94 GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice presence of a male who is not a relative, refuses to agree to an arranged marriage, falls in love with someone who is unacceptable to the family, seeks a divorce, tries to escape marital violence, or appears Western. In some cases, the mere perception that a woman has behaved disobediently, thus shaming her father, brother/s, uncle/s, or male cousin/s, has been reason enough to motivate an attack on her life. The norms of honor societies exist to maintain the sexual “purity” of women and to ensure that only certain bloodlines are allowed to blend, preventing wealth from becoming diluted by the marriage or consorting of a woman from the landed class with an individual of lower status in the social hierarchy. Rumors and gossip serve as community’s greatest weapons for instilling shame in male members of society who cannot preserve the purity and chastity of female family members (Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashef, 2013). Honor killings form part of a larger category of violence against women, though violence against women generally takes many different forms and names. Bride burning in India (Ahmad 2008), crimes of passion in Latin America (Brinks 2007), and honor killings in Islamic nations (Hellgren and Hobson 2008), for example, all share the same dynamic: women are killed by male family members in an act which is deemed as socially acceptable, “understandable,” or “excusable.” Although crimes of passion, bride burning, and honor killings share this dynamic, there are key distinctions. In a crime of passion, it is the woman’s husband or lover who commits the murder in a heated reaction to a sense of personal betrayal or anger (Sen 2005), whereas an honor killing is carried out by a male family member on a premeditated basis as a symbol of rejecting a perceived dishonorable action to prevent the family from being shamed by the group (Sen 2005). This paper applies these concepts to the murder of Shafilea Ahmed, a young British woman of Pakistani origin, and examines how the prosecution and the mainstream British media presented culture as the overriding explanation for this crime. A critical analysis of racialized interpretations of such murder cases is presented to advance an appeal for greater vigilance against the acceptance of “honor” as a justification for brutally murdering young women perceived to have shamed fam­ ily members (Gill 2014). The Murder of Shafilea Ahmed The eldest of five children, Shafilea Ahmed was born in Bradford on July 14, 1986, shortly after her parents emigrated from Pakistan. Shafilea attended Great Sankey High School in Warrington until her father removed her from school in February 2003 for a trip to Pakistan. She was murdered later that year. In the year prior to Shafilea’s death, tension over clashing “traditional” and “Western” values intensified between Shafilea and her parents, Farzana and Iftikhar. For instance, one of her parents’ complaints was that Shafilea’s wide circle of friends consisted of mostly Caucasian peers from school, with only a small percentage from minority ethnic backgrounds. Shafilea’s case was first referred to Warrington social services on October 3, 2002, after another pupil told teachers that Shafilea’s parents had physically assaulted her and prevented her from attending school. Shafilea’s social services file notes a mark on her face and the fact that she believed she was going to be sent to Pakistan for an arranged marriage. When Shafilea returned to school five days later, she revealed to her best friend that her mother, Farzana, had threatened a forced marriage. According to the friend, Shafilea’s mother said, “I can’t wait till you go to Pakistan to teach you a lesson” (Gill 2014), prompting school staff to refer Shafilea to social services again sev­ eral weeks later. This time, Shafilea’s social services file noted that her father, Iftikhar, had forced