I sometimes get depressed writing about all of the horrible atrocities committed in the name of religion. Once in a while I’m tempted not to post anything entirely, simply to avoid having to languish in the anger and resentment I feel towards superstitious belief.

If you feel like having a good day, then avoid this story altogether; a young woman named Bibi Aisha in Afghanistan had her ears and nose chopped off for the “crime” of embarrassing her husband’s family.

The story is simple enough; when Aisha was 8, she was already promised to a much older man, and when she turned 16 she was handed off to the man’s father in law, the husband being away fighting for the Taliban in Pakistan. She was essentially treated as a slave, and soon tried to escape. The women who offered to help her turned out to be untrustworthy, as they tried selling Aisha to another man. She escaped this fate only to be arrested for being a runaway.

To punish her for her “crime” of trying to be free, she was sentenced to three years in jail, although that sentence was reduced to five months when Hamid Karzai became president. When she finally left the prison, her new husband was there to “greet” her, and she was brought to a special Taliban court, which ruled that her nose and ears were to be cut off  as punishment (since evidently a few months in jail was not enough for these religious zealots). The ordeal described in the article is too much for me to repeat, but though she was left in the mountains to die, she survived, and her tale has inspired others to help.

Afghanistan is a nightmare for any woman living there, and this is entirely because of a culture that finds refuge in ancient traditions and piety. The population is afraid of the fundamentalist Taliban, who either coerce or encourage Afghans to follow their brutal religious law. Aisha lost her nose, ears, and almost her life for trying to escape her horrible new family. Women like her aren’t free; they are treated as property, suffering physical, mental and sexual abuse. So long as the religious hand of the Taliban is at work in the country, they will never be safe.

Here’s a scary thought: roughly half of all murders in Turkey are honor killings. That’s roughly 200 cases of women being killed by family members for the “crime” of offending the family’s honor. What does that entail, exactly? Well, take the story of Medine Memi, a teenage girl who was buried alive by her father and grandfather for having male friends.

Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.

A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.

The death was so brutal the whole country is actually in shock over this, even though there are plenty of other honor killings that go on (on average about 4 a week). The girl had tried to take refuge at the police station, claiming she was being beaten by both her father and grandfather, but this being the progressive country (cough) that it is, Turkish police returned her home on three separate occasions, proving there really is no safe place in the country for young women who fear being murdered by their own family members. I don’t foresee this barbaric practice ever ending in my lifetime, and that’s a depressing thought.

A few hundred years ago, when the world was a vastly different place, the slaughter of young women for the preservation of honor was a common occurrence. In strongly patriarchal societies, women were seen as disposable, and for cultures obsessed with their honor and reputation, honor killings became a way for families to regain social currency. If you had the stones to murder your daughter for almost no reason, you gained a lot of respect.

In Germany the problem is still pretty rampant, despite the best effort of police to clamp down on it. A young woman identified by the courts as “Gulsum” was murdered when her Kurdish father learned that she had lost her virginity and had an abortion. She was lured to a secluded location where she was strangled and clubbed to death. According to the court, her face was smashed to a pulp.

A judge has given the father a life sentence in jail, though it’s a small comfort in light of the fact this beautiful woman with an enchanting smile has ceased to live because of a stupid and inhumane tradition. Honor killings have a long history, which is precisely why they are so awful and barbaric; besides, how many practices from the ancient world do you know of that are pleasant and friendly? Can we all please stop living like we’re in the 3rd century? It’s fucking embarrassing.

There are some pretty shitty parents out there. If you want to see some hilarious examples of terrible child-rearing, you can always check ParentFail.com to see some truly hilarious examples.

Of course, this guy might actually top them all thanks to his ridiculous religious traditions. Police are looking for Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, after he ran over his 20 year daughter who he felt had become “too westernized”.

So, while the police are busy trying to find Faleh to show him his new digs, his daughter is in the hospital with life threatening injuries. I imagine he doesn’t really care if she lives or dies at this point. In Faleh’s mind, he would rather his child die than let her enjoy her own life with modern secular values.

