I believe the source of five seemingly inexplicable Arab/Muslim cultural phenomena--
honor killings, suicide terrorism, the "
rape jihad" and
female genital mutilation is the same. It stems from the severe shortage of available women due to
pervasive incest, polygamy and most importantly, the domination of a hierarchy of "big men" that typifies oppressed societies. Most honor killings are performed by brothers, who often lose in the sexual lottery when their sisters marry outside the family. Female genital mutilation causes such pain during intercourse that it eliminates sexual gratification, a significant incentive to overcome the pressure of families seeking to prevent women from choosing a husband based on love. It is not coincidental that suicide martyrdom is sold with the promise of 72 virgins, that the Islamist leadership has chosen a personal exemption from this element of jihad and that the major result of jihad is an amelioration of the shortage of available women through death and foreign adventurism.
Here is an illustration of how polygamous systems tend to confer religious sexual advantages to the leaders by eliminating young competition:
Up to 1,000 teenage boys have been separated from their parents and thrown out of their communities by a polygamous sect to make more young women available for older men, Utah officials claim.
Many of these "Lost Boys," some as young as 13, have simply been dumped on the side of the road in Arizona and Utah, by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), and told they will never see their families again or go to heaven.
Update (Apr. 3):
Leading Islamic Authority Campaigns for Universal Female Genital Mutilation
Despite the widespread propaganda, such as this example from Wikipedia, that "most contemporary [Muslim] scholars reject it completely"