SIOA Launches Honor Killing Awareness Campaign: Freedom Taxis Hit Chicago Streets

NEW YORK, July 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The human rights group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) has launched a new campaign on taxicabs in Chicago to educate the American people about the horrors of honor killing.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100712/DC33668)

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100712/DC33668)

The SIOA ads on Chicago taxis feature photos of honor killing victims with the question, "Is your family threatening you?" and the URL of the SIOA website LeaveIslamSafely.com.

While Muslims are not the sole perpetrators of honor killings, a recent survey showed that 91 percent of honor killings worldwide are committed by Muslims, and 84 percent of honor killings in the United States were done by Muslims.

The urgency of raising awareness about honor killing was underscored last week when a Muslim actress who starred in the Harry Potter films, Afshan Azad, was badly beaten by her father and brother in an attempted honor murder. She was dating a non-Muslim.

A manual of Islamic law approved by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates that "retaliation is obligatory... against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." In other words, Islamic law mandates no penalty for a parent who kills his child.

The legal codes Jordan, Syria, and other majority Muslim countries have substantially reduced penalties for honor murders as compared to other murders, and Islamic clerics have resisted efforts to stiffen penalties for honor killings.

Police say that 17,000 women are victims of honor killing every year in Great Britain alone.

SIOA's Executive Director Pamela Geller explained: "The taxis are a powerful medium to pull the curtain back on the obfuscation and deception on honor killings."

Geller added: "The goal of this pro-freedom ad campaign is twofold. Primarily it is to help girls in trouble, but it is also meant to raise awareness of the rise of honor killings in the West. Young Muslim girls must know that there is an escape from their homemade concentration camps."

She said that the Chicago honor killing awareness campaign was "a sub-campaign and logical follow-up to the 'Leaving Islam?' bus campaign," which has run in Miami, New York, and San Francisco. SIOA is suing the city of Detroit on freedom of speech grounds for refusing to run these religious liberty bus ads.

The ads feature photos of these honor killing victims:

Amina and Sarah Said: They ran away from their brutal home life and their devout Muslim father, Yaser Said, only to be lured back to their Texas home by their mother on Christmas Day 2007 and then brutally tortured and murdered not 24 hours later, in an honor killing on New Years Day 2008. They were killed for dating non-Muslims. Yaser Said is still at large.

Noor Almalaki was run over by a car driven by her father in an honor killing in November 2009 in Arizona. He killed her for being "too Americanized" and not Muslim enough.

Gulsum Semin was repeatedly and severely beaten by her family in Germany. Ultimately she was brutally beaten beyond recognition and "honor" murdered because she refused forced Islamic marriage in Turkey.

Banaz Mahmod was killed in her apartment in London by her father and his brother and four others because they didn't approve of her boyfriend.

The triangle that flanks the ads in the front and in the back reads, "They wanted liberty, they got death."

SIOA plans to take this campaign nationwide, and is currently soliciting donations to do so.

SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Join SIOA's Facebook page here.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at [email protected].

SOURCE Stop Islamization of America