Series On Islam: "THREE FACES EAST Part 64" - By HJS

Again we change the pace a little and present another matter that now has come much closer to home -- HONOR KILLING. We looked at an honor killing (murder) in Canada in Three Faces East #63. HJS


On June 11, 2007, the Associated Press, London reported the conviction of a Kurdish father for strangling his daughter with a bootlace. She found her arranged marriage abusive.

On March 2, 2005, Der Spiegel International Online reported the honor killing by their families of six Muslim women living in Berlin over a four-month period. They were living like Germans.

Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan and has been reported in Iraq and Iran." (National Geographic News, 2/12/2002)

Click on the links (hyperlinks) above for the full stories.


It seems that every year women are killed by their families for actions on their part that would not be surprising or even noted in the West. If anything, many of the actions would be subjects of love stories in books or movies. This is the West, however, and we have already "been there and done that," learned from it, and left it all behind us. We have learned that life is precious, so precious that it requires a Titanic-sized reason to take it.

In the West, we discovered that each individual is different, even among our own children. Parents have discovered that planning for their children does not always work; some of them march to a different drummer. How many times has a son or daughter whose enviable admission to a medical school was assured announced at the last minute that he or she was more interested in law enforcement or fire safety? How many graduating attorneys who were already nominated for a vice presidency of dad's firm declined that invitation in order to work as a civil rights advocate or public defender?

Whereas in the West the individual is responsible only for himself and his own actions, the East sees things quite differently. In the East, the family gives birth to the individual and thus becomes responsible for that individual from birth to death. In the West, if a person finds his daughter having trysts with the boy next door, he either forces them to marry or tries to keep them apart--case closed. In post-1960 America, some parents seem to have no obligation to do anything about it except keep her supplied with condoms and hopes she makes use of them. In the East, however, the family's honor is at stake and cannot be restored without proper punishment applied. Even if a family might otherwise be lenient for some reason, the daughter is no longer considered marriageable and would be an economic drain on family resources. The usual solution is death by stoning. There is now another alternative. In some places the daughter can restore her honor and her family's honor by volunteering as a homicide bomber.

No matter what the parents or husbands say about the murders, we cannot buy their excuse that it is a matter of religion. The tradition of killing women in the Middle East was in existence long before Islam came along. In Arab families, innocent female babies were slaughtered simply because of the possibility that someday they might bring dishonor to the family. Three years ago in Pakistan a father had his older daughter stoned to death for running away with her boyfriend. The father, whose honor was now restored with that daughter's death, then stabbed his younger daughter to death because he did not want her to ever stain his honor as her sister did.

Whenever the family or village takes such action against a female, sometimes there is no record of the event. The family can also erase the name from family records. The infant, girl, or woman killed then seems never to have existed. If authorities do discover the killing, bribes often can solve the problem. When bribes do not solve the problem, as in some countries, the father or brother, whoever was responsible, may serve only six months in jail. Even though Islam talks about the importance and the reverence of its women, it has not been able to keep its men from owning their women and disposing of them whenever a problem occurs.

The late Dr. Ralph Patai, cultural anthropologist, in his book The Arab Mind, notes that "While honor in its non-sexual, general connotation is termed 'sharaf', the specific kind of honor that is connected with women and depends on their proper conduct is called 'ird'. Sharaf is something flexible: depending on a man's behavior, way of talking and acting, his sharaf can be acquired, augmented, diminished, lost, regained, and so on. In contrast, ird is a rigid concept: every woman has her ascribed ird; she is born with it and grows up with it; she cannot augment it because it is something absolute; but it is her duty to preserve it. A sexual offense on her part, however slight, causes her ird to be lost, and it can never be regained." Even if a woman is attacked and raped, in many circles her ird has been lost and can never be regained. The woman would be killed.

"A man can diminish or lose his sharaf by showing a
lack of bravery or courage, or by lack of hospitality or generosity."

However, he himself would be dishonored, but his dishonor would not be shared by others of the family. A woman's loss of ird, however, would destroy the sharaf of all of the men in her family. One can see that the core of sharaf is the protection of the ird of one's female family members. That protection is the obligation of her own family, not her husband. If a woman cheats on her husband, for example, it is the duty of her own family to put her to death because their honor was besmirched, not the husband's. Under the school of thought of the Bedouin, allowing the husband to put their daughter (his wife) to death would give too much power to an outsider, weakening the family's control of its members.

Remember, the family of the Bedouin is a team. When the tribe is on the move, the several families make up a much bigger team. When each cooperates, the tribe has its honor intact. One female who is out of line affects the team, and a team without honor affects the tribe. A tribe without honor can be attacked and the men killed by a larger tribe or a coalition of smaller ones. Therefore, to restore honor to the family and to the tribe, it is a necessity that any woman out of line be killed as quickly as possible. It is the basis of the tradition that still exists today.

Whenever a Western state welcomes immigrants from the Middle East, it is incumbent on state officials to know what they are doing. The Middle East immigrants are mostly Muslims. Muslims have their own ideas of how things should be, how states should be run, and how people should act with one another. Normally, all of those Eastern ideas conflict with ours in the West. It does not take a brain surgeon to know that bringing together hundreds of thousands or millions of people into a country with serious culture and religious differences is asking for serious trouble--as some have already discovered. Of course, there are always those who discover nothing that conflicts with their own agenda or their adopted doctrine. Those agents of the state must be replaced with honest, knowledgeable administrators. Nonetheless, agents of the state must know the culture and the religion of each substantial group in that state, especially the newcomers and the states with whom they are in conflict. One would justifiably believe that any state welcoming new visitors with a culture and religion distinctly different or even inimical to those already in the state would be equipped in advance to solve the various problems which for the most part are predictable in those situations. Melanie Phillips, Bruce Bawer, Bat Ye'or, and Oriana Fallaci all condemned European states and the UK for their ignorance and denial with respect to their inability to solve problems between their immigrants and their citizens and between the immigrants and the law. These recurring problems still remain unsolved.

It is also necessary for the people in each state that welcomes immigrants or is in conflict with states with inimical cultures or religions to know something about the culture and religion of the other states and not rely on rumors or sound bites from others who do not know. Learning should be a womb-to-tomb activity. In this information age of ours, what you do not know can ruin your plans, your economic well-being, and your health. It is not too late to learn something new every day. What you learn today, may turn out to be important to you tomorrow.

HJS