Jordan: No end for honor killings in sight?

IN OCTOBER, A MAN from the Jordan Valley reportedly confessed to using a sword to stab to death his 22-year-old daughter and her unborn child. He said he felt he needed to preserve his honor after the girl became pregnant out of wedlock.

This horrific act wasn’t the only one of its type to have occurred in the Kingdom this year. As JO went to press, 17 other so-called honor killings had been brought to light in the media in 2009.

They included a 30-year-old mother of six who was stabbed to death with a switchblade by her brothers, after she went missing from her husband’s house for 10 hours. And then there was the 16-year-old victim of incestuous rape who was shot nine times in an Amman suburb by her uncle.

Between 15 and 20 women are known to be murdered each year in Jordan in the name of honor, according to the AFP news agency, and some groups and individuals who try to track the crimes say there may be more killings that are missed, or made to look like accidents, suicides or disappearances. Despite numerous high-profile attempts to eradicate the practice, things don’t seem to be improving.

via Jordan: No end in sight? | Stop honour killings!.

Guess what? Some activists thing honor killings are caused by poverty. The same that Abdumull… was a “poor” terrorist?

It’s important that Kind Abdullah speaks against domestic violence but it’s not sufficient. Specially because this hting about “honor” is mostly religious and cultural. It’s not only domestic violence: it’s sanctioned by every cleric who considers that is just to punish a woman for just being too Westernised, for marrying with someone her family doesn’t want (being desobedient thus) or having sexual relations out of wedlock. So, unless he speaks against those clerics and calls for legisiation supporting women in those cases, he is really doing nothing.