| Honor killings target spouses suspected of infidelity or even being the victims of sexual assault. Young women sometimes can be victimized if they are seen as embracing outside cultures.
Yasser Abdel Said: Suspected of hiding in his native Egypt. Will Egyptian authorities extradict him to face trial if a vocal clique of US Muslims and secular feminists imply prosecuting crimes like his serve the purposes of religious persecution?
Salaam writes: Muslimah Media Watch has several posts up right now that support the position that the term 'honor killing' is a slur of religious persecution - a position I oppose. Follow the link for a better understanding of that point of view.
The protesters are correct in asserting that public education is needed that honor killing is nowhere sanctioned in the deen. But the protesters favor an abstract feminist intellectual construct of domestic violence (systematic power and control by men), thereby obscuring and ignoring the fact that these killings are ignited at the cultural nexus of religion and male control of women's bodies, ie, religious men's fanatical concern with female modesty, imparted to them from the strident conservative modality of Islam.
In fact, I see the non-Muslim feminists position here as particularly unsavory: They come with an agenda, essentially using the case as a platform to promote their generic complaint about gender-based violence in the larger society, thereby leaving the motivations of Aqsa Parvez's killers unaddressed, thereby pulling the blanket over social dynamics in the Muslim community that will lead to other honor killings.
One girl who went to school with the Said sisters wrote this at Raquel Evita Saraswati's blog:
Amina was my best friend when we were in 7th grade and her and her sister's murder hit all of us here very hard. I was so dissappointed and hurt that some people expressed no sympathy what so ever. They felt that the girls got what they 'deserve' for having boyfriends. No one deserves to be shot and left to bleed to death by their own father.
Clearly, a problem continues to exist specifically among some in the Muslim community and that group needs to challenged and educated. Ignoring them and making the victims of honor killings invisible in a sea of undifferentiated domestic violence is anti-feminist and anti-Islam in dangerous, deeply irresponsible ways.
From the National Post of Canada:
It is the grizzled face on a Wanted poster that usually catches the eye, but as the FBI realized late last month, the words matter, too.
In its initial poster seeking fugitive Texas cab driver Yasser Abdel Said -- sought for the double homicide of his teenaged daughters -- the bureau said he disapproved of their dating non-Muslim boys, and stated that they were murdered "due to an 'Honour Killing.' "
Although family members speculated that the father's Islamic beliefs motivated the crime, the use of the phrase "honour killing" incensed the local Muslim-American community, which argued that the accused's religion should not be linked to the double homicide, which left his two daughters dead in the back of his taxi.
After a public outcry, the FBI struck the offending words three weeks ago.
A Bureau spokesman explained that unlike a hate crime, there is no legal definition of an honour killing. "It's not our job to label this case anything other than what it is, what it is from a criminal perspective," he said, apologizing that the writer did not see "the misunderstanding" the wording would create.
The girls' great aunt, however, was not satisfied. "Everyone knows this is an honour killing," she told Foxnews.com. "But even our law enforcement and the FBI succumb to the pressure?"
Whether these kinds of crimes take place in Texas, Europe or even in Mississauga -- where the father and brother of teenager Aqsa Parvez, 16, will soon appear in court charged with killing her last December -- the term itself is already on trial, a topic that speaks to the extreme hair-trigger sensitivities of multicultural balance.
Just this week in Toronto, advocates from a range of feminist, domestic violence and race-relations groups held a news conference to denounce media reports that categorized the murder of Aqsa as an honour killing.
Critics argue that the term is inherently racist and distracts the conversation from the main issue: domestic violence. But others argue that gagging the discussion by making this topic off limits is counterproductive, undermining a community's ability to acknowledge this particular abuse and eradicate it. The debate raises questions about whether any consideration of what motivates crimes like this is unfair and even culturally biased, or whether, instead, it is critical to gaining an understanding of motive.
Honour killing is the phrase used to describe a crime committed by male family members who feel that their spouses, daughters or even sisters have brought shame to a home. It typically targets spouses suspected of infidelity or even being the victims of sexual assault. Young women sometimes can be victimized if they are seen as embracing outside cultures.
Story here. |
