Muammar Al Khadafi

Rape in Libya has been much in the news lately, mostly because of the - as of yet - baseless stories regarding Colonel Gaddafi issuing his troops with condoms and viagra. But, in amongst one report on the BBC there was a quote which really screamed out.

"For the moment pregnancies can be disguised, but not for much longer. Many fathers will kill their own daughters if they find out they have been raped.....It is killing done with love. They believe they are saving the girl" - Ms Hana Elgadi, who is part of a group of Libyan volunteers.

The BBC's headline on the piece is "Libya rape victims face honour killings".

Why do we in the West persist in calling these acts of barbarism "honour killings" and present them in the media virtually unchallenged.

A simple thought. Heaven forbid, my wife or daughter was raped. Instead of comforting them, being there for them, I kill them. Is anybody going to even imply that it was an honourable thing to do, or cloak it in language that makes it more acceptable?

Of course they are not. It would be called a brutal murder, and rightly so, because that is what it would be.

It is a trait of western political correctness that we just cannot bring ourselves to condemn any aspect of foreign cultures. We may look upon them with distaste but we have to feign understanding, to use language which is somehow apologetic and non condemnatory.

Hence we have honour killings. They'd not be called that if, for example, it was some mainly white Christian sect in the USA carrying them out. Indeed, the headlines of all our newspapers would be shrieking about the barbarism and inhumanity involved.

As a society we are oddly biased all around. Were I to tell my wife she could not go out, or talk to any men she isn't related to, I'd be a domineering and chauvinistic pig. But, if I did it because Islam told me to do so it would be somehow empowering for the woman, or at least ignored and not condemned by the rest of society.

We exist in a situation where media panders to medieval customs that quite simply would not be tolerated were it not for who was responsible for this inhumanity being beyond criticism.

We're drip fed on excuses day by day, it's all based on excuses, those in power just cannot bear to state the truth without spinning it into as acceptable and PC a form as possible.