A Syrian refugee who fled to the Netherlands has reportedly confessed to murdering his 18-year-old daughter and dumping her body in a canal before fleeing the country in an apparent admission note sent to a Dutch newspaper.
Father-of-nine Khaled al-Najjar, 52, wrote in an email sent to De Telegraaf that he had killed his 18-year-old daughter Ryan al-Najjar, urging the publication to report ‘I am the one who killed’.
The confession did not specify exactly why he had decided to murder his daughter, with al-Najjar writing only that he was ‘very angry with her’, adding: ‘The reason is between me and the judge. I will read that in court’.
But neighbours and friends suspect Ryan’s death came as the result of an honour killing, with one claiming they had previously sheltered her when she had fled the family home in fear of retribution from her father.
Requesting anonymity to prevent any backlash, they told De Telegraaf that Ryan had a Dutch boyfriend, wanted to stop wearing a headscarf and had been beaten by her father who disagreed with her adoption of a Western lifestyle.
Killing a Muslim kid is Western, wtf?
The whole idea of religion is outdated. Abrahamic religions all share a similar problem. The real issue arises when a religion meets a particular culture.
No normal culture should/would ever allow this kind of thing to happen. Fundamentalist Islamic culture is the most harmful plague of its kind. It’s miles ahead of other any other problematic religious cultures, and it’s significant enough to be concerned.
It’s something we should actively denounce and criticize, and it’s not racist or disrespectful to other cultures to do so.
Which occupied territories are Muslim countries presently starving and/or bombing?
That’s more geopolitical than cultural, which ultimately is cultural, yes, but I think you know the difference.
Someone paid no attention to religious fundamentalist in history. Religion is just a form of division. No different than race, age, class, or sexuality. If there’s a religion (or any other kind of group) they’ve killed ppl for not conforming
Yes, and Islamic fundamentalists are the worst in terms of what we have in this age. They outnumber and outdo anyone else.
I really doubt they outdo the christofaschists…
Ever heard about Gaza? About Ukraine? About Xinjiang? The cartel murders? Hindutva? But I’m glad you found a reason to spread your bigotry…
This is not about religion. Islam is being used to justify their actions. Simply put, these people are sick! 😡
First question, why the fuck did they flee or move to the Netherlands? Money and excellent public services. Bosnia-Herzegovina or Turkey would be the more suited choices to maintain the Sharia rules.
Indoctrination is a hell of a thing, might escape it physically, but still being trapped mentally.
Not everyone has the privilege to choose where they move.
If you’re a Syrian refugee you definitely have the choice of going to Turkey rather than all the long way to the Netherlands…
All Muslim women and children and NO men whatsoever should be allowed to immigrate.
Islam is a plague.
I dont understand why leftists try and platform this terrible religion.
Religion is a plague.
You can believe in things, even god(s) and not be “religious.” But as soon as religion kicks in, and the dogmatism and compartmentalization that comes with it, it becomes a tool of authoritarianism, which itself breeds every kind of inhuman horror imaginable.
Westerners can be so fucking weird. Some of these people would rather let teenage girls get beaten to death than risk compromising their own white saviour complex and need to feel tolerant. My family was Muslim and I’ve been told, by the whitest of the white, that I’m racist for saying something against Islam because “cultures must be respected”. I am racist against my own people? Oh my… then, of course, there’s the other Westerners who believe I obviously have four wives and trade in camels even when I claim not to be religious…
Your framing is off. Leftists don’t platform any religion. They simply don’t discriminate on the basis of religion. Again, on the basis of any religion.
Religion* is a plague.
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Who exactly is the “fascist pos” here?
It’s not fascist to wonder why leftists platform this religion while bullshit like this happens.
The VAST majority of Muslims are just regular, kind people who don’t murder their families.
Yeah that’s great.
But why, I really hate to be this guy right now, do leftists not platform Christianity if that is the case?
