Saturday, December 17, 2011

Islamic Honor Code


What if Islamic law does support Honor Code killings?
What if they are legitimate under Islamic law?
Does the argument that Muslims are normal people like the rest of us and those who commit terrorist acts are radicals and aberrations of Islam still stand? Should their violent actions be ignored?
This question has arisen before elsewhere. When the U.S. tried to bomb Hanoi back to the Stone Age non-combatants were killed. Thousands. It was of no help to them that we did not mean to kill them.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are killed by members of their own families.[3] Many women's groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suspect the number of victims is about four times greater, according to Wikipedia.
Yet as a 40-year veteran of journalism it appears to me, and I could be wrong, that honor killings do not receive the news coverage they would if did not involve Islam.
Is it because it is feared coverage will trigger more violence. Why is the Kingston, Ontario, alleged honor killings of four women getting minimal coverage?
A Muslim iman who graduated from Montreal’s Concordia University says “There is no such thing as honor killing in Islam.”
Yet the Canada Free Press says it has found at least two references to honor killings being allowed when a “father or mother” kills their “offspring, or offsring’s offspring.”
The first reference, according to Canada Free Press, is “Umdat al-Saliq,” a manual of Islamic law written in the 14th Century and approved as late as1991 as a reliable guide to Sunni Islam by the al-Ahazar University in Cairo.
The late Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Iranian Revolution against the Shah, also approved immunity for parents who killed their own children. He wrote it in “Resaleh Towzih Al-Massadel” in 1961.
Or can we solve this question by verifying, for example, whether someone is a member of the Judean People’s Front or the People’s Front of Judea. Chances are they will explode their bomb before you can ask.


1 comment:

  1. I think that you may trace this "honour killing" to the Old Testament which lays out in grisly detail what who can do to whom. Canadians are following the trial in Ontario quite closely. The major TV stations report each morning of the trial, but it has adjourned until the new year. It's not about honour or morality or religion. It's all about who holds power over the lives of others.

    ReplyDelete