Kill to defend your honor... what honor??

"We were deeply in love and planned to get married; her parents asked me to pay them a visit in Pakistan and talk. We both thought everything will be just fine, her family being an educated one, employed as public servants and military. Man, I never thought about what horrific thing they planned. Shortly before leaving to Pakistan, I had a phone conversation with Marc, who initially offered me to live at his place while being there. (Marc is a common friend, working in a multinational company in Pakistan, my note) He asked me imperatively NOT to come there, NEVER; he told me that he found, on his own channels, that her father only asked me to come there to kill me; my life in exchange of hers, the so called "honor killing". The father asked her to lure me there, this being a proof that she is a "good daughter". I was deeply shocked and horrified. Of course I cancelled my trip. I didn't hear about her since. Is she still alive? I don't know."

What you just read above is a shortened transcript of a conversation I had with a friend of mine, few days ago. He is from the Western part of the world - and that's all I will disclose about him, according to the promise I made. He had an "affair" with a Pakistani girl and you can figure out the rest from what you read already. As you can see, he was lucky enough when Marc - the common friend of ours - found out what trap he could fall in.

Asking somebody to your house in order to kill him??? WTF, dude?? I mean, really, WTF???
Now he is not only pretty scared but he is in a sort of deep shock, realizing not only he escaped from certain death but also that the the girl he wanted to marry with might be also dead by now.

"Marc" is not the real name of our friend but as a precaution, I choosed not to use his real name; these Pakistani furious (and deeply deranged, I might add) guys might have connections at high levels, high enough to look for him also.
Being myself stunned by this, I started to search on the Internet about these things and guess what? No less than 11 (eleven) honor killings took place in Pakistan in January - April 2011, and I'm talking about documented ones... God knows how many others took place for real. And again, guess what? None of the perpetrators were punished as they deserved.
You can read more about this in a report from Asian Human Rights Commission: Pakistan: 11 honour killings from January-April 2011 In Sind
You can read an excerpt here:

An honor killing is the murder of a family member by his or her relatives due to the belief of wrongdoing. These wrongdoings are decided by the family if they think that the dishonor was brought upon them by the victims, who are mostly girls and women.
Honor killings are still occurring in Pakistan; and the important thing is that people, who kill on the name of honor, do not feel ashamed about it. An honor killing is also termed as karo-kari in Pakistan.
Karo-kari is part of cultural tradition in Pakistan and is a compound word literally meaning lack male (Karo) and lack female (Kari), in metaphoric terms for adulterer and adulteress. The concepts of women as property and honor are so deeply entrenched in the social, political and economic fabric of Pakistan that once labeled as a Kari, male family members get the self-authorized justification to kill her and the co-accused Karo to restore family honor.
During the first four months of 2011, as many as seven such incidents took place in the Sindh province of Pakistan. The incidents claimed the lives of 6 women and 5 men making a total of 11. So far, 6 cases have been registered in police stations against these killings; and 6 persons have also been put behind bars. There is only one incident in which neither a case has been registered nor the criminal arrested. In fact he fled from the scene to save his life. Jirga was involved in one case while the remaining six cases are based on self-authorized justification.

In Pakistan - and not only there - women and, often, girls, are shot, burned, electrocuted, burried alive (!!!), disfigured with acid, slained, decapitated, stoned, stabbed, strangled, you name it... by their own husbands, fathers or (and) brothers. Almost all of these bastards are free and the ones who are convicted received only 3-4 years in jail, because officials from Pakistan parliament said that "these are part of our tribal culture" so, even if the law there punishes such acts, apparently the "cultural heritage" accepts them as a part of being a Pakistani.
According to the same sick "tradition", if a male neighbour only tells you - TELLS you! - that your wife or daughter is having an affair, you should kill her based on the assumption that your neighbour is right, and you are already dishonored.

No, I didn't write this as an attack to Islam or something - I find necesarry to emphasise this - but I nearly had a good friend of mine KILLED by some s.o.b. who doesn't know that a "No, you can't marry my daughter" would be more than enough to sort the things out! Now this gives the heebie-jeebies to any mentally stable human...

With the risk of being cynical, if these things would be a part of Middle Eastern and Asian world only, it would be a thing (let them live with it if they're happy) but they began spreading around the Western countries as well and I'm not sure if it's a coincidence that England owns a great percentage from the total of these "honor killings" and this gives me the creeps...

With the risk of repeating myself... WTF???


Please, please, do not use this thread to attack Islam or Muslims for their religion, this isn't the point here. Think about that girl who was tied up and burried alive and when they opened the grave after few weeks they found her sitting, still tiled, in that grave. Picture this in your mind. even if it looks absurd: it could be YOU.

Tribal heritage! Not Islam. Just saying...

It is not Islam per se. It is all religion. Once upon a time it would have been within Christian repspectability to kill oneself if one has commited a wrong-doing. Now it is so with Islam.

I had a Muslim friend once, many years ago. She said to me that, if her mother had been raped, she would support her father in the killing of her mother. Better to be dead than be dishonered? But where does dis-honour come from? Religion.

In Australia I recently attended seminar on whether Africa should cast aside its religious woes. The point was, in a globalised society, religion and culture have no place. But if you are anti-globalist then you must support these cultural atrocities.

Where is drawn the fine line?