A Canadian journalist voices an opinion many share, regarding honor killings. Hopefully he doesn’t do a dhimmified 180, like British author Sebastian Faulks did, after criticizing the quran.
Steven Hazel wanted to end his marriage.
He increased the life insurance on his wife and removed his prize possessions from the family home. Hazel then murdered his wife and tried to hide the murder by burning down the family home in southwestern Ontario with his wife’s body inside.
This is a terrible story about violence and greed — but Hazel’s violence was directed at his wife only and he had no plans to intimidate others by his cruel deed.
Compare the Hazel case to the dreadful actions of Hasibullah Sadiqi who murdered his sister Khatera and her fiance Feroz Mangal in the Ottawa area because Khatera moved in with Feroz before getting married.
According to the Crown at Sadiqi’s trial, the killing was committed for the purpose of “restoring the family’s reputation and respect in the Afghan community.”
Sadiqi presents a typical “honour” killing; a killing, usually of a woman, committed because she has breached some sexual code of conduct, say, by dating a man of a different religion or race.
In an honour killing the murder is committed for the purpose of enforcing the sexual code of conduct and warning others who might be tempted to breach that code of the fate that may befall them.
At first blush there’s no difference between an honour killing and any other murder. If a woman is killed for insurance money or for honour, she’s still dead.
But on closer analysis there is a difference and an important one.
Killing a spouse for insurance is brutal and monstrous but it is an act only focused on the deceased.
But honour killing kills the deceased and threatens others. An honour killing uses violence as theatre to intimidate others. It stands to enforce a sexual code of conduct by violence and threats.
An honour killing is part of an organized effort to subjugate women to a specific and oppressive view of society. Although the total number of honour killings in Canada is still relatively small, probably less than 50 in total to date, the impact on the community as a whole is huge. When compared to a worldwide figure of perhaps 5,000 honour killing a year the implied threat is heightened.
But numbers alone do not tell the story. Even at its height, the number of lynchings in the American South was fairly small (probably less than 100 a year) but the intimidation huge. Southern blacks knew the danger of speaking up for their rights; with honour killings, women can see the risk of behaving outside their place.
Under Canadian law, terrorism includes an act taken for political, religious or ideological purposes which threatens the public or national security by killing, seriously harming or endangering a person. Terrorism is violence designed to intimidate for an ideological purpose.
That’s what an honour killing is — violence intended to subjugate and intimidate women.
In the United Kingdom ,the Crown Prosecution Service has found links between honour killings and terrorism.
Nazir Afzal, the CPS’s spokesperson on honour crime, said a terror group threatened to kill a woman, now in hiding, for her sexual behaviour.
“They told her husband that if he didn’t put his wife in her place then they would do it themselves,” Afzal said.
In just the same way the Ku Klux Klan used violence to enforce white supremacy in the southern United States honour killings seek to keep women as second-class citizens unable to choose how to live their lives.
Let’s call honour killing what it really is.
Call it terrorism.
Related posts:
- German police accuse Kurdish men of “honour killing”
- Jordan: Court commutes man’s jail sentence for honor killing
- Pakistani newlyweds live in fear of honour killing
- 225 women killed for honour in six months
- Jordanian man kills sister to cleanse family’s honour
- Honor Killing of wife and 3 kids “totally justified”
- Germany: Honour killing victim’s parents protect her killer
- Palestinian Women Fight Back After 8th ‘Honor Killing’ In One Family
- Saudi Arabia: Honor killing claims the lives of two sisters
- Pakistani court says killing to preserve woman’s honor “Not a crime”
