The Muslims' Honor Killings

Adam's Apple · Jul 6, 2006

These honor killings--done in the name of religion--make about as much sense as the belief that a warrior for Allah is going to be rewarded in heaven with 72 virgins "ever ready".

In the Name of honor
By Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review
July 1, 2006

Samaira Nazir was brutally and needlessly murdered. The 25-year-old in Southall, England, was killed in April of last year by her 30-year-old businessman brother -- all in the name of "honor." He stabbed her, cutting her throat in front of his young children, ages 2 and 4.

Samaira had turned down family arrangements for marriage and ultimately fell for another man, an Afghan her family said was from the wrong -- lower -- caste. As a prosecutor put it, "It would appear she lost her life for loving the wrong man."

for full article:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathrynJeanLopez/2006/07/01/in_the_name_of-honor Scroll down until you come to her column.

ekrem · Jul 6, 2006

In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say.

"In countries where Islam is practiced, they're called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable," said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The practice, she said, "goes across cultures and across religions."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_honorkilling.html

Is Muslim woman overvalued as a Indian woman or Latin American woman?

Adam's Apple · Jul 7, 2006

canavar said:

The practice, she said, "goes across cultures and across religions."
Click to expand...

Interesting article, Canavar. But I would question the truthfulness of the above statement. In America men frequently kill their wives, and sometimes women kill their husbands, but these are not honor killings done in the name of religion. More likely, thinking of each as "personal property" enters into the picture here.

ekrem · Jul 14, 2006

Adam's Apple said:

Interesting article, Canavar. But I would question the truthfulness of the above statement. In America men frequently kill their wives, and sometimes women kill their husbands, but these are not honor killings done in the name of religion. More likely, thinking of each as "personal property" enters into the picture here.
Click to expand...

Sorry but i do not agree.
IN which part i do not agree is that this is a Muslim practice.

It has something to do with century-long rural practices. The philosophy that a woman when she does this or that (subjective assessed by her family) brings dishonor and disgrace to the family.

In this tribal/rural philosophy there isn't even sisterhood or "woman solidarity" by for example sister to sister or mother to daughter as for example these Mothers or sisters are raised by the same rural Honor-concept as men.
Whilst some women are killed for bringing shame on her family with extra-marital sex, or also being raped even a women who is the subject of rumors or speculations can also become a victim.
This is a war against an army of ignorant people with tribal and rural belives.
And the bad thing is, that the statistics are somewhat misleading as there are many girls who do suicide.
These woman live in an environment where they are compeled and have no option besides than suicide.
Mainly in this rural families the youngest son is chosen as the murder of her sister. So many Sister's in avoidance of her younger brother going to jail make suicide not lkeaving the task for her younger brother.

This is a sistematic reducing woman to objects. Granting them no education by their families, locking them in houses and rooms and give her pecise behaving-codexes.
Gender equality needs to be taught to both sexis from a very early age. Children usually copy what their mothers and fathers are teaching them.

Before tribal and rural men do not understand that mistreating woman is an error nothing will change. And religion has nothing to do with this.
There are states where judiciary parctices in favor of the commiter and not the victim. In such states this concept has to be changed in favour of the victim. And most women do not even kno what rights they have as they are jailed by their families. Deepest tribalism. So they are ignorant about their legal rights putting family codexes as non-plus-ultra.

There is no doubt Turks are going to find out soon, in the process that we are about to embark on, just how complex European Union mechanisms are. Turkey itself, though, is just as complex, and this is what the European side is going to learn for its part. There are very serious problems in this country that will require both sides working together in order to solve them.

A survey conducted by the Department of Psychiatry at Dicle University, i.e. Tigris University, of 430 participants from across the Southeast showed that 37 of those surveyed support the idea of �honor killings.�

This is where the young girl, and sometimes her �lover,� is killed for �befouling herself� and leaving the family in disgrace. The killing is often agreed on at a family meeting with the participation of the mother and the job is often given to the youngest son because their age is considered to be more convenient in relation to the lesser criminal sentences they will receive.

It is interesting to note that 78 percent of the participants in the survey were men � and only 22 percent were women. Whether this is due to a problem in methodology; the reluctance of women to be surveyed or women being prevented by the men from participating is unclear.

