"As order slides, Palestinian women face honor killings," by Ilene R. Prusher for the Christian Science Monitor:
QALQILYA, WEST BANK - All the women in the family say Wafa Wahdan was wonderful.
But her sisters-in-law add that they noticed a few little things. She had changed the way she dressed in the past year to a less conservative style and she sometimes went out for a drive without saying where she was going.
A few weeks ago, the body of the young mother of four was found in a garbage dump east of town. Police arrested two of the woman's male cousins for having trapped Ms. Wahdan and shot her to death, committing the third "honor killing" in Qalqilya last month.
Wahdan's brutal murder devastated her husband and immediate family, who say that the rumor mill's tales of Wahdan having an affair were untrue. But regardless of their veracity, suspicion alone can be enough to get a woman killed by distant relatives looking to "cleanse" the family honor when there is talk of an illicit relationship.
According to local organizations, such murders have risen in the Palestinian territories to nearly 50 this year – a fact that many here blame on the absence of any true law and order, which allows individuals to enforce their own version of justice. Palestinians here say the image of an ever-weaker Palestinian Authority has increased after Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, making this local vigilantism harder to combat.
Particularly galling to many here is the fact that a man who admits to murdering a female relative for reasons of honor can be sentenced to as little as six months in jail. Palestinians say that policy is based on an old Jordanian law, which still holds in the West Bank: Article 341 considers murder a legitimate act of defense when the killer acts "in defense of his life or his honor."
Saed Taha, dean of Qalqilya's College of Islamic Law, says that honor killings in the Palestinian territories are never carried out according to proper Muslim stipulations and thus are unacceptable according to sharia, or Islamic law. In Islam, an unmarried woman found guilty of having an affair can be sentenced to 100 lashes; for a married woman, the sentence is death by stoning. But first, four witnesses must say they saw the illicit act with their own eyes.
"When the sentence is only six months, the consequence is that [perpetrators] encourage others to do the same," says Dr. Taha. "Islam does not allow anyone to take the law into his own hands. And for a woman to be sentenced [for illicit affairs], it would have to take place in a system that operates under Islamic law, which we don't have right now."
Tribal traditions are often a motive
But ancient tribal mores, not Islam, are usually what drive family members to demand that their honor be restored. In this case, according to several of Wahdan's relatives interviewed for this story, the men of the family met and came to a joint decision that Ms. Wahdan should be killed.
It is a recurring pattern that anything that looks bad in the international media is "just a tribal thing," with nothing to do with Islam. But the legal course confirmed by Taha shows more Islamic law-- so often promoted as a solution, though it would at best only replace lawless injustice with the rigorously legalistic injustices of sharia law-- would not help. Indeed, Islam only further reinforces the notion that a woman's value depends on her obedience and reputation for chastity:
Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great. (Qur'an 4:34)
The article continues:
"These men have no fear of God," says Wahdan's mother, Umm el-Walid. She pulls out of a photograph of her daughter, big-eyed and pretty, sitting with some of Mrs. Walid's now-motherless grandchildren.
"Had my daughter had an extramarital relationship, her husband would have been the first to notice and do something," says Wahdan's mother, stopping to squint out tears. "They charged her, sentenced her, and executed her all in one fell swoop."
Her children harassed in school
Hala Wahdan, a sister-in-law, says the other women in the family, who are now trying to take care of the late woman's children, are devastated. The oldest kids, aged 9 and 12, are being harassed in school.
"Her children are extremely affected by this, especially with people gossiping and saying things that aren't true," she says. "They tell her 9-year-old girl, Noura, 'You're the daughter whose mother was killed because of honor.' And to the 12-year-old son, 'Your mother was killed because she was messing around.'"
Read it all.
"These men have no fear of God," says Wahdan's mother, Umm el-Walid.
But they do. That's why they carried out the law as laid out by their god.
Wait til Hamastan swallows the West Bank. These oxymoronic honor killings will become as common as going grocery shopping.
I had an 'enlightened' girlfriend once who, while in KSA as the wife of a Saudi, sat in the next room while a young girl was beaten to death by her family for dishonoring them in some way. Having been a homicide detective and seen the horror of death, including what survivors must deal with, I merely said that honor killings are barbaric and amount to the same as gangsta's shooting one another ~ killing because the group feels put down by the act or omission of another.
She replied that it's just a cultural 'thing' and we westerners just don't get it. We expect them to be just like us, the implication being that their conduct viz their female children is perfectly okay.
That kind of thinking by American girls is part of what kills little Arab girls. I sometimes wonder if the American girls who think 'honor killings' are okie-dokie will answer to God for their true lack of honor. I think they will.
