This is just nuts!

ZULFINAN Baycinar died from a bullet in her back. Her husband’s family went into mourning for the 27-year-old’s “tragic suicide”. She was very happy, they said; they can’t imagine what got into her.
But now Baycinar’s husband is on trial for murder. Prosecutors say she was killed because she dared to fight against her husband’s wish to take a second wife, refusing to bow to tradition.
Such mysterious “suicides” have always been treated with suspicion in southeast Turkey, but they have increased so dramatically in recent months that the UN has launched an inquiry.
…
The increase in suicides follows a change in Turkish law a year ago to increase to life imprisonment the punishment for family members who carry out so-called honour killings.
…
Until the laws changed, men who killed their female kin for reasons of honour or tradition were treated leniently. Often, a young brother, a minor, would own up to the murder and be let off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

It’s sad that as these women are realizing that they don’t have to put up with being used by their husbands, their husbands are killing them to get what they want anyway. I’m glad that Turkey decided to join the 20th Century (yeah, I meant 20th) and has increased the punishment on these men. Maybe they should start trying to change the culture so that this is not so socially acceptable.
Updated: After I posted this, I found this story:

A leading Iranian pro-democracy and women’s activist, who was jailed on trumped-up charges last year, has revealed how the clerical regime cynically deploys systemic sexual violence against female dissidents in the name of Islam.
Roya Tolouee, 40, was beaten up by Iranian intelligence agents and subjected to a horrific sexual assault when she refused to sign forced confessions. It was only when they threatened to burn her two children to death in front of her that she agreed to put her name to the documents.
Perhaps just as shocking as the physical abuse were the chilling words of the man who led the attack. “When I asked how he could do this to me, he said that he believed in only two things – Islam and the rule of the clerics,” Miss Tolouee told The Sunday Telegraph last week in an interview in Washington after she fled Iran.
“But I know of no religious morality that can justify what they did to me, or other women. For these people, religion is only a tool for dictatorship and abuse. It is a regime of prejudice against women, against other regimes, against other ethnic groups, against anybody who thinks differently from them.”

What type of religion allows the raping and killing of it’s women. This is not a religion that I would want to have anything to do with. This is appalling and it is one of the chief reasons I support the war on terror. How can we reason with a government that would allow it’s citizens to be treated like this? We refuse to allow our enemies to be treated like this. How do we establish diplomatic ties with a country that would torture its women in this manner?
This is one of the reasons I support the war on terror. Islamic rule is dictatorship, pure and simple and I fear that if we don’t fight it then we will be defeated. I fear it will gain supremacy and many more atrocities will be committed.
I’m thankful that I leave in a country where we are free and where we desire to protect those freedoms and there are men and women who have died protecting them. Their sacrifice is very much appreciated and honored and remembered this Memorial Day weekend.
(Links via Girl on the Right and The Blogging Tories)