Honor as part of Islam

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Mar 10, 2009 at 16:24

Hi, Anne-Marie !

You wrote :

> The honor killing has to do with Islam : wife beating, sharia discrimination....

Misha was a Saudi Arabian Princess who was executed, in 1977, at the age of 19. Under sharia law, adultery is punishable by death, and death ..by stoning at that.

HONOR AND ISLAM ARE INEXTRICABLY BOUND.<

Thanks a lot for this clarification. I have always suspected this Moslem 'honor" is a bit misleading term . It has little or nothing to do with what we Europeans mean by "honor". E.g. the traditional expression of our honor was a duel. When offended it was restored in an equal fight according to elaborate knightly rules. In Islam the offender doesn't fight a duel with the offended but a whole clan is set upon him and his clan. The woman in old Europe had also a personal honor. When it was offended she would choose a knight to restore her honor in a duel.

Now in the Hassans' case what sort of honor did Assiya offend exactly? She broke shari'a which makes her inferior to her husband, which allows him to beat her, considers her taking recourse to kafirs' laws to defend her against his husband as illegal or rather as treason to Islam whose excellency every Moslem extols to heaven. In short -as far as I can understand -through her acts she became infidel and it's not 'honor' but shar'ia that made the husband cut off the infidel woman's head after traditional beating hadn't helped. By the decapitation Hassan restored more than the family's good opinion or esteem (our current idea of 'honor') in the ummah. He committed a sacred religious act of punishing a Moslem who offended and tried to defect Islam. So it's not honor killing. It's shari'a killing. Indeed, honor and Islam are inextricably bound.

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