In many other honor killing cases, Muslim women have been murdered for being too “Westernized.” It’s likely that in this case also, the family didn’t want Sajida Tasneem to return to Australia for that reason. Her disobedience and desire to live among the infidels were signs of her departure from Islam, and the honor of the family had to be cleansed.

In the Qur’an, a mysterious figure, known as Khidr in Islamic tradition, kills a boy in an apparently random and gratuitous attack. He then explains: “And as for the boy, his parents were believers, and we feared that he would overburden them by transgression and disbelief. So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy.” (18:80-81)

And according to Islamic law, “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.” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2).

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Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. 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.” In Iran, according to the New York Times, the legal system “treats parents who murder their children with relative leniency, as the maximum sentence for the crime is only ten years.”

Read more: Jihad Watch