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Honor killing

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An honor killing is a murder, nearly exclusively of a Muslim woman who has been perceived as having brought dishonor to her family by a Muslim man, . Such killings are typically perpetrated by the victim's own relatives and/or community and unlike a crime of passion or rage-induced killing, it is usually planned in advance.

In societies and cultures where they occur, such killings are often regarded as a "private matter" for the affected family alone, and courts rarely become involved or prosecute the perpetrators.

Honour killings have been continually mistaken to be a practice encouraged by Islam; this is due to the fact that honour killings are often perpetrated in Muslim-majority areas, especially in countries of the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. However the Qur'an and the Hadith mention nothing about honour killings, and such murders are almost always associated with pre-Islamic cultural patterns in the societies which condone them. For example, while honour killing is widespread among rural Muslim tribes in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and various Arab countries, it is virtually unknown in the Muslim communities of Malaysia and Indonesia.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor-killing victims may be as high as 5,000 women.



Locations

As of 2004, honor killings have occurred at the hands of individuals within parts of various countries, such as Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel (within the Arab, Druze and Bedouin communities)[1], Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States. According to the UN:

"The report of the Special Rapporteur ... concerning cultural practices in the family that are violent towards women (E/CN.4/2002/83), indicated that honour killings had been reported in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, Yemen, and other Mediterranean and Gulf countries, and that they had also taken place in such countries as France, Germany and the United Kingdom within migrant communities."[2]

In December 2005, Nazir Afzal, Director, West London, of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, stated that the United Kingdom has seen "at least a dozen honor killings" between 2004 and 2005. Given the geopolitical politics dominant today, the practice of honor killing is associated in the West with certain Muslim cultures and the peoples influenced by those cultures.[3] Honor killings are more common among poor rural communities than urban ones. Christians living within parts of Africa and the Near East, such as sections of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, sometimes carry out the crime, as well as some men from some Muslim communities. While violence and discrimination against women is unfortunately widespread across the globe, it is well established that social inequality is a precipatory factor. There is a strong positive correlation between women's social power and a baseline of development, associated with access to basic resources, health care, and human capital, such as literacy. [4]

Many cases of honor killings have been reported in Pakistan. During the year 2002 in Pakistan about four hundred people (men & women) were killed in the name of (Karo-Kari) in Sindh Out of 382 (245 women, 137 men). The phenomenon of the killing in the name of honor has direct relevance to the illiteracy rate, as these killings are more common in the areas where the literacy rate is lower. According to a report issued by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Jacobabad District ranked first in terms of murder in the name of Karo Kari (66 women, 25 men). Jacobabad district has a literacy rate of 23.66, the least literate district of Sindh after Tharparkar District, and Thatta District. After Jacobabad, the Ghotki District witnessed the highest number of murders in the name of Karo Kari (13 men, 54 women). After Ghotki, Larkana is the district with the next highest murder rate in the name of Karo Kari (24 men, 38 women). Larkana as well, has a low literacy rate of 34.95. This is lower than even Naushahro Feroze District, Dadu District, and Khairpur District, having 39.14, 35.56 and 35.50 percent literacy rates respectively. These districts of the upper Sindh have low literacy rates but high feudal influence in every walk of life. Jacobabad, Ghotki and Larkana are those districts of Sindh where not only the illiterate ones, but tribal chieftains are also in large number. According to a report released by the HRCP, the cases of Karo Kari are mostly settled at jirgas, the private and parallel judicial system of Chieftains. However, districts of lower parts of Sindh like Tharparkar, Badin, and Thatta experience nominal occurrences of honor killings because they have lower amount of feudal influence there.[5]

In 1997 Fadime Sahindal’s father Rahmi Sahindal and her little brother Masud threatened to execute her. Having grown up in Sweden, Fadime was not interested in entering into a forced marriage with a Kurdish man in Turkey. Instead Fadime pursued a university degree. She met and fell in love with a young Swedish man, whose parents’ overtures to Fadime's parents on the couple’s behalf were harshly rejected. Rahmi and Masud Sahindal would only refer to Fadime spitefully as “the whore”. Fadime, a sociologist and activist, was a public figure, bringing to light in Sweden the problems refugee families faced, especially refugee women. Pleading for humanitarian, not authoritarian, social intervention, Sahindal repeatedly explained, “I love my father. He understands no better way of treating me.” Before she was to embark on a scholarly trip to Africa in 2001, Fadime arranged to secretly meet her sister and mother at her sister’s apartment in Uppsala. Her father was advised. He ambushed Fadime at her departure visit, and shot her dead. Fadime’s parliamentary testimony two months earlier haunted Sweden: “It could have been prevented. If society had assumed its responsibility for integrating my family, it could have been prevented. If the Kurdish Association had helped my family, it could have been prevented.” Thereafter, a foundation in Fadime’s memory was inaugurated, and Sweden reformed its multicultural approach to gender violence. [6]

