THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DONNA ABU-NASR
CAIRO, Egypt - Nora Ahmed was on her honeymoon when her father cut
off her head and paraded it down a dusty Cairo street because she had
married a man whom he did not approve.
Begum Gadhaki was sleeping
next to her 3-month-old son when her husband grabbed a gun and shot
her dead. A neighbor had spotted a man who was not a family member near
the field where she was working in Pakistan's Sindh province.
Ahmed Ali used a cane
to beat his wife across the stomach until she died after she returned
home to their tiny village in Yemen from a two-day absence she refused
to explain.
Hundreds of women like
Ahmed, Gadhaki, and Ali perish every year because their male relatives
believe their actions have soiled the family name.
They die so family honor
may survive.
Long Tradition
Honor killings are based
on a "suspicion of immorality on the part of the victim,"
says the Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan.
But women have no way
to know what behavior could be their death sentence. They have been
killed for being too friendly to a brother-in-law. Having "arrogant"
body language. Sitting next to a man on a bus.
Honor killing exists
mostly in Muslim countries, such as those in the Middle East and central
Asia, even though Islam does not sanction the practice.
The United
Nations says such killings also have occurred in Britain, Norway,
Italy, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela.
At least one case has
been reported in the United States.
It is an ancient practice
sanctioned by culture rather than religion, rooted in a complex code
that allows a man to kill a female relative for suspected or actual
sexual activity.
"It's 100 percent
tradition," according to Madiha El-Safty, a sociology professor
at the American University in Cairo.
"It's associated with the value of sexual chastity of the woman."
The law is usually on
the man's side, often letting him go unpunished or with only a light
sentence. The community commonly treats the murderer as a hero and considers
the killing a duty, not a crime.
Cultures in which the
practice exists hold that a woman is a man's possession and a reflection
of his honor. It is the man's honor that gets tarnished if a woman is
not virtuous.
"A woman in Arab
societies is an object for sex and reproduction. As long as she is an
object, she is owned by a father, a husband, a brother," said Salwa
Bakr, an Egyptian feminist and writer.
"The way she uses
her body is not her business but the business of those who own her."
Ahmed Abbad Sherif,
a prominent, conservative tribal leader in Yemen, insists "it's
because women are weaker than men."
"If she's immoral,
it's the man's duty to kill her," Sherif said matter of factly.
"Otherwise, he will be despised by the rest of the tribe."
Feminists, activists
and human rights defenders have quietly begun work to end honor killings.
"Men worry about
their honor and dignity as if women had none," said Azza Suleiman,
an activist at the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance. "They
have stripped us of hour honor and appointed themselves its protector."
Honor killing, although
not as widespread as decades ago, still thrives in rural areas, where
women remain financially dependent on men and justice is administered
by village elders.
A matter of control
From early childhood,
girls are taught about "eib," shame, and "sharaf,"
honor. They dress modestly, lower their eyes when walking in public
and are segregated from boys if they are lucky enough to be sent to
school.
And everywhere girls
go are reminders that their most important mission in life is to remain
virgins until they marry.
Among some tribes inYemen,
guests wait outside the newlyweds' bedroom. Custom calls for the bridegroom
to emerge and fire his gun, signifying his bride was a virgin.
But virginity before
marriage and demure behavior afterward are no guarantee of safety.
Women have been shot,
burned, strangled, stoned, poisoned, beheaded or stabbed for falling
in love with the wrong person or even for being raped.
Their killers rarely
give them a chance to prove their innocence. They act first and perhaps
inquire later.
In Yemen recently, a
man shot his daughter dead on her wedding night after her husband said
she was not a virgin.
At the mother's insistence,
the daughter was examined by a doctor - and was found to have been a
virgin, said people familiar with the case.
It turned out the husband
was impotent. He lied to protect his honor.
No official figures
tally how many such crimes are committed every year. Many cases, activists
say, go unreported or misreported, with families describing the deaths
as accidents to prevent further accidents to prevent further scandal.