Religion is a plague on this earth, just to make my position clear here so some idiot doesn’t think im a right wing chud.
The idea of using your religion as an excuse to kill people is not exclusive to Islam. There are actually quite a few instances in the christian bible where people kill due to religion.
If you actually want to get away from religious killing, as a society, we must denounce religion as a whole. Blaming one religion is just stirring the pot.
What is whataboutism, Alex?
Whataboutism is a lateral move. What I suggested was a zoom-out.
“Islam is bad”
well what about every religion
Oh yeah, im very aware.
But this article is about Islam, so im going to talk about Islam.
Weird how that works huh?
You can’t do that when trying to make a point about something like religion. You are trying to set rules for the argument to go in your favor.
The evil of Islam and the evil of Christianity are one in the same. The same can be said for any religion.
This isn’t your world. You aren’t the main character. You don’t get to dictate the rules of an argument and truth. If you want to blame 1 religion for it’s evil, then blame all of them.
Also I don’t think leftists support these actions. They support people’s rights to religious freedoms. It’s up to people themselves to know not to kill. This poor woman would’ve been killed even if her folks were Christian. They were mentally unstable to have thought this was a good thing.
Well yeah, id imagine leftists dont support these actions.
Leftists dont support murder like the right does.
I’m not talking about the cess pit that is Christianity and its kid diddling because this article isnt about Christianity.
I’m speaking about Islam and its woman-killing because this article is about Islam and its woman-killing.
Idk what to tell you.
And of course, there it is.
Ryan’s murder is horrifying. She deserved safety, freedom, and support—but instead, she was failed by the people closest to her and by institutions meant to protect her. What happened to her wasn’t about Islam—it was about patriarchal control and deadly misogyny cloaked in the language of religion.
And that’s not unique to Islam. In ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, women have been attacked for dressing “immodestly” or denied divorces for years. In some conservative Christian circles, honor, shame, and purity culture have been used to justify abuse, disownment, or worse. This kind of violence is rooted in power, not faith.
It is fundamentalist religion in general that puts women at risk. No single one is devoid of such attacks.
It’s wrong to exploit Ryan’s death to stoke Islamophobia. Doing so ignores the broader pattern of gender-based violence that exists across cultures and religions. If we really care about preventing tragedies like this, we should be talking about how to hold abusers accountable, how to recognize warning signs, and how to protect women and girls from systems that excuse control as “tradition.”
Blaming one single faith just distracts from real solutions.
It is fundamentalist religion in general that puts women at risk.
Yeah, I get it, fundamentalists are terrible.
But this one was a Muslim and leftists, for some reason, like to platform Islam while this bullshit happens.
Islam, and pretty much every other religion, is an absolute plague on humanity.
Your use of the term “leftist” betrays your bias.
Not sure why, its what I use to describe myself and my friends in a broad sense.
Am I not allowed to criticize islam? Do I hand in my progressive card or something?
I often see the term leftist thrown around by right wing commentators like it’s a bad thing.
Where did I imply being a leftist was bad?
I’m just perpetually confused as to why people on the left side of the spectrum platform Islam while it kills women and persecutes gay people🤷♂️
You singled out leftists as doing something bad, ergo leftists are bad. Sorry, a bit of a knee jerk reaction on my part.
I guess it’s probably because leftists tend to promote religious tolerance even where it isn’t deserved (imo).
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Does freedom of religion include killing your daughter because she was too western?
All religions are a monstrous evil.
If you believe otherwise, you are comically naive and attitudes like yours are partly responsible for this child’s death.
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lock up every religious people [sic] for this crime
Religiosity isn’t a crime. There’s a shitload of evil in this world, and almost none of it is (or can ever be) “criminalized.”
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Not all religious people are evil, just like not all ignorant people are evil. But all ignorance and all religion and prejudice and celebrity worship and cults and gambling and extended-cab pickup trucks are certainly evil.
What a disgusting thing for a human being to do.
