Sweden: ‘Refugee’ Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim Restores His Family’s Honor

This story is as horrific as many others like it, but generally they take place in Muslim-majority countries and receive little, of any, notice in the West. In this case, Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim cleansed his family’s honor not back home in Somalia, but in ostensibly civilized Sweden, and the news has traveled far and wide. But will anything be done to protect women in Sweden or anywhere else against this sort of thing? Come on, man!

The New York Post reported Thursday that Ibrahim, who enjoys the status of “refugee” in Sweden, “has been charged with murder for allegedly killing his seven-months-pregnant Swedish girlfriend rather than face the shame of introducing her to his strict Muslim family.” According to prosecutor Elizabeth Anderson, he killed his Swedish non-Muslim girlfriend, Saga Forsgren Elneborg, at her home in Örebro “by suffocating and strangling her by means of pressure on her neck with an impact on the trachea and the blood supply to the head.”

Pressure on her neck, as in “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Quran 47:4). But why did Ibrahim treat his girlfriend and the mother of his child this way? Anderson explained: “I mean that the murder took place in an honor context because the man wanted to preserve or restore his and his family’s honor by killing the woman who was carrying his child.”

How could cold-bloodedly murdering anyone restore anyone’s honor? In order to understand that, we must first try to grasp why Ibrahim didn’t want to “face the shame” of having Elneborg meet his “strict Muslim family.” Why would his relationship with her bring him any shame at all? The answer can be found in the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an. Ibrahim’s family would likely not have objected if he had married her, for the Qur’an allows Muslim men to marry women from the “people of the book,” that is, primarily Jews and Christians (although it does not all Muslim women to do so): “This day, good things are made lawful for you. The food of those who have received the book is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for them. And so are the virtuous women of the believers and the virtuous women of those who received the book before you when you give them their marriage portions and live with them in honor, not in fornication, nor taking them as secret lovers. Whoever denies the faith, his work is vain, and he will be among the losers in the hereafter.” (Qur’an 5:5)

The problem for Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim is contained within that verse. “Not in fornication, nor taking them as secret lovers.” That’s exactly the situation Saga Forsgren Elneborg was in, and so Ibrahim couldn’t possibly introduce her to his family. The Post adds that “text messages between the couple revealed that Ibrahim told Elneborg shortly before her death that he would tell his family about her pregnancy — but he indicated he was nervous.” It’s no wonder that he was nervous: Elneborg’s pregnancy would leave no doubt as to their fornication and status as secret lovers. So what was he to do with the evidence of his transgression? In his mind, she had to be killed.

Anderson “said the investigation found no evidence that Ibrahim had told his family anything at all about his expectant girlfriend, who had planned to move in with him a week later.” What’s more, Ibrahim “had previously suggested to Elneborg that she get an abortion.” He wrote to her: “I know we can make it, but I won’t be able to keep my family. If it had been possible, there would have been no problem with keeping the child.” But Elneborg did not get an abortion, and Ibrahim stopped answering her messages. Then, “shortly after that, he allegedly went to her home and strangled her, the prosecutor alleged. Her unborn baby boy also was killed in the attack, officials said.”

Anderson explained: “He never told his family about Saga or the child. But the suspect has been raised in a standard of honor, and he has learned that it is not OK for him to date a white woman. He must date a woman of the same culture. If he doesn’t, he will be excluded.” The problem, however, wasn’t that Elneborg was white. It was that the relationship between her and Ibrahim was irregular from an Islamic standpoint. Killing her was the easy solution, although Ibrahim “has denied any wrongdoing and told investigators that he still loved his late girlfriend.” Love, however, has nothing to do with any of this.

Such situations are all too common. Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

To notice any of this, however, is to be “Islamophobic.” And so the one certainty in this sad case is that many more women in Sweden and all over the West will be murdered in similar circumstances.