The "honor" in killing ones daughter

Jan Moir:

Would Mahmod Mahmod pass Ruth Kelly's proposed citizenship points-based test? Once he had named the longest river in the United Kingdom, correctly identified the Queen's great-grandfather, ticked the box marked cucumber sandwiches and earned the correct number of credits for civic and voluntary work, the chances are, yes, he would.

Yet since Mahmod brought his family here 10 years ago, after successfully seeking political asylum from Iraq, his integration into British society and appreciation of British values seems to have been slight.

Certainly, in the dock at the Old Bailey this week, Mahmod showed no emotion when he was found guilty of ordering his daughter's murder, but why would he? His family's honour was more important to him than Banaz Mahmod's 20-year-old life, so he arranged to have her killed to restore his good standing in his south London Kurdish community.

His daughter's crime? To leave the husband - from her arranged marriage - whom she claimed was abusive, and then to fall in love with someone else; someone who was not of the family tribe, nor a strict Muslim.

Even though Banaz grew up here, her decision to act as an individual of free will, like the rest of us, was like signing a medieval death warrant. Strangled with a bootlace, stuffed into a suitcase, then buried 10ft deep in a suburban garden on her father's wishes? What a terrible way for a young woman to die.

Honour killings are on the increase here and in Europe, the inevitable result of migrant movement and a tectonic clash of ancient and modern cultures. In societies dominated by patriarchal and religious values, a woman's honour can be regarded as a family commodity, something that confers status and respect.

On the menfolk, of course. Not her. According to the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (a group fearful enough to have a panic button on its website, quickly to hide the pages from prying male eyes), Muslim Kurdish women, within the confines of their own society, have no human rights at all, not even the right to live.

...

Many people disappoint their parents at some point in their life, but most parents recognize the transgressions do not warrant the death penalty. At its heart this problem is part of the sickness that corrodes the Muslim culture. To some extent it is tribal in nature. What ever it is, it is a custom that deserves no honor and is clearly not honored in western culture. We are better than that.

Melanie Phillips has more on the case and the media attention that is not drawn to the Muslim cultural issues that are behind these crimes.