What Honor?

So called 'honor killings' are on the uprise in Europe. These killings occur when a Muslim family feels as though a daughter has acted improperly. In most cases it involves nothing more than a daughters wish not to accept an arranged marriage or for the horrible crime of kissing a male in public or holding his hand.

From most accounts Manna Begum and Ghorbani-Zarin were deeply in love and Manna became pregnant. What does any family do in these circumstances? Is the first thought to kill them? That was what happened in this case. Ghorbani-Zarin was brutally murdered by Manna's two brothers. Manna was forced to have an abortion. Today some justice was meted out to her two brothers and her father.

Mr Justice Goss described it as a cold-blooded killing, adding that “the sooner the term honour killings are seen for the grotesque misnomer they are, the better”. He told Ali, a Bangladeshi-born waiter: “Far from vindicating your family’s honour you have permanently dishonoured your family with the stain of murder.”

His two sons, Mohammed Mujibar Rahman, 19, and Mamnoor Rahman, 16, who stood alongside Ali in the dock at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, were jailed for a minimum of 16 and 14 years respectively.

The older boy held the victim down while Mamnoor, who was only 15 at the time, stabbed him so furiously that the tip of the knife snapped. TimesOnLine

A bright engineering student was brutally murdered to appease some warped sense of honor. Judge Goss is correct. The term honor killing is grotesque. Women in the West choose who they fall in love with, who they want to marry, and what they want to do with their lifes. Women all over the world should have the same rights. It's called freedom.