Shepherd gets 6 months for murdering his sister
AMMAN — The Criminal Court has sentenced a 26-year-old shepherd to six months in prison for the murder of his older sister in April 2005. A. H. was tried at the Criminal Court on charges of shooting to death his 35-year-old sister in her house on April 25.
The court decided to amend the premeditated murder charges originally pressed against A.H. to a misdemeanor as stipulated in Article 98 of the Penal Code because the defendant killed his sister in a “fit of fury.”
Source: [The Jordan Times]
I’m so sick of this crap! Is that what he gets?!? Six months!! Is human life that cheap? It really is outrageous! When will this stop? For how long are these murderers going to get away with slaughter? I strongly blame Jordanian members of parliament that turned down suggested amendments to the Penal Code to scrap the "fit of fury" Article. Why on earth would they want this to continue? Why on earth would they insist on letting murderers get away with such evil? Until when will they continue to dehumanize women? When will they stop dragging Jordan into the Dark Ages? I have had it!
Every time I hear rebuttals for Honor Killings by Arab men they go and say how that is an exaggerration and that is not how things really are and they are just painting a bad picture of Islam. Women are raped, beaten, tortured, shot, burned alive all because men feel the supreme need to preserve their honor based on the hymen between a woman’s legs. Religion or no the bottom line is that it is barbaric and inhumane. Honor Killings though prevalent in Muslim are cross culture and cross religion. If it were Christians, Hindus, Jews or any other religion performing honor killings I would still think the same way. Honor Killigns are most infamously notorious for happening in the Middle East and until the governments there start understanding the necessity of women’s rights these acts will continue.
Well put Jeff.
Actually, having worked for nearly two years with the reporter who largely brought this issue to the fore, I’d offer the following: The ‘honor crime’ issue is not an issue of religion. Honor crimes do happen within Muslim families but in Christian families as well. Honor crimes occur in families in the highlands of Mongolia for that matter. I’m not even sure what faith they’d follow.
Point is, most who know anything about this issue realize this is not a case of religion justifying behavior. These are long standing traditions that have existed perhaps before the foundation of Islam. They have tribal connections really, not religious ones.
And more to the point, the issue really is quite a complex one. It’s easy to read these stories and form a reflexive opinion based upon simple logic. But it’s not a simple issue. It requires cultural sensitivity and a really long view of the issue and its prevalence globally. Finger-pointing — particularly when the blame is laid upon a particular religion — is really not helpful. What would be helpful is the repealing of a number of articles in Jordan’s Penal Code that allow the practice to flourish.
Mark, please don’t ask me for proof before showing yours. At least I grew up in the country in which these crimes are happening, and it happens to be a Muslim country and I happen to know from first hand experience (not from papers) that what yo’ure saying is not true. When you grow up in this society, then you will get a true insight into why this happens and why people think like this.
I lived, talked, and grew up with these people who would commit such crimes. Hick I even think I know a few who might actually commit them come the circumstances. And here’s a piece of information for you my friend, most of these guys who commit such crimes are not even religious to begin with, they don’t even give a damn about what the Quran says, and most importantly almost all of them don’t even know the verse you’re talking about. Even when the legislation that allows this stuff to happen in Jordan is defended, no where is this verse referred to, because very simply what is happening in these crimes is not in Islam. No one can use Islam to defend this, and no one usually does, and even if some try to (and they do sometimes), it only exposes their hypocricy.
Maybe you don’t realize this, but not everyone in Jordan or the Arab world cares for Islam that much. Yet everyone cares about their culture, the norms, the traditions, and their culture’s values. One of the most important values for the Arabs is Honor. It brings forward all sorts of issues of how you can achieve great honor and what you have to do to defend your honor. The image of honor, when it’s achieved and how it’s defended has been forever distorted amont the Arabs. This even preceded Islam, and it was evident when it was common for an Arab man to feel shame if he had too many female children. Some even used to burry newborn female babies alive for fear of being shamed for having girls, some for fear of having their honor more vulnerable since the female gave them one more vulnerable point to worry about when it comes to defending their honor. As I said, this was even prior to Islam, and all these negative aspects were fought to great length by Islam and the teachings of Muhammed (PBUH), whos last wish from his people was to take care of their women.
I can assure you, that what you read in the papers is wrong, and that this is not what people use to justify these crimes.
Hamzeh and SC (Sugar Cubes), From what I read in the papers, plenty of Muslims understand K 005:032 and the rest of the Koran to mean that they can kill anyone with impunity if they allege that the person was spreading corruption in the land, or had murdered someone. This verse goes a long way in explaining honor killing despite both your assersions and denials, which, by the way, you offer without any proof.
Actually there should be a correction in the news report. Article 98 is used when the family of the victim drop the charges, and this is the number one reason these cases get handled this way. Article 34 of the law rarely applies to any of these cases as it states that the murder should happen when the person sees their spouse or immediate family member having sex and in bed, which was never the case in any of the dozens of cases we’ve heard about.
Mark James, instead of just “browsing” the Quran, I suggest “understanding” it. No Muslim will understand the verse that you quoted the way you interpreted it, why is that?
Jareer,
The sheep will be eaten during the up-coming Eid Iftar festivities. Sahtain!
Barbaric!