Pakistani men are mostly illiterate and are easily provoked, particularly if they feel (or are told) that their wives, daughters or sisters have been seen in the company of male strangers. There have been cases of men killing their wives for looking out of the windows of their houses. Sometimes a man comes home and hears a male voice, rushes in and kills the man, only to find out that the victim is his brother, back home from abroad. A couple of years back, three girls were killed when a video of them dancing on a stage with boys was seen by their brothers.
A worker from the rural areas of Sindh once told me, "We are not cowards like you city folks. If our wives want to be divorced, we simply kill them". This kind of thinking is very common. A maid working for us wanted a divorce from her drug-addict husband. The man came to our house, accompanied by seven relatives, and asked that his three daughters should first be handed over to him before he dealt with his wife. The daughters would be sold off so the man could continue buying heroin. I had to call the cops to persuade the man and his relatives to leave.
Why is it that honor killing takes place only in some Islamic states? Why aren't Buddhists and others provoked so easily? I've heard of honor killings happening in India, but those are done mostly by Muslims.
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