On February 12, 2009, the world awoke to the brutal murder of 37-year-old Aasiya Zubair Hassan, whose body was found beheaded and decapitated at the Bridges Network Inc. Television station, the American–Muslim TV venture located in the village of Orchard Park. She had been killed in an apparent “honor killing” at the station she owned with her estranged husband, only six days after she had filed for divorce on February 6, 2009. Aasiya had obtained an order of protection barring her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, from their Orchard Park home, according to her lawyer, Corey Hogan. The couple had launched their station in 2004 in an effort to counter images of Muslims as violent and extremist. According to the report, the Hassan family had been struggling with Muzzammil’s abuse long before the alleged murder took place. Muzzammil would coerce Aasiya into their bedroom, push her down on the bed, sit on her chest, and pin her arms and legs down. These violent acts had been reported by Aasiya in 2007 along with other, previous incidences of gender-based violence, but the couple reconciled afterward. This time, Muzzammil was arrested, convicted of murder, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, leaving their four children without parents (Normani, 2009; Sheridan, 2011). In another incident, a 33-year-old American woman, Mariya Taher, recalls how she was forced to undergo of gender based violence, female genital cutting at the age of 7 during a holiday visit with her parents to Mumbai, India. She described how she was taken to an “old looking building,” where her dress was lifted and her private parts were cut (Bryant, 2016). These two accounts demonstrate how vulnerable immigrants are to gender-based violence.
Violence is not only a perennial problem, it is also a universal challenge the world over. Studies indicate that modern society is the most violent in all of human history. The twentieth century in particular is considered to be the most violent, with an estimated 191 million people losing their lives directly or indirectly as a result of conflict (World Health Organization (WHO), 2002b). According to the WHO (2002a), violence causes more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year and is the leading cause of death for people ages 15–44, with women being the most seriously affected (Krug, Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, and Lozano, 2002; WHO, 2002a). The roots of violence are found not only in the socialization process but also in humans’ tendencies towards desire to exert power over one another. Violence can be simply defined as:
“the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person or a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development or deprivation.”
(WHO, 2002a)
Violence is a serious concern in modern society. As a general problem, violence is individual and collective. It is experienced in acts of wars; negligence; interpersonal acts such as sex, street, and hate crimes; abuse of children, the elderly, and the disabled persons. Intimate partner violence, otherwise known as domestic violence is the most prevalent. Even violence includes acts of coercion. It is indiscriminative as it transcends gender, age, individual, family, community, culture, ethnicity, country, region, and even religion – and it sometimes finds legitimacy in culture and religion. It is the main concern of this book to highlight how prevalent gender-based violence is as well as how this violence intersects with immigration, religion, and human rights. The objective is to argue for a more comprehensive interrogation of gender-based violence in the social matrices that inform it and as these relate to social structures of power.
To grasp gender-based violence fully, the complex and interrelated social factors that design violent attitudes and behavior must be interrogated. Not only is viciousness of violence in our society enabled by the inadequate approach to this problem, but the legitimization of violence by cultural and especially religious values also makes it more difficult to challenge attitudes and behavior that promote it. As modern society emphasizes values of democracy and human rights and moves to recognize multiculturalism and group rights, the complex social dynamics that inform violence must be underscored. Effective analysis and resolution of social violence must begin with a recognition of the reality that informs socially constructed behavior. The complex discourse surrounding gender-based violence reflect the difficulty of ignoring values such as human rights and multiculturalism, as these have significant consequences for real life experiences. The implication of the intersection of social realities is a legitimate and long-standing area of academic inquiry and dialogue to which this book makes a contribution. As the matrices and the web that serve as enablers and triggers of violence are identified and addressed, the root causes of violence are clarified. This book draws on the expertise of scholars from various disciplines, including religious studies, sociology, social work, and English, to highlight the intersection of not only gender-based violence but also multidisciplinary approaches to engaging social issues such as gender-based violence. It is argued that, while discourses in human rights, immigration, and social conflict, often based on the approach of a single discipline, have been rich in examining social issues, on their own they offer an inadequate approach and solutions are needed to understand and respond to social concerns such as violence that immigration. Instead of drawing on one of these frameworks in its entirety, this book describes the possibilities and limitations of utilizing interdisciplinary and intersectional frameworks to analyze religion, immigration, gender-based violence, and human rights.
