More Honorable Arithmetic

The Fifth:

A new born baby boy was found early Monday in a bag left behind in an uninhabited area in Maan, ed the fifth abandoned infant discovered in the last four months. According to Maan police, shop a passerby heard the infant’s cry and discovered the black tote bag on a roadside in Al Mreigha district yesterday morning. [source]

The First?

A man turned himself in to the police on Monday shortly after shooting his 30-year-old daughter in the Jordan Valley, the first reported honour crime in the Kingdom this year. The victim, who was not identified by officials, was reportedly shot by her father four times in the chest and back at his home yesterday evening. Police are currently questioning the father to determine the facts surrounding the shooting. A second source told The Jordan Times that the victim was examined for sexual activity by a government pathologist almost two years ago, after she was reported missing by her family. [source]

Forty-five months in exchange for one:

The Criminal Court has sentenced a 31-year-old woman to three years and nine months in prison for killing her one-month-old baby in August 2007. The tribunal first declared F. A. guilty of murdering her infant and handed her the maximum punishment, but immediately reduced the sentence by half because her husband dropped charges against her. Court papers said the defendant was married to a man who was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by the State Security Court after being convicted of drug smuggling. Two years later, the defendant got involved with another man and became pregnant. “The victim’s family discovered she was pregnant as a result of an ‘illegitimate affair’, so she sought refuge at a tribal leader’s house,” the court said. The tribal leader intervened to save the woman’s life, and the two were married through official channels,” the court said, adding that the defendant gave birth to a baby boy one month after the wedding.

“People in the community and the woman’s relatives kept commenting and reminding her that her son was the result of an ‘illegitimate affair’,” the court said. On August 12, the defendant waited until her husband went to work, then struck her son’s head repeatedly and told her family he was sick, according to the court. [source]

UPDATE [Jan. 9th]

The Sixth:

A newborn baby girl wrapped in a blanket was found in Abu Habil Mosque in Northern Ghor late Monday, raising the number of abandoned infants in the last four months to six. According to sources at the Civil Defence Department (CDD), worshippers leaving the mosque after evening prayers noticed the baby in the mosque’s courtyard and telephoned the local CDD centre. [source]

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9 Comments

  • I do not know if it is more related to the culture or to the religion, I know that in europe long time ago, the catholics used to have such ideas about killing the child that comes out of wedlock (marraige bond) because he/she were the “children of the devile”, and the community should be clean of such “devils”. Now in jordan and the muslim middle east we have such things. I do relate it to religion to tell the truth,,,or more specifically , to our idea about the religion, whether it was right or wrong.

    Some muslims “think” that the one who practices sex out of the wedlock should be killed. STONED TILL DEATH….I never knew why I have never found this rule in Quran, I found the subject with another punishment, but never found this punishment, I wonder why did Allah mention in his book the subject and its (easier) punishement and let Mohammad tell us about the (harder) punishment. I went in the end to the conclusion that we are hard with ourselves. We want to stone till death…… maybe easier is just to shoot in the head. isnt it?

    maybe its their idea about the religion that makes them blind…animal blind

  • The first and second stories fall on our ears in a normalized manner since in the last a couple of months, incidents of such kind have been reported and dealt with (not effectively)– this does not mean that the stories are normal, but we are coming to get used to their occurrence, and even some start to anticipate when the following trashed baby or honor crime will take place. This is really SAD.

    As for th third story, i bet the woman is really “sane” because , you know, this is “honor” we’re talking about!– if only the community and herself know how to respect the life of a human being!

  • Ammania:

    The command to stone the adulterers is from the hadiith.

    RE the Catholics, it was actually the other way around: in early Greek culture there were special walls where you could leave unwanted children and they would be exposed to the elements and die of hunger or cold or whatever. The early Christians understood that every life was precious and would go and take those unwanted children and raise them.

  • There is absolutely no justification for honor crimes, but one thing we tend to ignore is the pressure exerted on the murderers by their society. A man who kills his daughter or sister does it because the society would look down to him if he did not. If the law is changed and this man is executed or sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, he would be looked at as a hero by many people. Fixing the law is not enough, fixing the society values is needed too.

  • mohammad: i think, as history has proven, laws within a healthy judicial system, have a way of adjusting/fixing social values.

  • abu daoud,

    Thank you for the information about the Greek culture, I can be mistaken in this.

    I did not mean to change this into a religion thread. I know that this stoning thing comes from the Hadeeth, but doesnt it make you wonder why did not Allah mention it in his book when he came so close to it in “surat al noor”? it makes me wonder when I see that the punishment which Mohammad comes with (in case he really did) is harder and wilder than that is mentioned in Quran. it makes me wonder when I see that there is not any punishment (as far as I recall) in Quran that reaches killing (maybe unless for killers, maybe not), but then I find such punishments in Hadeeths (that I stopped believing Mohammad ever heard about them).

    The soul/human is the most precious on this earth, Allah only gives, and Allah only takes back as it belongs to him.

    by the way some islamic sectors do NOT stone, as they can not find why they should.

    Now to relate this to this thread, I wanted only to say that it can be the bad understanding of religion that makes people KILL others for such mistakes. I agree that it also is related to the “social dust” that lives in many brains.

  • Today again another baby in “Deir ‘alla” found, but this time DEAD. his mother cought, and unmarried.

    Isn’t it time for some SEX EDUCATION in our schools? something for those stupids, to ask them start using condoms? instead of ending as killers in jail !!?!

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