The Face of honor . . .

AT LEAST, that's what Mo thinks he has, according to Tim Appleby at the Globe, in an article covering the trial, "Daughters deserved to die, Shafia testifies at Kingston trial".

“My honour is important to me,” Mr. Shafia replied, alternately sorrowful and truculent, speaking in his native Dari and sometimes wagging his finger at the prosecutor as his jointly accused second wife and son gazed intently at him from the glass-walled prisoner’s box. “But you can’t regain your honour with murder – respected lady, you must know that.”

Not until after the four perished did he realize how scandalous his daughters’ conduct had been, he said, manifested in lying, stealing and flirting with boys. Until then, he testified, it was only the eldest, Zainab, who worried him.

When he did learn, it was clear God had delivered retribution – but not through him.

Delightfully elusive. An odious weasel, indeed. At least, this tragedy has put a burr under the butts of Canadian imams to get on-side in a more public fashion, after decades of silence. So, just maybe, this kind of tragedy won't happen again. 

"The best of you will never do this, the best of you will never beat their wives," Imam Sami Metwally said during his sermon at the Ottawa Mosque.

The Islamic Supreme Council and other Muslim organizations across Canada felt the need to speak out against the image of repressive violence that is coming from the high-profile Shafia trial going on in a Kingston, Ont., courtroom.

Problem is, Sami, what about the second-best, or third-best, or Mo-best? It's those not-quite-shiny we worry about.

Flowers sit near the Kingston Mills locks on the Rideau Canal where the Shafia sisters and their father's first wife died on June 30, 2009. It has been suggested that the women's death was an honour killing. (Sunny Freeman/CP)

But it's a world-wide phenomenon, not limited to Muslims. According to the CBC's report, The history of 'honour killings',

There are documented cases of men being killed for ruining a family's reputation, but the vast majority of the victims are female.

Believed to have originated as a patriarchal tribal custom, honour killings are a global phenomenon. A 2000 report by the UN Population Fund estimated that as many as 5,000 women and girls are killed each year by relatives for allegedly dishonouring their family.

A 10-month investigation by Britain's Independent newspaper in 2010, however, said woman's groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia peg the figure at closer to 20,000.

It will be interesting to see how long Mo and his equally odious son, Hamed manage to live, after they get incarcerated. Maybe we can start a Dead Pool? Maybe the Islamic Supreme Council could start funding self-defence training for their females? They're the Supreme Council, and anything with "Supreme" in its title has gotta be pretty powerful. Thing is, it's amazing how reasonable weasels like Mo are, when they know they are going to get the shit kicked out of them — by a female. But I'm willing to help our sisters out, love hunting vermin! . . . those Noslers . . . work so explosively well, lol, but there's nothing quite like crunching weasels by hand, up close and really personal, like the old Toyota ads used to proclaim, Oh, what a feeling! I once had a self-defence student who had been stabbed over 70 times. Young women should not be so scarred.