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.
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.
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).
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
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.”
Removed by mod
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.