Honour, Violence, Women and Islam

Mohammad Mazher Idriss, Tahir Abbas, Mohammad Mazher Idriss, Tahir Abbas

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415565424
• eBook ISBN: 9781136938108
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

Why are honour killings and honour-related violence (HRV) so important to understand? What do such crimes represent? And how does HRV fit in with Western views and perceptions of Islam? This distinctively comparative collection examines the concept of HRV against women in general and Muslim women in particular. The issue of HRV has become a sensitive subject in many South Asian and Middle Eastern countries and it has received the growing attention of the media, human rights groups and academics around the globe. However, the issue has yet to receive detailed academic study in the United Kingdom, particularly in terms of both legal and sociological research. This collection sets out the theoretical and ethical parameters of the study of HRV in order to address this intellectual vacuum in a socio-legal context. The key objectives of this book are: to construct, and to develop further, a theory of HRV; to rationalise and characterise the different forms of HRV; to investigate the role of religion, race and class in society within this context, in particular, the role of Islam; to scrutinise the role of the civil/criminal law/justice systems in preventing these crimes; and to inform public policy-makers of the potential policies that may be employed in combating HRV.

Chapter 1
Honour, violence, women and Islam – an introduction

Mohammad Mazher Idriss, LLB, LLM, Cert. Ed.
Senior Lecturer in Law

Why are honour killings and honour-related violence (HRV) so important to understand? What do such crimes represent? And how does HRV fitinwith Western views and perceptions of Islam? This book provides a collection of scholarly essays and research papers examining the concept of HRV against women in general and Muslim women in particular. This introduction outlines the main objectives and rationale of this book, and its contributions to both socio-legal understanding and public policy in general.

The issue of HRV has become a sensitive subject in many South Asian and Middle Eastern countries, and it has received the growing attention of the media, human-rights groups and academics around the globe.¹ However, the subject has yet to receive detailed academic study in the United Kingdom, particularly in terms of both legal and sociological research. This collection of essays sets out the theoretical and ethical parameters of a study of HRV in order to address this intellectual vacuum. The key objectives of this book are:

• to further construct, and further develop, a theory of HRV;

• to rationalise and characterise the different forms of HRV;

• to investigate the roles of religion, race and class in society within this context, in particular the role of Islam;

• to scrutinise the role of the civil/criminal law/justice systems in preventing these crimes; and

• to inform public policy-makers of the potential policies that may be employed in combating HRV.

The concept of HRV has emerged in recent years, referring to acts of violence predominantly against women who are perceived to have transgressed a religious-cultural divide, particularly in matters relating to sexuality. Persecution in the name of honour affects many women, South Asian and Middle Eastern women in particular, in communities both in Western Europe and in the sending regions. Incidents of honour violence take place in all social classes, but in less developed South Asian and Middle Eastern communities it is men who are the main perpetrators and young, vulnerable women who are the most likely victims. One explanation for the preponderance of female victims is that men who have breached the honour code are more likely to be able to escape the wrath of the aggrieved family by fleeing to other parts of the country or finding sanctuary with other friends and family. Women, by contrast, have little or no refuge to resort to; their freedom, money and lives are controlled and placed in the hands of men, in deeply rooted patriarchal culture. Another explanation is that women are more frequently blamed for breaching the honour code than men, and to kill a male from another family may create feuds in community structures that regard men as more ‘honourable’ than women.

Many HRV cases go unnoticed by the police and the authorities as they are not reported; offenders therefore often go unpunished.² Incidences of honour killings and HRV in Western Europe have occurred in many social contexts, for example in relation to Turks in Germany and Kurds in Sweden (see in particular Chapter 9 by Åsa Eldén and Chapter 13 by Suruchi Thapar-Björkert in this volume). The patterns of HRV crimes are also remarkably similar. A typical example may involve a young Muslim woman falling in love with a man of another religion/caste/sect, and once the community hears of it, it is felt incumbent on the head patriarch to take action so as to avoid any ‘shame’ being placed on the wider family. In essence, HRV is seen as a mechanism to control female sexuality,³ and in all the instances of HRV one is referring to groups who have arrived in host nations relatively recently and as such are still experiencing early concerns around cultural identity and multiculturalism, labour-market participation, their service needs and the role and impact of their ‘roots back home’. These groups have a strong sense of group identity and loyalty, and in cases where these communities are Muslim, there is extra pressure placed upon young women to remain chaste until marriage, and even then to marry partners that are chosen by members of the wider family, including the head patriarch as well as the head matriarch. When this line is crossed, it is quite possible for men to act to ‘punish’ their wives, daughters or sisters in the most extreme of ways, and such actions are tacitly sanctioned or approved by members of the community, directly or indirectly. These include criminal damage, bodily injury and death.

