Reuters – Jordan’s King Abdullah (C) reviews an honour guard during a celebration to mark the centennial of the Arab Revolt against the region’s then ruling Ottoman Turks, in Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba, on Jan. 23, 2016.
A Christian government official recently became the shortest-serving minister in Jordan’s history after he was forced to quit his post following the emergence of his alleged involvement in the killing of his own sister.
The Christian transportation minister, Malek Hadad, tendered his resignation to Jordan’s King Abdullah last Thursday — just a day after assuming his government post — after it was revealed that he was arrested in 1982 and was later pardoned in connection with the murder of his sister, who had married a Muslim man.
According to Breitbart, it was Hadad’s fellow residents in Furheis, a Christian stronghold in Jordan, who made known to the king the resigned transport minister’s alleged link to his sister’s honour killing.
The monarch was reportedly informed of Hadad’s criminal record while visiting the family of the Christian journalist and author Nahed Hatar, who was killed after publishing a cartoon on Islam and its God, Allah, which was considered by some Muslims as blasphemous.
King Abdullah immediately asked Hadad to resign after receiving this information. It can be recalled that the Jordanian leader earlier publicly condemned so-called “honour killings” on behalf of the nation’s citizens, calling them a “cowardly crime that is so foreign to the Jordanian people and their culture.”
“Since the Kingdom of Jordan was founded, our values were centered on the spirit of unity between Muslims and Christians, as far removed as possible from extremism, violence and bigotry,” King Abdullah earlier said, as quoted by Breitbart.
In 2014, the Muslim Ulema Council also declared that honour killing “has nothing to do with Islam.” The council highlighted that Muslim daughters and female siblings should not be killed, and should be considered as gifts from Allah.
The decree also stated that killing daughters or female siblings is a “sign of ignorance” that goes against the teachings of Islam.
Similarly, international human rights lawyer Arsalan Iftikhar earlier commented that this type of killings does not represent Islam, and is actually a form of sexual slavery.
