Muslim 'honor killings' shock Berlin

Police in Berlin arrested three Muslim brothers in what appears to be the latest in a series of so-called "honor killings."

The slaying of a 23-year-old Turkish woman, Hatun Surucu, who died of multiple bullet wounds to the head and chest, bears all the marks of an honor killing, a police psychologist said, according to BBC News.

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"In Islamic culture, the woman is the bearer of the family decency," explained Karl Mollenhauer. "She must maintain the honor of the family. Men must defend that honour."

It would be the sixth honor killing in as many months among Berlin's 200,000-member Turkish community and the 45th in the past eight years.

Surucu had taken her 5-year-old son and run away from her husband of eight years, a cousin with whom she was united in an arranged marriage.

The killing has prompted an unusually strong response, with Turkish women taking to the streets to protest, the BBC said.

"This tragedy has shaken us awake. We've been very surprised by the response," Eren Unsal from the Association of Secular Turks told BBC News.

Unsal noted that for the first time, political decision-makers and private groups in the community have been willing to sit down together to talk about addressing the problem.

The BBC reported, however, that just yards from the site of the killing, children on a school playground were heard praising it, saying the victim had lived like a German.

Ozcan Mutlu, a Turk on the Berlin city council, complained German authorities have turned a blind eye to the practice, pointing out a Turkish man who beats his wife does not get the same punishment as a German.

The authorities try to explain the disparate treatment as a function of cultural and religious differences, the BBC said, but Mutlu insists there is "no cultural or religious excuse for beating women, and there can be no less punishment for honor killings. But in Germany it was the fact in the past years."

Muslim leaders in Berlin also have contended honor killings have no basis in the Quran, Islam's holy book, but they have been criticized for not making clear condemnation of them.

Huseyin Midik, a representative of Germany's largest association of Mosques, said it's "natural that when something happens, people think we should respond. But it's not always the right thing to hold special events at these times, and then for it all to stop again."

"Our job is to explain Islam," he told the British news service. "That's what has a permanent effect - clearing up certain false ideas about Islam in people's minds."

But the BBC said honor killings continue among Germany's Turkish and Arab minorities and also prompt many young women to run away from their families.

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