There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that patterns of honour killings and HRV are on the increase in the United Kingdom. For example, in 2003 Shada Bibi, a young Muslim woman aged 23, was murdered on her wedding day by her cousin, who opposed her marrying her ‘first love’,a Pakistani man from the North. In September 2003 an Iraqi-Kurdish father, Abdalla Yones, cut the throat of his 16-year-old daughter, Heshu, after she embraced Western culture and began dating a young man. And in January 2006 Banaz Mahmod was killed for having a relationship outside marriage. It seems clear that men often kill women on the grounds of their illicit sexual relationships; very rarely are there cases of women killing men on the grounds of a man’s illicit sexual relationship. It is also men who command ‘honour’ – women do not control ‘honour’ in the same manner nor can they require men to adhere to chastity and other similar moral values. However, there are other acts which may ‘dishonour’ a family name, other than illicit relationships. They include:

• women marrying men of their choice, or vice versa;⁴

• women divorcing abusive husbands (e.g. the well-documented case of Samia Sarwar, who was killed in 1999, at the request of her mother, at her lawyer’s office where she was seeking a divorce);

• being raped;⁵ and

• entering into homosexual relationships, whether male or female.

The growing incidence of such crimes in the United Kingdom is illustrated by the fact that the Metropolitan Police Service has investigated over 100 cases of suspected ‘honour killings’ over a period of approximately two years, although it never completed a final survey (see Chapter 15 by Aisha Gill in this volume). The existence of HRV in the United Kingdom might be due to ethnic minority communities, and in particular second generation migrants, finding conflict with the norms and values of the elder generation. Second generation migrants who have become more ‘Westernised’ may provoke the first generation to take physical action in order to ‘remedy’ the perceived shame created by their apparent transgressions. But why is there increased media interest in this phenomenon in Western societies?

Within the global context of Islamophobia, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, many Western societies are preoccupied with barbarism and acts of cruelty carried out in the name of Islam, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7. Furthermore, those in the West yearn for an understanding of concepts such as ‘honour’ and ‘shame’ as a moral code for a way of life for Muslim communities, as well as the impact that this has upon Muslim women. Understandings of complex notions such as patriarchy as well as the socio-legal approaches to combat HRV within Muslim communities are also sought. Consequently, there is now real demand to comprehend the reasons behind the persistence of ‘honour crimes’ in Muslim societies and in Muslim diaspora communities, including the role the legal system has in preventing these crimes.

Unfortunately, it is only when HRV occur in advanced Western European societies that greater notice is taken (and more efforts are made to tackle the issue more directly). The concepts of honour killings and HRV are found in almost all Muslim countries and Muslim-dominated communities. Indeed, in Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey there is considerable evidence of violence against Muslim women in patriarchal societies and social systems that do not sufficiently protect the rights of women.⁶ However, there is also a common (misconceived) understanding that honour crimes occur mainly against Muslim women (and are mainly perpetrated by Muslim males) living in Muslim communities, and that HRV is expressly supported in Islamic scriptures and the Qur’an; this misconceived import is based upon a neo-Orientalist conception that Muslim men are violent, fundamentalist and irrational. However, this misconstrued understanding is supported by the bloodshed witnessed in Pakistan in the name of so-called honour. Not only do we witness vulnerable, isolated women targeted by the accusation of being karo kari (i.e. an adulteress), but men in Pakistan also direct their violence and anger towards other vulnerable minority groups, including Christians and Shias. It will therefore be demonstrated through detailed analysis within the context of Islamic theology that the concept of honour and HRV is not specifically a Muslim phenomenon nor is it limited to Muslim societies; sociologically, the concept of honour affects all societies, classes and religions. The concept of honour can even be said, in one sense, to be practised by Western societies and dominant groups.⁷ It is important to remain aware that the notion of HRV is neither confined to Muslim societies nor to South Asia; rather it should be viewed as an international women’s human-rights issue.⁸ Nevertheless, such acts of violence forced The Muslim Council of Britain in 2004 to issue a statement that honour killings and HRV are against Islamic Law, although they acknowledged that they do exist ‘within a very small section of the British Muslim community’.

