It was nice to see the New York Times devoting so much real estate in the Sunday magazine to the ongoing practice of honor killing. Katherine Zoepf basically takes the case of Zahra al-Azzo, which has received quite a bit of publicity, and looks at how it might be the tipping point for really changing both the culture and the law in Arab countries, like Syria, where honor killing is still widely accepted. Though statistics are almost impossible to gather accurately, The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women die every year as a result of honor killings.
Zahra's case has been palpable to the public because it isn't muddled by the hot button issues of female agency and sexuality. In short, Zahra was raped, then married by a sympathetic cousin, and finally murdered by her own brother.
I feel mixed about this, of course. On the one hand, anything that we can do to stop the practice of honor killing must be done. On the other hand, it feels a little disingenuous to have the martyr of that change still fit into a box of purity and innocence so that it makes everyone comfortable. Perhaps the answer is to get honor killing criminalized and then work on changing consciousness. Zoepf reports:
With tensions like these in play, Syrian women’s advocates are careful to phrase their criticisms of tribal traditions of honor and Article 548 in Islamic terms. Though some will privately admit that they are secularists, even feminists, they keep it quiet. It would be politically impossible to suggest in public, for example, that women have the right to choose their sexual partners. The basic culture of chastity is in no way being publicly rethought. Some advocates say that their cause is damaged if they are perceived as sympathetic to “Western values,� and even that honor killing is seen by some conservatives as a bulwark against those values.
Zoepf, the author of the piece, is working on a book on the lives on women in the contemporary Arab world. If her ability to capture the reality and a vision for the future in this article is any indication, it could be a really powerful read.
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But... who are we to judge their culture?
Honor Killings are not a cultural thing, they happen all over the world. Not only in islam influenced countries but also in the western world!
The only difference is that we don't call them honor killings, The media finds nicer names like "family tragedy". But let's face it, they are honor killings as well. Most of these women are killed because they did something like attempt to leave their husbands or cheated on their husbands, that's what an honor killing is and sadly it happens everywhere.
Rosa Parks wasn't the first woman to insist on sitting at the front of the bus. When the odds are this stacked against you, you take whatever advantage you can get.
That's generally what works best, from what I've seen. People change much quicker if the change is made for them and they have to adjust (and if they see that the world doesn't end when the change is made) than if someone tries to get them to change for their own sake.
Besides, a person's "consciousness" doesn't matter if they're not free to act on it.
Oh...and Zwillingsmama? Don't bother treating Jeff's question as sincere. It's not. It's a "gotcha" from a conservative who thinks that he's caught us being "bad liberals".
Didn't you know that all liberals are "cultural relativists" (translation: America haters) who refuse to criticize any culture but our own, even though - with all our flaws - we're still better than anybody else?
Snark, of course.
“But... who are we to judge their culture?�
We’re concerned human beings who think that when innocent people are murdered it’s not okay. Doesn’t matter if it’s your culture and if it’s a thousand-year tradition. Murdering a woman because her rape somehow brings dishonor to you is barbaric.
And yes, we can judge other cultures when they are doing barbaric things. Our own American culture was once built on a foundation of slavery. It was barbaric and it took our deadliest war to rid the continent of the legal presence of slavery.
Should we not judge Iran when they hang gays?
Who are we to judge that murder is wrong? Oh, gosh, I don't know. *rolleyes*
An atrocity is an atrocity. I don't care under what guise it is perpetrated.
Seraph:
Wrong. I'm a liberal who gets really annoyed by cultural relativism, and I was trying to make a point. Which is, that we use rational, ethical judgments to decide that honor killing is wrong, but in so many other circumstances we're unwilling to take a stand on what's the best way for things to be. We're not always right, no, and our perspective isn't omniscient. But reason is the best tool we have to improve the future for everyone, and cultural relativism will undermine us. Look how the right has cleverly stolen our relativism: now everything must have "balance", even if the facts solidly back one side.
Jeff, I'm not sure if I'm going to take your word that you're a liberal. I've seen too many right-wingers or naifs (as someone once said: "it's hard to tell a traitor from a custard head; the ratio of damn fools to villains is always high") who came in and gave self-destructive "suggestions" on how to make sure the message got out.
