studies in Middle East Quarterly have shown that “honor killings” are all too real and on the rise. Women have been honor-killed for refusing to veil themselves, marry their first cousins, or remain in dangerously abusive marriages, for wanting to choose their own husbands, and for behaving in “western” ways.
While Hindus and Sikhs do, to a much lesser extent, honor-kill their women, in Europe 96 percent of honor killings in the last 20 years were Muslim-on-Muslim. The average age of European women who were honor-murdered was 21; 66 percent were honor-murdered by their family of origin; 44 percent were murdered by multiple perpetrators; 68 percent were gruesomely tortured. Nearly half of these women lived in England.