By: Nourhan Ghanem

I think we’ve all heard about the Esraa Ghareeb incident labeled as an honor killing, but for those of you who don’t know, Esraa Ghareeb is a 21 year old Palestinian girl, she dreamt about being a makeup artist and had great potential and ambition to do so. The story started when Esraa got engaged, she asked for her mother’s permission to go out and meet her fiancée with her sister at a restaurant , to you know get to know the person she’s going to marry علي كتاب الله و سنة رسوله and spend the rest of her life with. She posted a story on her Instagram with all three of them in it at the restaurant, but her cousin Reham Ghareeb went to her father and brothers and went on about how Esraa was bringing shame to the family and it wasn’t only this outing with her fiancée that was causing it but also her makeup and how she dressed was also something that brought disgrace to the family.

This led to her father gathering her brothers and her male cousins and uncles and beating her up, and in her attempt to escape she fell down the stairs and broke her spinal cord. She was rushed to the hospital and even there she was beat up, her screams filled the hospital corridors and guess what? None of the nurses or doctors did anything at all. The people who made an oath to help people who were sick and in need of their help left the woman who suffered under their hospital’s roof. One of the nurses even recorded her screams. Reham told Esraa about what she did but it was too late. The family claimed that the girl was possessed and that her sister’s husband, el sheikh Mohamed el Safy, was exorcising the demon out of her. She was to have surgery that day but she died beforehand. Her brother who was in Canada said he would kill her when he heard about it from her father and guess what they all did.

Esraa wasn’t the only one, she was only one of the 100,000 women who die every year due to so called honor killings, one of the many women who could have changed this world, who had ambitions and dreams, who had potential, but were killed because their family members claimed the right of murdering them for honor. 

What makes Esraa’s story different than all these women is that her story surfaced and theirs hasn’t.

Qandeel Baloch was one of Pakistan’s first social media celebrities, she was bold, outspoken, controversial, she challenged the idea that a woman’s purpose was to marry a man whom her family chose and spent the rest of her life as an obedient wife. But sadly this woman suffered the same fate as Esraa, she was drugged and strangled by her brother. “Girls were born to stay at home and follow tradition, but my sister never did that “ he told journalists after the murder “ I’m proud of what I’ve done”

These monsters use tradition and religion as an excuse to murder human beings, their sisters!! Their own blood! And these scumbags feel proud for committing one of the biggest sins in religion, but we can’t just blame the murderer, they do have demons, some of these demons happen to be humans like our fire-starter Reham Gharib who’s gossip cost Esraa her life .

Rest In Peace Esraa Gharib . 

Rest In Peace Qandeel Baloch . 

May god have mercy on every beautiful soul who became a victim of honor killings and gossip.