To understand the intersection between violence, immigration, religious values, and human rights, it is argued, theoretical approaches must demonstrate the complex social situations that inform cultural occurrences. Recognizing the complex reality of social phenomenon is vital for adequate social analysis and policy development and enactment. In the book, we draw specifically on theories about immigration, gender, sexuality, religion, and human rights. Most works draw on intersectionality as an approach in the recognition of the complex reality that informs social behavior. Intersectionality as an approach is premised on the understanding that people’s lives are defined by multiple layered identities which derive from social relations, histories, cultures, and other operations of structures of power. Intersectionality has been described as an indispensable methodology for the development and promotion of human rights. As an analytical tool, intersectionality helps one to understand and to respond to the way in which social issues intersect with other identities, and how such intersections contribute to unique experiences of oppression and privilege (AWID, 2004). It aims at revealing multiple identities to expose the different types of discrimination and disadvantages that occur as a consequence of the combination of identities. In this way, it addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, classism, and other social systems of discrimination operate to create social inequalities. Its breadth lies in the fact that it takes into account historical, social, and political contexts to demonstrate how some individuals or religious communities are pushed to the margins or discriminated against as a result of the multiple identities they possess.
Thinkers such as Kimberlé Crenshaw have articulated how intersectionality works. A legal scholar who specializes in understanding intersections between social factors such as race and gender in the legal system, Crenshaw is known for coining the term intersectionality in her attempt to challenge the use of identity categories without locating them in contextual realities that inform them (1989: 139–167). She argues for intersectional analysis as a tool that recognizes how the complexities of identity produce competing political alliances and allegiances. She explains:
Recognizing that identity politics takes place at the site where categories intersect thus seems more fruitful than challenging the possibility of talking about categories at all. Through an awareness of intersectionality, we can better acknowledge and ground the differences among us and negotiate the means by which these differences will find expression in constructing group politics.
(Crenshaw, 1991: 1299)
To Crenshaw, any legal reform that does not incorporate intersectional feminist analysis fails to ensure the unique needs of diverse minority community members that are centered in any discourse. Similarly, Alison Kafer has argued for an intersectional approach that highlights how terms such as “defective,” “deviant,” and “sick” have been used to justify discrimination against people whose bodies, minds, desires, and practices differ from the norm (Kafer, 2013: 17).
As a theoretical paradigm, intersectionality enables one to understand how oppression, privilege, and human rights intersect locally and globally. By using intersectionality, one is required to think differently about identity, equality, and power. By acknowledging the complex dynamic processes and social structures that define human relations, an intersectional approach deconstructs how thought processes such as identity and power and opportunities are accessed. As members of more than one community at the same time, people can simultaneously experience both oppression and privilege. For instance, a woman may be a respected medical professional yet suffer domestic violence at home. Intersectionality is therefore not just a tool for analysis; it is also an advocacy tool that helps one to understand how different sets of identities impact access to human rights and opportunities. Drawing on interdisciplinary and intersectionality as a framework of analysis, this book explores broader cultural sensibilities reflected in and perpetuated by experiences of immigration, religion, gender-based violence, and values embedded in human rights. The interdisciplinary and intersectionality methods offer a political commitment to equality. The sharing of this political commitment in a book such as this is not only an acknowledgement of the reality of interconnectedness, interrelatedness, and interdependency of social experience and behavior, but also of academic disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences. It is also a rejection of a single straight-jacketed approach that barely addresses issues of violence and immigration. Other theories under consideration in the book include social theories of immigration such as the “melting pot” theory, the salad bowl theory (pluralism), and assimilation theories that highlight the challenges of social integration. Human rights theories such as moral universalism and cultural relativism have also been considered to highlight questions of agency and respect for diverse cultures. These have been engaged with as various aspects of the discourse are articulated in relation to other aspects.
