Nora Marzouk Ahmed’s punishment for eloping was death. Her father killed her for corrupting the family honor seven days after she had married. This incident, which took place on August 19 in Cairo, is not unusual in Egypt. On August 18, a man in a village 40 miles north of Cairo was arrested for setting his daughter on fire for eloping. According to Egyptian feminist activists, fathers, brothers and husbands kill and abuse women every year for having pre-marital sex, eloping, going outside with a man who is not a relative or going out without a veil.
Nawal Saadawi, an Egyptian feminist author, says, “Honor and integrity in Egypt have become warped. For many Egyptian men, integrity is now linked to the actions and behavior of the women in the family.” Saadawi argues that most of these murders occur in lower-income families, where men use family honor as an excuse to beat women.