In 2007, the Associated Press reported on an apparent honor killing in Jordan, when a father fatally shot his 17-year-old daughter whom he suspected of being sexually active despite a medical exam performed before her death that proved her virginity, according to a government forensic pathologist from Jordan's National Institute of Forensic Medicine. Previously, the young woman had apparently "run away from home several times for unknown reasons." She returned home from a family protection clinic after doctors "vouched for her virginity" and her father signed a pledge not to harm her. The pathologist reported that an autopsy also demonstrated her virginity.

On May 18, 2007, four Yazidi men were arrested for killing 17-year-old Du’a Khalil Aswad in Bashiqa, Iraq for being seen with a Sunni Muslim.[7] The April 7[8] attack was recorded on a cell phone camera and broadcast around the world, bringing international attention to practice of honor killing.

Honor killing as a cultural practice or religious practice

Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University states that honor killing is:

A complicated issue that cuts deep into the history of Arab society. .. What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. The honor killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's behind it is the issue of fertility, or reproductive power.[citation needed]

An Amnesty International statement adds:

The regime of honour is unforgiving: women on whom suspicion has fallen are not given an opportunity to defend themselves, and family members have no socially acceptable alternative but to remove the stain on their honour by attacking the woman.[9]

In Muslim majority countries

Honor killing is forbidden in Islam.[10] There is no specific mention of the practice in the Qur'an or Hadiths except in so far as the custom of killing baby girls to protect the family honor, which is specifically condemned in the Qur'an, was a form of honor killing. An honor killing refers specifically to extra-legal punishment by the family against the woman, and it is often argued that this is technically forbidden by the Sharia (Islamic law). Some modern Islamic religious authorities and Muslims disagree with extra-legal punishments such as honor killing and prohibit it, since they consider the practice to be a cultural issue.[11] They believe that since certain pre-Islamic cultures have influence over a number of Muslims, murderers of females use Islam to justify honor killing, even though there is no support for the act in the religion itself. The death penalty cannot always be applied in the Sharia as murders are a type of "qisas" ("retaliation") crime.[citation needed] This means that the deceased's family should be offered the choice of capital punishment or "diyya" ("blood money") and no execution can take place without them opting for death. Because a relative(s) is usually responsible for the honor killing, it is unlikely that the deceased's family will punish one of their own for the crime.[12]. However other punishments can be legislated and the murderer cannot pardon himself.[13]

The execution of the Saudi Arabian princess Misha'al is an example of a judicial honor killing, in which the execution did not follow any Islamic religious court proceeding, but was ordered directly by her grandfather,who was never brought to book for this murder

Interpretations of these rules vary. Some Arabs regard it as their right under both tradition and Sharia (by the process of urf), though this contradicts the views of many Islamic scholars (fuqaha). For the Shias, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran has condemned the practice as "un-Islamic", though punishment under Iranian law remains lenient. According to Sheikh Atiyyah Saqr, former head of the al-Azhar University Fatwa Committee (one of the oldest and most prestigious in the Muslim world):

Like all other religions, Islam strictly prohibits murder and killing without legal justification. Allah, Most High, says, “Whoso slayeth a believer of set purpose, his reward is Hell for ever. Allah is wroth against him and He hath cursed him and prepared for him an awful doom.” (An-Nisa’: 93) The so-called “honor killing” is based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws, which cannot be abolished except by disciplinary punishments. [11]

This opinion makes a clear distinction between "hudud" crimes, which have specified legal penalty in Islamic law, and "tazir" offenses, which can have a discretionary punishment decided by the judge. Honor killings are tazir crimes, not hudud ones, meaning that any punishment is either culturally defined, or is established by secular law.

