=1158022

An 18 year-old girl was shot in Ramala.

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/10371.htm

Turkey did the right thing and sentenced an entire family to life in prison for massacring their 15 year-old daughter who dis-honored them by getting herself raped and even worse, getting pregnant.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=64297

Bloomberg reported that hundreds of honor crimes go unpunished in the UK each year because Police there treat Muslims with “kid gloves.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ato5csz7na1k&refer=home

Safiye Haji Osman escaped certain death from family members for being selfish enough to get raped. She fled Somalia for a women’s shelter in Turkey.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=63895

Meanwhile, 1,500 Somali Muslims in Minneapolis pledged their support for the regime that wanted Osman dead.
http://bsimmons.wordpress.com/2006/12/31/1500-in-minneapolis-protest-ouster-of-sharia-government-in-somalia/

Turkey’s Interior Minister stressed the need for more women’s shelters to reduce the number of honor killings in the country.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=63640

The Canadian Supreme Court tore of the Zunnar and ruled that honor killings are no excuse for murder in the maple leaf country.

http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?articleid=7217