It amazes me how much people hold on to their religion, even after it makes their lives miserable. Sofia Hayat is an actress singer and model who grew up in an extremely religious family. She was routinely beaten and tortured for having a free spirit, and when she left home, she began to live a life her mother and father disapproved of. They kidnapped her, threatened to kill her, and eventually the police had to be involved.

And despite everything, she still believes the problem is not her religion, but rather the fact her parents never read the Koran properly. If they did, she argues, they would have realized it preaches peace and understanding.

Hardly. Yes, I’m sure some people can interpret the text to mean that, but I think by now it should be plainly obvious that the book merely reinforces what you already believe. She likes Western values, so for her, the Koran reflects these values. For her conservative parents and siblings, the book has a completely different meaning. This is the inherent problem of all religions: because they are all ambiguous, inexact, and deeply reflective of their primitive origins, they are completely out of their depth in our modern age. She can ignore the elephant in the room, but the real problem here is that her religion encourages its followers to be submissive, ignorant, stupid and proud of it. You can try placing the blame somewhere else, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any valid reasons why parents should be so cruel and violent towards their own children. Their first love is God, and everything else takes a back seat.

I’ve never understood why the Canadian government is so adamant about keeping certain immigrants while simultaneously trying to kick others out, especially when the people we send back to their home countries are in danger. While we harbor ex Nazis, mafia criminals, and other genocidal monsters, we also try to get rid of good people who seek our protection.

Roohi Tabassum is an illegal immigrant who says she will be killed by her estranged husband if she returns to her native Pakistan. She has received numerous threatening letters from him, but even with this evidence, my government seems not to care too much.

“The decision to remove someone from Canada is not taken lightly,” Giolti said by e-mail. “Under our laws, removal orders must be enforced as soon as possible.”

Giolti is a coward who is hiding behind the law; it’s quite clear here Roohi is in danger, and yet, our useless bureaucracy will end up failing her. Roohi is not a drain on society; she works at as a hair dresser, and has managed to make a life for herself in this country. Despite this, we are sending her back to a place where honor killings are common place.

I feel sick to my stomach about this. By sending her back, every Canadian is a silent partner on her eventual death. It isn’t too hard for us to do the right thing in this situation. All we need to do is let her stay and continue to live her life as she sees fit. Does that sound like a big deal to you?

Here’s another tragic honor killing in Germany, this time by the woman’s own brother. According to reports, he lured her to the countryside, where he strangled her unconscious with a clothes line before beating her to death.

Her crime? Well, it turns out the family was trying to set up an arranged marriage and found out that not only wasn’t she a virgin, but she had also undergone at least one abortion. That was all it took for her to die at the hands of her family.

Europe is facing a unique problem these days. Their immigrant population is increasing, and as they do so, they bring with them many customs and rituals we find morally repugnant. It’s a serious issue, and it’s not disappearing anytime soon. My sad prediction is we’re going to continue to read about these tragedies for some time, at least until we stop beating around the bush on this issue and take a hard stance. Right now all we can do is prosecute the murderers. It seems to me that we should be doing more to protect these women when they are still alive.

I always knew that a portion of Muslims in the world endorse honor killings, but I never realized until today just how big that number is. A new survey in Turkey shows just how chilling the response is, and how incompatible this cultural attitude is to modern societal values. 26 percent of adults and teenagers are in full support of honor killings. That’s a full quarter of their population.

I find it surprising there was almost no difference between the opinions of the older generation compared to the younger one. It’s a testament to the power religion has in this country, where something as frightening and deplorable as murdering your own daughter is considered a necessity.

According to the population, it’s the media that is mostly responsible for making this practice acceptable. I don’t speak Turkish, so I can’t accurately judge what kind of media coverage they have, but I get the feeling the blame isn’t being put on the right institution. At the end of the day, it’s the mosques and mullahs who have the real power, and I have serious doubts any of them publicly speak out against honor killings. It is, after all, a tradition to murder disobedient female children in this religion. Reformed this barbaric practice, it has not.