Saturday 31 May 2014

There is no Honour in Honour Killing


From the northern UK cities of Bradford, Rochdale, and Manchester to the rural areas of Pakistan, the grisly issue of honour killing persists. This has recently surfaced in the media, with the savage killing of Farzana Parveen, a 25-year-old pregnant woman, literally bludgeoned to death with bricks and stones by family members, for having married the man she loved. It beggars belief, how anyone can do this to their own flesh and blood. What kind of values do these people carry? Whatever it is, I can see no reference in Islamic law, and the life of the Prophet (saw), to remotely endorse such barbarism and cruelty.

One of the first Quranic injunctions forbade the killing of daughters; the pre-Islamic Arabs used to bury them alive, because it brought shame. For that same reason of ‘shame’, family members of Farzana Parveen collectively plotted and murdered her. It gets worse, in another case, a couple in Pakistan, killed their daughter for allegedly looking at a boy, and another family killed two teenage girls for ‘dancing’ in the rain, yes like most 15-year olds, they were engaged in some form of frolic enjoying themselves; they were not stripping or performing some lewd dance in front of a group of rowdy men.