Ramadan in France was peppered by acts of honor violence. Two brothers in the eastern French city of Nancy beat up their sister because she was having a love affair, reported Le Parisien newspaper. The French attorney general’s office initiated proceedings against the two men for “barbarous acts, torture, willful aggravated violence, attempted murder and repeated death threats.”

The elder brother, aged 36, learned that his sister, a 25-year-old bank clerk, was living with a man. He went to her apartment and reprimanded her for having an extra-marital relationship and dressing indecently.

After throwing the boyfriend out of the apartment, he proceeded to beat up his sister, cutting her hair with a knife and inflicting a wound of several inches.

He was joined by his younger brother, 29. They beat up the boyfriend outside the apartment building and tried to run him over with their car when he ran away. He found refuge in a police station, while the brothers continued to shout death threats at him from outside.

When taken before an investigating magistrate, the younger brother explained that the boyfriend had attacked the elder brother. The latter told police that his sister was aware of the cultural and family principles concerning self-respect. She had been warned on several occasions that she had “no right to behave like that, especially during the month of Ramadan.”

Earlier in the Islamic month, two Afghan asylum-seekers aged 20 and 23 were arrested after attacking a 33-year-old woman on the Paris-Dijon train because she was wearing a low-cut top during Ramadan.

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