Nawar Fakhry Ezzi
It seems like the "sin" of bringing "shame" to one’s family has become a "legitimate" reason for killing women around the world. The recent murder of Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media celebrity, by her brother made international headlines shedding light on the so-called "honor killing" in Pakistan and around the world. It does not matter what she did or did not do, but rather that she was one of the estimated 1,000 Pakistanis and 5,000 people, mostly women, around the world who are murdered in cold blood by their own relatives in the name of so-called "honor killing".
As much as some Muslims would like to find this barbaric act supported in Islam, there is no such code in the Islamic tradition. However, killing one’s female relatives for acting in a way that would dishonor her family can be traced back to 6,000 BCE in the Assyrian law codes and in the codes of Hammurabi. Moreover, ancient Romans and ancient desert tribes practiced this heinous crime and sadly it reemerged by infecting many people’s understanding of Islamic values and morality. Although it is more common now among Muslim communities and countries, it can still be found across the world and among people from different religious traditions facilitated in some countries by lenient laws, which provide lighter sentencing for so-called "honor killings" or "crimes of passion" as some countries in Latin America call it.
To understand "honor killing" in relation to Islam, it is important to note that it is usually done to "wash the shame" that had befallen the family. It is interesting to note though that there is no such thing as "shame" in Islam. On the contrary, we find in the Holy Qur'an that “no bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another”, which was repeatedly mentioned in different contexts. As a matter of fact, the Arabic words that refer to honor, "sharaf" and "ird" are pre-Islamic terms that were never mentioned in the Holy Qur'an in reference to women. Linguistically, "sharaf" indicates pride and dignity while "ird" means one’s body, self, one’s paternal and maternal descent, or what people are praised or slandered by.
Since Arabs considered their female relatives as their property, they were the main "objects" that defined a family’s honor, which means that in case of being defiled in any way, they should be "confiscated" in order to purify their family’s name from such shame. Shame was such a strong factor in the Arab culture that one of the reasons Arabs before Islam used to bury their daughters alive was out of a paranoid fear of the shame that she would bring to them if a war erupted and she was taken into slavery.
As a result of the absence of the concept of "shame" in Islam, every family has its own definition of shame according to its community or tribe, which could range from talking to a stranger to eloping with a lover or even to getting raped. Indeed, getting raped constituted a "shame" that a woman deserved to be killed for! What is even worse is that in some Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, getting pregnant as a result of being raped does not constitute a "legitimate" reason for abortion. In other countries, in an attempt to reduce so-called "honor killings" as a result of rape, the government would offer to drop the charges against the rapist if he agreed to marry the victim! Not enough words can express the outrageousness of these actions and laws, but to say: “Then your hearts hardened after that, so that they were like rocks, rather worse in hardness and surely there are some rocks from which streams burst forth.” (Holy Qur'an, 2:74)
According to Anita Weiss, a professor at the University of Oregon who wrote several books about women’s rights in Pakistan, "honor killing" is “about controlling a woman’s mobility and controlling her actions”. She compares "honor killing" to the daily murder of women in the United States by their intimate partners arguing that so-called "honor killing" is essentially a form of domestic violence which occurs all over the world. The problem is that it should be treated this way by the international community and local governments because murder and violence have nothing to do with "cultural relativism" and cannot be part of any religious teachings.
As Muslims, we always take great pride in the rights Islam gave women 1,400 years ago when the rest of the world did not even consider it an issue. The first right Islam gave women was the right to live by prohibiting burying girls alive. As centuries passed, the deeply rooted patriarchal tribal values managed to infiltrate our understanding of the very religion that attempted to diminish them. People managed to find other ways to bury women alive through preventing them from leaving their houses, depriving them of education, controlling their every action by appointing themselves as their guardians, and sometimes even by killing them outright in the name of "honor", which they know nothing about. The day will come though “when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked. For what sin she was killed.” (Holy Qur'an, 81:8-9) Until then we shall fight and seek justice until we get our right to live again.
— The writer can be reached at nawar81@hotmail.com
