Last May, two brothers allegedly bound their 18-year-old sister in packing tape, gagged her, and drowned her in a swamp. This was an honour killing, motivated by what the girl’s brothers saw as her ‘westernisation.’ During the trial last week, WhatsApp messages revealed that the family’s main grievances were the fact that she had refused an arranged marriage, had a boyfriend, and had stopped wearing a headscarf. “There is no other solution,” one of the brothers wrote in a message. The girl’s own mother said that she was “a disgrace to the family and deserves to die” and should be “wrapped in a shroud.” In a secretly recorded conversation, one brother said he believed the family had been humiliated by the girl’s behaviour, and the only way out was her death.
This happened not in Nigeria, Pakistan, or Iran, but in the Netherlands. Ryan Al Najjar was allegedly murdered by Mohamed Al Najjar, 23, and Muhanad Al Najjar, 25, in the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve in Flevoland, 75 miles away from their home in Joure, Friesland. The killing is thought to have been ordered by their father, who fled back to his home country of Syria following his daughter’s death and has since remarried.
Police had been monitoring Ryan due to previous reports that she was in danger at home, but this protection ended shortly before her murder. In 2023, she had fled from the family’s house barefoot, telling neighbours that she thought her father might kill her. As a result, she had been given some police protection and was taken to a secret location, but she eventually had to return home.
The Dutch public prosecution office has formally described Ryan’s murder as an ‘honour killing.’ This barbaric practice is typically committed by a victim’s own family members when the victim—who is almost always a woman or girl—has undertaken some action their culture sees as shameful or taboo. This twisted logic views death as the only way for the family to regain their honour and their place in society. While honour killings can happen and historically have occurred across cultures and communities, they are mostly concentrated today in the Muslim world.
Through mass migration and a lack of proper integration, they have spread to Europe, too. The case of Ryan Al Najjar is by no means an isolated one. Last week, a 50-year-old Afghan man allegedly attacked his own 15-year-old daughter with a kitchen knife in the middle of the street in Vienna, Austria. Thankfully, she survived the assault when a witness heard her screams and rushed to help. She was airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries to her upper body and neck. While a motive isn’t currently known, the authorities are currently investigating the possibility that this was an attempted honour killing—the girl revealed that her family strictly disapproved of her having a boyfriend.
In France, we see similarly horrific stories play out. In March of this year, a French-Algerian man, 48-year-old Mounir Boutaa, was convicted for burning his wife alive. In 2021, Boutaa began stalking 31-year-old Chahinez Daoud, the mother of his three children, following their separation. He shot her in the legs with a rifle, poured petrol over her, and set her on fire, while also partially filming the incident. She died from her injuries. He had previously received a prison sentence for choking Daoud and threatening her with a knife, but he was released at the end of 2020. A month and a half before her death, Daoud submitted yet another complaint against Boutaa—which was handled by a police officer who himself was found guilty of domestic violence. This raised questions not only about the police’s lack of action but also about the increasing number of honour killings and femicides in Western Europe. An almost identical case took place in Belgium this summer, when a Kosovar Muslim man allegedly set his wife on fire after being released from a jail sentence early due to prison overcrowding. Between 2022 and 2024, there were 12 recorded incidents of honour killings in Germany. In England, acts of ‘honour-based abuse’ increased by 81% in the five years before 2021. Similar cases have occurred in Italy.
The response to murders such as these has been severely lacking. Some nations have introduced femicide as a specific crime. Italy was the most recent EU state to add the legal definition of this to its criminal code this month, joining Cyprus, Malta, and Croatia. But there is yet to be any reckoning with the causes themselves of honour killings and femicide. While there is plenty of discussion about misogyny and violence against women, there is less being said about the large numbers of Muslim migrants and the failure to assimilate these new arrivals into the host culture. The rigidness of many Islamic cultures means that even when migrants—especially women—do begin to integrate themselves into life in the West, they are threatened with violence or even death. When women and girls start to befriend locals, dress in a more Western way, or date outside of their religion or ethnicity, they become the potential victims of honour crimes. This cycle reinforces itself, with communities becoming more and more isolated from the Western cultures they live within. In some cases, the atmosphere within these insulated Muslim populations of Europe ends up becoming more repressive than the culture of the majority Muslim countries they left behind.
The unwillingness to address the root causes of honour killings is, to a certain extent, understandable. That would involve harsh public criticism of certain aspects of Muslim communities in the West, thus risking the inevitable accusations of racism or ‘Islamophobia’—not to mention possible backlash from the communities themselves. Given the increasing influence of radical Islamists in countries like France, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands, it’s perhaps no wonder that the authorities would be hesitant to name this particularly ugly problem and face it head-on. But until they do, there will be many more horror stories like those of Ryan Al Najjar, who will be killed for their attempts to assimilate into Western culture and for their wish to be treated as more than second-class citizens. This mediaeval behaviour has no place anywhere in the West. But it will continue to propagate for as long as we allow it.
Europe’s Growing ‘Honour Killing’ Problem
Richard Mcall from Pixabay
You may also like
The Gulag Beckons
We have been told repeatedly to be reasonable, to compromise. But the new totalitarians do not seek dialogue with us; they seek submission. Every concession—every retracted tweet, every groveling apology, every updated syllabus—only emboldens them. What can we do? Alvino-Mario Fantini has some suggestions.
The Portuguese Left’s Attempts To Cancel Christmas Show Wokery Is Still Far from Dead
When schools remove Christmas symbols, they are not making space for diversity; they are signalling that the majority’s culture is unworthy of being observed or continued.
