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"Honour" killing - a self-important murdering pig speaks

A long, chilling interview in the Observer today with the father of a 17 year old Iraqi girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, who he choked, stamped and beat to death in Basra.  Abdel-Qader Ali explains why he is unrepentant and says the  police backed his actions.
     'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion..'I don't have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends"
    Just note that last sentence.  It's not about Islam (sane Muslims agree that the Qu'ran forbids such murders).  It's not about Islam but it's all about him.  It is uncivilized, irreligious, psychopathic nonsense.  A fathers who murders his daughter because her even smiling at another man "humiliates"  him personally is  no better than Josef Fritzl.    But read the interview.  It's a window into hell.

'Honour' killing fatwa

Associated Press are reporting that Lebanon's top Shi'a cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, has issued a fatwa (religious edict) condemning 'honour' killings as 'repulsive' and 'prohibited by Islam' he added that such crimes were on the rise in Middle Eastern countries in a fax to the Associated Press.

He's been linked to Hezbollah and has a large following among Lebanon's mainly Shi'a Muslim population. There's an interview with him here after the war in Lebanon last year.

'Honour' killing conviction

A terribly sad story which will reignite the debate over whether so-called 'honour' killings are a product of religious or cultural prejudice.

"A 70-year-old grandmother and her son have been found guilty of murdering his wife in a so-called 'honour killing'."

They were both Sikh. But what strikes and pains me most about this story is the calculated, cold blooded way in which it was planned - right down to the life insurance taken out for the victim before she went to India and was reported missing. 

A "crime passionel" of the most disturbing kind.

'Honour' killings and Islam

The awful death of Banaz Mahmood, strangled by her father and uncle, raises once again the troubling question of 'honour' killings and what relationship, if any, they have to the family religion. Cultural self-justification of these murders often uses language allied to religious terms, but we do not seem to see
imams preaching strongly against these incidents. Many are detailed on a campaigning website. 

Given the closure of the Muslim Women's Helpline there seems to be little help, though there is an Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights site.

Fury is, however, vented on the Iraq Solidarity Campaign  and Whydontyou blog sites.   We are searching for formal religious statements but have so far found none.