The information and web sites discussed and listed on this and the next page, along with the help page are intended to be a voice for those who cannot speak, (as we still have people who believe that women should not be seen or heard), or obtain their freedom. I list important resources at the end of this article. This is an important focus and concern I have for the status of women in the world and this section was created by myself. These pages offer articles, personal accounts, laws, religious views, human rights and women's and children's organizations working to eradicate the hideous crimes called honor killings, bride burning, acid attacks, bullying, torture, slavery, and other abuses, terrorist suicide bombers, plus ways in which you can help.

The acts and other human rights abuses are shocking, brutal and naturally very disturbing to read about and view.

Only recently have these crimes become much more exposed to the western world, but they go back even further than one of my own past lifetimes as Sheherazade, (which I mention only because it shows how things have NOT changed at all in centuries), who saved her own life and the lives of other women in a culture that oppressed women by telling stories. She finally gained the trust, respect, love, from her husband who ordered the deaths of his previous wife and three thousand virgins all because he thought his wife had been unfaithful to him. For Sheherazade, Aladdin represented the prayer and belief that she'd be rescued by a strong, rich, and magical man who'd treat her kindly. We don't need the fairytale prince anymore. We don't need to fabricate stories in order to save our lives. We don't see violence, control, and abuse as being strong, or tough, or manly. We need and deserve respect, love, support and freedom for who we are, to be ourselves, just as we allow men to be who they are. And together we CAN have a wonderous relationship.

Remember that the goddess cultures which were very prominent and used to create a balance in these societies were killed off long ago by hunters and herder cultures who were warriors. Even Arabs, prior to Islam, were pagan and/or had influences (and even stole) from Judaism and Christianity. Muhammad rejected the goddesses, calling them hateful - why, who knows? The same Muhammad who claimed Allah told him begin beheading people - of course non-believers of Islam. Take the Anunnaki Marduk (Enki's son): he destroyed the goddess and her temples so he could be the God over all. Muhammad did likewise, ordering people to stop worshipping the goddesses. People forget that since then these cultures teach that God is a male. With this misinformed, incorrect, idiotic notion that God is a male, and therefore males are superior to females, women have little to no chance of ever being seen or treated equally. [God is not a male or female - It is everything.] And, by the way, when you go back into mythology it was the Anunnaki "goddess" Ninhursag who created human life with Enki by combining their DNA with those of homonids which created our modern homo sapien.

Women, who were created by this cosmic creative energy called God, are able, with their bodies, to create life which grows within them as they love and nurture it, carry it around, deliver it to its independent life, and then feed it (and then raise the child). Men cannot do this with their bodies. Sure, women need sperm (but today not necessarily intercourse with a man) to create a fetus. It takes TWO - and each person has half of their chromosomes from their mother and half from their father. But men cannot procreate at all on their own. I think men are in awe of the ability women have to grow and give life, are a little afraid of it, maybe jealous of it. But, it's how everyone gets here on planet earth: through the body of a woman! It is because of a woman that you can trace your family all the way back to Ninhursag, or even mitochrondrial DNA...the first mother of all. So why are you punishing her when you should be thanking her in every woman? How can you discount half of what you are?

Aisha, in the Qur'an states: "I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing woman" and that means a Muslim woman. Nothing has changed since she said that more than a thousand years ago. Muslim women, primarily, are being oppressed, and in miltant societies are abused by radical Islam and culture just because they are women. Islamic cultures believe women are considered to be the devil and so evil that even the archangel Gabriel fled in the presence of a nude woman! hahaha Can you imagine, an ANGEL being afraid of a nude woman? What kind of angel is that? It is this ignorance that demands women cover up, wear veils and burkas.

What I understand about the Wahhabi is that they think having sex only between males secures a place with God and immortality. (A rather radical way to justify homosexuality and abuse against women, hunh?) Bottom line is it's all for control and to keep women subservient. These weak Muslim males are afraid to face truth, and hate the evolved Western world where women are free, because it threatens the loss of their old ways. (I just think they're fearful, abusive, ignorant, apathetic, and lazy, and don't know what love is: the most powerful thing.)

"A nation is not lost as long as the women's hearts are still high. Only when the women's hearts are on the ground then all is finished, and the nation dies." --- An old Native American proverb.

What is even worse is that women in Muslim nations are forced to go against each other and enforce these barberic practices for fear of not being accepted or of death. There is continued psychological, emotional, physical, and SPIRITUAL abuse - creating generations of tortured souls, who take their pain with them when they pass over. Let's face it - Islam lives by the sword and it is enacted in many annual rituals and passages of life, and an order from Allah to convert by conquest. Just shows you how insane this religion or any religion that has these ideas are, and how much people have been LIED TO! Freedom and love are not crimes. They are your natural rights. No one has any right to remove those from another human being. No honor is restored by killing your child, your sibling, or another. It only makes one a murderer - and you have to face that hell for the rest of your life and after you die. If you kill your child's mother, you are not only destroying her, but you are irreparably harming your child, damaging the family and the future. If anyone was truly spiritual, they would be ending this, not perpetuating it. Thank God I am not a Muslim living in a Muslim nation today because I'd have even less of a chance of surviving now. These Muslim women and men need more than illusions and fanatasies; they need real help, and one way that begins is by changing education and removing the lies that have been taught. Here is the Profile of A Martyr".

Update: June 18, 2010
While there have been ongoing abuses by Muslims against women, I have not had the time to post each and every one of them. But I could not pass up posting this one. Police in Chechnya are reportedly firing paintball pellets at women who do not wear headscarves in another apparent attempt by region's iron-fisted strongman to force a version of Islamic law on the volatile Russian province. Rights activists are voicing their outrage at Chechnya's firebrand leader Ramzan Kadyrov, whose police squadrons have been enforcing rules that in some cases violate Russia's constitution.

[Up-date: May 7, 2004 - A senior aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told worshippers during a Friday sermon in southern Iraq that anyone capturing a female British soldier can keep her as a slave. Where's the world's outrage at what these Muslims are doing?]

These barbaric acts are mostly committed mostly in Muslim nations, but also appear in South America, Russia and Eastern Europe, the Far East, India, and occasionally in the United States. Unfortunately, a more commonly found abuse is the abduction, rape, and often murder of a young girl. Why does it happen? Because you will do to others what you've already done to yourself. If you are dead and disconnected from all life, from God, you will have no trouble trying to disconnect and kill others. People have not been taught that all life is connected, that each life is part of God. Everyone is part of you. You forget you're alive, so you no longer feel anything.

One easy way you can help prevent the abuse of women and children around the world is refusing to permit and visit web sites that promote such abuses, like photos and films of rape and outright violence performed on women. These women are slaves, forced into prostitution, often under death threats, and are not doing this willingly. They do not receive pleasure, help, medical or otherwise, nor financial benefits for the crimes committed on them. When you are sent ads to go to these sites, complain to their isp and to yours, demand you will not tolerate such sites and invasion of your email. Such places exist only because some people pay to support them. Stop paying. Stop going. Stop the abuse. IT'S NOT ENTERTAINMENT. It's deviant behavior of the lowest kind. If watching anyone being beaten and slashed, and sometimes permanently maimed, or killed, is entertainment for you, you are seriously ill.

We are seeing what happens when people, a culture, misinterpret and use religion or politics which promote abuse, murder, control, and upsets the balance and value of male and female. We see it in how our beautiful Earth Mother is abused, and this is carried into the abuse of anything and everything female. My feeling is that religion and sexism has been the cause of almost every war and the deaths of millions upon millions of people. It is the female who carries life, gives birth, and raises children, is responsible for continuity and the understanding of spirit and nature. The balance is missing. Love and respect are missing, and it's not only lacking in the Taliban. The past few years has seen a radical increase in crimes against women and their children...especially kidnapping, rape and murder in the U.S., by men who see women and children as sex objects, objects of their demented fantasies played out, or see them as their sole possessions, not partners or family, (whether or not the women are still married to them, whether or not the women want to be with them, or have sought refuge away from their abuse only to be tracked down and slain). So it is everywhere, and its driving force is insecurity, fear, lack of trust, and separation from God. The legal system continues to fail women by NOT LISTENING or taking action when there is still time to do so and prevent deaths.

But, back to the main topic: What is an honor killing? Let's first talk a bit about life for women in these nations. Islam does not mean "peace." It does mean "submission" or surrender of one's will to Allah via Muhammad. And truthfully, it is goal of the majority of those who practice Islam to take over the world (quietly or overtly) and hate, convert, or kill, those who is not Muslim in that process. I know there must be Muslim who are not this radical, who see these crimes as the minority and abhor what these Muslims are doing. But few people in the Western world will tell you this truth (or are simply too out of touch with reality to even realize what's been going on), and many other Muslims will deny this fact. Not all of them are ready to kill or be killed for Islam.

Read the various interpretations of the Koran for starters, then listen to those who proclaim themselves as Islam's spokesmen, those who encourage murder for Allah, and then check on what's been the pattern around the world for the last twenty years, and then the last thousand years. Is it any wonder that the Western world has to resort to figuring out who are the good guys and the bad guys? Who wants peace, and who wants eternal war until they rule supreme? Why do you think the Western world has had to change the way it travels, implement security measures against Islamic terrorists?

In most of these nations are tribal and women are not free, but property of their male relatives. Men have absolute rule. The women's lives in themselves are considered valueless, even though they spend their short lifetimes with hard work and continual pregnancies. (In 2003, comic Dennis Miller commented on women who have child after child, "It's a body, not a clown car." Absolutely right!) You've probably seen something in the news about many women in these cultures who are, generally speaking, not free to leave their homes on their own, who are not allowed to drive, play musical instruments, dance, do any sports, work, go to school, receive proper medical care, cannot divorce their husbands, cannot even have custody over their own children, must wear burkas and cover themselves head to toe and see the world through a screen, who are forbidden to speak to any man who's not a relative in public, and so on. Granted, there are pockets within these nations where life is more liberal. In this page I'm focusing on the areas where it is extreme.

Men dictate what women can or cannot do and the men are free to do with their women whatever they want to. In Saudi Arabia, for example, women and children can be held against their will with the full blessings of the Saudi government. This includes American citizens in Saudi Arabia, as well. Women and children cannot leave the country without written permission from the husband or father. Women aren't even free to wear a modern bathing suit so they can swim, enjoy the ocean or a pool. A 2007 news item showed a new bathing suit for Muslim women - it's polyester, BLACK, and fully covers the body. What woman could be comforable in that? Can you imagine the heat, the sweating, the itching, the lack of freedom of movement in that get-up? Women in the Western world got out of such ridiculous bathing attire more than a hundred years ago.

More often than every two hours a woman is killed by a male relative for any reason - even if the reason is illusionary - and it is supported by the views of the nations and religions in which they live. An eye for an eye, hate because your parents hate, make sure the sons are punished for the sins of their fathers, etc. But the justification for the murders is to save the family's honor from the horrible deed the woman supposedly did because it means there is bad blood in the family. Men, however, are not subject to the same treatment to which they inflict upon women. The men are often protected. No one protects the women - not their society, not their laws, not their religion, not their own families.

Women are blamed for being raped (often by their own relatives), for wanting to be educated, to choose who they marry, for not being a virgin (even if a doctor has proven that she is) - as if that is anyone else's business besides the woman's. In Islam one cannot prove rape - guess that goes in line with the approval to beat women, so that a beaten and raped woman will just appear normal! Muslim women are killed for not obeying their husbands, or because a man wants another wife. In these cultures death to a woman is easily justified, and the only witness that counts in court is usually the man's - actually 4 men. The woman's testamony doesn't mean a thing. Muslims equate rape with consensual sex and therefore the woman is guilty of aduletry! A man can accuse a woman of anything and that means her family's honor has been ruined. The only way to save face, to save a family's honor, is usually by either making her a prostitute or killing her. She has no opportunity to defend herself, nor are there many who would even care to hear any explanation from her side. If she tries to escape chances are she will be hunted down until she's murdered. Often a woman puts herself in jail for protection - but that is no guarantee she will be protected. Frequently she is raped or killed while in jail. Any way you look at it, the woman is already dead. And, for some strange reason, blood sacrifice makes everything all right again. Killing a woman, and that killing her creates any purification of their own blood, is beyond reason.

Another crime that is on the rise in places like India and Pakistan are acid attacks. If a man feels snubbed for any reason, by any female (including a child - many children have already been scarred for life), he throws acid on her face and body to forever destroy her life. This is because women are seen as property and to marry a woman means the man gets a dowry. If any girl refuses him, he loses financially and therefore punishes her father by acid burning his daughter and making her an ineligible commodity.

The women who live in the nightmare conditions of the above mentioned societies abhor these traditions and their lifestyle. Women are crying out to be heard, to be helped so that the laws will change and they can finally have their own freedom. Right now they are the walking dead and live in a perpetual prison of darkness, loneliness, hopelessness, betrayals, poverty, illness, fear, abuse, anger and pain. They can trust no one. There is no joy in their lives. Some are desperately trying to make a difference either by having support groups, shelters, or simply by trying to reason with lawmakers and religious leaders to have new legislation. Obviously, the UN Charter of equal rights has meant nothing. The progress has been terribly slow for many reasons, and you can read about these on the listed sites.

But, change is underway and it will continue. Jordan is one nation currently debating change in the laws. Israel is the only place in the Middle East where an Arab woman can vote. Queen Noor and the new King Abdullah have strongly spoken out in favor of change. But Jordan is the exception, rather than the rule. In some nations, such as Saudi Arabia, they are currently going backwards. But you can't remain conflicted. You can't demand to retain women and children as your slaves and doormats, and yet employ Western music, clothing, movies, industry, and so on. It can't, won't, it doesn't work. Spiritually impossible, too.

For dated reports on worldwide reports of abuses, please visit the Archives page. They are numerous and very depressing, showing our world continues to have serious problems. These news items begin in September, 2000, and continue to August, 2002. I've been writing about these abuses for three years, and have yet to see any significant improvements worldwide in the treatment of women and children, although some minor strides are being made. I hope, may it be one day soon, that these incidents will be rare.