Honour killing claims life of six-year-old

[The Straight Story]

Honour killing claims life of six-year-old

A six-year-old girl was killed in an arson attack on her family home by men who disapproved of a relationship her older brother was having with a teenager, a court heard today.

Alisha Begum, the youngest of 12 children in her Bangladeshi family, became the innocent victim of an attempt to warn her sibling off seeing the 15-year-old when a blaze swept through her Birmingham home earlier this year, prosecutors said.

Two men went on trial today at Birmingham Crown Court accused of her murder and the attempted murder of nine of her relatives who escaped from the property in Bayswater Road, Aston, during the fire.

Hussain Ahmed, a 26-year-old dentist, and Daryll Tuzzio, 18, both from Birmingham, deny all the charges, including an additional count of arson with intent to endanger life.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405941&in_page_id=1770

That's some fucked up shit right there.

[BeautifulLoser]

1. How was that an 'honour killing'??

Just wondering

[The Straight Story]

2. An attempted one:

The jury heard that Alisha's brother Abdul Hamid, 21, started a relationship with Ahmed's 15-year-old sister Meherun Khanum towards the end of last year.

Mr Redgrave said their relationship was discovered by her family, who disapproved. Twenty-four hours before the fatal fire, the prosecution said Mr Hamid received a threatening phone call from a man who warned him: "Don't f*** with my sister or I'll break your b******s."

[barb162]

5. Going after relatives of the "perp" or the "perp" himself

is an honor killing. Justice ( royally screwed up style).

[intaglio]

7. Honour Killings

Check out this Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

/snip ... Human Rights Watch defines "honor killings" as follows:
Honor crimes are acts of violence, usually murder, committed by male family members against female , who are perceived to have brought dishonor upon the family. A woman can be targeted by (individuals within) her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce — even from an abusive husband — or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a specific way to "dishonor" her family, is sufficient to trigger an attack. ....

/snip ... As of 2004, honor killings have occurred at the hands of individuals within parts of various countries, such as Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy <12>, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States. Honor killings are more common among poor rural communities. In Europe, honor killings have mostly been reported within some Muslim and Sikh communities. Individual Arab Christians living within parts of the Near East, such as sections of Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, are said to sometimes carry out the act as well. <13> Many cases of honor killings have been reported in Pakistan. In December 2005, Nazir Afzal, director of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, stated that the United Kingdom has seen "at least a dozen honor killings" between 2004 and 2005. <14> Critics argue that the practice is over-whelmingly associated with certain Muslim cultures and the peoples influenced by those cultures. ...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Woman arrested in Duquesne shootings.

http://www.tsn.ca/ncaa/news_story/?ID=178024&hubname=ncaa

Apparently one American was upset because his girlfriend was talking to another man.

[Solo_in_MD]

10. You see that sort of stuff in HS and hopefully it ends there

One of my daughters got told it was inappropraite that she speak to another girl's "man". She laughed it off, which lead to more issues for "dissing" the girl. Scariest part was that the school counselor told my daughter she should be more sensitive about other peoples' relationships. When we complained, the counselor said that she was only trying to keep things from erupting further. I called it cowardice...to her face.

Despite the efforts of those who support the Sharia, women are not chattel...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. Duquesne is a University.

And jealous lovers are frequently murderers in all age groups. And religions and races.

[Solo_in_MD]

12. My point was that behavior was at best a HS behavior that should be

strongly discouraged even at that level

[Donald Ian Rankin]

14. No, they're not.

Jealous lovers *are* murdered in all age groups, religions and races.

I know of no demographic where it happens *frequently*.

It is far more common in some cultures than in others. I believe that most of the ones where it is commonest are Islamic, and that it's rarer in Western cultures than in most others, although I admit I can't quote a statistic to prove that of the top of my head.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Solo_in_MD]

16. Reported rate

Many honor killings go unreported, the women victims simply forgotten

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. Not all problems have solutions.

I wish that Islam would simply vanish overnight with a "ping", and all its current believers would become liberal humanists, but I think that that is unlikely to happen.

Attempts to coerce Islamic societies into improving will be counterproductive, as Afghanistan and Iraq have shown.

The least worst approach I can see is economic and cultural pressure on the relevant nations - pressure to liberalise legal systems and government, support for liberal Islamic movements, trying to maximise exposure of the young to western culture and ideas, and the like.