If you are, in fact, a liberal, I'd have to guess that you're one who doesn't hang around here very much, and that you're bringing your particular gospel to every liberal website you find without paying attention to context. Refusing to judge another culture regardless of its crimes has never been a problem around here.
just like Zwillingsmama said, this is a cultural thing-and we had a few honour killings here too. and i'm sorry i dont care what cuture your coming from-that is no fucking excuse to kill a woman! in most cases they have been raped. however, i dont see why the "martyr of that change still fit into a box of purity and innocence so that it makes everyone comfortable." i fit into this box too-does my opinion not count?surely this would reinforce the point rather than takes away from it?
"Honor" killings are believed to have their origins in misinterpretations of pre-Islamic Arab tribal codes. Thus, since they pre-date Islam, it is not really accurate or fair to blame them on the faith. Similarly, since they are misinterpretations of Arab tribal codes, it is inaccurate and unfair to blame them on the tribes, which actually have more humane ways of handling these situations. Something just got horribly corrupted along the way, and no one has been successful yet in rectifying it.
That said, of the estimated 5,000 "honor" killings globally per annum, it is the case that the overwhelming majority of them occur in Arab/Muslim countries and in Arab/Muslim immigrant communities elsewhere. This is just an empirical fact.
They are not to be confused with crimes of passion or other types of murders, which have occurred throughout history and across cultures and, unfortunately, seem to be part of the human condition.
It is a common tactic in some of the countries where these crimes occur and where the laws offer leniency to the perpetrators to say that the people aren't ready for change and, thus, the laws will remain as is. For years, I watched this and then one day thought, well, gee, I'm a professional marketer, if that's the case, then let's start changing hearts and minds. And so I traveled on my own nickel to Jordan (where I'd worked a couple times before and where people had told me there was a need for empirical data about these crimes) to begin the process. Marketers first measure baseline attitudes and opinions before designing any professionally-conducted promotional campaigns, and so that is where I began. And, to my surprise and many others', I found that 89% of the people in my representative sample already support strengthening the penalties for "honor" killings (the average sentence right now is six months. . .some people went so far as to tell me they want the death penalty for the perpetrators of these crimes). Another 3.5% are neutral, and the remaining 7.5% prefer the status quo. This kind of consensus is almost unheard of in market research. Other questions on my in-depth survey were equally, if not more, compelling. It wasn't even a close call.
So, instead of designing an expensive hearts and minds campaign and executing that, I remained in Jordan and presented my findings to members of the royal family, to the Senate President, to the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the Lower House, and to other high-level decision and policy makers. People began to ask me to write a book about this, so I stayed in Jordan and did so.
I'm with those of you who believe the place to start is to change the laws. Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and others have reformed theirs (though there are some problems with loopholes, enforcement, and now an emerging disturbing trend toward what is being called "honor" suicides, where the victims are forced to kill themselves so that their family members don't have to serve time). As long as states basically tell killers to go ahead, we'll look the other way, these crimes are going to continue. In fact, they are on the increase in some countries. And it's just not a good message for the state to send to 50% of the population that your life can be summarily snuffed out on the basis of a mere rumor and your killer will return to his family and village or town as a hero with scarcely a punishment.
That said, I do wonder how many people in other countries where these crimes occur feel as the Jordanians do. . .that this is a blemish on their collective culture, that they are ashamed to live in a country that accepts this.
There is so little reliable empirical data on this whole issue, and accurate crime statistics are almost impossible to come by (in no small part due to the very nature of these crimes. . .they often go unreported or are disguised as accidents or suicides).
This situation has some obvious remedies. Legal reform and the development of a network of safehouses and shelters to protect the at-risk people would be very high on my list of to-dos. It's an emergency. . .people are dying.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
"Honor" killings are believed to have their origins in misinterpretations of pre-Islamic Arab tribal codes. Thus, since they pre-date Islam, it is not really accurate or fair to blame them on the faith. Similarly, since they are misinterpretations of Arab tribal codes, it is inaccurate and unfair to blame them on the tribes, which actually have more humane ways of handling these situations. Something just got horribly corrupted along the way, and no one has been successful yet in rectifying it.
That said, of the estimated 5,000 "honor" killings globally per annum, it is the case that the overwhelming majority of them occur in Arab/Muslim countries and in Arab/Muslim immigrant communities elsewhere. This is just an empirical fact.
They are not to be confused with crimes of passion or other types of murders, which have occurred throughout history and across cultures and, unfortunately, seem to be part of the human condition.
