generalspeaking

Honour Killing

They're everywhere, everywhere that primitive tribal traditions of enslaving women to the dictates of males reserve the privilege to 'martyr' their daughters, their wives, their sisters, their mothers to family honour, doing homage to the religion that they worship which appears to demand this code of piety as fitting social behaviour. Women subservient to the wishes of their menfolk. Women assigned their place as bearers of the new generation, discreet sex toys for men, labourers for their families.

Discreet, their presence, sensed rather than seen. A public presence absent. Burqa, headscarf, hijab, veil, headscarf, niqab. In Islam women must be seen to be modest. In Muslim societies women must not be seen unaccompanied. Women must ask permission of their fathers, their husbands, their brothers, to venture out of the home. No part of the female anatomy is to be revealed in the company of men other than family.

To do so is to openly invite not merely censure but stern punishment, including the unwanted attentions of men incapable of disciplining their 'natural' urge. A woman in the company of a male not of her family is seen as a whore. A woman who flaunts her femaleness invites the brutality of sexual violation, and religious courts will hold her guilty of her own defilement. One that renders her as filth, unworthy of a marriage proposal.

But then families tend to migrate. They seek to remove themselves from political and religious strife, to further their economic interests, to take advantage of opportunities to establish elsewhere, in countries that will protect their freedom to speak as they will, socialize as they will, worship as they will, isolate themselves in like communities, as they will. Bringing with them some of their traditional social customs.

Where the liberal democracies which have welcomed them, and encouraged them to honour their heritage and culture and traditions, also make a monumental effort to accept that values may occasionally appear to clash. Whereupon the public is aghast when a Sikh or a Muslim male becomes sufficiently enraged by the perverse behaviour of a daughter, a sister, or a wife in tarnishing the family honour by her demeanor and independence as to deserve death.

Two and a half years ago one such incident in Ottawa, where a family originally from Afghanistan expressed their displeasure at the insult their 20-year-old daughter brought to Islam, dishonouring her family's customs and wishes by partnering with an unsuitable man, and living with him absent of marriage. Now her 23-year-old brother Hasibullah Sadiqi stands before a Canadian court of justice, charged with murder.

He shot his sister Khatera and her fiance, Feroz Mangal, as they sat in a parked car at a mall in the early morning hours. His lawyers are prepared to base their client's defence on the fact that he was provoked to act as he did. His younger sister had brought shame to their family; he had little other choice but to act as he did out of religious conviction. Without seeking their father's permission, his sister engaged herself to a man not approved by her father.

Mr. Sadiqi has lived most of his life in Canada, but according to his lawyers he had developed a "profound attachment" to his heritage. Which tradition shaped his views with respect to the acceptable relationship between men and women, circumscribing his values and his conduct in such a manner as to influence his decision to restore family honour by murdering his sister and her fiance. This is seen as pivotal to his defence.

That, despite having grown to adulthood, having lived his childhood in a country where it is clear that the genders have equal entitlements under the law, this man chose to believe that women should be subservient to men, and to respect his religion's codification of gender relations. His sister obviously took her entitlements as a free agent living in Canada seriously, whereas her brother viewed her behaviour as an insult to Islam and a curse to her family.

Mr. Sadiqi is expected to testify in his own defence. To claim that he loved his sister, planned to give both his sister and her fiance the opportunity to undo the damage they had wrought, recognize the error of their judgement. It would appear they thought otherwise. Even so, he will testify that he had no plan to carry out a final judgement on these religious malefactors. It was merely coincidental that a borrowed gun had been in his car, along with ammunition.

Canadian justice is preparing itself to hear the evidence, and to produce a just response. There is no such thing as relative morality, there is a universal consciousness about taking a life, a universal recognition that to do so is to commit a cardinal offence against both temporal and religious concepts of right and wrong; the ultimate sin against humanity.

There are no extenuating circumstances.

Labels: Canada, Human Relations, Justice, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Friday, May 08, 2009