Did somebody really post their father's modern approach(therefore right?) of positive reinforcement to child-rearing actually failed on her while the old approach of physical punishment was backwards? I'm not getting into it, I understand behavioral mgmt to a degree, but don't knock something while proving the preferred? method didn't work.

Getting tired of this, but here are some more FACTS:

Yes indeedy men do to get killed for sexual impropriety in tribal/theocratic countries. Get caught having gay sex in Iran or Saudi for example. And if you assault or even have consensual unmarried sex with a woman, you are at just as severe risk from her family as she is (though not your own). Which isn't necessarily all that severe: "honour killings" are not epidemic, but mostly confined to Jordan & Saudi, & starting to show up in Iraq. And are not all that common in any case.

In Jordan, several very brave women, some of them elected members of parliament (yes Jordon actually has elections and has elected a few women, though the parliament's powers are pretty limited) are leading the fight against the practise. Honour killings are specifically illegal in Jordon, and men have been jailed and even executed for them, the problem now is to get the law more uniformly enforced.

The hejab is not necessarily a symbol of oppression. When I was a kid, living in an Islamic country, my dad's secretary was a very attractive woman, always dressed to the nines, lots of makeup, jewelry, etc. She got married, and not too long after that, she started showing up for work in a hejab, no makeup, severe clothing. I asked her, had her husband made her do this? No she said, it was her own idea and he wasn't happy about it. But she wanted to be seen as a person and a professional, not something pretty to look at. She wanted to be taken seriously. So you see, the hejab is not always a symbol of oppression.

Also, and I don't know how often I have to say this, WE DON'T KNOW THAT SHE WAS KILLED FOR NOT WEARING A HEJAB. We know that the family had problems, and the hejab was an issue, but that is about all we know. It may have been THE issue, but frankly I doubt it.

Come on, how many teenage girls go out the door in the morning in clothes that their parents approve of, and then do a change at school into something that they wouldn't? And would get scared of getting caught? Even by their brother? I can remember almost getting caught by my big brother smoking behind the bleachers, and I said, oh my god if he sees me he's going to kill me! And I was scared.

If some non-Muslim controlling abusive fundamentalist asshole beat their child to death for say dressing like a "slut," it would be sad, but even if you don't like fundies much, you would not likely use it blame the entire group, you would blame garden-variety child abuse that sadly enough shows up in every society.

Do you think that because someone reads the Koran and prays five times a day they magically lose the ability to love and care for their children, and going to church and watching religious tv twice a week doesn't? Muslims love their children as much as anybody, and also, Muslim families can sometimes be as dysfunctional as any other kind of family.

To correct a few other points above, the acid in the face thing is not Islamic at all, it is more of a Hindu thing. (As are dowry burnings & suttee.) And in tribal/traditional cultures, a woman's beauty is not her source of power, her children are. Young women tend to get the short end of the stick, but mothers of adult children and grandmothers wield considerable power. Those societies value age and procreation, not youth and beauty. You want to understand the thinking, just read the old testament, the Pentateuch and Ruth for starters.

Now, having had real actual experience with the theocrats and salafists and assorted assholes, please do not take it that I am in any way a defender of their ilk, quite the contrary, to put it mildly. But you start tarring a whole group like this, all you do is drive them closer together and increase the influence of the extremists.

But if you want to be a bigot, go ahead I guess.

I wonder if it was the brother who killed her, not the father. It's not unknown for a parent to protect a child which did wrong; and it was the brother she was sure would kill her, while the parents agreed to her moving out. That indicates some degree of willingness to accept her autonomy on the parent's part to me.

I agree that the culture bears some blame; but that banning the hijab would be repressive to the women who want to wear it. Domestic violence is primarily the fault of over-controlling people, and those will use whatever appropriate cultural memes are floating about to justify their actions. Domestic violence is not just an Islamic, nor even just a religious problem; people of all beliefs engage in it.

What planet do you live on?

Read any Pakistani newspapers lately? or Algerian? or....?

Honour killing occurs all over the Islamic world on a daily basis. It has its roots in tribalism, not religion, but Islam is so deeply a tribal religion that it is perfect for fostering the kind of environment in which honour killing (and FGM, etc.) can be carried out.

The Q'uran says you can beat your wife (Pickthall's translation uses the word scourge, the same word used in the KJB to describe the beating of Christ). The Bible says you can beat your children and in fact should beat them--with a stick (professionals consider striking someone with an object a particularly egregrious form of physical assault, and the victim is more likely to be injured).

Old time religion is some evil shite, if only because it enables abusers and gives them excuses. And yet we continually make excuses for it. Why?