Beyond Honor 1

TAHIRA KHAN

BEYOND HONOR 1

The author is a young lady from Pakistan, currently teaching at a university in the USA. Unlike the usual descriptive works on HR and violations of women in societies in the East and the West, she has presented a well researched scientific and analytical work.
The book deserves a detailed commentary which could enlighten concerned and compassionate persons who do not have time to read the whole book.
THE QUESTION
Why violence against women?
She goes on to dwell on how to define, explain and do something about it.
Violence against women has many ugly faces. It has been a universal phenomenon in the East and the West. In the West it has been identified during the last two decades and measures taken against it. Whether they have been successful it is too early to say.
In the East and Africa identification of the problem has just begun in the last decade and little by way of effective measures against it has been done about.
Wife beating, marital and other rape, sale of women, bride burning, genital mutilation (nose slashing in Pakistan), forced and child marriage and coercion and finally murder of women in name of honor.
Sufficient documentation exists to define, conceptualize and analyze such violence. Attempt is made in the study to ascertain the historical roots of repression of women and especially honor-passion related murders. Historical materialist approach is used as a tool for analysis.
WOMEN'S SUBORDINATION
There are two major schools of thought which purport to explain women's subordination.
a) Idealist holds that inferior status of women is natural , trans-historical and immutable. Conditions of women can be rectified by demanding protection from the state, ignoring the fact that state itself is patriarchal. It supports equality, liberty and freedom with out looking at the material and economic roots of oppression.At the family level again women are exhorted to struggle with out questioning the material basis of the institution.
b) Materialist theory holds that oppression of women is social, historical and alterable phenomenon.Family institutions are shaped by ownership of private property and the mode of production.Social norms, traditions, religious dictates and imagery have all been developed out of material basis and economic system of societies.
There has always been a material-concrete reality behind social-religious constructs of terms and language. Male sperm as seed and female womb as cultivating field as used in Judaic and Islamic sources is related to prevalent mode of production. Quran says "your wives are as a tilth unto you. So approach your tilth when and how you will" (Q 2:223) is in an agricultural context.
Honor revolves around sexuality of women. "Why is the womb of the woman the repository of man's honor. An attempt is made to answer the question.
MATERIALIST EXPLANATION OF VIOLENCE.
Engels wrote that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion etc.
Materialist approach invites the oppressed to discover the material nature of their subordination. It explains the phenomenon of female oppression at two levels:personal and structural. When and why the honor/shame code constructed around female sexuality and why is it enforced by the social system? All social and intellectual relations can be explained by analyzing the material conditions of a particular society.Material changes in world history have changed the role and status of women. surplus value gave birth to private property which accumulated in the hands of men.That raised concerns about inheritance rules and efforts to assure paternity. That led to monogamy (and end of polyandry) and lax sexual relations for the husband.
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
Materialist theory is applicable to both personal and familial violence. In one case violence can be traced to an individual. In the other one violence is built into the structure of society ( John Gaitlung in journal of Peace Research). Personal violence is manifest, direct and visible. Structural violence is indirect and invisible and can not be registered. Cases of structural violence can be traced back to personal violence in prehistory.( Gaiitlung). He later added cultural violence " culture used to legitimize violence". There is a causal relationship between the three kinds of violence.
Structure and culture make unequal laws for men and women and have matte rial foundations. Honor/Passion crimes are tri-dimensional and involve all the three actors-personal, familial and cultural. Money and sex are directly linked. Violence is committed by individuals facilitated by religious, legal, soc ail and political institutions. Men were divided into Free-Slave, rich and poor. Women on the other hand into attached ( wife, sister, daughter) and unattached Concubine and prostitutes). I saw a video on the history channel that the prophet Lot when besieged by his towns people to surrender two male companions, offered his young virgin daughters instead. Offer of girls to settle conflicts is an ancient custom. Mercifully in this case God did not agree and rained sulfur and fire on the besiegers.
Part one of the book reviews literature and asks why such violence persists. Part two attempts to answer the question through a materialist approach.
HONOR/PASSION CRIMES, KINDS AND CONTEXT
