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Muslim "Honor Killings" article in Chicago Tribune Some pretty nasty stuff on the front page of the Chicago Tribune about two women in Europe, one of Kurdish ancestry, the other of Turkish, who were brutally murdered by a family member for "disgracing" the family honor. Free registration is required from the Chicago Tribune, the article is here.Here's a chilling excerpt: The idea of honor is in our cultural backyard. Ethnically and culturally, we believe it," said Mohammed Ahmed, a white-haired man who said he was a peshmerga--a fearsome mountain-fighter--with Yones before they immigrated in 1990. "Even in court, the father...

FOR daring to fall in love with a Muslim girl, an Oxford student was stabbed 46 times by her vengeful family, who showed no remorse yesterday as they were convicted of the teenager’s murder. The girl’s father, Chomir Ali, 41, who bullied his two young British-born sons into killing Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, 19, boasted that the murder was to "vindicate the family’s honour" after the popular engineering student made Ali’s daughter pregnant. With so-called honour killings on the increase in Britain, detectives described this as one of the most tragic cases they had encountered. Friends of the lovers had warned them...

The hard Left's compulsive need to single out Israel for what is often undeserved condemnation is damaging the human rights movement, weakening the anti-war movement and wounding other progressive causes such as feminism. By heaping disproportionate blame for the evils of the world on the Jewish state, these anti-Israel zealots are not only ignoring the real problems faced by many, they are also providing excuses to the perpetrators of real evils. Consider, for example, a recent report by Amnesty International ("AI") on violence perpetrated against Palestinian women by Palestinian men in the West Bank and Gaza. The report purported to...

According to a recent report, there are special graveyards in Sindh where only women killed for honour are buried. The cult of “karo-kari” in Sindh brings Pakistan a bad name. Many documentaries on the topic have gone around the world, arousing curiosity and shock, but no one is to blame for it but us, no matter how President Pervez Musharraf tries to cover it up. The woman killed for honour is not allowed the Islamic last rites and no one is allowed to visit the unnamed grave where she is dumped. Despite the fact that our parliament passed a law...

BERLIN -- A Turkish author in Germany, herself a victim of the act, wants a ban on forced marriages and honor killings of Turkish women in the country. Germany is considering such a move as honor killings escalate in Turkish communities, especially in Berlin, where six women have been slain in the past year. Serap Cileli, whose husband deprived her of food, spoke out against the "crazy tolerance of society" in Germany, where 45 women have been stabbed, shot or drowned in so-called honor killings since 1996, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported. Cileli, who moved to Germany when she was 8,...

Accused Pakistani woman has feet chopped off 09 Jul 2005 10:53:00 GMT Source: Reuters ISLAMABAD, July 9 (Reuters) - A Pakistani man and some of his relatives chopped off his wife's feet after accusing her of being promiscuous, police said on Saturday. The woman survived the gruesome attack, the latest in a wave of assaults that have raised international concern about the plight of women in Pakistan, particularly in conservative rural areas. "It is a shameful act of cruelty against a woman and we are taking it seriously," said Talat Ali, a senior police official in Punjab province. "Those who...

AMERICA THE MULTI-CULTURED: Shahriar Ahmed, shown in the Bilal Mosque, in Beaverton, Oregon, just one of many mosques in America. It may be time to throw out old motifs of America as strictly a Judeo-Christian country. A new movement is bubbling to the surface and wants to change the term to Judeo-Christian-Islamic. Leading Muslim organizations say it's time for Americans to stop using the phrase "Judeo-Christian" when describing the values and character that define the United States. Better choices, they say, are "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" or "Abrahamic," referring to Abraham, the patriarch held in common by the monotheistic big three religions. The...

Faten Habash's father wept as he assured his daughter there would be no more beatings, no more threats to her life and that she was free to marry the man she loved, even if he was a Muslim. All he asked was that Faten return home. Hassan Habash even gave his word to an emissary from a Bedouin tribe traditionally brought in to mediate in matters of family honour, a commitment regarded as sacrosanct in Palestinian society. But the next weekend, as Faten watched a Boy Scouts parade from the balcony of her Ramallah home, the 22-year-old Christian Palestinian was...

JERUSALEM – Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas reinstituted the official death penalty this week in direct response to a recent episode of Hamas carrying out an "honor killing" that humiliated the Palestinian leader in his own media, a senior PA official told WND. The PA Sunday enforced its first executions in three years, killing four convicted murderers in an apparent attempt to deter criminals and send a message to the public that law and order are being restored. The Palestinian government in 2002 suspended the death penalty under intense international pressure. About 50 Palestinians are currently on death row, some...

