First let's look at a definition of a term:
Guardian:
| 1. | a person who guards, protects, or preserves. |
| 2. | Law. a person who is entrusted by law with the care of the person or property, or both, of another, as a minor or someone legally incapable of managing his or her own affairs. |
| 3. | the superior of a Franciscan convent. |
The first two definitions are pertinent in the case of Du'a Aswad.
Often in the USA society, forms indicate parent or guardian when needing permission for minors or children to perform actions. Guardians are a subset of parents. The difference between parents and guardians is that parents are the actual father or mother of a child and guardians are protectors assigned by the government when parents are not available.
So Du'a Aswad's parents are her guardians - charged with the protection of their child. Protection of a child, in my definition, is encouraging that child to live and have a good future, hopefully a better future than your own (as a parent of guardian).
Ending the life of your charge or child is the exact opposite of protecting them as any parent or guardian is charged with doing.
Why would someone destroy their charge? Well, it is simple. They must have believed that it would serve a higher cause. In this case the higher cause was their honor - their access keys to getting to Heaven. In addition, they had a real-world concern that if she defected to Islam, she would have children which would then become the opponents of her birth-family.
Both of these reasons are based on selfishness and are actually lower on the scale than protecting your charge or child.
What good is heaven if your child dies horribly? What good is heaven or afterlife if those you love won't be there? Any parent should choose death for themselves if there is no other choice than death for their child. The child, inherently, has a higher chance of a longer future than the parent. The child, is the result of a marriage not the by-product of marriage. Long after my bones are dust I hope my children live on. I certainly don't care if I live eternity in Hell, as long as my children get a fair chance at a future.
So, in killing one's children or charges you have accomplished the opposite of your goal.
Then the secondary material-world reason for her death is that she would bear children that would eventually be the enemies of her birth-family.
This again, is just selfishness. If she has children and they don't happen to be the religion of her parents, does it matter? What matters is that humanity has a stable society and a stable future. Honor killing your daughter does nothing to advance stability of humanity. It only furthers small ambitions of being a stronger religion because you have more people on your side. Killing her is a way to prevent Islam from having more people on its side.
The survival of humanity depends on a great many things. Variety in the thoughts of humans that are not self-destructive in nature requires that there be different religions and people who do not believe in religions. A stable society depends on laws that are not oppressive to one group over another and that the members of that society obey those laws.
The premeditated killing of a woman in the town streets contributes to the destabilizing of humanity. The idea that justice and punishment is equally valid dished out by any citizen as it is from the government. If that were the case anything could be considered a crime, and anything could be summarily punished without due process at any time.
It seems that the 15 minutes of Du'a Aswad's posthumous fame are already over. CNN has moved on; however, hopefully this will be remembered and the point continued by others that such honor killings serve no-one except for the selfish needs of those performing those actions.
In the end, Du'a Aswad's family are now failures having failed to raise their daughter to maturity, but killing her mercilessly like some bug being tortured by a child.
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