It is a common tactic in some of the countries where these crimes occur and where the laws offer leniency to the perpetrators to say that the people aren't ready for change and, thus, the laws will remain as is. For years, I watched this and then one day thought, well, gee, I'm a professional marketer, if that's the case, then let's start changing hearts and minds. And so I traveled on my own nickel to Jordan (where I'd worked a couple times before and where people had told me there was a need for empirical data about these crimes) to begin the process. Marketers first measure baseline attitudes and opinions before designing any professionally-conducted promotional campaigns, and so that is where I began. And, to my surprise and many others', I found that 89% of the people in my representative sample already support strengthening the penalties for "honor" killings (the average sentence right now is six months. . .some people went so far as to tell me they want the death penalty for the perpetrators of these crimes). Another 3.5% are neutral, and the remaining 7.5% prefer the status quo. This kind of consensus is almost unheard of in market research. Other questions on my in-depth survey were equally, if not more, compelling. It wasn't even a close call.
So, instead of designing an expensive hearts and minds campaign and executing that, I remained in Jordan and presented my findings to members of the royal family, to the Senate President, to the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the Lower House, and to other high-level decision and policy makers. People began to ask me to write a book about this, so I stayed in Jordan and did so.
I'm with those of you who believe the place to start is to change the laws. Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and others have reformed theirs (though there are some problems with loopholes, enforcement, and now an emerging disturbing trend toward what is being called "honor" suicides, where the victims are forced to kill themselves so that their family members don't have to serve time). As long as states basically tell killers to go ahead, we'll look the other way, these crimes are going to continue. In fact, they are on the increase in some countries. And it's just not a good message for the state to send to 50% of the population that your life can be summarily snuffed out on the basis of a mere rumor and your killer will return to his family and village or town as a hero with scarcely a punishment.
That said, I do wonder how many people in other countries where these crimes occur feel as the Jordanians do. . .that this is a blemish on their collective culture, that they are ashamed to live in a country that accepts this.
There is so little reliable empirical data on this whole issue, and accurate crime statistics are almost impossible to come by (in no small part due to the very nature of these crimes. . .they often go unreported or are disguised as accidents or suicides).
This situation has some obvious remedies. Legal reform and the development of a network of safehouses and shelters to protect the at-risk people would be very high on my list of to-dos. It's an emergency. . .people are dying.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
Seraph, I'm not some conservative trying to secretly undermine the progressive cause by pointing out the errors of cultural relativism. I guess you'll just have to take my word for that. We can go down the list if you'd like; I'd hazard a guess that I'm in about the 98th percentile of liberal-ness.
I read this blog religiously but comment sporadically, depending on what else is going on for me. And I made the original comment because I *do* see a lot of relativism here, and I thought it was a good place to illustrate the point.
ERS, what an amazing post! Thank you!
I'm not interested in your bona fides, Jeff. You're trying to hijack the thread to make your point about cultural relativism. You're a concern troll or a jerk. Which is it?
You were interested in them half an hour ago, it seemed.
My point may, yes, be a bit of an aside, but it's clearly related. I guess I could stay directly on the issue, but what is there anyways? "This is bad. I agree." If you consider something a threadjack, just ignore it; if I make a comment and people don't engage the idea, I'll assume it wasn't interesting, or it was too far off topic, and not bother with it again.
"Honor Killings are not a cultural thing, they happen all over the world."
More accurately, it's a custom that is more common in some cultures and subcultures all over the world than in some other cultures and subcultures all over the world.
"Not only in islam influenced countries but also in the western world!
The only difference is that we don't call them honor killings, The media finds nicer names like 'family tragedy'."
...or "gang violence."
Lately in Boston there have been a whole bunch of fatal shootings. I forgot if it was in Metro or in BostonNow, but one new columnist referred to some of them as "honor killings." Yes, even though these killers seem to have shot other young men for "dissing them" instead of female relatives for "being slutty."
"And, to my surprise and many others', I found that 89% of the people in my representative sample already support strengthening the penalties for 'honor' killings"
That kicks ass - both your research and the 89%'s response.
ERS--
Beautiful comment. And the response of the Jordanians just seems to emphasize the point that ordinary people are eseentially the same everywhere. The problem is largely 'leaders' that turn a blind eye to injustice.