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. I suggest you look up the word "coerce" in a dictionary

And then actually read what I just said, and try and come up with a response to *my* suggestion, rather than to the suggestion that we should be using violence to oppose Islam.

[Bill McBlueState]

47. lol

The poster you're replying to said, "I wish that Islam would simply vanish overnight with a "ping", and all its current believers would become liberal humanists."

Did the Nazis wish the Jews would turn into liberal humanists? Or did they want to murder them all? It's not a fine distinction, but your analogy works one way and utterly, fantastically fails the other way.

[cali]

55. Actually,

It wasn't Judaism that the Germans wanted to "disappear", it was Jews. Do you see the difference between that and what the poster you are responding to said? I don't agree with that poster about Islam vanishing overnight, but he absolutely did NOT suggest anything genocidal. Sorry for the reality interruption. You may now return to twisting other posters' statements.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

60. yuh huh.

Oh sure, sure. He doesn't want to kill them all. He just wants them all to convert.

Big difference.

:crazy:

[Donald Ian Rankin]

62. That's just laughable.

Your saying that wanting someone to change their mind and wanting them to die are similar?

You're currently trying to persuade me to change my mind.

[redqueen]

24. What does that mean? It's not an "Islam" problem...

That's a strawman. Not all Islamic people condone honor killings and the like.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. Yes, grasshopper.

"Not all Islamic people condone honor killings and the like."

That's my entire point.

[redqueen]

34. hahahah... okay

I missed where someone said that.

*tips hat*

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

35. Sorry I was unclear. Maybe I'm the one in denial.

I suffer from the congenital defect that something like "not all Islamic people believe in honor-killings and the like" doesn't need to be said.

;)

[Donald Ian Rankin]

38. It doesn't, and you haven't said it.

You've made some much stronger - strong enough to be untrue - claims, but not that one, and you didn't need to make that one.

However, a non-trivial minority of Muslims (in some places a majority) do support honour killings, and there are a great many other unpleasant things - the inferiority of women, the criminalisation of homosexuals, capital and corporal punishment for relatively minor offences, the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of religion - that even higher proportions (although still nowhere near all) support.

If all you'd said was "not all Islamic people believe in honour-killings and the like" no-one would have disagreed with you.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

41. No, I haven't said it.

And I'm not going to, because as I've implied, I don't have to. It's obvious.

I will say this:

I have this neighbor that's a muslim. She wears a hajib regularly. Sometimes she wears a burka. She drives a car. She supports gay rights. She's got an education (at least I think she does, I'm pretty sure research scientists with PhDs have educations). And she's very progressive. Much more progressive that you. Now if somebody went up to her and told her she should vanish overnight, well then I'd probably punch that inbred, redneck, dumb motherfucker's teeth in.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

45. You assume a lot.

Do you have any evidence that your neighbour is more progressive than I am? Opposition to most forms of Islam Islam is evidence that one *is* progressive, not that one isn't, because most forms of it are inherently conservative.

You appear to have missed, either accidentally or deliberately, the difference between "Islam should vanish overnight" and "Muslims should vanish overnight". I'm afraid that given how clear I made it, I suspect you're deliberately misrepresenting me rather than simply failing to understand, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if you claim it was an honest mistake - which was it?


"I'd probably punch that inbred, redneck, dumb motherfucker's teeth in."

Do you often resort to violence as a substitute for rational argument? And personal abuse is a poor substitute for it, too.

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

49. So that's a "no", then?

Because the definition of "bigot" that you're using (or at least, the one that you put forward in your earlier post) is one that correlates *negatively* with being progressive - progressive implies supporting women's rights, gay rights, etc, and thus believing that societies which do so are better than those that don't - bigotry, by your definition.

So if she's not a bigot in your (silly) sense of the word then, more or less by definition, she's not progressive.

I suspect that if you asked her, she would agree that some societies are better than others, though, and hence qualify as a "bigot" and potentially progressive.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

52. Liberals and progressives disapprove of most forms of orthodox Islam.

Liberals and progressives, by definition, believe that women should have equal rights to men, and that homosexuality should not be a crime, and that nor should criticising a religion, and that corporal punishment is wrong; nearly all of them oppose capital punishment and all of them oppose it except in the most severe cases?

Do you agree with all these positions?

Do you deny that nearly all muslims believe that Islam teaches the opposite of all of them?

