Are honor killings or other honor-based practices supported by Islam?

No — so-called honor killings, forced marriage, and similar practices sometimes carried out in the name of family honor have no basis in Islamic law and are explicitly forbidden by it. Islam prohibits the taking of any innocent life, stating that whoever kills a soul unjustly, it is as though he had killed all of humanity (5:32), and Islamic legal tradition requires due process, evidence, and a court's judgment before any punishment is carried out — never private, extrajudicial violence carried out by a family member. Accusations of unchastity likewise require four eyewitnesses to the act itself under Islamic law (24:4), a deliberately high standard designed to protect individuals, especially women, from precisely the kind of unproven suspicion that fuels these cultural practices. Honor-based violence predates Islam in many regions where it persists today and continues there as tribal or cultural custom, at times practiced across communities of different faiths in the same regions, which is itself evidence that it is a cultural phenomenon rather than a religious one. Major Islamic scholarly bodies and fatwa councils worldwide have repeatedly and unequivocally condemned honor killings as murder, urging Muslims everywhere to reject such practices as a corruption of, rather than compliance with, their faith.

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