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Are Honor Killings an Islamic Phenomenon? | Animation

Honor killings are never far from the headlines. Here are 4 things you need to know about Islam’s connection to honor killings.

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This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.

Are honor killings an Islamic phenomenon? Based on an article by Jonathan Brown, honor killings are never far from the headlines, typically with strong reference to Islam and

Muslims. Here are four things you should know about Islam's connection to honor killings. Number one, Sharia explicitly prohibits honor killings. The Islamic position draws directly

from the rulings of the Prophet. Killing a spouse or the spouse's lover is homicide, even if they were caught in the act. When the Prophet was asked what would happen if a husband found his wife with

another man, he responded that the husband could not kill anyone and no one could be punished, unless the husband brought in four witnesses who had actually seen the act. The idea was that

getting four witnesses was an impossible task. The bottom line, honor killings are not justifiable in Islam under any circumstances. So if the concept of honor killings didn't originate in Islam,

where did it come from? The reality is that Muslim majority countries today do have laws that either excuse or treat honor killings lightly, but their origins may be surprising.

Fact number two, criminal law in the Middle East today is largely shaped by the Ottoman Criminal Code of 1858, which was a literal translation of the French Criminal Code of 1832.

Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt are essentially following literal translations of European law, not Sharia. And Pakistan's criminal law is still based in the 1860 code the British imported to

rule over colonial India. As Europe promoted these harsh laws, Muslim scholars over the centuries have consistently denounced and declared the impermissibility of honor killings.

Number three, honor killing today is part of a larger phenomenon of femicide, or the murder of a woman for some reason associated with her gender. The most prevalent type of femicide is actually

not honor killings. It's dowry killings among India's Hindu populations. The growth of the

killings is alarming. A 2012 UN report found that 4,836 known dowry murders occurred in India in

1990. That number increased to 8,383 murders in 2009. Although the Indian government outlawed

dowry giving, it remains an important custom. The suspicious deaths of wives are rarely investigated, and police often dismiss these deaths as kitchen accident. And the country that ranks worst in the

UN's ranking of femicide is non-Sharia applying, majority Catholic El Salvador, with an average of one femicide occurring every 16 hours. Which brings us to our final point, number four,

violence against women is not a Muslim problem, it's a global problem. The tired line of Islam allowing honor killings directly contradicts the prophet's teachings, and the rulings that

unequivocally prohibit and condemn honor killings. Violence against women and the failure of legal systems to punish it is a serious problem in certain Muslim majority countries today.

But Islam and the Sharia should be mobilized as arguments against honor killings, rather than falsely claiming it as the cause. Sensationalizing Islam deflects the reality that honor killings

are just as much a part of the past and present of the West as anywhere else.

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