If so, how can you justify not disapproving of Islam?

"Hate" is something to avoid, but liberals and progressives, by definition, oppose all but the most liberal (and hence heterodox) forms of Islam, and thing that they are bad, unless they're hypocrites.

[redqueen]

58. What the hell?

"Nearly all muslims believe..."... what, like you've talked to them? Fuckin hell.

How many Muslim people do you actually know? I'm extremely curious to find out...

[Name removed]

59. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

63. Comparing "religion" with "race" or "gender" is silly.

Disliking someone's views has nothing whatsoever in common with criticising a race or (as most forms of Islam do) teaching that one gender is inferior to the other.

And a sensible liberal, like anyone else sensible, doesn't let anecdotal or personal evidence influence them.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

64. Au contraire.

Most liberals consider religion in the same category as race, gender, orientation, and physical ability.

Why, it's even in the DU rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

66. Firstly, I think you're wrong, and secondly, if you're not I don't care.

I think you're wrong that most liberals are stupid enough to class *criticising* an opinion with criticising a gender (as opposed to discriminating against someone on basis of it, which is a different issue); if they're not, that's their loss.

The fact remains, saying "everyone who holds these views is wrong" is nothing like saying "everyone of this race or gender is bad". "Muslims" as a category has far more in common with "liberals" or "conservatives" than "women" or "gays".

[Donald Ian Rankin]

61. None whatsoever. This is irrelevant.

Anecdotal evidence is worthless.

It might be possible to get to know enough Muslims personally for them to be statistically significant, but it would involve spending your life travelling the world meeting-and-greeting Muslims, and even then I doubt it would be possible.

The way to form an informed opinion on what Muslims believe - or, to phrase that less misleadingly, on how many Muslims believe what - is, of course, through secondary sources; the number of Muslims one knows is irrelevant.

It's also worth noting that Western Muslims are, *on average*, considerably more liberal than Muslims from most largely-Islamic societies (although obviously that statement becomes nonsense if you omit the "on average").

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[redqueen]

39. Well when you respond with a reference to the "Islam problem"

you're the one begging the comment, as it infers that you see the problem of honor killings as somehow analogous to a problem with all of Islam.

Strange, it is.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

46. Are you deliberately misrepresenting me, or just misunderstanding?

Did you not understand the distinction between "cease to exist" and "change their views", or did you just choose to ignore it to give yourself an opportunity to compare me with the Nazis?

Either way, I'd suggest that you (re)read what I said and admit that the comparison is invalid.

[redqueen]

53. I knew exactly what you were trying to do.

I was only wondering WHY.

(And in that previous post I meant to say "imply", not "infer". Oopsie.)

[Name removed]

56. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[redqueen]

57. Yeah, you're right about that...

and since the government is encouraging us to all associate Islam with Oceania, well there's no shortage of news items to feed that need.

:(

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. Then count me a bigot.

Cultures where homosexuality isn't a crime punishable by death, where the law doesn't punish rape victims, where women aren't second class citizens by law, where the ultimate arbiter is the will of the people rather than religion, etc, etc, etc, are better than those where that is not the case.

The willingness of so-called "liberals" to defend and try to justify things in Islam far worse than the things American Christians reguarly have them up in arms about depresses me. Mysogyny, theocracy, homophobia, state-run murder and mutilation and the like are bad things even when groups which liberals traditionally regard as minorities and hence to be supported do them.

Do you support George Bush's attempts to legalise torture in America? Do you deny that everything he's proposing is far less bad than e.g. flogging homosexuals?

Some cultures are objectively better than others.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. Alright. Donald Rankin. Check.

Can I put you on the hypocrite list too?

"Do you support George Bush's attempts to legalise torture in America?"

Why Donald, it's precisely because he does and so many people support him that I think we're not better than anybody else.

Oh, and please read Leviticus when you've got a moment. And google the name "Matthew Shepard."

[redqueen]

22. Seems like false balance to me.

Aren't these things legal in some of these countries? Honor killings... rape victims punished... these things are sanctioned by governments, aren't they?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

29. Please actually think about what you've just said.

Even if Bush gets everything he wants, the US would still have far less torture and a far better attitude to human rights than e.g. Iran.

What the hell does Leviticus have to do with the debate? Christians certainly don't believe they're meant to follow most of the instructions in it, and I don't believe Jews do either, although I'm slightly less certain about that.

