Anyone who has read my diaries, knows that I'm an admirer of the Kurdish people. Therefore it was with both confusion and horror that I read this report on this latest honor killing incident in the U.K., involving a Kurd who has just convicted for ordering his own daughter murdered:
A Kurdish man was convicted in a London court on Monday of murdering his 20-year-old daughter in a so-called "honor killing" after she left her husband and fell in love with another man.
http://www.cnn.com/...
More below the fold...
Banaz Mahmod, the descendant of Iraqi Muslim Kurds (living in London) left a husband she'd been forced to marry at age seventeen and met her new love, an Iranian Muslim Kurd, after returning to her family home.
For this "crime," the twenty year old was strangled with a shoelace. Her assailants put her body in a suitcase and took her from London to Birminghamd, where they buried her in the backyard of a house.
The young man she'd fallen in love with cried on the witness stand and then issued this statement: "I don't think I have loved anyone as much as I have loved Banaz. She was my first love. She meant the world to me."
Heartbreaking.
From the BBC:
A father has been found guilty of killing his daughter in what police have described as an honour killing.
The body of Banaz Mahmod, 20, was found in a suitcase buried in a garden in Birmingham last year. Her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and uncle Ari Mahmod, 50, from Mitcham, south London, were both convicted of murder at the Old Bailey.
The most heartbreaking part of this heartbreaking story?
Banaz had made several attempts to warn police that her life was in danger, even naming those she thought would kill her. In footage recorded following an earlier attempt on her life by her father in December 2005, she said she was "really scared". However her statement following the assault was allegedly not taken seriously enough by investigating officers.
[snip]
After the verdict, Detective Inspector Caroline Goode, said: "Clearly there is no honour in killing... I think it is the ultimate betrayal for a parent to kill a child."
D.I. Caroline Goode is correct. What is the honor in killing one's daughter, one's sister, one's friend? The fact that these types of murder by Kurds have made their way to the forefront recently (see this diary about the incident in Iraq) has me asking questions whether certain sects of Muslim Kurds have lost their way.
There's a historical reason to ask this. The Kurds were originally the Medes, a Zoroastrian people whose binding precepts would never have allowed for such a misogynistic atrocity:
- Equalism: Equality of all, irrespective of gender, race, or religion.
- Respect and kindness towards all living things. Condemnation of the oppression of human beings, cruelty against animals and sacrifice of animals.
- Environmentalism: Nature is central to the practice of Zoroastrianism and many important Zoroastrian annual festivals are in celebration of nature: new year on the first day of spring, the water festival in summer, the autumn festival at the end of the season, and the mid-winter fire festival.
- Hard work and charity: Laziness and sloth are frowned upon. Zoroastrians are encouraged to part with a little of what would otherwise be their own.
- Loyalty and faithfulness to "family, settlement, tribe, and country."
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Equality of all, irrespective of gender, race, or religion
In the UK case, like the oney in Iraq, the offense seems to be an objection to the love interest's religion and tribe:
The court had been told that Banaz had been forced to marry an Iraqi Kurd when she was 17 but the relationship collapsed. She returned to live with her parents in 2005, later falling in love with Rahmat Suleimani.
Her family decided to kill her because they believed the relationship had brought dishonor on the family as Suleimani was an Iranian Kurd and not a strict Muslim.
http://www.cnn.com/...
Iranian, not Iraqi and not a strict Muslim...
In defense of the Kurds -- and that includes Sunni and Shi'a Muslim Kurds, Yezedi, Zaza, Alevi, Christian and Jewish Kurds -- the ones I've met dearly love their children, irrespective of gender, and are likely to be as horrified by these events as anyone reading them here.
It should also be noted that "honor killings" happen across many cultures, in Turkey, Iraq, etc... which leads to the questions about "honor killings" in general. Why are they happening? What can be done about them? Which Imams, since this seems to be a predominately Muslim phenomenon, are issuing Fatwas for or against the practice?
I don't know the answers. I do know the questions need to be asked.
Here's a link to the CNN report.
Here the one to the BBC report.
The link to my diary on the Kurds.
And my diary on Zoroastrianism.
Update [2007-6-12 0:8:42 by jhritz]: Rippen Kitten provides the following important petition links:
Petition to stop stonings and honor killings in Kurdistan;
Petition to stop female genital mutilation in Kurdistan;
Petition to stop Sharia law in Kurdistan.