Today a Canadian court delivered a guilty verdict in the prosecution of Mohammed Shafia for the “honor murders” of his three teenage daughters and first wife. Once again Islam is in the spotlight as the acts of three ignorant people cast a horrible light on the religion they profess, Islam. Okay, just so we’re clear here. There is NO place in Islam for so-called “honor killings”. Honor killings are murder, plain and simple, and anyone who tries to claim that they are condoned by Muslims or by Islamic law is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I can’t put it any more bluntly than that. Well, yes I can, but I’d probably end up using bad language so I’ll just leave it at that.
I should state categorically that violence against women is condemned by all human beings of conscience, whether it be “honor killings”, smacking the old lady around after one too many cans of beer, sexual exploitation of girls enslaved as prostitutes, or any of the other forms of abuse and torture that are all too common on our planet. The villages of Afghanistan are not worse than the brothels of Bangkok or the slums or even dignified suburbs of America. The violence may change but the game remains the same: strip women of their dignity and power, reduce them to chattel, treat them as less than human, and when they are all used up, discard them.
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