French police arrested a man after he attempted to strangle his daughter’s boyfriend, apparently enraged at having found out that the young man was not a Muslim.
The attack occurred in the commune of Givors on the outskirts of Lyon on Tuesday morning and saw the Muslim man, described to be in his 50s, enter the house of the boyfriend of his daughter. The father later said to police that he had gone on the pretext that the boyfriend had been physically violent to his daughter Le Progrès, a regional newspaper in Lyon, reports.
Once he got to the home of the young man, the father barged through the door and struck his daughter’s boyfriend several times before getting an electric cable and attempting to strangle him with it.
The young man was eventually able to escape his attacker and called the police.
Investigators were sceptical of the Muslim man’s reason for the attack and after speaking to both the victim and the daughter of the attacker found that the Muslim man had a serious problem with his daughter dating a man outside of the Islamic faith.
The attack follows a number of other cases of so-called honour-culture violence across Europe. In countries like Sweden, honour culture now affects as many as 240,000 young people and some have been on the receiving end of, often deadly, violence.
In one especially brutal case, the charred body of a woman estimated to be in her 30s was found by the side of a road just outside the city of Helsingborg. A 43-year-old man was later arrested in connection with the case which was believed to have had an honour-culture related motive.
Dilek Baladiz, a manager at Onigo, a Swedish organisation attempting to combat honour-culture violence, said earlier this year that the number of young people asking for help has dramatically increased.
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