CRUEL BUT REAL.....

It’s been three days I last updated my blog….while enjoying my weekend with my kids , I also spent some time searching on a popular topic which has long been swirling in my mind…how can it happen?…is it real ?.... almost all WH questions that I have in mind …I got almost all the answers on this cruel but real crime………..HONOUR KILLING….

HONOUR KILLING…… this is what I got from a few websites on this topic ....

An honour killing is a murder, nearly exclusively of a woman, who has been perceived as having brought dishonour to her family. Such killings are typically perpetrated by the victim's own relatives and/or community and unlike crimes of passion or rage-induced killings, usually planned in advance.

In societies and cultures where they occur, such killings are often regarded as a "private matter" for the affected family alone, and courts rarely become involved or prosecute the perpetrators.

A POEM BY MAHA ABU AYYASH

They are killed, and any memory of their "dishonored" existence is deliberately erased.
Do they have gravestones and epitaphs?
You cannot hear the weeping of their mothers.
There are no condolences, no questions nor answers.
They suffer brutal violence - are killed without reason: it is injustice.
The sentence against them is brutal - a punishment for crimes not committed, handed down without evidence, witnesses, judges or trials.
As a society we endorse the verdict after it is rendered.
Mercy is not a factor weighed on the tilted scales of justice used to judge them.
Their lives vanish into the hell of the forgotten.
We fail to protect them, and their lives are gone in vain.


The report concerning cultural practices in the family that are violent towards women, indicated that honour killings had been reported in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, Yemen, and other Mediterranean and Gulf countries, and that they had also taken place in such countries as France, Germany and the United Kingdom within migrant communities.

Here in Jordan , in a desert nation of conservative Bedouin tribes, activists are trying to scrap the time-honored law that gives men light sentences for murdering female relatives for offenses to family honour. It took Ahmad Ismail two months to track down his teen-age sister Haneen who had fled home with a boyfriend .

When Ahmad pulled the trigger, 19-year-old Haneen was two months pregnant. Ahmad, now 17, spent one year in jail and then was released to a hero's welcome from his family and neighbours.

"I cleansed our family honour," he said at his family home in the dirt alleyways of this town, 17 miles northeast of the Jordanian capital, Amman.

"She disgraced us," he said. "We are a tribe of thousands of men. It was better that one person die, but not the thousands, of shame."

Ahmad's thankful father, Mahmoud, concurred: "Our neighbors and even relatives had stopped talking to us until Ahmad carried out his heroic act."

"Now, we can walk with our heads held high," he added.

In Jordan, One-Quarter of All Murders Are 'For Honour'

Haneen was one of scores of Jordanian women who face, or faced, family retribution in this conservative, tribal-oriented society where men rule on family matters and women, who constitute 49 percent of the 4.6 million population, have little say.

Official statistics show that 25 women--the majority of them teen-agers--are killed each year in so-called "honor crimes," which constitute 25 percent of the annual homicides in Jordan. Most are buried in unmarked graves, disgraced even in death.


Honor killing is forbidden in mainstream interpretations of Islam
Many Muslim scholars and commentators say that honor killings are a cultural practice which is neither exclusive to, nor universal within, the Islamic world.

Many campaigns to stop this 'cruel but real ' crime are being carried out all over the Middle East..... I personally really hope this crime will no longer exist in this enchanting Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, InsyaAllah.