Killed for not acting the way men expect them to act? That sounds pretty USian to be honest.
The religion of peace. Damn.
The religion prescribes death for being too westernized?
The religion demands all who don’t follow the rules be put to death. Especially if you’re a woman.
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I once heard a boy about 15-17 talk openly and loudly on the bus whilst on the phone about how he’s going to kill his sister because of who she’s dating and he didn’t like it (in England). He said that he previously hit her to hit some sense in to her. He was Pakistani and boasting about this on the phone. I saw another boy about the same age shouting at a girl also about the same age, “hurry up you fat slut” and “f*cking get up these steps whore” forcing her to walk up and down steps in a library because she was honestly, slightly chubby by today’s standards, in an attempt to make her slim. I touched her arm to get her attention as she passed and said she didn’t have to put up with this and she needs to report it, whilst another girl overheard it and was like wtf and we both reported it. She kept apologising for him about how he didn’t mean it and so on. He came up to me and was like ‘bro, bro, what you think you doin’ touchin’ my girl? touch her again and i’ll knock you out’. I had to stop myself from laughing because this kid was like a 1.6m skinny shit!
Still, this is normal in their culture. You either understand, or you really can’t imagine how normalised it is.
Maybe not directly for “being too Western” but certainly it’s the one providing the moral framework for allowing murder for ideological and behavioural differences.
Going by this article…
https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/30/brothers-still-deny-involvement-18-year-old-sisters-honor-killing
…I would speculate that by sending the letter, Khaled al-Najjar attempts to free his sons of complicity in the crime. Whether they are or aren’t complicit, is for the court to determine. Getting the man back from Syria would be a priority for the court, but given the situation in Syria, this might be difficult to arrange.
The court seems to consider the brothers either plausibly complicity or a flight risk and decided not to free them on bail.
The brothers’ lawyers requested that they be released from pre-trial custody. They have been detained for almost 13 months. Both insist that they “had nothing to do” with their sister’s murder. But the court ruled that they’ll stay in custody until the next hearing in September.
According to the OM, the three men killed Ryan because she behaved too Western and “shamed” her family.
Traveled to a Western country instead of any of the Muslim countries around Syria to apply for asylum and gets mad that the culture around them might affect them.
Makes sense
Only religions give permission for people to kill their children.
Don’t think that this is the only religion that does this. They all do. They all do this shit. “My fictional god is more important than my child”. “No matter what I do, my fictional god will forgive me!”
It’s fucking disgusting, and you are too if you support religions.
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But abortion? Can’t do that, you’re killing a child!
That child might conform! Only when they don’t bow to the powers that want to use them is it ok to kill them!
Back to Syria then
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If i was willing to murder my child for growing up like other normal kids here: yes, definitely, you should.
Not “back to Syria” but “how to get him back from Syria, where he has presumably fled”, if you read the article.
Why go back to Syria when you can forever box?
Yes, let’s meme a lot, that will help everyone understand what is going on.
Religion of peace.
When I read this I wondered if this disgusting man did what he did because of his Muslim beliefs so I looked up the connection between honour killings and Islam. Turns out it has very little to do with Islam and a lot to do with just being a horrible, poorly educated human being. What I found out was that people be killin their wives and daughters for what they perceived as dishonouring them since way before Islam came along. If anything, Islam tried apply some brakes on that whole idea. For example demanding that four male eyewitnesses had to actually have seen the act for it to be recognised as legit. This article is quite interesting.
Small correction: Death is only the punishment for adultery (as in for a married party engaging in unlawful sexual acts), so the case in the article is already a no-go.
I’m sorry, how does adding witnesses make it ok? All that does is legitimize it.
Well, it also makes it almost impossible for such a thing to actually happen short of a confession. I mean Pakistan has been implementing hudood 50 years and still hasn’t had one of case of implementing the hadd for fornication or adultery (on the latter of which is punishable by death), because how are you going to get four adult males watching two people have sex? Pretty much all, if not straight up all, cases of honor killing are committed in direct contradiction to Islam, because they’re fundamentally a cultural act, not a religious act.
