No "Honor" in Honor Killings

A Canadian court just convicted a man, his wife and son of murder for the "Honor Killing" of their daughters and sister.

The girls' crime? Dressing in Western clothes, talking to boys, wanting to go to school. So they were drowned and put into a car that was dumped into a canal - to appear to be an accident. It was an act beyond sick.

It shows the danger of extreme conservatism and the intolerance it breeds --to the point that these people killed their own kids for doing the things that any normal American or Canadian or Asian or European teenager would do, like "tweeting."

The family immigrated from Afghanistan - where men feel they "own" their women. Until the U.S. entered the war in 2001 the Taliban had stopped girls from going to school.

The intolerant father brought his Afghan customs to Canada with them, including segregating men from women. He disrespected Canada's customs and law (which is similar to the U.S. and the rest of the world). Canadians don't kill their kids for wearing jeans and talking to boys and going to co-ed school! And the "horrors" that they Tweeted! How backwards can you get?

This should tell you what we are up against in Afghanistan, the country that America has been fighting in for nearly a decade. It is a conservative, primitive culture where each valley is a different group with their own weird, narrow beliefs - beliefs that include killing a woman who isn't hidden under her clothes -- or talks to men who are not in the family without a male family member being present.

Just this week, separate news reports that a woman in Afghanistan was killed for delivering a girl baby - the father and his family ignorant that it was his sperm that controls whether it was a boy or a girl.

This problem is not limited to just one religion. I've seen this extremism in other groups as well. There was the Jewish rabbi in Florida who recently publicly called for the assassination of President Obama by Israel. There was a so-called "Christian" GOP official in Kansas who "prayed for the assassination of the President's so that his children would become fatherless." How sick is that?

In Israel, the ultra-orthodox Jews are demanding that women sit in the back of the bus and cover themselves. Some of these "religious" men shouted at and spit on a 8 year old girl who was simply trying to go to school. It is that same intolerance that leads to so-called "honor killings" by people who can't relate to anyone beyond their tiny, narrow group.

What kind of bizarre thinking is this?

There is no honor in killing your family for any reason. It's murder. It's beyond stupid. There is no honor in treating women as property. There is no honor in treating women as less than equal to men.

We have much to do to prevent this growing cancer of intolerance from infecting our world, and all religions.