OnIslam & News Agencies
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 10:27
TORONTO – Experts have agreed that honor
killings, which dominated headlines after the grisly family murder in Canada,
are driven by cultural and tribal reasons and are not sanctioned by Islamic
teachings.
"There is nothing in the Quran that justifies honor killings,”
Taj Hargey, director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford in England,
told CNN.
“There
is nothing that says you should kill for the honor of the family."
The ruling has spurred accusations that
the killing is sanctioned by the Islamic faith, a claim denied by experts.
"This idea that 'somehow a girl has
besmirched our honor and therefore the thing to do is kill her' is bizarre, and
Muslims should stop using this defense," Hargey said.
The expert insisted that the “honor killing” is cultural and societal,
than religious.
"You cannot say this is what Islam approves of. You can say this
is what their culture approves of."
The convicted father himself denied that
he was prompted by kill his daughters by his faith.
"In our religion, a person who kills
his wife or daughter, there is nothing more dishonorable," he testified.
In Islam, there is no place for
unjustifiable killing as the case in honor killing.
Even in case of capital punishment, only the government can apply the
law through the judicial procedures.
Though portrayed in the Western media as
exhorted by Islam, honor killing is a cultural act and has nothing to do with
the faith.
Cultural, Tribal
Experts stressed that culture and tribalism, not religion, are the
cause behind “honor murders”.
"It's not linked to religion; it's
more cultural," Nadya Khalife, a researcher on women's rights in the Arab
world for Human Rights Watch, told CNN.
"There have been several Islamic scholars who have issued fatwas
against honor killing."
She said that the problem exists in many
countries and among immigrant communities.
"It's definitely a problem that happens in many different places:
the Middle East, Pakistan, Bangladesh and among immigrant communities in North
America," she said.
Azyumardi Azra, the director of the
graduate school at the State Islamic University in Jakarta, agrees, citing the
case of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.
"No such a practice can be found among Indonesian Muslims,"
Azra said.
“'Honor killing' is, I believe, a cultural
problem among Arab and South Asian Muslims. I don't think that kind of practice
has an Islamic basis.”
Author Irshad Manji shares a similar
view.
It is "a tribal tradition that
emphasizes the family or the tribe or the community over the individual,"
she said.
However, Manji opines that many Muslims
don’t understand this distinction.
"It is a problem within Islam because of how Muslims often
confuse culture and religion," she said.
"It's
Muslims who have to learn to separate culture and religion. If we don't, Islam
will continue to get the bad name that it gets."
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