A Horror Saga of Gruesome Islamic Honor Killings

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by Dr. Radhasyam Brahmachari

A shocking, hearth-rending tale of gruesome honor killing of Muslim women around the world...

From the treatment of women in Muslim societies, it becomes clear that Muslim women are properties of Muslim men, mere sex-object. Muslim girls and women, often raped by close relatives—father, brother, cousin, or uncle—are supposed to keep their mouths shut, because they cannot to prove such a crime in a Shariah Court, because she needs to produce four male-witnesses, which is next to impossible. When she fails to produce the witnesses, she is prosecuted for committing adultery or fornication, and is punished with lashings, jail-terms and even stoning unto death in certain countries (Iran, Saudi).

Thus, Muslim men can rape with near-impunity, while the victims have to suffer in silence. Another side of this sad story of Muslim women is that female victims of rape or female partners of so-called illicit relationships often become the target of gruesome honor killing, when the story comes out, as we will see. So, Ms Wafa Sultan, contrasting the freedom of women in Islamic countries with that in the West, rightly says, “Now in America, I enjoy freedom. I can now talk with a male member of my next door neighbour without being convicted of committing adultery.”

In recent years, there have been numberless cases of Muslim women, and even girls as young as seven, have been the victim of Muslim honor killing for being raped, for having a premarital relationship, for falling in love and marrying someone their male family-members do not approve, or for refusing to follow Islamic dress-code or lifestyle.

A few days ago on Oct 19, 2009, Noor Faleh Almaleki, a 21 year-old girl student was allegedly run over by her father Faleh Hassan Almaleki, a 48-year old Iraqi American in Glendale, Arizona. He allegedly ran over his daughter at a parking lot in Peoria, because she disliked Islamic dress-code and preferred American lifestyle.

On the same day, i.e. on October 19, 2009, a Jordanian man was arrested for stabbing his 22-year-old daughter to death, because she became pregnant outside wedlock. On the previous day, the father and his brother took the girl to a doctor, because she suffered from stomach pains, and everybody was surprised to learn that she was six months pregnant. On their way home, the father stabbed the girl with a sword 25 times in her stomach, killing her immediately as well as her unborn baby boy. The source said the suspect has confessed to the crime following the murder, which took place in the Jordan Valley. His brother was also charged with premeditated murder, while the victim's boyfriend is being held in custody for his own protection.

In another incident on August 21, 2008, in Jordan, Rana Riad Muhammad Siwahra, wife and mother of two girls (aged 3 and 5) was murdered by her father days before her 21st birthday. After stabbing her with a knife five-six times in the stomach and chest, he smashed her skull with a large rock. Afterwards, he washed his hands and went to the market, where he was later arrested.

According to the Chicago Tribune, ‘On May 31, 1994, Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out into the street, waving the bloody knife and crying, “I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor.” Kifaya’s crime? She was raped by another of her brother, aged 21.

Murder is punishable by the death penalty in Jordan, but in such cases of the so-called "honour killing", the court usually commutes or reduces sentences, particularly if the victim's family urges leniency. In the past, parliament has refused to institute harsher penalties. Around 15-20 women are murdered each year in Jordan in the name of honour, despite government efforts to fight such crimes. So far this year, 17 cases have been reported. It may be mentioned in this connection that on March 28, 2006, a Jordanian man killed his sister to cleanse his family’s honor in the southern city of Aqaba. In a similar incident, another Jordanian killed his sister on November 17, 2004, to save his family from dishonor.

On October 15, 2008, a young man Taher of Murid Wal village near Lahore, Pakistan, killed his 40-year-old mother Muktaran Bibi to restore family honor. The victim’s son suspected that his mother was involved in an illegal affair with a local and he regularly quarreled with her. On Monday, after yet another argument, he used a sharp-edged weapon to viciously stab her to death. A year ago, on February 24, 2007, Pakistani police in Karachi arrested two men in a remote village in the southern Sindh province and accused them of killing two young women for allegedly having sex outside of marriage. The suspects, who are uncles of the women, were caught after authorities were tipped off by the girls’ parents.

In another incident, on May 3, 2009, Ayman Udas, in her early thirties, was killed by her brothers as an act of honor killing. Udas sang and wrote compositions in her native Pashto language, spoken in the tribal areas and the North-West Frontier Province. She also frequently performed on PTV, the state-run channel. Despite Udas's popularity, her family felt it was sinful for women to perform on television and strongly opposed her activities. According to the report, her two brothers reportedly entered her flat on 3rd May, 2009, while her husband was out and fired three bullets into her chest. Neither of the brothers has been caught. In 2001, in Gujar Khan, Pakistan, Zahida Perveen’s husband attacked her, gouged out both her eyes, cut off her nose, and her ears. He wrongly suspected her of adultery.

According to Time magazine, in September 2003 in Iraq, Ali Jasib Mushiji, 17, shot his mother and half-brother, because he suspected them of having an affair; he also killed his 4-year-old sister, because he thought she was their child.

