Honor Killings

On Christmas Eve as “judge show” dealt with a case of a woman who had fled Iran with her two daughters. The treatment at the hands of her husband and Iran society in general that she described caused me to shake my head and to grown.

In recent months a story in Saudi Arabia received some attention in the US. To meet up with her boyfriend a young woman left her home without a male chaperone. She was attacked and raped by four men. Though the four rapists were known, they were not convicted, let alone charged. The woman was the one who was blamed, arrested, charged and convicted. She was the one who the court system victimized again by shaming her publicly and ordering her to be beaten.

A young lady was killed in Canada recently by her father for refusing to wear the prescribed religious dress. In Islam the father’s action is viewed as an honorable act, a “honor killing.” Recently I read a blog that on Islamic “honor killings”, a worldwide phenomenon. Again my heart moaned. Here just a few “honor killing” examples noted:

1. Asian student, Shafilea Ahmed, aged 17, from Warrington, Cheshire, UK, was probably murdered in 2003. Pathologist Dr. Alison Armour said: “The most likely cause of death is strangulation or smothering.” Prior to her disappearance she had returned from Pakistan where she had rejected an arranged marriage. To date, no one has actually been charged over the murder. Although the case remains open, one possibility considered by police is that Shafilea was the victim of an ‘honour killing’.

2. Another 17 year old girl, Souad, a Palestinian from a remote village on the West Bank, fell in love. But she was living under the strict rules of an Islamic society where a single girl caught making so much as eye contact with a man was labeled a charmuta, a whore. When Souad became pregnant she knew her punishment would likely be death.

After her secret was discovered, she was sitting in the courtyard when her brother-in-law approached. She felt cold liquid — petrol — pouring over her head and shoulders. Next thing she knew, she was ablaze. In a frenzy of panic and pain she escaped into the street where some local women beat out the flames and took her to hospital. Hideously burnt, Souad was only saved by the intervention of a European aid worker who arranged to have her flown to Switzerland.

3. At 17, Doaa Fares believed she could be somebody other than herself. She dropped out of secondary school, changed her name to Angelina, and entered the Miss Israel beauty contest. But she came from a deeply conservative Druze village. She was soon threatened with death, allegedly by two uncles and other men from her village who accused her of disgracing the family name with promiscuous behaviour. When she emerged from hiding she announced that she was withdrawing from the competition, fearing for her life.

4. In 2003, Sahjda Bibi, 21, from Birmingham, was stabbed 22 times while already in her wedding dress. A cousin did not approve of her choice of husband.

5. In 2005, in Southall, Middlesex, Samaira Nazir, 25, was murdered because she wanted to marry her Afghan boyfriend, rather than someone from the family circle. Her brother was jailed for at least 20 years for her murder and her cousin, who was 17, will serve 10 years for his role in her death. The ‘honour killing’, which took place at home in front of her parents, was carried out with four knives, as she was pinned down, and left with 18 stab wounds and three separate cuts to her throat. The family disapproved of Ms Nazir’s boyfriend, Salman Mohammed, because of his caste and they were so determined to split the pair up that when the couple announced their engagement, Ms Nazir’s father, Azhar, lunged at Mr Mohammed with a knife and threatened to kill him. Her brother, Azhar Nazir, a 30-year-old greengrocer, threatened to “get” the couple if they married, even if they were abroad. He was incensed that his sister had turned down the suitors waiting for her in Pakistan in favour of the Afghan.

6. In 2006, in Brescia, Italy, Hina Saleem, 21, received a phone call from her father. She told her boss at the Pizzeria Antica India where she worked: ‘Some relatives have arrived from France - with presents! I must greet them, but I won’t be late for work.’ During the hours that followed, both her boyfriend and her boss tried to call Hina on her mobile - without success. The call home had been a trap. Hina’s father, aided by three male relatives, had cut his own daughter’s throat, after a family council condemned her to death for her liaison with Tampini, a local carpenter.

7. In 2007 Hamda Abu Ghanem, 19, was the victim of another murder in Ramla. In January the police found her body riddled with bullets at her parents’ home. She was reportedly punished for talking on the phone to her cousin. Much as Naifa, Suzan, Zinat, Sabrin, Amira, Reem and Shirihan before her, Hamda was the victim of an ‘honour killing’, to wash away the supposed affront to her family’s reputation.

8. In 2007, a father, uncle and distant cousin were given life sentences for the barbaric ‘honour killing’ of a young woman they believed had shamed their family by falling in love. Mahmod Mahmod, 52, will serve at least 20 years for hiring a gang of Kurdish thugs to murder his daughter, Banaz, 20. They strangled Miss Mahmod at her home in Mitcham, South London.
The men had decided that Miss Mahmod should be tortured, raped, and murdered to restore ‘honour’ on their family name and serve as a lesson to women in their community. Miss Mahmod had previously fled an abusive arranged marriage that prevented her from studying to become a lawyer. She had wanted to move in with her boyfriend, Rhamat Sulemani, 29, and begin her legal studies. She was raped and murdered after contacting police four times saying that she feared for her life. She was garrotted but took half an hour to die as Hama stamped on her neck to “get the soul out”. Her body was crammed into a suitcase and driven to Birmingham, where it was buried in a back garden in January last year.

Under certain circumstances, and among the more traditional kinds of family, “honor killings” are regarded as a social duty. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2003 also noted that in Jordan: “Police rarely investigate ‘honour’ killings, seldom take any initiative to deter these crimes, and typically treat the killers as vindicated men.” The report also quoted a Jordanian lawyer as saying that when ‘honor’ killers turn themselves in to the police, the police “try to calm them down, give them a cigarette. The culture deals with them as heroes.”

Though such treatment needs to be aggressively exposed what is frightening is that Islamic leaders and followers who claim that such killings a cultural and not tied to Islamic beliefs fail to explain that if this is true then why is it happens across so many cultures. Further, and most poignantly, if these killings are not in keeping with the Islamic faith then why are the Islamic teachers remaining silent and not aggressively speaking out? Their silence speaks volumes.