Because they can

What enables a man to walk into the abyss of taking the life of a living, breathing individual – and call it victory? Revenge? Honour? Ego?

Let me not beat around the bush and come straight to the point: what made a 22-year-old man named Umer kill a 17-year-old girl just because she said no to his proposal? Let’s call this what it is – murder, fuelled by entitlement and enabled by a system that rewards silence and punishes resistance.

We’ve seen this pattern before. We saw it when Noor Mukaddam was held hostage, butchered like an animal, and decapitated by a man who came from privilege and power. It was an open-and-shut case – the evidence was not circumstantial; it was visual, loud, grotesque. CCTV footage. Witnesses. Graphic forensic detail. Zahir Jaffer cut her head off.

And yet, the burden of proof fell on her grieving parents to prove that their daughter was a Muslim, that she went for Hajj, that she was ‘good enough’ to deserve justice. Why? Because even in death, a woman’s character must be dragged through the mud.

In Bakr Jamali, Sindh, a young lecturer and mother of three was murdered by her husband in what was proudly declared an ‘honour killing’. Her crime? Being a woman who earned and succeeded. Her reward? A brutal death, and a murderer who admitted it with ease.

In Mandi Bahauddin, over 40 girls were abducted and sexually assaulted in July 2024 alone. Cases filed. Eyewitnesses silenced. Headlines faded. Quratulain’s own brother killed her. The paren