Gender-based violence
Gender-based violence refers to repeated or habitual patterns of behavior resulting in the infliction of physical injury by one family or household member on another. According to available statistics, 35% of women worldwide have experienced violence in their lifetime, an equivalent of one in every three women (WHO, 2017). Some national studies show that up to 70% of women have experienced physical or sexual violence in an intimate relationship (UN Women, n.d.; UN Women Palestine, n.d.). Statistics also indicate that of all the women killed in 2012, almost half were killed by intimate partners or family members (Domonoske, 2017; UNDOC, 2018). Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by intimate male partners (WHO, 2017). A study based on interviews with 42,000 women across the 28-member states of the European Union revealed that only 14% of women reported their most serious incident of violence to the police (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014). According to the UN, in the majority of cases, less than 40% of women who experienced violence sought help of any sort (UN the World’s Women, 2015). In the United States, approximately 1.5 million women are raped and/or physically assaulted by intimate partners annually (Tjaden and Thoennes, 2000). While the prevalence in Europe and the United States is slightly lower due to higher standards of living among women in these countries, the prevalence rate in developing countries in Africa, the Mediterranean region, and Southeast Asia region is significant, ranging between 37% and 38% (WHO, 2017). Often, this violence is physical, sexual, or both. One in every ten girls under the age of 18 has been forced to have sex (UN Report, 2015). The United Nations acknowledges that women across the world are subjected to physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence. In 2006, ex-Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan acknowledged that violence against women and girls was “a problem of pandemic proportions” (UN News, 2006; UNIFEM, 2006: 9). In 2010, the Bureau of Justice reported that 25% of women had experienced domestic violence and that 6 million children witness domestic violence annually. This fact is affirmed by studies that show that 20% to over 30% of women experience intimate violence in their lifetime (WHO, 2017).
In the United States, the cost of violence has been estimated at about $300 billion per year. The cost to victims is estimated at more than $500 billion per year. Combined, the cost is nearly 10% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (WHO, 2004). In 1996, the World Health Assembly declared that “violence is a leading world public health problem” (World Health Assembly, 1996: 20–25). Gender Based Violence can lead to long-term physical, mental, and emotional health problems such as hemorrhage, infertility, complications during childbirth, and the risk of sexually transmitted infections like HIV, with death being reported in the most extreme cases. According to the WHO, women exposed to intimate partner violence are likely to suffer from mental health issues, sexual and reproductive issues, and serious injury that can lead to death. These women are twice as likely to experience depression and to have alcohol use disorders, 16% more likely to have a low birth-weight baby, and one and half times more likely to acquire sexually transmitted diseases like HIV, syphilis, chlamydia, or gonorrhea. Forty-two percent of these women have experienced injuries as a result and 38% of them have ended up dead (WHO, 2017). Intimate and culturally legitimate violence can be the most fatal and difficult to contain because, more often than not, cases of violence go unreported.
Immigration
Human migration is a historical reality dating back to the movement of homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about 1.75 million years ago. An ancient and natural human response to survival, migration is a response to hunger, deprivation, persecution, war, or natural disaster. About 3% of the world’s population has migrated across international borders, with over 258 million people worldwide migrating for protection and employment (UN DESAS, 2017). About 65 million of these migrants are refugees who have been forced from their homes due to war, persecution, hunger, crime, and natural disasters. At this moment in time, many more people are expected to leave their homelands, a reality that is very current in the news media. This movement by people from one place to another with the intention of settling temporarily or permanently in the new location is known as immigration and can be voluntary or involuntary. As indicated above, immigration is triggered by many factors ranging from climate change, landscape, and food supply, as for early humans, to labor, refugee status, and urbanization of the modern industrialized world (Manning, 2004). Migration is a natural response to hunger, deprivation, persecution, war, or natural disaster. A migrant is any person who lives temporarily or permanently in a country where he or she was not born. Migrants often leave their countries in search of a decent living for various reasons. Often, they move in search of jobs, opportunities, education, and quality of life. In modern society, the reality of the world’s increasing interconnectedness has made international migration easy as transport and thus moving around the globe has become cheaper, faster, and easier.
While globalization has encouraged the free movement of goods, services, and capital, thus intensifying immigration processes, it should be remembered that this is a natural process that has changed with time. W...
