Islamic “Honour Killings” of women unabating

Honour killings continue to strike terror in female folks in the Islamic world. A recent study in Pakistan now lists “honour killing” as a major portion of the country’s homicides. Recent incidents include the report from Jordan about the teenager who stabbed his 22-year-old sister to death "to cleanse the family honor because she left the house too often" ; or the case in Germany, where a 20 year old Kurdish boy lured her triplet sister to an isolated side road, choked her unconscious with a clothes line before clubbing her to death. The girl who was to be forced into marriage was discovered not to be a virgin.
www.jihadwatch.org/archives/ 025568.php
In a case from Turkey where a 16-year-old was given a gun by his mother and made to shoot his sister-in-law, several times, in the presence of other family members; the courts decided that “the region’s tradition placed an incredible burden on the two families” to do what they did as the victim was rumored to be having an extra-marital affair. The shooter, especially being a minor, thus received only a very light sentence. http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026122.php
Sexual immorality is not the only dishonorable thing a woman can do to earn her (and not her male accomplice!), an instant death sentence. For ultra-orthodox muslims, a girl going to school could be just as bad. This has been a major issue in Afghanistan (and other sharia-enclaves such as Somalia), where girls’ schools face continual assaults. In one of the latest of such, 84 girls were hospitalized following the release of airborne poisonous chemicals in the school environment. The incident reported here was the third of such in three weeks directed at girls schools.
Meanwhile, the forced marriage of a young Saudi girl (aged 8) to a man in his 50s, which attracted worldwide attention and a court action by the girl’s mother, has mercifully now being annulled. Since the Islamic courts found nothing wrong with the development (the Islamic founding prophet married one of his wives, Aisha, at the age of 6), an out-of-court settlement had to be sought as a face-saving device for the Saudi Kingdom. The girl's father is said to have married her off against her mother's wishes to a close friend in order that he could pay off a debt. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8026545.stm