Honour killing, cultural hell

Killing in Birmingham UK: Six Year Old Girl Burned To Death For Muslim ‘Honor’
LGF
September 20, 2006

Swiss charge Pakistani over 'honor killing' of wife
AFP
August 23, 2006

UK: Marry A Muslim Girl - Hide For 13 Years
Giraldus Cambrensis
May 26, 2006

Pakistan: Muslim Honor Killings Confronted?Giraldus Cambrensis
May 28, 2006

Winning the War on the Islamo-Fascists means Liberating the Women
Stefania - Free thoughts
February 18, 2005

Photo source: Freethoughts

Articles:

Honor Thy Father -- Or Else
Muslim cut his daughter's throat for taking a Christian boyfriend
Cousins in 'honour killing' face life for knifing bride
Burned alive

Honor killing in the Netherlands?
December 07, 2003
Dhimmi Watch

Culture of death? Palestinian girl's murder highlights growing number of 'honor killings'
Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

"ABU QASH — Rofayda Qaoud — raped by her brothers and impregnated — refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through murder.
Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother, no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick.
Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor..."

Study shows regional discrepancies in perception of ‘honor killings’
September 20, 2006
Daily News Turkey

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News
A survey carried out by the U.N. Turkey bureau in six cities around the country showed that the people of the southeastern city of Şanlıurfa were the least aware of women's rights.
The study, called Protection and Development of the Human Rights of Women and Girls,� carried out in the provinces of Şanlıurfa, Van, Izmir, Trabzon, Nevşehir and Kars, where the U.N. Joint Program on Women is being implemented, aimed to find out about the state of women, their needs and demands.
Apart from Şanlıurfa, 90 percent of women said there was a women's rights problem in Turkey, calling for measures to ensure gender equality. Women of Şanlıurfa were shown as less developed when it came to women demanding equality and measures to solve their problems. The study in the province, where 34.8 percent of women are illiterate, revealed that lack of education ensures that women there do not have access to the means to learn more about their rights. Similar problems and illiteracy rates exist in Van and Kars.

A quail of a tale in Pakistan
Damon Lynch
September 20, 2006

" DSZT believes that when an individual violates cultural norms, they have violated the rights of the community and must therefore be punished. I suggested that even if one was in total agreement that such behaviors were in violation of community rights, why did the perpetrator need to be killed? Could they not be punished in some other manner? He responded by saying that such people were no longer human, and therefore had to be killed. I pressed the issue further, saying that people can be led into such behaviors due to difficult circumstances over which they may have had little control, such as traumatic marriages devoid of love or childhoods in which they experienced sexual or emotional abuse. Furthermore, people make mistakes. Is not compassion therefore superior to community sanctioned murder? DSZT rejected this approach. He said that were these punishments not in place, society would break down and many people would naturally behave immorally. Killing wrongdoers is therefore essential to preserve decency..."

Honor Killings Are Against Islam Widespread and brutal crime is a gender issue
Smita Poudel
September 17, 2006

Legalized Murder Killing for "Honor"
Laura Jamison
Summer 2003
Amnesty International Magazine

Thousands of Women Killed for Family "Honor"
Hillary Mayell
National Geographic News
February 12, 2002

"...In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say.
"In countries where Islam is practiced, they're called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable," said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch."
"...nothing in the Koran, the book of basic Islamic teachings, that permits or sanctions honor killings. However, the view of women as property with no rights of their own is deeply rooted in Islamic culture..."

Reputation is Everything, Honor killing among the Palestinians
James Emery
WorldandI.com

"...If a woman brings shame to the family--through allegations of premarital or extramarital sex, by refusing an arranged marriage, or attempting to obtain a divorce--her male relatives are bound by duty and culture to murder her. "

"...Steeped in a collective sense of identity, families take pride in the accomplishments of individual members and feel shame if one of them does something dishonorable. "The family plays a role in every aspect of life in the Arab world," says Nimrat. "Whatever you do, you have to consider the immediate family and extended family, even the neighbors. How will they react? What will they think?"

Unlike Western countries, which champion individualism, Arabs focus on the group. The family is more important than the individual.
In the feudal, patriarchal societies of the Middle East, honor is based on what men feel is important, and reputation is everything. Unfortunately, thousands of women have been killed in the name of honor because imagination and rumors are as important as actions and events. Most, but not all, of these killings involve Muslims. Some Jewish communities, from the ancient fortress of Masada to conservative Hasidic sects of today, have similar views of tradition and ritual law but refrain from killing women in the name of honor.

