Friday, November 18, 2011

"Honour" Crime and Punishment (or Lack Thereof)

It's not that "honour killings" are unique to (some) Islamic cultures, writes Ryerson academic Mutaza Haider. It's that in non-Muslim societies the crimes are seen as crimes, and are punished, but in Muslim ones, which adhere to sharia, they aren't:
Many in the West associate ‘honour killings’ with Muslim societies. However, the deplorable practice can be found in several non-Muslim majority societies. In India, for instance, the practice is more frequent in rural settings where village councils at times have sanctioned murdering the couple who had eloped or married without the family’s consent. Earlier this week a judge in Uttar Pradesh sentenced eight men to death and 20 others for life imprisonment for honour killings committed in 1991. In May 2011, the Indian Supreme Court had already recommended capital punishment for those convicted of honour killings, thus enabling the lower courts to award stricter punishments.
In Pakistan and several other Muslim countries, female victims of honour killings seldom get justice. While laws against honour killing have been on the books in Pakistan since 2005, however the conviction rate has been despicably low. In Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP), a mere 8 per cent of those accused of honour killings were convicted in 2009. *Of the 33 women and 18 men murdered in honour killings in 2009 in KP, 83 per cent of the accused were husbands, fathers, brothers and other male relatives of the deceased.
Research from Pakistan, Jordon, and other countries revealed that often mothers of murdered women approach the sharia courts as their legal heirs and sought and received pardon for the accused father, brother or other male relative of the murdered girl in a Diyat (blood money) arrangement.
The Shafias will have to face justice. Mohammad Shafia’s wealth and property cannot buy him freedom in Canada...
Something tells me Shafia would rather rot in a kafir jail than live a life that's been unbearably tainted by "whorish" daughters. The question is: what, if anything, can we as Canadians do to combat the primitive, "honour"-obsessed mindset of outwardly modern and affluent citizens?

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