Many Muslim scholars and commentators say that honor killings are a cultural practice which is neither exclusive to, nor universal within, the Islamic world. The practice is little known in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic country, as well as in parts of West Africa with majority-Muslim populations.[14] However the practice is strongly associated with the Arabic- Turkish-Kurdish- and Urdu-speaking parts of the Muslim world. Furthermore, most cases involving the practice in non-Muslim areas involve people from Muslim-majority countries.[15][16]

Islamic teaching holds that life is given by Allah and should not be taken lightly, but it allows severe punishment, up to and including capital punishment, for certain kinds of crime; these include, in strict interpretations, all extramarital sexual relations by both men and women — though only adulterers may be punished with death (see Zina). Islamic law makes it very hard to punish families for their murder of their daughters through the necessity of offering the family of the victim the right to offer clemency to the killer.

The interpretation and application of laws relating to marriage and chastity has varied in different eras and places. (See Islamic marital jurisprudence, Zina).

Honor killing in national legal codes

According to the report of the Special Rapporteur submitted to the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2002) concerning cultural practices in the family that reflect violence against women (E/CN.4/2002/83):

The Special Rapporteur indicated that there had been contradictory decisions with regard to the honor defense in Brazil, and that legislative provisions allowing for partial or complete defense in that context could be found in the penal codes of Argentina, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Peru, Syria, Venezuela and the Palestinian National Authority.[17]

Though Israel is mentioned in the report, Israeli law does not allow for "family honor" as a defense in murder, partially or completely[18].

Countries where the law is interpreted to allow men to kill female relatives in a premeditated effort as well as for crimes of passions, in flagrante delicto in the act of committing adultery, include:

  • Jordan: Part of article 340 of the Penal Code states that "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty." This has twice been put forward for cancellation by the government, but was retained by the Lower House of the Parliament.[19]

Countries that allow men to kill female relatives in flagrante delicto (but without premeditation) include:

  • Syria: Article 548 states that "He who catches his wife or one of his ascendants [sic], descendants or sister committing adultery (flagrante delicto) or illegitimate sexual acts with another and he killed or injured one or both of them benefits from an exemption of penalty."

Countries that allow husbands to kill only their wives in flagrante delicto (based upon the Napoleonic code) include:

  • Morocco: Article 418 of the Penal Code states "Murder, injury and beating are excusable if they are committed by a husband on his wife as well as the accomplice at the moment in which he surprises them in the act of adultery."
  • Haiti: Article 269 of the Penal Code states that "in the case of adultery as provided for in Article 284, the murder by a husband of his wife and/or her partner, immediately upon discovering them in flagrante delicto in the conjugal abode, is to be pardoned."
  • In two Latin American countries, similar laws were struck down over the past two decades: according to human rights lawyer Julie Mertus "in Brazil, until 1991 wife killings were considered to be noncriminal 'honor killings'; in just one year, nearly eight hundred husbands killed their wives. Similarly, in Colombia, until 1980, a husband legally could kill his wife for committing adultery."[20]

Countries where honor killing is not legal but is frequently in practice include:

  • Turkey: In Turkey, persons found guilty of this crime are sentenced to life in prison.[21]
  • Iraqi Kurdistan: In Kurdistan, women are killed nearly every day for 'dishonoring' their families. Honor killing was legal until 2002 in Iraq.
  • Pakistan: Honor killings are known as Karo Kari (Sindhi: ڪارو ڪاري) (Urdu: کاروکاری ). The practice is supposed to be prosecuted under ordinary murder, but in practice police and prosecutors often ignore it.[22] Often a man must simply claim the killing was for his honor and he will go free. Nilofar Bakhtiar, advisor to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, stated that in 2003, as many as 1,261 women were murdered in honor killings.[23] On December 8, 2004, under international and domestic pressure, Pakistan enacted a law that made honor killings punishable by a prison term of seven years, or by the death penalty in the most extreme cases. Women's rights organizations were, however, wary of this law as it stops short of outlawing the practice of allowing killers to buy their freedom by paying compensation to the victim's relatives. Women's rights groups claimed that in most cases it is the victim's immediate relatives who are the killers, so inherently the new law is just eyewash. It did not alter the provisions whereby the accused could negotiate pardon with the victim's family under the so-called Islamic provisions. In March 2005 the Pakistani government allied with Islamists to reject a bill which sought to strengthen the law against the practice of "honor killing".[24] However, the bill was brought up again, and in November 2006, it passed.[25]. It is doubtful whether or not the law would actually help women.[26]

During the year 2002 about four hundred people (men & women) were killed in the name of (Karo-Kari) in Sindh Out of 382 (245 women, 137 men). The phenomenon of the killing in the name of honor has direct relevance to the illiteracy rate, as these killings are more common in the areas where the literacy rate is lower. According to a report issued by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Jacobabad District ranked first in terms of murder in the name of Karo Kari (66 women, 25 men). Jacobabad district has a literacy rate of 23.66, the least literate district of Sindh after Tharparkar District, and Thatta District. After Jacobabad, the Ghotki District witnessed the highest number of murders in the name of Karo Kari (13 men, 54 women).

