According to official figures, 10 to 12 women are murdered in Britain in honour killings each year, but the government has been warned by MPs that this is a serious underestimate. Police often record the deaths as cases of domestic violence, while other girls are driven to suicide or taken away to their family’s country of origin and never seen again.

The study criticises the police and schools for failing to take action in a misguided attempt to avoid offending cultural sensibilities.

“Police have a long way to go before they get on top of honour crime. There is a lingering fear among officers of being dubbed racist for probing cultural issues. We’ve got to shake off that myth,” she said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3295487.ece

. . .

“In Afghan culture, women are seen as the repository of family honor, and the education of girls–whether in terms of the design of school buildings or in the way in which classes are conducted–needs to reflect that reality,” says Matt Waldman, the Afghan policy adviser for Oxfam, which released a damning report in 2006 on the state of education in Afghanistan. It shows that the ratio of boys to girls in primary school is roughly 2 to 1, but by the time girls enter secondary school (and puberty), the ratio drops to four boys for every girl. In more than 80% of rural districts, there are no girls in secondary school at all. Overall, only 10% of girls in school actually obtain a diploma.

From Time Magazine - full article at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704654,00.html

As regards child brides, I don’t mean to condone the practice, but I do caution that western cultural mores don’t necessarily translate to the Third World. It is possible that women in the above-mentioned culture have less use for a schoolroom education than they have for an older husband. I’m not saying this is good, merely that it might be the current reality. Something to consider, at least, before we attack the practice, as difficult as it might be for us to stomach.

Nikolaus, I just cited the NY Times, because it’s in English. I did not choose it because it focused on Islamic countries. As I said in my first post, I may not know how Turkish courts implement the law against marital rape, but at least it exists, so if a man runs around and burns his wife, I really doubt he would get away there with the excuse that he is from a different culture with different values and has problems with integration. And yes, I know, Turkey is a secular state, but some people just count it as another Islamic culture where men just do what they want to do.

Here is an article about the man who burned his wife (it’s in German though):
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,509523,00.html
He says a lot of disgusting stuff about his wife, like, “I watched with satisfaction as her face burnt.” The article doesn’t say anything about the verdict, but I remember that he was also excused by the judge for being a member of a different culture.