Honour Killings in Pakistan: Adherents of the Religion of Peace, Love, Compassion and Mercy Have Been Trying to Prove Islam’s Superiority Again!
THE TELEGRAPH: Dozens of relatives of a Pakistani teenager who eloped against her parents' wishes shot her dead on Monday in a raid on her new home which also left her husband and in-laws dead, police said.

Relatives dressed in police uniforms stormed the bridegroom's house in the district of Charsadda, in North West Frontier Province.

"The assailants took the bridegroom out while some of the attackers climbed the wall and entered the house. They killed the bride, the mother and sister of the bridegroom," said Saleem Jan, a police official for the Charsadda district.

"They beat them first and then shot them dead," he told AFP news agency.

The groom's father was also killed, another police official told AFP.

Police said the bride, who was 18 or 19 years old, came from the deeply conservative Mardan district next to Charsadda. She had run away and married her boyfriend, who was around 30, without telling her parents.

"Both the girl and man married some weeks ago," Misal Khan, the bridegroom's uncle, told reporters at the scene.

Police said the main suspects were two uncles and a cousin.

Human rights groups have strongly condemned the practice of honour killings in Pakistan, which claim the lives of hundreds of women each year. Pakistani family shot dead in 'honour killing' after wedding >>> | Monday, June 29, 2009

Murder in the Family: Honor Killings in America
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Hat tip: Always On Watch

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Defending the West
THE SPECTATOR – Melanie Phillips: Daniel Pipes records how a united display of public condemnation and opprobrium forced Islamist organisations in America to back down over the refusal by Muslim cab drivers to transport blind passengers accompanied by their guide dogs. Faced with a united approach by police, courts and public opinion which resulted in such cab-drivers admonished, fined, re-educated, warned, or even jailed, the Council on American Islamic Relations finally backed down. Pipes concludes:

When Westerners broadly agree on rejecting a specific Islamic law or tradition and unite against it, Western Islamists must adjust to the majority's will. Guide dogs for the blind represent just one of many such consensus issues; others tend to involve women, such as husbands beating wives, the burqa head coverings, female genital mutilation, and ‘honor’ killings. Western unity can also compel Islamists to denounce their preferred positions in areas such as slavery and Shar‘i-compliant finances.

Defending the West >>> By Melanie Phillips

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A Question of Honour: 17,000 Victims a Year in UK Alone
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: Ministers are stepping up the fight against so-called 'honour' crime and forced marriages. Detectives say official statistics are 'merely the tip of the iceberg' of this phenomenon. Brian Brady investigates

Up to 17,000 women in Britain are being subjected to "honour" related violence, including murder, every year, according to police chiefs.

And official figures on forced marriages are the tip of the iceberg, says the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

It warns that the number of girls falling victim to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults, beatings and even murder by relatives intent on upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35 times higher than official figures suggest.

The crisis, with children as young as 11 having been sent abroad to be married, has prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to call on British consular staff in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to take more action to identify and help British citizens believed to be the victims of forced marriages in recent years.

The Home Office is drawing up an action plan to tackle honour-based violence which "aims to improve the response of police and other agencies" and "ensure that victims are encouraged to come forward with the knowledge that they will receive the help and support they need". And a Civil Protection Bill coming into effect later this year will give courts greater guidance on dealing with forced marriages. A question of honour: Police say 17,000 women are victims every year >>>

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Sean Hannity & Brigitte Gabriel on Radical Islam

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Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Sins of the Father
THE SUNDAY TIMES: In a suburban McDonald’s a father begged his wayward daughter to come home... so he and the men of her family could have her beaten, raped and murdered. Fearing violence, but moved by his tears, she relented – and died. Our correspondent investigates how a man can choose the death of a daughter above dishonour

Ari Mahmod held his head up when he went to prison. He felt no embarrassment. And why should he? After all, he said, it was not as if he was locked up for something as inconsequential or shameful as theft. He was sure that, back in the real world of suburban Mitcham, south London, among his own people, they would be thanking his family for what he had done, taking pride in the decisive way he had acted.

Many people might find it hard to comprehend that any man could take pride – pleasure, even – in the brutal murder of his niece. Banaz Mahmod had been beaten, probably raped, and finally strangled with a bootlace in the living room at home. Her uncle Ari had not been there, but he had planned it, knew exactly what was happening, and had been waiting nearby…waiting for his family reputation to be restored.

As he liked to say, in his culture, reputation was more important than life itself. That was why it had to be done – why his brother’s daughter had to die. Sins of the father (more) By David James Smith

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BBC Report on Honour Killings

Mark Alexander

Honourless Killings; Shameful Killings
THE TELEGRAPH: Would Mahmod Mahmod pass Ruth Kelly's proposed citizenship points-based test? Once he had named the longest river in the United Kingdom, correctly identified the Queen's great-grandfather, ticked the box marked cucumber sandwiches and earned the correct number of credits for civic and voluntary work, the chances are, yes, he would.

Yet since Mahmod brought his family here 10 years ago, after successfully seeking political asylum from Iraq, his integration into British society and appreciation of British values seems to have been slight.

Certainly, in the dock at the Old Bailey this week, Mahmod showed no emotion when he was found guilty of ordering his daughter's murder, but why would he? His family's honour was more important to him than Banaz Mahmod's 20-year-old life, so he arranged to have her killed to restore his good standing in his south London Kurdish community. Where is the honour in killing your daughter? (more) By Jan Moir

Mark Alexander

Honour Killing: 20 Year Old Banaz Mahmod Strangled with Bootlace

Photo courtesy of Google Images (UK)

DAILY MAIL: As a teenager's father and uncle are found guilty in 'honour killing' case, police face an investigation for failing to respond to her desperate warnings. These reports from Fiona Barton and Stephen Wright.

Five police officers are under investigation after a series of terrible blunders left a young Muslim woman at the mercy of killers in her own family.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a bootlace on the orders of her father and uncle, both Iraqi Kurds who ruled their families with violence and fear. Murder girl's five cries for help that were ignored (more) By Fiona Barton and Stephen Wright

Mark Alexander