Um Zaid, honor is a relative concept. It obviously means differently to different people. There is no true honor. People would still have their own version even if we try to impose our own on them. Maybe it is time to stop making a big deal out of honor. We should declare that life itself tops it. Human love and family relationship is more important. Honor is overrated in our society, we should shrink it.

Allah did say in Quran that he forgives all but worshipping a God other than him (ofcourse between those who got his message), even then he did not ask us to kill those who worship another than him after getting his message, its left for him to decide. this gives me an idea that the heaviest mistake is not adultry, why shud we kill for it then and give it the heaviest punishment ?

Kind of a tidy deal here, the brother gets her inheritance even if he gets jail time, and the husband doesn’t have any alimony to pay.

.

These men (and the women who encourage them) are certainly products of the society, but I wouldn’t call them victims. Not at all. They are perpetrators. Every single one of us is given the power to rise above, and with the exception of those who are mentally disabled, we are given the *ability* to choose between right and wrong. Now, I know not everyone is a Muslim, or particularly religious, but from my perspective, God has given them the tools and guidance and given them the choice. That makes them something that is the opposite of a victim.

Regarding infidelity, we know that most of the women, girls, and men who are killed were probably not unfaithful or promiscuous (as if that is a reason). Many women are killed for the sake of their inheritance, then the man claims honor to get a social and legal sanction for it. This has been going on for decades. There were cases in the past of men being killed because they were out on the corner with their friends all night, or wearing hair gel and generally acting like dopey young men. On top of that, you have girls and women who are murdered by relatives because they fear that this girl or woman will reveal a shameful secret of family sexual or physical abuse. Such a case happened in Salt last year — and that’s just one that made the papers due to the horrific extent of the killing itself. I also remember two such cases involving boys several years ago.

Finally, you have people who are killled — notably women — on the say so of their neighbors’ and vicious relatives’ gossiping tongues. We *know* there are girls who have done nothing more than been the subject of rumors that they talked to a man or were seen wtih a man. A man in Jerash killed his wife and six of his children a few years ago because the neighbors were spreading gossip that, ultimately I believe, ended up being tragically false.

So it is isn’t enough to say, “Well, this is the problem with the way we marry, it leads to infidelity,” because it is just as likely — if not more likely — that she was killed for her land, or becuase a jealous neighbor spread rumors about her, or because she threatened to tell someone about abuse she suffered.

Mohanned, you say that we should advertise that it is “okay to live without honor.” I say the opposite. I vote for *true* honor, real valor, precious little of which is evident in people who have these disgusting, backards notions about the value of life. If they are Christians, let their community present them with Biblical and church writings about true honor and valor and the value of life. If they are Muslims, let our community point to the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Ditto if they are Druize, or Yazidi (as in the case of that awful killing in Iraq last year) and so forth. Let us say to the families and neighbors, “If you are truthful, bring forth your proof.” No, these people are in submission to the tongues of their neighbors and relatives, and it is these things that they fear and appeal to. There is nothing wrong with seeking the approval of your family or society, but when doing so leads you to *take a human life,* then it is ‘ayb and it is mindless, and people should be held responsible for this and prompted to do better and be better.

These things won’t stop until *we*, the rest of the society, make this “killing for my honor” mindset and idea an ‘ayb itself.

In any change initiative a strong message has to be sent and that message has to come from the top.

Read here

its not meant to deter him from a crime he’s already committed. it’s meant to deter others.

Nas, I am not sure how fair this sentence is. The man is just as a much of a social victim as of his sister. Death sentence wouldn’t forbade him of committing such crime, because people with such mentality would just die believing that they are dying for their honor. This is a social crime, we should all get punished for the culture we built.

Maybe we should start advertising that it is okay to live without honor. It would solve many problems of us. Let’s have a campaign in our streets like the one for traffic accidents ‘It is OKAY to live without honor, it is not the end of the world’

‘Honor is not an excuse of killing’

‘Life is more worthy than honor’

Let’s just drop the honor flag