The same Time magazine report (September 2003) also recounts: “Last November, Qadisiyah Misad, 16, ran away from her family's home on the outskirts of Baghdad. Within days, one of her brothers and a cousin tracked her down on a city street and hauled her back home. According to Essam Wafik al-Jadr, the judge who prosecuted the case, one of Misad's brothers cornered his teenage sister in the living room; he then drew a pistol and shot several bullets into her.”

One would be shocked to know that an Iranian Muslim father cut off his 7-year-old daughter’s head, because he suspected that she had been raped by her uncle. The incident helps one understand not only on what kind of grounds Muslim girls are being murdered by their male family members as an act of honor killing, but also what kind of sexual offences Muslim men commit in their households.

From the above narrations, one may think that honor killing of women is an affair confined to Islamic countries. But, in reality, it is spreading among Muslim communities in the Western world as well. The reader may remember that on Tuesday, January 1, 2008, a 50 year-old Egyptian-born Muslim taxi driver, Yaser Abdel Said, murdered his two daughters, Sarah Said (17) and Amina Said (18), in Las Colinas, a suburb north of Dallas in Texas, USA, for discarding Islamic dress-code and refusing to wear hijab (veil). He shot his daughters in his taxi, which was parked in front of a hotel, and left them die to the taxi. Texas authorities are in a manhunt for the absconding father, feared to be armed and dangerous.

On December 10, 2007, a Pakistani taxi driver in Toronto, Canada, killed his own daughter Aqsa Pervez for the same reason. Sixteen-year-old Aqsa refused to cover her body with hijab or veil and wanted to live like other Canadian girls. According to press reports, the girl died in a local hospital on after she was allegedly strangled by her father Muhammad Parvez, 57, in a Toronto suburb, where many Pakistani live.

On February 13, 2009, in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo, 44 year-old Muzzamil Hassan, a prominent Muslim businessman, was arrested for having beheaded his wife, 37 year-old Aasiya Z. Hassan. The husband had committed that terrifying crime as Aasiya dared to obtain an order of protection from her cruel husband, and wanted a divorce so that she could live a life, free of daily violence.

According to a report appeared in The Independent, London, on July 1, 2008, over 120 honor killings have occurred in UK within a past few years, and the police was investigating 120 deaths. It also said, nearly 12 women are murdered every year in Britain in connection to honor killing.

From these incidents, it appears that only the male members of a Muslim family take active part in murdering their daughters, sisters or mothers, as an act of honor killing. But it is really astonishing that the honor killing, which took place in the suburb of South Mumbai on July 2, 2006, the mother of the victim actively assisted her husband to kill her daughter and cut her into pieces. A press report appeared in major Indian dailies on July 12, 2008, said that the parents of an 18-year-old girl were sentenced to life by a court in Mumbai for murdering their daughter and cutting her into several pieces. On the previous day, the Additional Sessions Judge, O S Jaiswal, held Mohammad Munna Sardar Khan (38) and his wife Shenaz Khan (35) guilty of murdering their daughter Mehnaz Khan on July 2, 2006 and cutting her body it into 11 pieces before dumping in a gunny bag.

The gruesome crime was committed by the parents, because their daughter fell in love with a Hindu boy, eloped with and married him. The court, while delivering its verdict, observed that the case was one of rarest as the convicts strangled their own daughter with a towel and then cut her body into 11 pieces. The court also observed that, although perpetrators of such a cruelty deserved death sentence, the court showed leniency and sentenced them to minimum punishment for the moral responsibility towards other 5 children of the convicts.

In this latest incident, Mehnaz Khan and Vidyanand Jadahv, a Maharastrian Hindu boy, were in love for past several years and eloped to a place, called Panvel, and got married. When the girl’s parents came to know that their daughter was living with her husband at Panvel, they went there and pleaded with Mehnaz to return home. They assured Mehnaz that, once she comes home, they would accept her marriage with Vidyanand. They, thus, succeeded in persuading Mehnaz to return to their South Mumbai home.

But after she reached home at about midnight, Munna Khan immediately strangulated Mehnaz to death with a towel, as Sehnaz sat on her chest to prevent her from escaping. Munna Khan then dragged the body to the bathroom and cut it into 11 pieces. He also peeled off the skin from the victim’s face and disfigured it by cutting the nose, hoping that no one could identify her after a possible discovery. He then put her body-pieces in a gunny bag and threw it near the Byculla Bridge.

The body was discovered after a few days after the local people complained of stench. The police traced the culprits by following the company-name printed on the gunny bag. After a preliminary enquiry, the police could learn that the company had delivered the gunny bag to one G N Shop, a grocery store belonging to Munna Khan.

The incident helps one gauge the degree to which Islamic brainwashing many motivate Muslims, even a mother, to kill their own children.

While the entire non-Muslim world vehemently condemn this barbaric practice of honor killing, the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, while commenting on targeted killing of two Muslim prostitutes in Chechnya, justified the practice, claiming those, who had been killed had "loose morals", and were rightfully shot by relatives in honor killings. They deserved to die.