‘Honour’-killing everyone’s concern
Shafia trial proved Canadians can’t turn blind eye to shameful traditions
Guilty. The jury in the Shafia trial returned a verdict on Sunday that most people presumed as soon as the details of the drowning deaths of three sisters and their father’s first wife were made public on June 30, 2009, in Kingston.
Over the 18 months that followed, Canada held honour-killing up to the light and found the recently immigrated Afghans Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their eldest son, Hamed, 21, were guilty as charged of first-degree murder — not a trumped-up piece of tradition called honour-killing. What was on trial here was duplicity, ego-powered face-saving and colossal entitlement. What the jury had to endure were statements and explanations so convoluted and astounding the jurors sometimes rolled their eyes in court. The details headlined behaviours long seen as abhorrent but invariably overlooked as politically correct Canadians bowed to the “it’s not your culture so it’s none of your business” accusation.
The newly appointed United Nations Independent Expert on Cultural Rights, Farida Shaheed of Lahore, Pakistan, rips down the facade of respectability attached to ancient traditions that harm women. “Violence against women is always justified in the name of culture. This is always the excuse. If that was the culture, change it. This is not acceptable,” she says bluntly.
The poisonous root of honourkilling is centuries old, dating to the pre-islamic era called Jahiliyah (the Time of Ignorance before Muhammad) when men were encouraged to bury infant daughters alive to avoid the possibility that they would grow up to dishonour the family. Scholars of Islam say this practice has nothing to do with the Qur’an and that, in fact, the Prophet Muhammad called for an end to burying girls. But honour-killing has burgeoned and sent deadly tentacles into much of Asia, where in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, women are stoned to death for infidelity and in India and Bangladesh, they are burned alive in “sari fires” for being an unsuitable bride. And in the Middle East and elsewhere they are shot, choked to death and bashed over the head with slabs of cement to rid the family of some perceived stain. The way men in tribal cultures such as Afghanistan see it, a man is cast as the sole protector of the female, so he must have total control of her. If his protection is violated, he loses honour because either he failed to protect her or he failed to bring her up correctly.
This obsession with the purity of women has survived the centuries to a greater or lesser extent throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia, as well as in Brazil, where honour-killing is practised by both Christians and Muslims. The good news is that today, a sisterhood of women in groups such as Women Living Under Muslim Laws is banding together, defying the old order, rescuing women and stashing them in safe havens while they lobby for change. Accused of promoting promiscuity and destroying the traditional family, activists who have been shadowboxing with political, cultural and religious forces for the past decade think the oppression of women could be at a turning point. And millions of women are hoping they’re right.
But curiously, those who defend their cultural right to murder their women even in countries that allow it, invariably rely on a coverup, a tapestry of lies and the wailing presumption of innocence. I once interviewed the chief coroner of East Jerusalem, Dr. Jalal Aljabri, who said he hardly ever sees a case in which honour-killing is the official cause of death.
“In our culture, everybody knows but nobody says. I get cases that say the cause of death is a firearm injury. I know inside what really happened but what can I do? I sign the certificate and say, ‘Bye-bye; that’s it.’ ”
And this is indeed the point — a dishonest response to a vile act. If murdering your children is an act of honour — if Shafia further says, “May the devil s--t on their graves,” and claims were they to come back to life 100 times, “I would do the same thing” — how do the keepers of the honour key pretend the death was an accident? If it’s all about family honour, how come it’s a secret?
Invariably, those who defend honour-killing and other harms associated with women and girls are quick to challenge a critic with, “This is our culture, our religion; it’s none of your business.” But when culture and religion are hijacked by political opportunists, when misogyny is passed off as “our way,” when women and girls are denied an education, denied access to health care, exposed to daily rations of violence, then surely it is the obligation of everyone to speak out, to say what is happening here is not cultural, it is criminal. Canadian icon, the late June Callwood, was known for taking the side of the vulnerable, the disenfranchised. Her motto was this: If you see an injustice being committed, you aren’t an observer, you’re a participant. That is the change that’s needed in the lives of girls and women who are controlled by so-called culturally correct men. The participants in their lives, whether they be nextdoor neighbours or UN observers, are beginning to shed the “not my business” mantra and bring the truth to light. In country after country, women are speaking up; their “participant” neighbours, colleagues and international cohorts are echoing their call for justice and change. The days of malignant presumptions about culture are being challenged far and wide, and the human-rights argument is beginning to trump the tribal past.
If there is a legacy for the four innocents — Zainab, 19; Sahar, 17; Geeta, 13; and the woman who died with them, Rona Amir, 52 — let it be the public airing of shameful traditions.