YOUR editorial “Killed for ‘honour’” (Jan 20) says “Zeenat Rafiq was one of a thousand women murdered in the name of honour in Pakistan last year.”

Your paper is rife, almost on a daily basis, with such cases and yet there isn’t a law on the statutes that can call this a ‘murder’. Isn’t this a shame for our lawmakers and our ‘independent’ judiciary that after more than 60 years of independence we haven’t been able to pass a law to do away with this decadent system based on ‘honour’.

As your editorial very rightly put it “where the perpetrator and the family are the same”, the law of forgiveness cannot be applied. In Islam the consent of the girl is very important. If she marries on her own free will, there is no force that can oppose it. Moreover, there is a misconception.

First, Sura Nur is very clear that if (to put it briefly) a husband suspects his wife, he has to swear four times on the Quran that his wife has been disloyal and then the wife similarly swears four times on the Quran that her husband is lying and then God says no further action is to be taken.

Lastly, a cuckold is a cuckold irrespective whether the husband or another family member kills the wife or not.

Sardar Ahmed Shah Jan

Peshawar Cantt

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2017