When suicide isn't suicide

Most of you are familiar with the quaint Islamic custom of `honor killings'.

This is murder directed at females who have shamed Islam or shamed their families with such offenses as refusing to allow themselves to be sold into an arranged marriage, being victims of rape or incest, being seen in public with a man not in their immediate families or just general female uppityness and refusal to kowtow to male dominance.

Last week, al-Reuters had a article about the rise in female `suicides' as authorites in Turkey,interested in cleaning up their act for prospective entrance into the EU have attempted to clamp down on honor killings.

For instance, the article cites the case of Bahar Sogut, who was 14 when she shot herself in the head with her father's gun.

"She died with Allah's (God's) bidding," her mother, Nefise Sogut, told
Reuters. Fate was the only explanation either gave for what happened.

Bahar Sogut was one of 14 people -- 10 of them women and girls aged under 23
-- who have killed themselves this year in Batman, a city of 250,000 people.
Another 12 year old girl threw herself off a building opposite her school.

Turkey, which started EU entry talks last year, has passed legislation on honor killings. Men, previously treated leniently by judges who considered "honor" a
mitigating factor in murder, now face life sentences under the new penal code
passed last year. Women's rights groups say that the new trend is murder made to look like suicide, or pressure on the woman to kill herself to spare the male relative from jail and save the family honor.

"(They are told) if I were you I'd kill myself," Nilgun Yildirim, from the women's support center Ka-Mer told Reuters. "They think 'I've done a bad thing, my brother will go to jail because of me, I'll kill myself'."

In the eastern city of Van, 20 women have killed themselves this year,
compared with 45 for the whole of 2005. Zozan Ozgokce, from Van Women's
Association, says some deaths are a result of coercion while others are
murder presented as suicide.

"One woman's husband was a soldier. She had a baby. Her mother-in-law forced her to kill herself," Ozgocke said, citing the woman's family. "She said if (your husband) was here he would kill you, so you must kill yourself."

Or, let us bask in the wisdom of Islam:

Tabari IX:113- "Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain, they have the right to food and clothing. Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Qur’an."

Qu'ran 4:34- Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.


Hat tip to Rosey Rants for the heads' up..