Europe’s Forgotten Christians: Why the Greek Orthodox of the Near East Must Be Defended
What is at stake is more than the survival of a population: it is the preservation of a living heritage that links Europe to its earliest Christian roots.
Last May, two brothers allegedly bound their 18-year-old sister in packing tape, gagged her, and drowned her in a swamp. This was an honour killing, motivated by what the girl’s brothers saw as her ‘westernisation.’ During the trial last week, WhatsApp messages revealed that the family’s main grievances were the fact that she had refused an arranged marriage, had a boyfriend, and had stopped wearing a headscarf. “There is no other solution,” one of the brothers wrote in a message. The girl’s own mother said that she was “a disgrace to the family and deserves to die” and should be “wrapped in a shroud.” In a secretly recorded conversation, one brother said he believed the family had been humiliated by the girl’s behaviour, and the only way out was her death.
This happened not in Nigeria, Pakistan, or Iran, but in the Netherlands. Ryan Al Najjar was allegedly murdered by Mohamed Al Najjar, 23, and Muhanad Al Najjar, 25, in the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve in Flevoland, 75 miles away from their home in Joure, Friesland. The killing is thought to have been ordered by their father, who fled back to his home country of Syria following his daughter’s death and has since remarried.
Police had been monitoring Ryan due to previous reports that she was in danger at home, but this protection ended shortly before her murder. In 2023, she had fled from the family’s house barefoot, telling neighbours that she thought her father might kill her. As a result, she had been given some police protection and was taken to a secret location, but she eventually had to return home.
The Dutch public prosecution office has formally described Ryan’s murder as an ‘honour killing.’ This barbaric practice is typically committed by a victim’s own family members when the victim—who is almost always a woman or girl—has undertaken some action their culture sees as shameful or taboo. This twisted logic views death as the only way for the family to regain their honour and their place in society. While honour killings can happen and historically have occurred across cultures and communities, they are mostly concentrated today in the Muslim world.
Through mass migration and a lack of proper integration, they have spread to Europe, too. The case of Ryan Al Najjar is by no means an isolated one. Last week, a 50-year-old Afghan man allegedly attacked his own 15-year-old daughter with a kitchen knife in the middle of the street in Vienna, Austria. Thankfully, she survived the assault when a witness heard her screams and rushed to help. She was airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries to her upper body and neck. While a motive isn’t currently known, the authorities are currently investigating the possibility that this was an attempted honour killing—the girl revealed that her family strictly disapproved of her having a boyfriend.
In France, we see similarly horrific stories play out. In March of this year, a French-Algerian man, 48-year-old Mounir Boutaa, was convicted for burning his wife alive. In 2021, Boutaa began stalking 31-year-old Chahinez Daoud, the mother of his three children, following their separation. He shot her in the legs with a rifle, poured petrol over her, and set her on fire, while also partially filming the incident. She died from her injuries. He had previously received a prison sentence for choking Daoud and threatening her with a knife, but he was released at the end of 2020. A month and a half before her death, Daoud submitted yet another complaint against Boutaa—which was handled by a police officer who himself was found guilty of domestic violence. This raised questions not only about the police’s lack of action but also about the increasing number of honour killings and femicides in Western Europe. An almost identical case took place in Belgium this summer, when a Kosovar Muslim man allegedly set his wife on fire after being released from a jail sentence early due to prison overcrowding. Between 2022 and 2024, there were 12 recorded incidents of honour killings in Germany. In England, acts of ‘honour-based abuse’ increased by 81% in the five years before 2021. Similar cases have occurred in Italy.
The response to murders such as these has been severely lacking. Some nations have introduced femicide as a specific crime. Italy was the most recent EU state to add the legal definition of this to its criminal code this month, joining Cyprus, Malta, and Croatia. But there is yet to be any reckoning with the causes themselves of honour killings and femicide. While there is plenty of discussion about misogyny and violence against women, there is less being said about the large numbers of Muslim migrants and the failure to assimilate these new arrivals into the host culture. The rigidness of many Islamic cultures means that even when migrants—especially women—do begin to integrate themselves into life in the West, they are threatened with violence or even death. When women and girls start to befriend locals, dress in a more Western way, or date outside of their religion or ethnicity, they become the potential victims of honour crimes. This cycle reinforces itself, with communities becoming more and more isolated from the Western cultures they live within. In some cases, the atmosphere within these insulated Muslim populations of Europe ends up becoming more repressive than the culture of the majority Muslim countries they left behind.
The unwillingness to address the root causes of honour killings is, to a certain extent, understandable. That would involve harsh public criticism of certain aspects of Muslim communities in the West, thus risking the inevitable accusations of racism or ‘Islamophobia’—not to mention possible backlash from the communities themselves. Given the increasing influence of radical Islamists in countries like France, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands, it’s perhaps no wonder that the authorities would be hesitant to name this particularly ugly problem and face it head-on. But until they do, there will be many more horror stories like those of Ryan Al Najjar, who will be killed for their attempts to assimilate into Western culture and for their wish to be treated as more than second-class citizens. This mediaeval behaviour has no place anywhere in the West. But it will continue to propagate for as long as we allow it.
Our community starts with you
READ NEXT
Berlin’s Blackouts: Dark Streets, Dim Management
Venezuela Tests Europe’s Moral Credibility
“Où va ma France?”: The App the Left Wants To Ban