Canadian group labelled 'racist' for attempting to help Muslim women avoid honor killings

It is difficult to battle radical Islam in the Middle East, where any individual in a crowd may turn out to be a radical Muslim or a suicide bomber, but what about closer to home? How difficult is it to fight radical Islam in the United States, or Canada?

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In Canada in 2013, Edmonton Transit caved to demands from Islamic supremacists after they demanded that bus ads sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) be removed. These adds offered to help Muslim girls and women who were living in fear of honor killings.

No woman should ever have to suffer these horrors.

Since then, the group initiated a court action to defend their rights to free speech, which is protected in Canada, much like it is in the U.S., by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

These advertisements ran following the 2007 killing of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez, who was strangled to death by her father and brother for refusing to wear a hijab. In 2009, Mohammad Shafia murdered his first wife and three daughters in another honor killing.

The ad depicted photos of Aqsa and six other girls who were murdered by their family, and read: "Is your family threatening you? Is there a fatwa on your head? We can help: go to FightforFreedom.us."

Honor killings are part of Islamic law, authorized in a reliable guide to Sunni Islam published by Al-Azhar University, the most respected and followed authority in Sunni Islam. The manual says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." This does not apply to honors kills as they are "not subject to retaliation."

"A father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring," are not subject to legal action.

"Why does it matter that the practice of honor killing has Islamic sanction?" wrote Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch. "Because if the roots of honor killing are never discussed and always ignored, the practice will never stop. Until the Islamic roots of the practice are discussed openly and human rights groups begin calling for reform, honor killings will continue in the Islamic world - and in Muslim communities in the West."

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