5,000 women a year killed for bringing dishonor.

[dogbone]

This is certainly a very odd world in which we live.

link (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/europe/16turkey.html)

[Blue Velvet]

'You're not my mother any more,' shouted Samaira. Then her family killed her '

The "honour killing", which took place at home in front of her parents, was carried out with four knives, as she was pinned down, and left her with 18 stab wounds and three separate cuts to her throat. The Old Bailey heard the method was "barbaric".

...Ms Nazir succeeded in fleeing from her captors, her bloodstained arm emerging briefly from the door, but the men grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back into the house. Her family held her down, tied a silk scarf round her neck, and Imran Mohammed slashed her neck three times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1821073,00.html


There's also this recent case here in the UK. I must admit that my feelings about respecting diversity and other cultures' traditions are sorely tested by such abhorrent practices.

Besides, I can't understand how killing a family member is supposed to confer 'honour'. Genuinely puzzled... :confused:

[dogbone]

That is certainly a nasty case. But what I find appalling is the quantity of this that is going on. I thought it was a few hundred. But 5 fracking thousand a year. This is very depressing.

[Applespider]

Besides, I can't understand how killing a family member is supposed to confer 'honour'. Genuinely puzzled... :confused:

Because by ritually killing somone who has 'erred', you wipe the slate clean and the dishonour they brought to the family is wiped out too.

And in some minds, perhaps having the strength to kill a family member gains you some additional credit on the slate since I'm sure it's recognised that it must be hard to do. You know the 'such a devout family that they'd rather sacrifice their daughter than live in shame' - what an example to us all?

It makes me shudder. Like BV, I'm all for upholding cultural traditions and lifestyles but certainly not to this extent.

[Queso]

There was a case in Pakistan a few years ago where a man was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his younger sister. Apparently she had run off with a man from the next village, rather than marrying the man her father had promised her to, so on the orders of the father the brother hunted her down and stabbed her to death. In court he showed absolutely no remorse for the murder, saying he had restored his sister's honour, then was found guilty and sentenced.

But a couple of weeks later the father gave the local magistrate a cow and the son got released on a full pardon. So there you go girls, you are officially worth as much as a cow. Gives you a nice warm feeling about the human race doesn't it? :confused: :(

[Dont Hurt Me]

I wouldnt blame the human race, I would blame the nuts that practice a warped religion. The article doesnt seem to want to mention the F.Upd religion these nuts use.Extreme Islam is a mess and so are the cultures that use it as a base for everything.

[Queso]

I wouldnt blame the human race, I would blame the nuts that practice a warped religion. The article doesnt seem to want to mention the F.Upd religion these nuts use.Extreme Islam is a mess and so are the cultures that use it as a base for everything.
It's not the religion, it's a cultural thing. It says clearly in the Qu'ran that women are equal to men

Their Lord responded to them: "I never fail to reward any worker among you for any work you do, be you male or female, you are equal to one another"
Yet in the Arabic culture at the time of Mohammed women were treated as mere extensions of the male, pretty much as it was in Europe at the time. A lot of the other "bad stuff" associated with Islam comes from this cultural extension to the religion, rather than the religion itself. It's known as the Hadith, and it should be treated as herecy, but for some reason most muslims live by it.

Brainwashing. Pretty much like every other religion then ;)

[solvs]

I must admit that my feelings about respecting diversity and other cultures' traditions are sorely tested by such abhorrent practices.
This has nothing to do with culture. They hide behind their culture to justify such things, but as has been pointed out this isn't even part of that belief system. Any more than drowning witches as Christians used to do, or beating gays like they still do. It should be seen as abhorrent because it is. No matter what the supposed justification.

You can tolerate their beliefs all you want if you want to be tolerant, but you don't have to like their actions. ;)

[Blue Velvet]

I didn't want to start another thread about the following story and thought it might as well go here... bit off-topic but words cannot express my revulsion and contempt.

I don't believe in hell, but if there was one I'd love to see some people rot there...


Execution of a teenage girl

A television documentary team has pieced together details surrounding the case of a 16-year-old girl, executed two years ago in Iran.

On 15 August, 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka. Her death sentence was imposed for "crimes against chastity".

The state-run newspaper accused her of adultery and described her as 22 years old. But she was not married – and she was just 16.



Previously arrested for attending a party and being alone in a car with a boy, Atefah received her first sentence for "crimes against chastity" when she was just 13.

Although the exact nature of the crime is unknown, she spent a short time in prison and received 100 lashes.

When she returned to her home town, she told those close to her that lashes were not the only things she had to endure in prison. She described abuse by the moral police guards.

Soon after her release, Atefah became involved in an abusive relationship with a man three times her age. Former revolutionary guard, 51-year-old Ali Darabi – a married man with children – raped her several times. She kept the relationship a secret from both her family and the authorities.

Circumstances surrounding Atefah's fourth and final arrest were unusual.

The moral police said the locals had submitted a petition, describing her as a "source of immorality" and a "terrible influence on local schoolgirls". But there were no signatures on the petition – only those of the arresting guards.

Three days after her arrest, Atefah was in a court and tried under Sharia law. The judge was the powerful Haji Rezai, head of the judiciary in Neka. No court transcript is available from Atefah's trial, but it is known that for the first time, Atefah confessed to the secret of her sexual abuse by Ali Darabi.

However, the age of sexual consent for girls under Sharia law is nine, and furthermore, rape is very hard to prove in an Iranian court.

When Atefah realised her case was hopeless, she shouted back at the judge and threw off her veil in protest. It was a fatal outburst.

She was sentenced to execution by hanging, while Darabi got just 95 lashes.

Judge Haji Rezai took Atefah's documents to the Supreme Court himself...

And at six o'clock on the morning of her execution he put the noose around her neck, before she was hoisted on a crane to her death.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/5217424.stm

[mactastic]

Yeah, that's pretty disturbing. Just another in a long line of examples of how far women's issues still have to go, and another reason not to let religious nutters in charge of government functions.

[Queso]

That's what it's like in most of the Middle East and Africa sadly. We are so insulated from this crap in the West that it makes news, but it's just background noise in some places.

Bloody humans :(