That is sad and extremely frustrating to read. I hope she is safe from harm, and lives life to the fullest.

@Nealie Zealbie, it’s your American showing, not your Ravenclaw. In the UK it’s ‘pleaded’. – another Ravenclaw

It’s not wrong to have relationship with people of differences, as long as they like each other. She must be in a very difficult position.

That’s really horrible…I hope things turn out alright.

I’m with you, Nealie Zealbie! As a longtime copy editor by profession, it drives me nuts how people nowadays just ignore irregular verbs: ‘dived’ instead of ‘dove,’ ‘wreaked’ instead of ‘wrought,’ etc. etc. For me, the English language is the biggest toy in the world (and it’s free!!!), and I hate to see anything that seems to water it down.

Yeesh. That’s really sad. It would be very hard to be her. On one hand, he’s her brother, but on the other, he hurt her and needs to be prosecuted.

Sorry, WeenyOwl, but these are cases where British English and American English are just different. ‘Dove’ as past tense of ‘dive’ doesn’t exist in British English. I note that there are some cases where it’s the other way round, e.g. ‘slew’ in British English where I’ve heard ‘slayed’ in American. In other cases, you are right, the irregular verbs seem to be being lost—I notice that ‘thrived’ seems to be taking over from ‘throve’. All of this seems rather a long way from poor Afshan’s troubles, which suggests that probably none of us really know any more about it than there has been in the rather brief newspaper reports.

‘Slayed’ and ‘thrived’ set my teeth on edge as well, V-J… Those are not Americanisms, they are just ignorance. I don’t mind so much if the different forms are genuine regionalisms – it’s when people just can’t be bothered to learn the irregular forms that I sink into despair.

And you’re right, we’ve gone way off-topic! I try to keep an open mind about differences in cultural values, but when I hear about any so-called ‘cultural’ practice that oppresses women, whether it comes from East or West, I tend to go into vengeful Amazon mode. If I were in her shoes I think that I’d want to marry outside my religion just for spite, now!

Know what you mean (on both counts). All the best to Afshan. I hope that her Harry Potter work will give her the money and freedom to do what she needs to do, and that her family will come to accept this.

Good that she is safe…her brother deserves to be put away..before things got worse

How awful. I will be keeping her in my thoughts and prayers. I agree with Jordan Steele, but I think that most HP fans are just cool and open-minded like that. The supportive comments are very contrasting to the negative comments you would see on a different site.

That must be frightening for Afshan… All the best

This is the problem with religion, anything that could warp one’s mind so much, as to attempt to murder your own sibling, is astonishing. 6months? for attempted murder? I say give him 10 years to life like any other attempted murderer.

it is so sad that in the muslim faith a woman cannot marry who she wants, it must be very disturbing for you if you really like somebody who is not muslim :(

Ok, I am glad that Afshan is doing Ok, and she must have felt awful when they arrested her brother, but on the other hand if something had not have been done, he might have done it again. It is a bit sad that they are not free to choose who they want to be with, but I suppose customs are customs, and not being of that faith, it would be very hard to criticise I do believe that the attack was totally not-exceptible and thank goodness that she was not hurt severly.