Oh, well in that case it’s a totally reasonable and very much not insane rule. /s
I mean Pakistan has been implementing hudood 50 years and still hasn’t had one of case of implementing the hadd for fornication or adultery (on the latter of which is punishable by death)
I was certain that this was not true (I could swear I’ve even read articles about it). Took a 3 second google search to disprove it:
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 470 cases of honour killings were reported in Pakistan in 2021. But human rights defenders estimate that around 1,000 women are murdered in the name of honour every year.[3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan
because how are you going to get four adult males watching two people have sex?
I don’t know, maybe they just fucking lie?
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 470 cases of honour killings were reported in Pakistan in 2021. But human rights defenders estimate that around 1,000 women are murdered in the name of honour every year.[3][4]
I was talking about state executions for adultery, which now that I think about it was not clear from the wording so apologies for that. I was trying to provide an example of how Islam delegitimizes the practice by making it almost impossible to meet the legal criteria for it, but as I said this is ultimately a cultural practice so without strong state intervention it’s not going anywhere, no matter what the religion actually says.
I don’t know, maybe they just fucking lie?
Prosecution does have to verify the witnesses’ accounts, and falsely accusing someone of extramarital sex gets you 80 lashes, so it’s not quite that simple.
Sounds like moving the goalposts a little bit, no? Why did you have to specify “for adultery” when we’re talking about the general concept of honor killings?
Because that’s the only case in which sexual conduct warrants death in Islam. As for the rest it’s straight up not a thing. As I said Islam pretty explicitly states that cases such as the woman in the article aren’t to be punished by death. The punishment is lashing if you can meet the (again, nearly impossible) standard of proof.
And yet, here we are…
Where can I read about the honor killings on English in detail: with rules, code, persecution of such practice? I’m not well versed in muslim-esque topics, so I can tell if sources are good or garbage only by my own intuition and it’s unreliable.
They’re not called honor killings in Islam; you’re looking for hudood for the general category including punishment for illegal sexual conduct (known as Zina). The latter article has the rules you’re asking for.
Other Sunni schools of jurisprudence rely on early Islamic scholars who state that a fetus can “sleep and stop developing for 5 years in a womb”
Glad to hear this justice system is so smart, well developed and based on ground realities!
Okay? They used the knowledge they had at the time to resolve a minor edge case in a way that doesn’t lead to out of touch scholars playing with people’s lives. Since we know the basis of their decision to be decisively false, this conclusion can be safely rejected (unless one accepts the other argument, stated literally in the next sentence: “They also argue that the woman may have been forced or coerced”).
The person you’re replying to is full of shit. They happen in Pakistan all of the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan
https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Honor_Killing)
Yes, there is a relation between honour killings and Islam, please read the link above. Unlawful sex relations (something that the girl did by the eyes of Islam just by having a boyfriend) are expected to be punishable by death, the only thing is that it is expected to be done by authorities.
Please also read the exmuslim sub on Reddit to see that this is not an isolated case, things like this happens all the time. Watering down Islam enables this things to continue.
If you want to know about Islam read the Quran and the Hadiths (the only real source), not some articles trying to make this cult beautiful and peaceful. It is not.
Unlawful sex relations (something that the girl did by the eyes of Islam just by having a boyfriend) are expected to be punishable by death, the only thing is that it is expected to be done by authorities.
Unlawful sex relations while married (so cheating) are expected to be punishable by death enacted by the authorities if you can pass the nearly impossible burden of proof of four male adult witnesses. This is a lot harder than it sounds, for example Pakistan hasn’t had one of these in its 50 years of implementing hudood. In this case the girl wasn’t even married, so the father was acting on his own pejorative, not Islam.
It’s “prerogative”, not “pejorative”.
