Male Honour Killings, Homosexuality and Terror.

This academic research aimed to critically analyse the concepts and phenomena that underpin men as victims of ‘so-called honour-based abuse’ (SCHBA). The research further sought to critically explore and analyse whether the legal system could better understand the circumstances of male victims of SCHBA, alongside to what extent it could be better prepared to handle male victims. This was achieved by examining the notion of ‘so-called honour’ and the crimes associated within honour- based violence (HBV) through a theoretical framework deriving of structural and humanistic criminology rooted in Grounded Theory, Structured Action Theory and Perry’s conceptual framework on hate crime. My thesis focused on men as victims, as there is a significant gap in knowledge and literature. Exploring literature and data from within my own PhD, homosexuality emerged as a key theme for why men become victims of SCHBA. Islamists and Islamic State (IS) hostile views towards homosexuality have created ‘hate offenders’ (Levin and Perry, 2009) through ‘hate speeches’ (Perry et al,2020) creating an intolerance of homosexuality. Islamism is religio-politics embedded in religious ideologies and fundamentalism seeking to claim global hegemony for its own principles and religious practices. It is these extremists’ views when addressing homosexuality that hatred and disgust for their life choices and personalisation of radicalised interpretations of Islam fuels the need for Islamic States militia groups to execute homosexuals in horrific ways. This will further highlight the discrepancies in gender reporting of HBV, as male victims have been significantly misunderstood in past rhetoric.