Such crimes have always taken place, but were reported from 1970ies on in Mediterranean and Latin American countries. they hit the headlines in Pakistan in 1993. Till 1990ies murder of women by male relatives were not characterized as honor/passion crimes. Mazhar H Khan (1972 Purdah and polygamy) is the earliest research.He traces the historical roots of violence against women among the Turkish tribes before and after the advent of Islam and focuses on changes in material forces and economic system.. He also mentions the practice of such crimes in Muslims of South Asia. He also researched son-preference. How female fetuses are aborted and female infants killed ( Amartya Sen More than a 100 million women are missing in Asia 1990).
A Mr Anwar Pirzado wrote in daily Star Karachi "We are husbands and strong. They are women and weak.We can have more than one wife. They can not have more than one husband. We sometimes kill them for looking beyond chardiwari-outside home." Nafisa Shah wrote about Karo Kari ( killing dishonored women-news line 1993)She blamed the feudalist and tribal system. (recently Dr Shazia Khalid was raped 9n Sui Baluchistan, Pakistan allegedly by army officers. She was declared Kari by her husband's grandfather who wanted her killed). In spite of more frequent reporting a curtain of silence still hides such crimes in the country.
Patriarchal and misogynist customs and religious practices haven blamed for honor-passion crimes. Very rarely have the forces that shaped such customs been analyzed.
Fatima Mernissi (Beyond the veil 1975) explains the relationship between money and female sexuality.Nawal El Saadavi ( 1980 The hidden face of eve) an Egyptian scholar states that " a man's honor remains safe as long as the female members of the family keep their hymens intact-pre-marriage I suppose).
Lama Abu-Odeh an Arab scholar emphasizes the anthropological and socio-legal implication of such crimes in Arab society and makes a clear distinction between honor and passion crimes.
1999 saw coverage of honor-passion crimes by international media-BBC, CNN, NBC, NY Times, Washington Post and guardian and an impression was left that these crimes occurred only in Muslim countries. 90 % of such crimes are reported from Muslim countries. Muslims are emotionally hurt by the coverage, do not have strong arguments to refute such reports and are by and large unaware of the occurrence of such crimes. Non Muslims tend to attribute the crimes to "veiled, segregated, uneducated and oppressed majority of Muslim women. Muslims assert that it has nothing to do with Islam.
Honor related crimes occur across class, caste and ethnic groups among Muslims. The most "celebrated" case was that of "death of a princess" a BBC documentary of the execution of a Saudi princess and her lover, with a trial in Sharia court as ordained by Islam.CNN reported on how a brother stabbed his "fallen" sister to death and invited villagers to watch the murder.
Even among educated families a bride is expected to be a virgin. Gynecologists perform surgical restoration of hymen. Girls are sometimes killed on mere suspicion of loss of virginity.95 % of girls killed in Jordan had no sexual relations at all.
Number of killings reported are no where near the actual number.
Rim Zahara of Syria (Women's international net 24 B 1999) highlights the dual standards of sexuality for men and women in Syria.The practice of hymen repair is also common in Iraq. In Turkey honor killers are very highly regarded in prison. In the penal code bodies and sexuality belongs to their husbands, families and communities.
In Iran situation has worsened since the advent of theocratic state in 1979.
ABC night line Feb 16/1999 elicited this reaction from an American " I saw the true face of Islam..."Muslim reaction to such remarks is very bitter.
In March 2000 BBC aired a documentary on honor killings and followed up with interviews with Muslims.The general impression by interviewees was that honor killing was permissible in Islam ( Moulvi Ghatoor Naib-deputy Amir of Jamaat Islami the leading religious party of Pakistan told a press conference that Honor killing was Islamic). People of Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey are generally very hostile to HR workers, journalists and lawyers for daring to expose such crimes (in the USA expatriate community behaves much in the same way) calling the activists as agents of Judeo-Christian forces.
MUSLIM WOMEN FACING VIOLENCE IN NON-MUSLIM COUNTRIES.
Daughters and sisters in European countries have been murdered for wanting to marry a man of their choice and for rejecting arranged marriages. ( one subterfuge is to take girls to "home countries" for a visit and forcing them to marry in the clan. Neighbors, police and administration aid and abet the perpetrators. Examples are numerous.
THOSE WHO DARE TO EXPOSE
Informants prefer to remain anonymous. (rape is rampant in jails, police stations, military hospitals, feudal, tribal chief's houses in Pakistan). Survivors of outrages did not want to mention their real names.
Naval El Sadawi a physician of Egypt was jailed for her research. Fatima Mernissi a social scientist from morocco was physically assaulted by a male "scholar" from Pakistan in a conference i Malaysia. Ayaan Hirsi, a Somali born Dutch parliamentarian had to go into hiding after murder of Van Gogh the film maker's movie "submission" on the abuse of Muslim women. She had written the script.
To be continued