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.
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.
Do the people committing these acts typically deny that their religious views played a role (or were the sole reason) for what they did?
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. We know how Islam generally treats women in practice. We know how they view chastity. We know how some of them feel about girls even going to school.
Why else would they murder their child, if not because of their religious views?
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