But ancient tribal mores, not Islam, are usually what drive family members to demand that their honor be restored. In this case, according to several of Wahdan's relatives interviewed for this story, the men of the family met and came to a joint decision that Ms. Wahdan should be killed.
Maybe, and maybe not. Are honor killings as common (per capita) among the various Christian denominations of the Middle East -- the Copts, the Armenians, the Assyrians -- as among the Moslems? Are they as common among the Jews? I don't have any figures, and given the vast preponderance of the Moslem population in the Middle East, I would expect that the vast majority of killings are by, and of, Moslems. Still, I don't remember a single Christian or Jewish honor-killing.
Also, if the causes are tribal rather than Islamic, then one must ask if there are notable differences in the frequency of honor-killings between the various Islamic ethnic groups. Are there different rates between Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, Egyptians, Somalis, Pakistanis, etc? If there are differences, then maybe there is a tribal element to this behavior. But if the rates are much the same, then it looks like Islam is the major ingredient.
Having replaced their kleptocracy, though crude, barbaric and ruthless it was, with a genuine theocracy, the "palestinian" arabs can now fully enjoy the blessings of islam. None deserve it more than they.
Cultural traits in the Islamic world that are considered benign - low crime rates for example, are invariably and proudly attributed by Muslims to the influence of their religion in society.
Conversely, we're supposed to believe that the social pathologies that afflict the Muslim - such as honor killings, somehow have nothing to do with the same religion that influences every other facet of Islamic society.
It doesn't wash.
Honor killings may not have theological sanction in Islam, but they are directly correlated to the subordinate position of women that IS part and parcel of the faith.
Quranic verses 2.228, 2.282, 4.11 & 4.34 all codify the second class status of Muslim women in Islamic law.
Meanwhile, there are literally dozens of Hadith in Bukari's collection that denigrate women, quoting the Prophet Muhammad as calling them "deficient in religion and intelligence"..."evil omens"..."the majority of the residents of hell"...etc.
"honor killing"
Yet another oxymoron.
Islamofacism could set a record.
Just curious: "If honor killings are really "just a tribal thing" that have nothing to do with Islam, why do they seem to be rampant only in Islamic societies? Why not among, say, the Aborigines of Australia, the native people of New Guinea, or many of the Indian peoples of South America, who traditionally have always been pretty "tribal" as well? Not to say that tribal cultures don't treat women brutally as a rule (they do, un-PC as it may be to say it), but Islamic tribal cultures do seem to take this brutality to the most dizzying heights.
Robert or whoever is minding the store, please delete the 9:34 Post by "mowasaperv".
It is obvious the post of either a Muslim provocateur trying to discredit JW, or of a racist who can only succeed in doing the same.
"If honor killings are really "just a tribal thing" that have nothing to do with Islam, why do they seem to be rampant only in Islamic societies?
As strange as it may sound, I think that honour killings of women began with the intent to control men within Islamic society.
First off, I'm starting with my personal opinion that the Islamic religion was created as a control structure to subjugate those within it and for it to use young, able men to go forth and conquer others. Since sexuality is among the most powerful things that define a persons psyche, having absolute and stifling control over that is a perfect tool to control young, impressionable men. The promise of wives, slaves, and sex to faithful and obedient (and frustrated) men is very prominent in that religion. Heck, in many strict countries Islamic women can't even be seen by non-relatives.
Frustrated, aggressive people are easy to manipulate. Hatred is the perfect blinder to put on someone and have those with control use those people to do their biding. And encouraging men to subjugate and dehumanize women removes any possibility of warmth and tenderness they may feel, and further turns them into a hateful automaton that's willing to lash out in any direction he's aimed. When men are so hateful towards women and they are told that a woman may have dishonoured their clan or their faith, they will unreservedly do whatever is necessary to desperately try to win approval and acceptance, even if it is the blood of their own sister at their feet. After all, she was just a woman.
It's like gang culture: Deprive him of everything and have the club be his only sense of self-worth, and keep the bitches in line. If he can't do that, he's not a man. And if she shoots off her mouth too much, shut her down.
(Sorry, I rambled. I don't know if all that makes much sense, but it's a thought.)
ixysi - ironically, Muslim men are the ultimate "bitches" (in the way men use that term to describe other men in prison). Cause the simple truth is, they're all in prison!
(There's a wake-up call to all you Muslim guys, er 'bitches'...)
What is so honorable about killing a woman, for any reason?
tanstaafl, re your post:
should be - killing honour.
Fixed it for you!
Well, that's my smartyboots comment for the day...