After Ghotki, Larkana is the district with the next highest murder rate in the name of Karo Kari (24 men, 38 women). Larkana as well, has a low literacy rate of 34.95. This is lower than even Naushahro Feroze District, Dadu District, and Khairpur District, having 39.14, 35.56 and 35.50 percent literacy rates respectively. These districts of the upper Sindh have low literacy rates but high feudal influence in every walk of life.

Jacobabad, Ghotki and Larkana are those districts of Sindh where not only the illiterate ones, but tribal chieftains are also in large number. According to a report released by the HRCP, the cases of Karo Kari are mostly settled at jirgas, the private and parallel judicial system of Chieftains. However, districts of lower parts of Sindh like Tharparkar, Badin, and Thatta experience nominal occurrences of honor killings because they have lower amount of feudal influence there.[27]

See also

Further reading

References and notes

  1. ^ Haaretz article, February 23, 2007,
  2. ^ Working towards the elimination of crimes against women committed in the name of honour
  3. ^ Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Laws (London): Combating ‘crimes of honor’ through data, documentation, networking and development of strategies, November 15, 2006
  4. ^ Wilkinson, Richard G. 2005. The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier. New York: The New Press.
  5. ^ Sindh Education Department
  6. ^ Sahindal, Fadime. 2001. “Fadime Sahindal’s Speech at the Swedish Parliament.” Fadimes Minnesfond. http://www.fadimesminne.nu/tal_ar_fadime_eng.html. Accessed June 6, 2007. Hellgren, Zenia and Barbara Hobson. 200X. "Intercultural Dialogues in the Good Society: The Case of Honor Killings in Sweden." http://www.gwu.edu/~psc/news/Hobson%20Honor%20Killings%20paper%20June%2006.doc. Accessed June 11, 2007.
  7. ^ Four arrested in Iraq 'honor killing'
  8. ^ Casualties of a different war. Metro Boston (newspaper), 20 Jun 2007. Page 8.
  9. ^ Amnesty International: Broken bodies, shattered minds - Torture and ill-treatment of women, Report, March 6, 2001
  10. ^ Kecia Ali: Honor Killings, Illicit Sex, and Islamic Law, The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project, June 10, 2003
  11. ^ a b IslamOnline.net: Honor Killing from an Islamic Perspective, June 17, 2002 Cite error: The named reference "HKIP" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  12. ^ Islam Online (Atiyyah Saqr): Reprisal in Islamic Legal System, March 30, 2005
  13. ^ Chapter 37. Judgements on Homicide and Hadd-Punishments
  14. ^ http://www.nuradeen.com/Reflections/ElementsOfSufism3.htm
  15. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3828675.stm
  16. ^ http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1244406,00.html
  17. ^ United Nations General Assembly: Template:PDFlink, July 2, 2002
  18. ^ Knesset report on honor killings, June 27th, 2001 (Hebrew)
  19. ^ Rana Husseini: Lower House again rejects cancelling Article 340 of Penal Code, Jordan Times, January 27, 2000
  20. ^ James D. Wilets: Conceptualizing private violence against sexual minorities as gendered violence: an international and comparative law perspective, 60 Albany Law Review 989, 1994
  21. ^ Dan Bilefsky: How to Avoid Honor Killing in Turkey? Honor Suicide, New York Times, July 16, 2006
  22. ^ Taipei Times: Pakistan's honor killings enjoy high-level support, July 24, 2004
  23. ^ Salman Masood: Pakistan Tries to Curb 'Honor Killings', New York Times, October 27, 2004
  24. ^ BBC News: Pakistan rejects pro-women bill, March 2, 2005
  25. ^ Asim Yasin: Pakistan's Senate Approve Women Protection Bill, Ohmy News, November 25, 2006
  26. ^ The Reality of ‘Women Protection Bill’
  27. ^ Sindh Education Department
  28. ^ Malcolm Knox: Historian challenges Palestinian bestseller, Sydney Morning Herald, April 13, 2005

External links

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