Hammer attack called attempted honour killing
The hammer attack on a woman on Tuesday morning, allegedly by her own father, is being called an attempted honour killing because she was planning to marry a man who is not a Muslim.
Medhat Darwish is shown in several dramatic photos because he’s a martial arts expert, wearing a black gi, although his style is not specified. Chasing him down via Facebook, I find a page for Centre Samourai Koryukan, with the arresting headline “Controlling Aggression Without Inflicting Harm is the Art of Peace”.
Joey 13:43 on 2026-04-16 Permalink
This right here is why Montreal City Weblog is by far my favourite source of news about the city.
Kate 15:49 on 2026-04-16 Permalink
Cheers, Joey.
Nicholas 18:14 on 2026-04-16 Permalink
People like to say big cities have big murder rates, but if Montreal had St Anne’s murder rate for this month there would be 350 murders in Montreal this month. (This is a jab at stories about a small town murder that say small towns are safer unlike the big city, when the average murder rate is something like 0.1 per year, and so you need to look over a bigger time frame or bigger geography to compare numbers sensibly. I know this is not a great measure.)
Also it is weird these are called honour killings and not dishonour killings: the murderer thinks the woman (it’s always a woman) committed dishonour on the family and society thinks the murderer is dishonourable.
Kate 18:37 on 2026-04-16 Permalink
Nicholas, were there murders in Ste‑Anne this month?
Luc 20:27 on 2026-04-16 Permalink
I have known Medhat for about 15 years now. I trained at his school for roughly two years, within his lineage. He was teaching under an official license from Japan, representing a legitimate lineage in both Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu and Niten Ichi-ryu. He was praised by hundreds of practitioners.
Having practiced different martial arts and met many people throughout my life, I can say without hesitation that he has been one of the most inspiring figures to me over these past 15 years.
We attended concert together. We spent long nights talking about art and life, philosophy, family and spirits. He never said ANYTHING about religion for 15 years to me.
I saw him train people with mental disabilities. I saw him work with elderly individuals. I saw him support someone going through cancer remission. I saw him teach children with a genuinely open heart.
And I can tell you this: the people I speak with—those who have spent even more time under his guidance—are completely stunned by this situation.
I understand the reactions and the comments I’m seeing. I share some of the frustration, especially regarding how this is being framed in certain ways. But I still struggle to fully process the information.
I am not questioning that something serious has happened, nor the emerging understanding of what may have occurred. But like many who know him, my mind simply cannot reconcile how a person with such a big heart, such calmness, gentleness, intelligence, openness, and deep kindness could have committed something like this. Right now, it feels impossible for me to make sense of it. The only explanation my mind can even begin to grasp is that of an extreme psychotic episode.
We all know the victim—his daughter—and his wife. My thoughts are with them, and I sincerely wish them strength and healing through this incredibly difficult time.
I speak for myself, of course. But I also know that these words reflect what many others are feeling—people who have been positively impacted by Medhat Darwish over the past 30 years.
Nicholas 22:17 on 2026-04-16 Permalink
Sorry, attempted murder, tired today.
Nicole 02:05 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne coined the term “himpathy” for disproportionately and inappropriately sympathetic reactions like Luc’s to male perpetrators of violence against women that tend to center the perpetrator’s reputation and shift focus away from the harm done to the victim.
dwgs 07:31 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
People are complicated creatures, it is possible to have lived an exemplary life and then negate all the good one has ever done in a brief moment of madness. I read Luc’s comment as a person struggling to understand a horrific event that was at odds with the person he thought he knew.
Kate 09:10 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
Well put, dwgs.
MarcG 09:27 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
Is it normal that the JDM publishes unsourced stories as facts? Other news outlets are saying much less about what happened and why.
Kate 10:16 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
They often do, MarcG. Their signature style is to imply they have access to police or other sources that other media do not.
I’ve rarely known them to be mistaken although it does happen (e.g. the time they claimed that a mosque made an objection to a woman’s presence in a work crew on the street outside on a Friday).
Deborah 10:51 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
A brief “moment of madness” is not divorced from reality,
it is the explosion of reality that illuminates a “lifetime of good.”
Joey 11:25 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
@Luc your post reminded me of a killing in Texas maybe 15-20 years ago – IIRC a somewhat well known local musician had some kind of psychotic break after taking a dose of a smoking cessation drug (Chant) – he had also been drinking. Apparently uncharacteristically, he fought with his girlfriend and wound up banging on his neighbour’s door. This being Texas, the neighbour fired a gun through the door, which killed the musician.
dwgs 11:35 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
@Deborah I understand the first phrase but you lost me with the ‘explosion of reality’.
Deborah 11:44 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
The moment of madness reifies the underlying reality
dwgs 11:58 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
So all those good acts that Darwish performed over the years were just a cover for his true evil self?
Kate 12:22 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
I don’t think we can say for sure. Darwish may have known he was sometimes prey to violent impulses, and found that martial arts taught him the discipline he needed to control them. He may have been one of those people who can compartmentalize his life, putting a wall between his demeanour in the dojo and his personality around his family. I suspect the latter but I’m writing about him now as if he’s a fictional character, as are we all.
Deborah 12:41 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
the “madness” is not a departure from the person’s reality, but the sudden surfacing of their actual state which the “exemplary life” was effectively masking
Kate 12:55 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
Deborah, you can’t psychoanalyze a person remotely in this way. We do not know. Someone can develop a brain tumour or other physiological condition that completely changes their personality. I am not saying that this is what happened here, but you can’t know without an examination of the person. Making such statements as you have made here is not stating facts, but presenting a baseless theory.
Deborah 14:56 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
I’m not claiming to know his medical state, but calling it a ‘moment of madness’ in an ‘exemplary life’ is also a theory—one that ignores how a disciplined mask often hides deep, accumulated conflict. Whether the cause is biological or psychological, dismissing it with a label like ‘madness’ stops us from looking at the actual fact of the violence
CC 19:11 on 2026-04-17 Permalink
Beside the point, but I was curious what is meant by ‘Christian’, in this context, referring to the fiance. An actual church goer, or non-religious with Christian roots? Sounds like the former, but made me wonder…