Letters to the Editor
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what Islam says
Islam says if a woman is sexually active outside of marriage, she should be executed.
According to some scholars, she should be granted a trial of sorts first. But Sharia is so primitive it has few of the elements that we would recognize as jurisprudence today. There are some provisions for calling witnesses, and that's about it.
However, with Islam stating specifically that impurity should be punishable by death, do you really expect that the culture of honor killing wouldn't flourish under Islam? That it will not continue to do so?
It's like Hirsan Ali wrote about FGM--no, it's not Islamic, nor it is a universal throughout the Muslim world. But it fits well with Islam because of this religion's preoccupation with controlling women's sexuality and its emphasis on keeping them "pure". Same with honor killings--there's a weak argument to be made that it's cultural and not Islamic, but dang, it seems to go well with Islam and you don't see Muslims having put a stop to it in 1,400 years, have you?
The other thing to remember is that after 1,400 years the cultures in question have been largely formed by Islam, and the two (cultural values vs. Islamic ones) are so intertwined as to be almost interchangeable. This is rarely brought up but it is a fact.