There are no grounds for jumping to any fast and convenient conclusions here, of course, but it is important to note that the Southeast is predominantly Kurdish and that �honor killings� are seen mostly, if not exclusively, in that part of the country.

Put another way, there are very serious social problems in the Southeast that result from ignorance, backwardness, poverty and dispossession. By one account there are about 20,000 homeless children on the streets of Diyarbakir.

These are massive problems that will need ideas, projects, political will, and, of course, money to overcome. Turkey and the EU will inevitably be confronted with this reality during the negotiation process.

The missing link in all this, however, is the Kurdish side. The side represented by politicians such as Leyla Zana, Serafettin Elci and Abdulmelik Firat. There is a lot of talk about �language rights� and �cultural rights� by these politicians and much of it is justified.

But one hears very little said by them about topics such as �honor killings,� the problem of street children in Diyarbakir or the general squalor and poverty of people in the region. What they say points to more of a political agenda than a social one.
Click to expand...

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=26317

In North-Iraq situation is even darkener. And you wouldn't call Kurds in Iraq "Islam-Practicers" or would you as they are till now yet your allies. Be honest.

dilloduck · Jul 14, 2006

canavar said:

Sorry but i do not agree.
IN which part i do not agree is that this is a Muslim practice.

It has something to do with century-long rural practices. The philosophy that a woman when she does this or that (subjective assessed by her family) brings dishonor and disgrace to the family.

In this tribal/rural philosophy there isn't even sisterhood or "woman solidarity" by for example sister to sister or mother to daughter as for example these Mothers or sisters are raised by the same rural Honor-concept as men.
Whilst some women are killed for bringing shame on her family with extra-marital sex, or also being raped even a women who is the subject of rumors or speculations can also become a victim.
This is a war against an army of ignorant people with tribal and rural belives.
And the bad thing is, that the statistics are somewhat misleading as there are many girls who do suicide.
These woman live in an environment where they are compeled and have no option besides than suicide.
Mainly in this rural families the youngest son is chosen as the murder of her sister. So many Sister's in avoidance of her younger brother going to jail make suicide not lkeaving the task for her younger brother.

This is a sistematic reducing woman to objects. Granting them no education by their families, locking them in houses and rooms and give her pecise behaving-codexes.
Gender equality needs to be taught to both sexis from a very early age. Children usually copy what their mothers and fathers are teaching them.

Before tribal and rural men do not understand that mistreating woman is an error nothing will change. And religion has nothing to do with this.
There are states where judiciary parctices in favor of the commiter and not the victim. In such states this concept has to be changed in favour of the victim. And most women do not even kno what rights they have as they are jailed by their families. Deepest tribalism. So they are ignorant about their legal rights putting family codexes as non-plus-ultra.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=26317

In North-Iraq situation is even darkener. And you wouldn't call Kurds in Iraq "Islam-Practicers" or would you as they are till now yet your allies. Be honest.
Click to expand...

Hmmm--Imagine American feminazis going global.

Annie · Jul 16, 2006

canavar said:

Sorry but i do not agree.
IN which part i do not agree is that this is a Muslim practice.

It has something to do with century-long rural practices. The philosophy that a woman when she does this or that (subjective assessed by her family) brings dishonor and disgrace to the family.

In this tribal/rural philosophy there isn't even sisterhood or "woman solidarity" by for example sister to sister or mother to daughter as for example these Mothers or sisters are raised by the same rural Honor-concept as men.
Whilst some women are killed for bringing shame on her family with extra-marital sex, or also being raped even a women who is the subject of rumors or speculations can also become a victim.
This is a war against an army of ignorant people with tribal and rural belives.
And the bad thing is, that the statistics are somewhat misleading as there are many girls who do suicide.
These woman live in an environment where they are compeled and have no option besides than suicide.
Mainly in this rural families the youngest son is chosen as the murder of her sister. So many Sister's in avoidance of her younger brother going to jail make suicide not lkeaving the task for her younger brother.

This is a sistematic reducing woman to objects. Granting them no education by their families, locking them in houses and rooms and give her pecise behaving-codexes.
Gender equality needs to be taught to both sexis from a very early age. Children usually copy what their mothers and fathers are teaching them.

