haram dot fraud

Author of fake honour killing book exposed in new film

By Paul Tate

AMMAN — Three years after Norma Khouri’s bestselling book on her friend’s honour killing was exposed as a fake, the Jordanian-born writer has taken to the silver screen to clear her name, but her efforts to salvage her reputation spectacularly backfired.

Khouri’s book, Forbidden Love, told the story of her childhood friend Dalia, a Muslim from a conservative family who was murdered by her father after he discovered she was engaged in a secret love affair with a Christian army officer.

The book, published in 2003, proved a big hit, selling half a million copies in 15 countries and turning Khouri into a self-styled champion of women’s rights.

But Khouri’s new found status was short-lived when it transpired that her story was fabricated.

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This is disturbing on a couple of levels, and makes me appreciate journalist Rana Husseini even more. Husseini brought honor killings to attention in Jordan by covering them in the Jordan Times. I've heard her speak and she deals with the topic by speaking very frankly about it as a human rights issue that needs to be addressed, and by Jordanians themselves. At the same time she forestalls the xenophobic attacks on Arab and Muslim society that this issue often fuels by making clear that the people who commit such crimes are not religious or following Islam, and that honor killings are not confined to one religious group, region, or culture; they are known to happen in Christian communities, in southern Europe as well as South America, for example.

What Norma Khouri has done by selling a fabricated story as truth harms the campaign against honor killings, and is a setback for the positive work of people such as Rana Husseini.