A recent UNICEF
survey found that in 1997, honor killings claimed the lives of as many
as 400 women in Yemen, 52 in Egypt, and an estimated 300 in just one
province of Pakistan.
Jordan
reports an average of 25 such killings each year.
In 90 percent of the
cases the United Nations investigated, the victims were killed by or
on orders from their families, said Asma Jehangir, a human rights lawyer
who also consults for the United Nations.
In Yemen a decade ago,
a father learned his daughter had eloped with a man from another clan,
breaking a taboo against marriage outside the tribe.
Gathering sons, brothers,
uncles and cousins, he headed north in a convoy of about 20 cars, said
Yemeni sociologist Abdo Ali Othman. The men stormed the bride's new
home and threw her into one of the cars.
When the convoy reached
the edge of her village, her father hurled her to the asphalt and had
every car drive over her.
Islamic experts say
Islam forbids such killings, even though most of them occur in Muslim
countries.
"What's there in
the Koran is against
it," said Mohammed Serag, a professor of Islamic studies at the
American University in Cairo.
"In the eyes of
Islam, those people (who kill in the name of honor) are criminals,"
he added. "They get maximum punishment . . . the death penalty."
Law vs. practice
Islam, which emphasizes
chastity for men and women, prescribes 100 lashes each for anyone who
violates the Muslim code of behavior.
But nothing in the Koran
supports the death punishment for honor-related transgressions.
Serag said men who believe Islam approves of honr crimes may have misinterpreted
the Koran verse that allows husbands to beat their wives.
"As to those women
on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct admonish them, refuse
to share their beds, beat them," the Koran says in chapter 4, verse
34.
Because the language
is general, it has been open to many interpretations, Serag said. Some
scholars believe the beating should be symbolic - with a feather, for
instance. Others disagree on who should administer it: the husband or
the state.
Still, some religious
groups and politicians have criticized attempts to condemn the killings
or introduce harsher punishment arguing that greater freedom would set
women on the road to Western liberalism.
"Women adulterers
cause a great threat to our society because they are the main reason
that such acts take place," said Mohammed Kharabsheh, a Jordanian
lawmaker who heads his Parliament's legal Committee.
"If men do not
find women with whom to commit adultery, then they will become good
on their own," he said.
Men who cannot use religion
to justify their crime sometimes find sanctuary in the law.
In countries where such
actions are prosecuted, the youngest male in a family may be asked to
carry out a killing because punishment for minors is less severe.
Judges and police officers
have been known to side with the "wronged" man.
In areas under Pakistanian
control, judges usually look for "justifiable excuses" to
exonerate the killers, according to Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, a criminologist
at Hebrew University
who participated in the UNICEF study.
"There is pure
conspiracy from the formal system - the judiciary - and the informal
one - the tribal system and family," Kevorkian said.
No where to turn
Women who seek shelter
at police stations because they feel threatened by their families are
referred to tribal leaders whose concept of justice is arbitrary.
"One tribal leader
told me, 'I look in her face and I can tell if she is innocent or guilty.'
"A young woman's
life is decided by the look on her face," Kevorkian said.
Until last February,
a man in Lebanon
who killed to cleanse the family honor was protected by law that said:
"A man who surprises
his wife, daughter or sister practicing adultery or illicit intercourse
and kills or harms one of the two partners without premeditation benefits
from the legitimate excuse" that relieves him of the burden of
the murder.
After years of protest
spearheaded by feminist Laure Moughaizel, the law was amended, making
the man's actions punishable by a sentence lighter than death.
Lawyer and activist
Fadi Moughaizel, whose mother, Laure, died before amendments were made,
said in some cases the man murdered the woman because he had a mistress
or wanted to get her inheritance.
In Yemen, it is the
absence of a functioning legal system, especially in the rural, tribal
areas, that helps the murderers.
"There are very
few villages where the judiciary is represented by a court and a prosecutor,"
said Jamal Adimi, a lawyer and head of the Forum for Civil Society.
"Regular murders
go unreported. Do you really expect people to report a crime of honor?"
July 2, 2000, Democrat & Chronicle, page 12A.
Rochester, New York.
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