The murder of females in the Middle East is an ancient tradition. Prior to the arrival of Islam in AD 622, Arabs occasionally buried infant daughters to avoid the possibility that they would later bring shame to the family. This practice continued through the centuries. It may still occur today among Bedouins, who consider girls most likely to sully the honor..."

The Price of Freedom

Image: Cox & Forkum Steven Vincent -August 05,2005

August 02, 2006 was the first anniversary of Steven's brutal death

Steven Vincent: Bloggers remember one of their own

In New York last week, I had the privilege to meet with Lisa Ramaci-Vincent. We talked about the wonderful man Steven was, the profound marks he left behind and the recognition he received during his life and after his tragic death. He was an honest and gifted writer known to be attentive to those he met. He was a successful art critic in New York but touched by the horrors of September 11, exactly five years ago today, Steven Vincent decided to leave for Iraq. He devoted his time to follow the reconstruction but was savagely murdered in Basra during his third trip on August 02, 2005.

Admired by many, Steven always maintained a dignified humility in life. He will always be deeply missed.

***

A few days ago, Iraqi journalist Ali Fadhil gave a brief TV interview on one of the major news broadcaster. I think it was on CNN.

Most of the content of this interview can be found in an article Mr. Fadhil published on September 6, 2006. Iraq’s Endangered Journalists

During the interview, Mr. Fadhil describes the perils that Iraqi journalists are facing every day. He is genuinely and quite understandingly concerned for the safety of Iraqi journalists and for the freedom of the press.

While, in his article in The New York time, he recognizes that "building a free press in Iraq was one of America’s greatest achievements" he explains how the situation has been dangerously degrading since. He also reports that American soldiers are responsible for the death of 14 Iraqi journalists.

Towards the end of the TV interview Fadhil is asked to comment on freedom of speech during Saddam's reign. Visibly relieved, he strongly admits that freedom of the press and freedom of movement have hugely improved since the fall of the regime.

Ali Fadhil's devotion to his country is commendable and his worries regarding the freedom of the press are quite understandable but I wished that during his TV interview he had found something to say about the enormous efforts that brought him the new freedoms he so wants to keep.

We hear too little on the price we must pay to guarantee our liberties and we hear hardly nothing on the sacrifices America made to this day to free Iraq from its decades of violence and nightmarish regime. We are however constantly reminded of the growing discontent with American policies in Iraq and elsewhere and America's "mistakes".

We all know that the difficulties in Iraq are mostly due to terrorism of internal and external origins and to the struggle between Iraqis themselves. Meanwhile the Arab media and MSM have been consistently leading a dishonest coverage of the war. All this goes well with this blind hatred for Bush's administration but surely does not help Iraq's future and everyone's interest. The challenge is to overcome all this together.

Lisa Ramaci-Vincent had something to say on one of Ali Fadhil's observation and reminded us all that Steven Vincent paid with his life for reporting a story.

Forwarded by Lisa Ramaci-Vincent

The New York Time
A Journalist’s Death
To the Editor:
September 9, 2006

While reading “Iraq’s Endangered Journalists,” by Ali Fadhil (Op-Ed, Sept. 6), I was shocked by his claim that “foreign reporters ... have the advantage of being considered untouchable by the Iraqi police and security forces.”

Might I remind Mr. Fadhil that on Aug. 2, 2005, my husband, Steven Vincent, an American journalist living in and writing from Basra, was kidnapped and killed by five men in police uniforms?

Two days before Steven’s murder, The New York Times ran an Op-Ed article he wrote in which he disclosed how the British Army was ignoring both the infiltration of the Basra police force by Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and the resulting spike in fundamentalist violence. He specifically mentioned the white police vehicles used to abduct and kill an ever increasing number of people; two days later, one of those vehicles came for him.

Steven thus has the dubious distinction of being one of the few foreign journalists in this Iraq conflict specifically targeted for execution.

Lisa Ramaci-Vincent
New York, Sept. 7, 2006

Photo taken a couple weeks ago at ground zero.

Diane

Beheaded: Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed - Sudan

Difficult Images, September 07 2006 Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, found beheaded

Update, September 08, 2006
More on Sudanese editor Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed.