FEW Pakistanis have broken taboos as gleefully as Qandeel Baloch, a social-media star who used the internet to titillate and scandalise her fellow citizens. The 26-year-old (pictured with her iPhone), whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, twerked on camera, posted suggestive selfies and mocked the mullahs who police the social boundaries of a Muslim-majority nation that has become more religiously conservative over the years. It was too much for many, including her brother, who strangled Ms Baloch after drugging her to sleep. Waseem Azeem proudly admitted his crime: “She was bringing disrepute to our family’s honour.” He has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Ms Baloch’s funeral (pictured) was held on July 17th.

So-called “honour killings” are rarely so sensational. But nor are they rare. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan tallied 1,096 female victims of them last year. Many go unreported to the police. Cases in the past three months include a 19-year-old girl burned to cinders for refusing a marriage proposal; a 16-year-old girl who met a similar fate for helping a friend elope; and an 18-year-old killed by her mother for marrying a man from a different ethnic group against her family’s will.

Such atrocities are widely accepted. At a recent screening of “A Girl in the River”, an acclaimed documentary about honour killing, male students at a leading university applauded an interview with a man who was unrepentant about trying to kill his daughter for entering a “love marriage”.

The problem is rooted in tribal and cultural traditions at odds with young women in a growing middle class who increasingly wish to choose their own husbands. Often such killings will be agreed beforehand at a gathering of local men.

She mocked the mullahs. She died Pakistan’s mullahs are united in declaring that Islam condemns such murders. But this clerical consensus frays when it comes to the sharia-inspired laws of qisas (retribution) and diyat (blood money) that enable men to get away with it. Introduced in 1990, the laws allow the heirs of murder victims to decide whether killers should suffer qisas or be pardoned, sometimes having paid diyat. Since most honour killings are premeditated conspiracies involving entire families, charges are often dropped even before the case goes to court. Mr Azeem, however, may not dodge punishment. His distraught father vowed not to forgive the killer of a daughter who was financially supporting the family. And the local police have taken the unusual step of bringing the case themselves. But rights activists say that is no guarantee against a court later agreeing to a forgiveness deal. Families come under immense pressure to pardon honour-killers. Pakistan’s clerical establishment is loth to endorse change. A bill in 2004 to reform the law was “severely mutilated”, says the Aurat Foundation, a human-rights group. Reforms proposed in 2015 that would make honour-killers serve at least seven years in jail, even if pardoned, have gone nowhere. But there is now an encouraging sign: a private member’s bill to make such crimes “non-compoundable”, meaning that families would no longer be able to forgive each other, is expected to be presented to parliament for debate within weeks. It had long languished in limbo, even after Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, vowed in January to crack down on honour killings after “A Girl in the River” was nominated for an Oscar, which it then won. Now the government appears to be backing it.

But Mr Sharif has been beset by corruption allegations, by disputes with the army and by open-heart surgery. While the leading clerical party, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami (JUI), has only 13 seats, Mr Sharif values its support at a shaky time and may be wary of pushing through a new law.

The bill’s sponsors think the JUI may be persuaded that honour killings are an abuse of sharia concepts that were intended to resolve tribal wars, not to provide cover to murderers. But the mullahs may still balk if they believe reform is part of a “Western agenda” epitomised for many by the outrageous Ms Baloch.