Austria: Muslim migrant father stabs his 15-year-old daughter 12 times for dating a non-Muslim boy

This story says that the Afghan tried to kill his daughter because she was dating a Romanian boy, as if the problem were that the boy was Romanian. But Afghans don’t have some peculiar animus against Romanians. The problem was that the boy was non-Muslim, and Islamic law forbids a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man.

In the Qur’an, a mysterious figure, known as Khidr in Islamic tradition, kills a boy in an apparently random and gratuitous attack. He then explains: “And as for the boy, his parents were believers, and we feared that he would overburden them by transgression and disbelief. So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy.” (18:80-81)

And according to Islamic law, “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2).

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.”

“‘I just wanted to slap her’ — Afghan father sentenced to life in Austria for stabbing teenage daughter 12 times for dating a Romanian boy,” by Thomas Brooke, Remix News, May 20, 2026:

An Afghan man has been sentenced to life in prison in Austria after trying to murder his 15-year-old daughter in a knife attack that prosecutors said was driven by claims of wounded family honor.

The 51-year-old attacked the girl on Nov. 24, 2025, in Vienna’s Donaustadt district, stabbing her more than a dozen times in the chest, back, and neck. The assault was so violent that the blade broke during the attack. The girl survived only after a doctor from a nearby clinic quickly provided emergency first aid.

As reported by Kronen Zeitung, the case was heard at the Vienna Regional Court and the sentence passed down on Tuesday. The court heard how the attack followed tensions inside the family over the girl’s relationship with a Romanian boy of the same age. Her father, who fled to Austria in 2004, allegedly regarded the relationship as unacceptable and claimed she had damaged the family’s honor.

In earlier statements to police, the teenager had described threats, violence, and control inside the family. She said she had been promised to an older Afghan man, was not allowed to make her own decisions about her life, and had been threatened along with her boyfriend and older sister.

However, her testimony in court surprised those present. While her father remained in the room, the girl suddenly defended him and said she forgave him.

“My father is actually a very loving person. I was simply too rebellious. I love my father, and I forgive him for what he did,” she told the court….

According to ORF, the defendant said at police interview that he had the right to stab his daughter because she had a boyfriend.

He told the court there had been another argument that day and claimed he had been concerned about school and one of her friends, whom he described as a bad influence. “I was worried. I just wanted to calm her down a bit,” he said. “I was angry. I lost my temper. I actually wanted to slap her.”…

In January, a Syrian man was sentenced in absentia in the Netherlands to 30 years in prison for murdering his 18-year-old daughter, Ryan, after accusing her of living too Western a lifestyle. His two sons were each sentenced to 20 years for their roles in the killing….

In Sweden, a Palestinian family from Örebro was put on trial in September 2025 after abducting their 20-year-old daughter because she wanted to integrate into Western society. Prosecutors said the woman had lived under years of strict control, had been forced to wear a headscarf, and was not allowed to choose her friends or live independently.

Investigators found messages in which the father allegedly wrote in Arabic: “She must have her head cut off!” He later claimed the phrase was not meant literally. Other messages reportedly showed relatives objecting to her embrace of Swedish identity, with her older brother writing: “She loves Sweden and being Swedish.”

Germany has also seen several honor-related cases. In Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, a Syrian father was accused in 2025 of ordering his 17-year-old son to kill his 19-year-old sister after she saved a boy’s phone number. The son refused and went to the police.

“He looked at me with a cold stare. No smile, nothing,” the boy told investigators. “Then he said, ‘You have to kill her. Make it look like an accident, like a fight. No one must know that she insulted my honor.’”

According to Bild, the daughter later said, “For five years, my father has been beating us daughters. We are not allowed to speak to boys or have contact with them.”

In another German case, a Somali migrant was put on trial last year, accused of stabbing his sister to death on her 23rd birthday after objecting to her assimilation into Western society. Prosecutors said handwritten notes found at the defendant’s home included the lines, “My sister is trying to be a slut” and “I can live without a future but not without honor.”

Sweden has also seen unresolved or partially unresolved cases with alleged honor-related motives. In May 2025, the Svea Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal of three Afghan-born individuals on murder charges over the killing of 37-year-old Ako Abbas, whose dismembered body was found in a suitcase in woodland on Värmdö in March 2024. The court convicted the defendants of lesser offenses, but no one was convicted of the killing itself. The main suspect remains at large.