Before tribal and rural men do not understand that mistreating woman is an error nothing will change. And religion has nothing to do with this.
There are states where judiciary parctices in favor of the commiter and not the victim. In such states this concept has to be changed in favour of the victim. And most women do not even kno what rights they have as they are jailed by their families. Deepest tribalism. So they are ignorant about their legal rights putting family codexes as non-plus-ultra.
Click to expand...

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=26317

In North-Iraq situation is even darkener. And you wouldn't call Kurds in Iraq "Islam-Practicers" or would you as they are till now yet your allies. Be honest.
Click to expand...

argue with the NY Times, everyone does, they are addressing the killings regarding Islamic Turkey:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/europe/16turkey.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

July 16, 2006
How to Avoid Honor Killing in Turkey? Honor Suicide
By DAN BILEFSKY

BATMAN, Turkey For Derya, a waiflike girl of 17, the order to kill herself came from an uncle and was delivered in a text message to her cellphone. You have blackened our name, it read. Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first.

Derya said her crime was to fall for a boy she had met at school last spring. She knew the risks: her aunt had been killed by her grandfather for seeing a boy. But after being cloistered and veiled for most of her life, she said, she felt free for the first time and wanted to express her independence.

When news of the love affair spread to her family, she said, her mother warned her that her father would kill her. But she refused to listen. Then came the threatening text messages, sent by her brothers and uncles, sometimes 15 a day. Derya said they were the equivalent of a death sentence.

Consumed by shame and fearing for her life, she said, she decided to carry out her familys wishes. First, she said, she jumped into the Tigris River, but she survived. Next she tried hanging herself, but an uncle cut her down. Then she slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife.

My family attacked my personality, and I felt I had committed the biggest sin in the world, she said recently from a womens shelter where she had traded in her veil for a T-shirt and jeans. She declined to give her last name for fear that her family was still hunting her. I felt I had no right to dishonor my family, that I have no right to be alive. So I decided to respect my familys desire and to die.

Every few weeks in Batman and the surrounding area in southeast Anatolia, which is poor, rural and deeply influenced by conservative Islam, a young woman tries to take her life. Others have been stoned to death, strangled, shot or buried alive. Their offenses ranged from stealing a glance at a boy to wearing a short skirt, wanting to go to the movies, being raped by a stranger or relative or having consensual sex.

Hoping to join the European Union, Turkey has tightened the punishment for attacks on women and girls who have had such experiences. But the violence has continued, if by different means: parents are trying to spare their sons from the harsh punishments associated with killing their sisters by pressing the daughters to take their own lives instead.

Families of disgraced girls are choosing between sacrificing a son to a life in prison by designating him to kill his sister or forcing their daughters to kill themselves, said Yilmaz Akinci, who works for a rural development group. Rather than losing two children, most opt for the latter option.

Womens groups here say the evidence suggests that a growing number of girls considered to be dishonored are being locked in a room for days with rat poison, a pistol or a rope, and told by their families that the only thing resting between their disgrace and redemption is death.

Batman (pronounced bot-MON) is a grim and dusty city of 250,000 people where religion is clashing with Turkeys official secularism. The city was featured in the latest novel by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, Snow, which chronicled a journalists investigation of a suicide epidemic among teenage girls.

In the past six years, there have been 165 suicides or suicide attempts in Batman, 102 of them by women. As many as 36 women have killed themselves since the start of this year, according to the United Nations. The organization estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year around the world by relatives who accuse them of bringing dishonor on their families; the majority of the killings are in the Middle East.

Last month, the United Nations dispatched a special envoy to Turkey to investigate. The envoy, Yakin Erturk, concluded that while some suicides were authentic, others appeared to be honor killings disguised as a suicide or an accident.

The calls keep coming, said Mehtap Ceylan, a member of Batmans suicide prevention squad. She said she had very recently received a call about a 16-year-old girl who had committed suicide, her family said, because they would not let her wear jeans. But when Ms. Ceylan visited the house, neighbors told her the girl had been a happy person and had been wearing jeans for years.

The story just doesnt add up, Ms. Ceylan said. The girls family says their daughter was eating breakfast, walked into the next room and put a gun to her head. They were acting as if nothing had happened.

