Longtime Jihad Watch readers are familiar with the horrifying case of Amina and Sarah Said, whom their father Yaser Said murdered in an honor killing in Texas on New Year’s Day in 2008.

“Trotter added that Amina and Sarah had nowhere to turn in Texas. No one understood that a teenager saying ‘My Dad is going to kill me’ is a serious cry for help, not adolescent drama.”

No one understood it because no one knows much of anything about honor killing. If they have heard of it at all, they think of it as something that is a weird cultural practice done by people in far-off countries. If authorities in Texas had been aware of how many Muslim countries tolerate it, and how it is justified in Islamic law, they might have taken the Said girls’ claims more seriously.

Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. In this case the victim was the murderer’s daughter, a victim to the culture of violence and intimidation that such laws help create. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.” Until the encouragement Islamic law gives to honor killing is acknowledged and confronted, more women will suffer.

“‘Nice legs. Mmm very nice’: Disturbing home video reveals creepy relationship slain Texas teenage sisters had with their Egyptian father who fled nine years ago after their ‘honor killings,'” by Kaileen Gaul, Dailymail.com, February 3, 2017: