Mohammad Shafia, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their son Hamed were all convicted of first degree murder in a court in Kingston, Ontario for murdering Shafia's first wife and his three teenaged daughters by Tooba. The murders were planned and deliberate and the trio were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for twenty five years.

The Toronto Star wants to know if the murders were honour killings or domestic violence. See "Were Shafia murders 'honour killings' or domestic violence? Toronto Star, January 30, 2012.

I'll answer the question for their readers right off the bat.

The murders were honour killings, absolutely no doubt about it. The victims were murdered because they violated Mohammad Shafia's sense of honour, period. There was no other motive for the murders, none. Shafia felt dishonoured by the victim's behaviour and decided to murder them to restore it.

That decision and the subsequent murders were rooted in Shafia's religion, Islam, which degrades and oppresses women and sanctions, indeed mandates, violence against them. Islam sees women as nothing more than chattels who exist for men's benefit and pleasure - they are to obey men and do as they wish without question. They are objectified and in no way equal to men...their lives are strictly proscribed and there are terrible consequences for those who step outside the bounds laid down for them. Shafia's victim's behaviour was innocuous and in no way violated Canadian norms or laws. It violated Islamic norms and laws however and that is what got them killed...Islamic norms and laws also allowed Shafia to excuse and justify the murders.

Almost as soon as the sentence was announced apologists for Islam claimed that the murders had nothing to do with Islam and that honour killings don't exist in the Islamic community. This is complete and total nonsense. The murders had everything to do with Islam and its teaching towards women (read the Koran yourself if you doubt it, specifically 4:34, 2:228, 33:59, 33:33, 2:223, 66:5, 4:11, 2:282:, 5.6, 24:31, 4:3, 53:27, 4:24, 33:50, 38:44, hell, read the whole thing) and honour killings have been a staple of Islamic life from the very beginning and are a large, well-documented and growing phenomenon in Islamic communities everywhere in the Western world as countries become more and more Islamized. They are not an extreme case of domestic violence, as apologists and putative feminists would have you believe. They take place in Islamic communities all over the world and have taken place ever since Islam came into existence 1,400 odd years ago. Domestic violence occurs in all societies. Honour killings are common to Islamic ones and have been so for a millennium and a half. Occasional murders to assuage someone's honour take place in all societies. Honour killings as a matter of course take place in Islamic ones and always have.

Shafia's victims were tragic figures who deserved much better. There will be more like them in Canada if Islam becomes more and more established, if Canadians continue to turn a blind eye to what it really is, not to what its apologists and adherents would have them believe it is. Perhaps the Shafia case will serve to wake Canadians up to Islam's true nature and essence and to the threat it poses to them and to take meaningful steps to overcome it.

That would be a very fitting legacy.