I saw a fire truck Monday morning making the school run, wonder if it was this incident. Brings dishonor killing a little too close to home for comfort. (UPDATE: It was in Abu Alanda, not my ‘hood)
A commenter on Nadine’s FB link to Al Arabiyya mentioned something like “a convenient way to reduce splitting the inheritance”. I have never heard of a family WANTING a daughter with four kids to move away. How could she afford that? Did she receive a huge divorce settlement from her husband? (non-local readers, that was sarcastic, as there is no such thing here)
So four teenage kids now have no mother. A dad who had probably remarried a woman not much older than they are. And three uncles who are murderers.
At least the courts called it premeditated murder, which is calling it what it is.
Perhaps a new penalty for murderers is to take their inheritance and divide it among the children of the deceased, or if she is single, to the fund for orphaned girls to have a dowry and chance for a new start. I bet that would end one incentive given those who kill ‘for honor’.
From the Jordan Times
AMMAN - Criminal Prosecutor Tareq Shqeirat on Thursday charged three men with complicity in premeditated murder charges in connection with stabbing to death their older divorced sister a day earlier for reasons reportedly related to family honour, official sources said.
The three men, aged between 20 and 26, allegedly stabbed their sister, then set the house afire after her children went to school on Monday, one senior official told The Jordan Times.
The suspects then called the Civil Defence Department (CDD) claiming that a fire broke out at their 40-year-old sister’s apartment in an Amman neighbourhood, the source added.
“The CDD extinguished the fire, found the body of the victim and rushed her to a nearby hospital where attending doctors examined the corpse,” said the source.
The physicians discovered multiple stab wounds on the victim’s body and called the police, the source continued.
Two of the three brothers were treated at the same hospital for minor injuries and respiratory problems as a result of smoke inhalation, according to the source.
Shqeirat questioned the three brothers, one of whom reportedly confessed to “plotting to murder his sister with the help of his two brothers because she had a bad reputation”.
The suspect said the victim was divorced in 2003 and that “the family had asked her repeatedly to move out of their building”, said a second source quoting the suspect’s initial testimony.
“The victim refused to move out so they decided to kill her and cleanse their family’s honour, according to the suspect’s claims,” the source told The Jordan Times.
I am really confused with the count now, I guess victims of juveniles who commit dishonor crimes don’t count, so I am going by Rana Husseini’s number. But total female and fetal loss of life for 2009 is over 20 now, for what those lives are worth.
And we still have THREE MORE MONTHS of 2009. it will be a record breaking year, it seems.
That is horrific and disgusting at the same time. How can any family member do that? Don’t they fear God?
Jessy, I am so with you.
My husband talked to our former next-door neighbor, whose first cousin was under a honor death threat from her family and in hiding. He asked him “How can you read Jesus’ words, and the ten commandments, and still call for the death of your cousin? Is honor more important than Scripture?” After thinking a minute, he replied, “yes, it is”.
When a man’s identity is more wrapped up in his personal honor than fearing God, this is the result.
not that i condone but if we take a fundamentalist reading of the bible (i’m talking the idea if its mentioned there then its done with kind of thing) then they can possibly justify it since honor killings are mentioned in the old testament. That aside fundamentalism in this case is an excuse (a very strong one at that) but it all boils down to social pressure.
so unless we reach a tipping point where the societal pressure and disdain of killing your daughters overcomes that of letting her live we will never be able to deal with honor crimes
Hi Bam, yes, I know you don’t condone it. Passages are mentioned, and Levitical law prescribed both parties to be killed in it’s extreme sense of ‘honor killing’. Even then, it was God’s honor, not the man’s.
Mentioned yes, but not having been practiced even by the Jews 400 years before Christ (I can’t site the scholarship on that one). So that is likely 2,400 years of no one practicing of that, and most other problematic injunctions. Jesus had a whole new set of standards.
This society can really get on my nerves. Alhamdulillah the Prophet PBUH married several divorcees and if they were good enough for him, then they should be good enough for the likes of today’s Muslims in Jordan. Ugh.