I'd suggest you consider what the fact that Matthew Shepard's case made frontline news says about the relative frequency of the torture or murder of homosexuals in America and Iran, and about what the fact that his killers are now in jail whereas in Iran it's the government doing it says about official attitudes.

Perfect? Of course not. Better? Indisputably.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

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[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. It does? Why?

That's a statement so entirely devoid of logic that I can't respond to it except by expressing incredulity, and asking you to actually respond to what I've said rather than launching baseless accusations.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. What you're suffering from is "denial."

Among other things.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

40. Denial of what?

That American, British, French etc society is not better than Iranian, Pakistani, Syrian, etc? Yes, I'm denying that. I always do my best to deny things that aren't true.

[Irreverend IX]

54. Leviticus and Matthew Shepard?

Yeah, because Matthew Shepard's killing was a legally sanctioned punishment for his homosexuality. Well, actually, it wasn't, and his killers will be rotting in prison for the rest of their lives. That's the difference between the US and Pakistan. And I think that Western European and Scandinavian cultures are a much better model of secular society than the US currently is. "We're no better than they are, so we can't judge" is a wimpy way to escape from a tough question.

[Bridget Burke]

44. Some already did. n/t

[Irreverend IX]

51. You know what?

Some cultures are better than others. In particular, secular Western cultures that exist under democracy and the rule of law are superior to theocratic cultures that encourage barbaric practices like honor killing and female genital mutilation. They're also superior to contemporary American culture, where fundamentalism and religious intimidation are making a major comeback (see "Jesus Camp" for details). If you think secular culture is no better or worse than Pakistani culture, do you think the Justice Department should start looking into punishing people by having their female family members gang raped?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Not the usual honor killing

I've never heard of an honor killing directed at a male.

One of the alleged perpetrators has an Italian name, you'll note.

I wonder if either of the perps in fact had the hots for the teen-ager mentioned in the article.

In any case, the Daily Mail isn't exactly the most sober and trustworthy news source.

[BeautifulLoser]

6. That's what has me confused

They tried to take out a male.

[Solo_in_MD]

8. Killing a man accused of rape *can* be called an honor killing

[Fierce]

36. I disagree.

Assuming he's guilty (which your statement doesn't), calling it an "honor killing" implies that raping a woman takes away her honor, essentially laying a lifetime stigma on her that will not be erased by the killing. If there's any loss of honor in any of this, it's what the man loses by raping.

My point is, "honor killing" is a terrible term that clouds the issue and should be discarded. It legitimizes what is actually going on, which is first-degree murder.

[Solo_in_MD]

65. Hmmm, not sure I agree that it legitimizes anything

When I see/hear the term honor killing, it tend to think that the marginally civilized are at it again...that those who practice it are illiterate whatevers (judgemental of me, but not without merit).

I fully concurr that it is indeed murder most foul

[Fierce]

68. I hear what you're saying.

But I think that to use the term the "marginally civilized" use is to automatically give it some weight. Kind of like pedophelia. I hate it when people use that word, because the act it names has absolutely nothing to do with love of children.

/drift

[Anarcho-Socialist]

9. You're right to be wary

I find the Daily Mail to be even less reliable than FOX News. I always wait for a saner news source before I give credence.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. Yes, now that I've actually been to the UK and paged throuogh

a copy of the Daily Mail that I found lying around in a train station, I don't consider them a reliable news source.

[Taoschick]

27. The BBC

Is reporting it as well. They're not calling it an honor killing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/5360334.stm

From my limited knowledge of "honor killings" this doesn't seem to fit the profile.

[JVS]

13. Yeah, this looks more like a feud

Honor killing is if I am so ashamed of the seduction of my family member that I kill her.


Being so pissed off at someone for seducing a family member of mine is just being a raging crazy.

[redqueen]

26. Exactly what I thought, too.

And again, it's in the Daily Mail...

[AtomicKitten]

25. there's no honor in killing a 6-year-old - ever

eom

[SmokingJacket]

37. They call in an "honor" killing to excuse it.

It's a murder, just as all cultures have.

An interesting book on this subject is "The Murderer Next Door," by David Buss.

[Bridget Burke]

43. This is a horrible event, but not an "Honour Killing"

And, according to the story, the victim was 12 years old--not 6.

Certainly not an "excuse" of the crime--but another reason to disregard the fishwrap that printed this story.