How people speak about this like this is normal and ok is beyond me, but anyway, the influence is there, the belief that this is so immoral that is punishable by death it is there too. And the fact that nowadays this practice is so extended in this particular religion is another thing.
Of course the authorities of any country that is not a hell hole won’t do anything about it even if they had these “four male adult witnesses”, especially in any European countries, that might be a reason why the families do this on their own influenced by these barbaric beliefs.
but anyway, the influence is there, the belief that this is so immoral that is punishable by death it is there too.
Again, this is a cultural practice, not religious. There’s no “influence” here because this was already a thing and remains a thing regardless of religion.
And the fact that nowadays this practice is so extended in this particular religion is another thing.
Not exactly, no. It’s a thing in India and Nepal too, and conspicuously not a thing in Muslim Southeast Asia, for example. You’re looking at the Middle East and South Asia, Muslim or not.
It’s actually kind of crazy… this same person just claimed that it hasn’t been done in Pakistan in 50 years because they somehow think it’s impossible for four people to lie about witnessing something (or for people to just take it into their own hands and do it anyway because their religious laws are more important to them than any nation’s).
Took me 3 seconds on google to disprove it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan
Their prophet, when he was in his 50’s married a 6 year old, and r*ped her when she was 9.
I’m sorry, but that alone loses all moral credibility Islam might have.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-mail/
Why are people listening to a bunch of lying racists?
Surely if this is a rare chance of Daily Mail reporting accurately, a trustworthy source would have also covered it…
Two tiny websites who don’t even have mbfc ratings…
Thanks for proving my point there’s no trustworthy sources, since it’s a safe assumption those were the best you could find short of the literal far right tabloid you first learned about this from
I get these news sources might not be perfect.
It’s not like these things are uncommon, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/honor-killing-convictions-woman-stabbed-in-front-daughter-netherlands/
Here is another source found in a local dutch newspaper https://www.omroepflevoland.nl/nieuws/415004/ook-vader-van-ryan-18-wordt-vervolgd-voor-ombrengen-dochter
How many news sources do you need? There is probably not a single news source out there that somebody won’t be able to find fault in.
You’ve made it abundantly obvious that you’re problem is the religion and not an isolated incident.
It’s also obvious why you’re hyper focused on the far right extremists of just one of the Abrhamic religions when literally all of them have extremists doing the same fucking shit. Because their rationale for doing so is literal the same original rules, and for the literal same god.
If you want to avoid people pointing out the bias in what you’re doing talk about far right religious extremists of all religions, not just a singular one.
Especially when the religion you’re hyper focused on are the victims of multiple genocides right fucking now
It’s not a fucking isolated incident.
It has less to do with religion and more to do with culture, there are Christian, Muslim and Atheistic cultures that discriminate against women, neither of them should be tolerated.
There are cultures where female genital mutilation is commonplace, and that has little to do with religion. Hundreds of thousands of women in Europe are put through this, just like honour killings, we need to raise awareness that this is happening and put a stop to it.
It has less to do with religion and more to do with culture
No. It’s far right religious extremism…
You’re taking the actions of the most extreme 0.001% and using a label that applies to literally billions of people…
It’s hard to believe someone cant logically understand that
You don’t know jack shit about Islam lol. Here in India we aren’t even an Islamic country yet honour killings by Muslims are a thing.
There is a reason Islam is the most hated religion on the planet. Western liberals are a plague that love a religion that encourages murder as punishment. No wonder they’re the joke of this century.
You are clueless about Islam. Please read the freaking Quran and the Hadiths there you have all the info you need, this religion is extremist by it’s own nature. You seem stuck in the something something racism, Islam is not a race by the way, it is another flavor of far right but on steroids, which happened to be enemies of the Christian far right, but the enemy of our enemy is not our friend. How the left is defending this particular religion is crazy.
What label did I put on which people?
I never said anything bad about a single group of people, I simply want to shine light on the fact that honour killings and genital mutilations needs to stop, and that women should be treated as equals.