This collection of essays aims to assist in the transformation of conventional assumptions about Muslims and their supposed support of HRV, based on an analysis of Islamic scriptural teachings that clearly do not support HRV. Furthermore, the essays provide a very distinctive comparative dimension in relation to HRV, presenting not only an examination of the phenomenon in Muslim and other ethnic communities living in the United Kingdom, but also an examination of the phenomenon in a number of non-Muslim-dominated societies (including Sweden, India and sub-Saharan Africa) as well as in traditionally Muslim-dominated countries (including Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey).⁹ The editors believe that it is vital to show the dynamics of HRV in both Muslim and non-Muslim societies, for it helps to reveal that HRV permeates all religions and social classes, as well as importantly rebutting the assumption that HRV is entirely foreign to Western societies and cultures; it is a ‘world-wide phenomenon’.¹⁰ There is a clear need to understand the dynamics of integration by immigrant and ethnic minority communities, the processes of assimilation and the issues surrounding exclusion within this context; there is also a genuine case for analysis of the difficulties surrounding the transformation of religious and cultural beliefs held by immigrant communities living in Western societies, and of the tensions between respect for cultural and religious diversity on the one hand and the legal-rational organisation of Western civil society on the other.

The editors believe that there is a dearth of research in relation to the phenomenon of HRV and this collection of essays attempts to address some of these issues. Despite many books having been written on this topic (see most recently Thiara and Gill’s (2010) Violence Against Women in South Asian Communities), there is – to the knowledge of the editors – no single text covering the issues of honour, violence, women and Islam from the socio-legal perspective adopted here, written by lawyers, sociologists, criminologists and Islamic theologians. This collection of essays contains the work of nationally and internationally distinguished academics, professionals and practitioners in law, sociology and criminology, as well as human and women’s rights activists. It provides expert analysis on the discussion associated with HRV nationally and internationally and pushes the debate in relation to how government agencies can best begin tackling the problem. Undoubtedly, one of the main books in this area of study is that edited by Welchman and Hossein (2005), Honour: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence against Women. While this is an excellent book to read concerning honour crimes, there is only one chapter in it that deals with the United Kingdom specifically and offers some criticisms about the law. This collection of essays goes much further in its analysis of English law and society, and in proposing reforms in Western societies that could help in the fight against HRV.

Structure of the book

The aim of this collection of essays is to confront the challenges presented by crimes of honour and to present them clearly to those teaching and researching sociology, law and criminology and, in particular, to those with research or practical interests in these fields. Throughout, the significance of legal and social reform on the issues covered will be clearly drawn out. To that end, the role of lawyers, of sentencing and of ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Chapter 1 Honour, violence, women and Islam – an introduction
• Chapter 2 Honour-related violence towards South Asian Muslim women in the UK
• Chapter 3 The silencing of women from the Pakistani Muslim Mirpuri community in violent relationships
• Chapter 4 “There is nothing ‘honourable’ about honour killings”
• Chapter 5 Collective crimes, collective victims
• Chapter 6 Honour and shame in domestic homicide
• Chapter 7 Does the Qur’an condone domestic violence?
• Chapter 8 The construction of ‘honour’ in Indian criminal law
• Chapter 9 Men’s violence and women’s responsibility
• Chapter 10 Lack of due diligence
• Chapter 11 A comparative study of the reform work conducted in Asia and Europe to combat violence and ‘so-called’ honour murders*
• Chapter 12 Ending honour crimes in sub-Saharan Africa
• Chapter 13 Conversations across borders
• Chapter 14 Tackling ‘crimes of honour’
• Chapter 15 Reconfiguring ‘honour’-based violence as a form of gendered violence
• Index