Hideously Fated
There is honour in killing. Not merely killing helpless and often dependent human beings, but committing atrocities, wretchedly torturing vulnerable people - women no less - in the determination of the restoration of a family's, or a tribe's, or a community's, or a religion's honour.Surely Islam is not the only religion that permits its adherents to believe that it is incumbent on pious Muslims to exact the discipline of murder on recalcitrant, stubborn, or determined women who insist on exerting their independence. But it is of fundamentalist Islam and its interpretation that we read of honour killings most frequently.
Occurring in countries of the Middle East, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and much further abroad, where pious Muslims originating in those home countries, emigrate to reside in Europe and North America. There too, erupt horrifying incidents of family members exacting revenge on rebellious daughters.
No, it is not Islam alone that encourages believers to this controlling expedient; there are reported incidents from other cultures, other religions.
Where males are complacent in the belief that they may control utterly the life trajectory of their female dependents. And when the daughters, the sisters, the wives, struggle to gain independence, and give honour to their own life-choices this becomes their last act of defiance before meeting untimely death.
What to make of a country for whom honour killings are considered so much a part of the culture, so reflective of social mores, so dedicated to their religion, that it is institutionalized, respected and supported by the social and political elite? It is confounding, at the very least, that in the 21st Century anywhere in cultivated society such atrocities can occur.
Yet a Baluchistan senator, Israr Ullah Zehri, in the government of Pakistan, has asserted publicly, in response to a female opposition senator, Yesmeen Shah's accusation that her government is unconcerned about such killings, that such events represent "our norms", that honour killings are acceptable, and should "not be high-lighted negatively".
Three young women who had decided they would marry men of their own choice were kidnapped, along with two older female relatives by several men from their village, taken to a deserted area where they were beaten and shot. The vehicle in which they were abducted was seen to be bearing provincial government license plates, as reported by the International Federation for Human Rights.
What they proposed to do for themselves was considered a blot on their family honour. One of the men involved in the gruesome killing in which the still-breathing young women were covered with earth and stones to suffocate them, was a brother of Baluchistan's housing minister. A member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party of the people, the party of Benazir Bhutto.
The two older female relatives who were abducted along with the three younger women attempted to protect their young relatives. They tried to stop the brutality. They thus earned themselves a like fate. They too were buried alive. The government has been accused of attempting to shield the event from public knowledge. But a tidal wave of outrage compelled the government to support a Senate resolution condemning the killings.
The Pakistan Peoples Party was prepared to ignore the tragedy. Benazir Bhutto's widower, the corrupt (Mr. 6%) Asif Ali Zardari, who has cast himself as a major candidate in a run for the presidency is actively currying favour in Baluchistan.
Labels: Political Realities, Religion, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 03, 2008
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