Shafia trial jurors find family guilty of 1st-degree murder

[iverglas]

23. it isn't just you

The discourse in Canada, and I assume on CNN etc. (didn't have time to watch the segment on CNN this morning), is all about "honour killings".

Really. These murders had *nothing* to do with honour killings, any more than most such murders in the news do.

Honour killings, as I said, are a complex phenomenon. Put simply, if a family member in a culture where these rules apply brings "shame" on the family, the only way the family can counter the shame is to kill the family member. If they do not do that, they are doomed -- they could literally starve on the street, because they will be cast out by the community: an extreme form of shunning.

Mohammad Shafia's security, and the security of his family, were in no danger in Canada. This was no "honour killing". It was violence against women. The Canadian media are giving voice to people pressing this point, but unfortunately still tossing the term/concept "honour killing" around in relation to the deaths.

Just for a quick start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University, says that honor killing is:

A complicated issue that cuts deep into the history of Arab society. .. What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. The honour killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's behind it is the issue of fertility, or reproductive power.

An Amnesty International statement adds:

The regime of honour is unforgiving: women on whom suspicion has fallen are not given an opportunity to defend themselves, and family members have no socially acceptable alternative but to remove the stain on their honour by attacking the woman.

That is, the family itself may feel compelled to kill the offending family member (who is not always a woman) in order to ensure its economic survival, which depends on social approval.

Yes, the term is now widely applied to pure hate crimes against women, and the people who commit those crimes do sometimes wrap themselves in the concept.

In our beloved western world, a man who kills a cheating wife "in the heat of passion" has long got a big break from the judicial system, let us not forget. Very little difference on the surface: a man's righteous rage at the woman daring to interfere in his right to control her reproductive activities. The difference between that and honour killings, historically, is that in the latter case it was historically not a case of righteous rage; the family itself may have been subject to extreme social pressure to kill the offender even against their own wishes, while in the west it's the offended man whose actions have been approved by society.

Obviously this derives from a very different concept of the nature and relationships of individual, family, community and society from ours in the modern west. But it really did not derive from the individual men's pride and ego or their personal hatred of or desire to oppress women.

What we see and term "honour killings" in these instances in the west today, and also in instances in the homelands where the practice exists historically, are pretty far removed from the origins of the practice, which is rooted deeply in cultures where the individual is far less of an independent agent and far more dependent on the community than in our own society. Everyone, not just women, was (and may still be) subject to social controls on their behaviours and sanctions for violating norms that we regard as intolerable, but that were survival mechanisms for those cultures, for whom extreme social cohesion was necessary. This operated in the interests of individuals in some regards, and against their interests in others. Just as some of our own norms do. This is not to apply "cultural relativism", it is to understand a phenomenon.

That phenomenon has been perverted and exploited by men like Shafia, who simply is not subject to the pressures that call for "honour killing". His daughters' behaviour did not cause him the kind of social shame that would have jeopardized his family; his community, both the broad Canadian community and his own cultural community, do not ostracize and marginalize him because of his daughters. He had no need to cleanse his and his family's name and reputation. (Remember, a true "honour killing" is done for the family.) He's simply a woman-hating, egotistical asshole.