http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5097
Michael Zeigler
Staff writer
Infuriated because his younger sister was going to clubs, wearing immodest clothing and planning to leave her family for a new life in New York City, Waheed Allah Mohammad stabbed her outside their Henrietta home, prosecutors allege.
Afterward, he told Monroe County sheriff’s investigators that he attacked his http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4725," according to court documents.
Mohammad, 22, is scheduled to appear Friday in Monroe County Court on charges of attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault in the May 8 attack on Fauzia A. Mohammad, 19.
The case is the second in four years in Monroe County in which an immigrant from South Asia is alleged to have killed or tried to kill a family member over the perceived loss of family honor — an occurrence that is not uncommon in South Asia but is rare in the United States.Although the defendants in both cases are Muslims, resorting to homicide to restore family honor in mostly Muslim South Asia is a custom that predates Islam, said Aly Nahas, a retired professor of pharmacology at the University of Rochester who is a student of Islamic tradition.
“In my belief, it has nothing to do with Islam,” said Nahas, a practicing Muslim. “I know Islam well, and I do not believe it is Islamic. There is nothing in Islam that talks about honor killing.”
Nahas said, however, that many Westerners don’t accept his assertion.
“And they will not because it occurs in countries that have been Muslim for 1,000 years,” he said. “People will ask, ‘Why isn’t it stopped?’ I can’t answer that.”
According to the United Nations Population Fund, up to 5,000 women are killed each year in South Asia for allegedly disgracing their families. Some of the women are killed after becoming rape victims or rejecting arranged marriages.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008807170360