- Can the licence to kill be revoked in Islamic countries, such as Pakistan?
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“Honour killings” can be stopped only by scrapping religiously inspired laws
Islamabad, Jul.23.─ Few Pakistanis have broken taboos as gleefully as Qandeel Baloch, a social-media star who used the internet to titillate and scandalise her fellow citizens. The 26-year-old (pictured with her iPhone), whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, twerked on camera, posted suggestive selfies and mocked the mullahs who police the social boundaries of a Muslim-majority nation that has become more religiously conservative over the years. It was too much for many, including her brother, who strangled Ms Baloch after drugging her to sleep. Waseem Azeem proudly admitted his crime: “She was bringing disrepute to our family’s honour.” He has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Ms Baloch’s funeral (pictured) was held on July 17th.
So-called “honour killings” are rarely so sensational. But nor are they rare. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan tallied 1,096 female victims of them last year. Many go unreported to the police. Cases in the past three months include a 19-year-old girl burned to cinders for refusing a marriage proposal; a 16-year-old girl who met a similar fate for helping a friend elope; and an 18-year-old killed by her mother for marrying a man from a different ethnic group against her family’s will.
Such atrocities are widely accepted. At a recent screening of “A Girl in the River”, an acclaimed documentary about honour killing, male students at a leading university applauded an interview with a man who was unrepentant about trying to kill his daughter for entering a “love marriage”.
The problem is rooted in tribal and cultural traditions at odds with young women in a growing middle class who increasingly wish to choose their own husbands. Often such killings will be agreed beforehand at a gathering of local men.
She mocked the mullahs. She died
Pakistan’s mullahs are united in declaring that Islam condemns such murders. But this clerical consensus frays when it comes to the sharia-inspired laws of qisas (retribution) and diyat (blood money) that enable men to get away with it ...
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