No "honour" killing in Canada, please

I occasionally listen to Dennis Prager's radio program thanks to the magic of the Internet, and I've heard him speak on occasion of how while Judeo-Christian ethics centre around absolute standards of right and wrong, the Muslim ethic is based on the subjective idea of "honour." He writes, for example:

In much of the Arab and Muslim world, "face," "shame" and "honor" define moral norms, not standards of good and evil. That is the reason for "honor killings" - the murder of a daughter or sister who has brought "shame" to the family (through alleged sexual sin) - and the widespread view of these murders as heroic, not evil.

That is why Saddam Hussein, no matter how many innocent people he had murdered, tortured and raped, was a hero to much of the Arab world. As much evil as he committed, what most mattered was his strength, and therefore his honor.

(Prager, "The Case for Judeo-Christian Values: Hate Evil", Jewish World Review, Mar. 1, 2005)

As if to illustrate the point, here's a news story that happened this weekend (while I was busy writing up Saturday's Remembrance Day post and some other offline work):

The Supreme Court of Canada declined an invitation on Thursday to consider whether Muslim cultural and religious beliefs in "family honour" should be taken into account as justification for receiving a lighter sentence for killing an unfaithful wife.

The court refused to hear the appeal of Adi Abdul Humaid, a devout Muslim from the United Arab Emirates, who admitted to stabbing Aysar Abbas to death with a steak knife on a visit to Ottawa in 1999.

In an application filed in the Supreme Court, Humaid's lawyer, Richard Bosada, argued Humaid was provoked by his wife's claim she cheated on him, an insult so severe in the Muslim faith it deprived him of self-control.

[Full Story]

Humaid was originally convicted of first-degree murder in 2002. My question at this point is: Whose bright idea was it to appeal this case? In its judgment, Hamaid's defense of "provocation" (that the circumstances would cause any "ordinary person" to similarly lose control) lacked an "air of reality." The evidence favoured the conclusion that the murder was premeditated, not committed in a shame-induced robo-rage, because Captain Caveman had certain ulterior motives:

The Ontario Crown, in a Supreme Court court submission, maintains the murder was pre-meditated and Humaid, who had an affair with the family maid, wanted out of his marriage. Humaid also stood to gain financially from the death of his wife, a successful engineer who controlled most of the family wealth.

I suspect that "no air of reality" is court-speak for "Don't waste my time with this idiocy." More nuggets of wisdom:

[Humaid's lawyer Richard] Bosada said the high court should take on the case to provide guidance to lower courts "in this multi-cultural Canadian society."

Excuse me? What additional guidance did the lower courts need? Murder = go to jail for a very long time seems pretty straightforward to me. It's to the court's credit that multicult didn't trump common sense. Islam is not a defense.

An American scholar, Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, testified at Humaid's trial that many Islamic societies permit men to punish wives suspected of adultery and sometimes even kill them. Under Islamic law, punishment for adultery is usually flogging or stoning, Ayoub said. In some Muslim cultures and rural areas, unfaithful women can be killed.

The above atavistic vomit, faithful readers, is a major reason why I repeat to myself frequently: "I am very happy that Sharia law has not been codified in Ontario in any way, shape, or form." "Islamic law" is antithetical - if not downright hostile - to a free and democratic society, and there is no place for it in Canada.

Enjoy prison, barbarian.