generalspeaking

Honour In Murder

There is an indelible truth that some societies traditionally force females to live in utter subjugation to male traditions. That any woman, or girl, who somehow finds the internal resolve to break from that tradition risks physical harm resulting in death. It does not even necessarily equate with a woman struggling to free herself from stifling tradition.

Should any woman give even the barest hint of rejection of male authority, or bringing shame upon society's traditions, or her family, she is in direct and immediate danger of obliteration. A young Muslim girl who refuses to cover her head in the traditional way angers a controlling father. A young woman originally from the Indian subcontinent finds herself in love with a non-Indian and risks the wrath of her family.

A young woman sufficiently indiscreet to hold hands in public with someone her parents don't know, and wouldn't approve of. A young woman who has been raped, bringing dishonour to her family who, instead of comforting her, consider her to be unclean and detest her for bringing dishonour to the family, murder her. A young woman who runs away with a man not from her community is hunted down by her brother, her uncle, her father.

It is only in relieving a woman, or a young girl, of her life, that family honour is restored. That is brutal, fatalistic, existential reality in some societies. Rigid theocracies that incline toward a deeply fundamental misogyny. Where women are considered the property of their fathers, their brothers, uncles, husbands. Where dissent is not countenanced, and innocent liaisons can be interpreted as a uncompromising disorder earning the reward of death.

Violence toward women exists in every society. The simple fact is that women are vulnerable, they haven't the physical strength of a male, and there is no contest when a male authority figure, be it a father or a husband, batters his wife or his daughters for perceived insubordination. Most societies in which familial brutality is commonplace prefer to keep things under wraps. In free and democratic societies, however, attempts are made publicly to protect women from violence.

These attempts are by no means always successful. The incidence of wife battering, of a man murdering his wife, and occasionally his children as well, as a kind of revenge of rejection, are only too well known. But the social culture does not support this, and the law is there for the purpose of protecting women and children. And there is no received tradition of imprisoning women in a culture of enforced modesty and arranged marriages.

Throughout the Muslim world, victimization of women is common, and it is ingrained and it is often socially acceptable as part of tradition, and in some countries the laws of the land and of society enforce it. Only it isn't seen as victimizing women, it is considered to be a way to keep women in their place. Which is to be neither seen nor heard. To know their place as a backdrop to male society.

This type of violence against women who bring shame through perceived culturally inappropriate behaviour occurs in other societies as well, among Indian Sikhs, for example, but it is in Muslim countries in particular that women's lives become forfeit if they flout their countries' and their societies' social mores and flaunt their femininity, or their desires as independent women.

Left-leaning groups in Canada, anxious to appear politically correct, and who accept the concept of moral relativism in societal relations, refuse to equate the physical abuse and murder of women through Muslim societies with "honour killing", claiming that the very phrase is racist in character, and unworthy.

While Muslims who recognize the reality of the phenomenon and reject it as a human tragedy and a humiliation and human rights travesty of their religion, denounce those who would whitewash the violence against women.

"For all these lefties who have formed alliances with Islamists, I accuse them of racism of lower expectations", fumed Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Coalition.

Labels: Particularities/Peculiarities, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 16, 2008