Psychologists here say social upheavals in a region rocked by terrorism have played a role in the suicides. Many of the victims come from families in rural villages who have been displaced from the mountains to the cities because of warfare between Turkey and a Kurdish guerrilla group that wants to create an independent state for Kurds in southeastern Turkey.

Young women like Derya, who have previously led protected lives under the rigid moral strictures of their families and Islam, are suddenly finding themselves in the modern Turkey of Internet dating and MTV. The shift can create dangerous tensions, sometimes lethal ones, between their families and the secular values of the republic that the young women seek to embrace.

The price can be heavy. When a woman is suspected of engaging in sexual relations out of wedlock, her male relatives convene a family council to decide her sentence. Once news of the familys shame has spread to the community, the family typically rules that it is only through death that its honor can be restored.

The European Union has warned Turkey that it is closely monitoring its progress on womens rights and that failure to progress could impede its drive to enter the union.

Until recently, a family member of a dishonored girl, usually a brother younger than 18, would carry out the death sentence and receive a short prison sentence because of his youth. Sentences also were reduced under the defense that a relative had been provoked to commit murder.

But in the past two years, Turkey has revamped its penal code and imposed life sentences for such killings, known as honor killings, regardless of the killers age. This has prompted some families to take other steps, such as forcing their daughters to commit suicide or killing them and disguising the deaths as suicides.

In an effort to bring honor killings out from underground, Ka-Mer, a local womens group, has created a hot line for women who fear their lives are at risk. Ka-Mer finds shelter for the women and helps them to apply to the courts for restraining orders against relatives who have threatened them.

Ayten Tekay, a caseworker for Ka-Mer in Diyarbakir, the regional center, said that of the 104 women who had called the group this year, more than half had been uneducated and illiterate. She said that in some cases the families had not wanted to kill their relatives but that the social pressure and incessant gossip had driven them to it.

We have to bring these killings out from the shadows and teach women about their rights, she said. The laws have been changed, but the culture here will not change overnight.

Derya, fiercely articulate and newly invigorated after counseling, said she was determined to get on with her life. This region is religious and it is impossible to be yourself if you are a woman, she said. You can either escape by leaving your family and moving to a town, or you can kill yourself.

Derya said the underlying problem was inequality between the sexes, even though the prophet Muhammad argued in favor of empowering women.

In my village and in my fathers tribe, boys are in the sky while girls are treated as if they are under the earth, she said. As long as families do not trust their daughters, bad things will continue to happen.
Click to expand...

Psychoblues · Jul 16, 2006

It's a religious thing. The very thing our Founding Fathers fought against and for very good reason, don't you think?

Psychoblues

Kathianne said:

argue with the NY Times, everyone does, they are addressing the killings regarding Islamic Turkey:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/europe/16turkey.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Click to expand...

ekrem · Jul 17, 2006

Kathianne said:

argue with the NY Times, everyone does, they are addressing the killings regarding Islamic Turkey:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/europe/16turkey.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Click to expand...

Look at the following source. It is kurdish source.
http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=12736

Killings in the name of honour claimed 50 lives in Turkey's southeastern province of Diyarbakir in the past six years, the Diyarbakir Bar Association's Women's Rights Centre said on Tuesday.
(...)
Activists say honour killings are particularly prevalent in the mainly Kurdish southeast, which is generally more conservative, and poorer, than western Turkey.
Click to expand...

Also the city called Batman which NYTIMES is talking about lies also in Southeast:

But you have to see in everything the good. At least under Turkish kurds there is no female genital mutilation like it is in North-Iraq
http://www.kwahk.org/index.asp?id=72

It is this thing with cutting the clitoris with a razor and then stich up female genital. This stitch up is only removed when girl is being married.

ekrem · Jul 17, 2006

I think you should believe the Christiansciencemonitor.

Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it.

"We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, director of a German nongovernmental organization called WADI, which has been based in Iraq for more than a decade.

Of 1,554 women and girls over 10 years old interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907, or more than 60 percent, said they had had the operation.
Click to expand...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0810/p06s01-woiq.html

Also a good read:

Cash for women’s blood affair
http://www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=12814
------------------

So, is it religion or backwarded rural Tribalism-philosophy ?

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