No wonder the Pakistan government can't catch Osama bin Laden. It is too busy harassing, detaining - and now kidnapping - a gang-rape victim for daring to protest and for planning a visit to the United States. Last fall I wrote about Mukhtaran Bibi, a woman who was sentenced by a tribal council in Pakistan to be gang-raped because of an infraction supposedly committed by her brother. Four men raped Ms. Mukhtaran, then village leaders forced her to walk home nearly naked in front of a jeering crowd of 300. Ms. Mukhtaran was supposed to have committed suicide. Instead, with...

Within an hour, the entire village would learn that the 25-year-old married woman had been discovered in a darkened nearby hut with her lover. Within two days, Amina was dead -- killed by her fellow villagers April 20 after the men of the community ruled that she had violated Islamic law by having an affair with a neighbor.... Soon Amina's father, the elders and a crowd of villagers had gathered outside. Mohammad unlocked the chain and flung open his front door. At the back of the room sat his son, Karim, on a floor cushion. Next to him sat Amina....

Throughout Europe, people are standing idly by as Muslim women are being murdered for having the audacity to date, or to not wear their head scarves outside, or to yearn for a life outside of the home. The problem is most pronounced in Germany. Last month six German women were murdered by their Muslim families for flirting with Western culture. Most recently, Hatin Surucu, a twenty-three-year-old Turkish woman who had been forced into marrying her cousin at age 16, was gunned down at a German bus stop. The attack had been planned. The motive-- Surucu had divorced her husband, discarded...

- Known cases of murder and rape committed to protect a family's honour are on the rise across Europe, forcing police to explore the reasons behind such crimes and how to stop them, officials said. AFP/File Photo   At a two-day conference in London, British police spearheaded a campaign to fight so-called honour-based violence, typically committed against women to protect a family's reputation. The problem is greatest in Islamic communities in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, but it has spread as families migrate, bringing their traditional values with them. "This is a long, long journey that we are...

Berlin – Frost covers the roses, and the scrawled eulogies are tattered near the sidewalk where Hatun Surucu was gunned down. The attackers appeared on a cold night more than a month ago. Three shots were fired and the young Turkish woman crumpled in the blurred glare of a streetlight. The accused assailants fled to a place that Surucu knew well: the home where she was raised. Her killers, police say, were her brothers. A 23-year-old single mother seeking to escape tradition and religious constraints, Surucu was the sixth Muslim woman to have died in Berlin since October in suspected...

Police in Berlin arrested three Muslim brothers in what appears to be the latest in a series of so-called "honor killings." The slaying of a 23-year-old Turkish woman, Hatun Surucu, who died of multiple bullet wounds to the head and chest, bears all the marks of an honor killing, a police psychologist said, according to BBC News. "In Islamic culture, the woman is the bearer of the family decency," explained Karl Mollenhauer. "She must maintain the honor of the family. Men must defend that honour." It would be the sixth honor killing in as many months among Berlin's 200,000-member Turkish...

In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women? The shots came from nowhere and within minutes the young Turkish mother standing at the Berlin bus stop was dead. A telephone call from a relative...

Shortly before nine o'clock one Monday evening earlier this month, Hatin Sürücü left her five-year-old son asleep in their small apartment in the Tempelhof district of Berlin and made her way to a bus stop in the main Oberlandgarten Strasse. Minutes later, a volley of pistol shots rang out but no one came to help Mrs Sürücü, 23, who was of Turkish origin. A bus driver discovered her body, with multiple wounds to the head and chest, about 40 minutes later and called the police. Last week, Mrs Sürücü's three brothers, aged 18 to 25, who were arrested six days...

AMSTERDAM — The Dutch Cabinet has promised it will act quickly to protect seriously threatened immigrant women, many of whom are Islamic and living in fear of an "honour killing". The cabinet partially met an impassioned plea from Liberal VVD MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who threatened during an emotional parliamentary debate on Thursday to lodge a "motion of sadness" against Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner. Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam, said Donner was not doing enough to protect Islamic women. In fact, she claimed the Christian Democrat CDA minister had never woken up from fairytale land, news service...

AMSTERDAM — Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has rejected a call by MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali to use the intelligence service AIVD to tackle honour killings. Speaking on radio on Friday, Donner said honour crimes and killings were "ordinary crimes" and would continue to be treated as such. Hirsi Ali said in an interview with newspaper De Volkskrant that the police should not only go after the person who actually carries out the killing but also the family members involved in the planning. She suggested the AIVD should be used to gather evidence against all the guilty members of the...

Hulya Gulbahar, 43, refuses to accept the on-going "honour" killings of women in Turkey. A lawyer in Istanbul, she is one of the founders of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Women's Platform - a forum of women activists from 30 NGOs nationwide that has worked towards a substantial amendment to the country's outdated TCK. Prompted by the European Union to revamp its legislation before Turkey joins the Union as a member, and thanks to a fierce fight put up by activists like Gulbahar, the reformed legislation now includes a life sentence for those involved in honour killings. The rape of...