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.
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 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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan
I don’t know, maybe they just fucking lie?
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.
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…
I mean, yes, because people are horrible and culture has a way of trumping religion. “Honor” killings are a thing in the Middle East and South Asia to varying degrees and I hate it, but Islam is—if anything—a restraining force on such actions and a framework within which people who commit them can be punished.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.