THE DAILY BLADE: Honor Killing And Beheading: Stereotype Or True To Type?
If someone said the word “beheaded” in 1793 most people would immediately think, “Guillotine.”
In 2009 when someone says the word “beheaded” most people would immediately think – what? Baha'i? Um, no, that doesn’t sound quite right. Jain? Um, that’s not it, either. Quaker? Nah. Muslim. Yeah, that’s it! Muslim.
Ditto “honor” killings of girls and women.
Is this racist or reality?
When Pakistani native Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan - who co-founded an Islamic cable TV channel near Buffalo, NY, to counter post-9/11 Muslim stereotypes - allegedly confessed to beheading his estranged wife, Aasiya Hassan, “some U.S. Muslims thought the initial reports were a hoax,” The Associated Press reports:
The killing and its aftermath raise hard questions for Muslims - about gender issues, about distinctions between cultural and religious practices, and about differing interpretations of Islamic texts regarding the treatment of women.
"Muslims don't want to talk about this for good reason," said Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a Muslim author and activist. "There is so much negativity about Muslims, and it sort of perpetuates it. The right wing is going to run with it and misuse it. But we've got to shine a light on this issue so we can transform it." …
Asra Nomani, a Muslim journalist, author and activist from Morgantown, W.Va., challenged Muslims who say the murder has no link to Islamic teachings. While Islam does not sanction domestic violence or murder, a literal reading of a controversial verse in the Quran taught in some mosques can lead to honor killings and murder, she said. …
The passage - Chapter 4, Verse 34 - has been widely translated [contextual link added by The Stiletto] to sanction physical discipline against disobedient wives. There is disagreement about to what degree and whether it's punitive or symbolic. …
There also has been speculation - by the head of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Woman, among others - that the Hassan case involved honor killing, in which a person is slain by a relative who believes the victim has brought shame to the family.
In a post on “The Daily Beast,” The New Agenda co-founder Amy Siskind argues that debating the motive and method in the murder of Aasiya Hassan is a distraction from the real issue – the pervasiveness of violence against women in the U.S.:
Aasiya’s murder could serve to elucidate our country’s gravest societal crisis - violence against women. The problem is, her killing has touched off a debate among feminists on several fronts, including whether hers was an honor-killing or domestic violence; multicultural relativism; Islamic violence on our shores; and whether we should even be speaking out about this particular murder in the first place. Yet in order for our country to start a much-needed national dialogue on violence against women, the feminists of our country need to unite and work together on this most-important takeaway - that a woman was senselessly murdered and the laws of our country could not protect her. …
The attention on this case comes as a result of the gruesome way in which Aasiya was murdered - torture and then decapitation - and what a beheading symbolically means. …
But do these discussions about honor-killings and multicultural relativism instead distract from the most important point? By elevating Aasiya’s beheading here, are we unwittingly ascribing a “violence against women-lite” to the 2 million victims of intimate-partner violence in our country each year?
Siskind also notes that “progressive feminists, on the grounds of multicultural relativism, are trying to close down the whole discussion before it begins” – and in this disinformation (taqiyya) effort they are joined by many the Muslim community, reports AP:
"Calling it an honor killing, it sort of takes it out of the mainstream conversation and makes it a conversation about those people from over there from those backwards countries," said [Salma] Abugideri, of the Peaceful Families Project. "In fact, in this country and in mainstream society there are many cases where domestic violence escalates to the point where a woman is killed."
Yes, it’s true that domestic violence is all-too-common in the U.S., and that ongoing brutality too-often escalates to murder when women are fatally beaten, shot or stabbed by their husbands or lovers. But honor killings are a distinct phenomenon – and distinctly Muslim – contends Phyllis Chesler in the current issue of The Middle East Quarterly. She distills the available data on honor killings in North America and Europe into this illuminating chart:
| Honor Killings |
Domestic Violence |
| Committed mainly by Muslims against Muslim girls/young adult women. |
Committed by men of all faiths usually against adult women. |
| Committed mainly by fathers against their teenage daughters and daughters in their early twenties. Wives and older-age daughters may also be victims, but to a lesser extent. |
Committed by an adult male spouse against an adult female spouse or intimate partner. |
| Carefully planned. Death threats are often used as a means of control. |
The murder is often unplanned and spontaneous. |
| The planning and execution involve multiple family members and can include mothers, sisters, brothers, male cousins, uncles, grandfathers, etc. If the girl escapes, the extended family will continue to search for her to kill her. |
The murder is carried out by one man with no family complicity. |
| The reason given for the honor killing is that the girl or young woman has "dishonored" the family. |
The batterer-murderer does not claim any family concept of "honor." The reasons may range from a poorly cooked meal to suspected infidelity to the woman's trying to protect the children from his abuse or turning to the authorities for help. |
| At least half the time, the killings are carried out with barbaric ferocity. The female victim is often raped, burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc. |
While some men do beat a spouse to death, they often simply shoot or stab them. |
| The extended family and community valorize the honor killing. They do not condemn the perpetrators in the name of Islam. Mainly, honor killings are seen as normative. |
The batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil. |
| The murderer(s) do not show remorse. Instead, they experience themselves as "victims," defending themselves from the girl's actions and trying to restore their lost family honor. |
Sometimes, remorse or regret |
On her own blog, Chesler adds:
If a twenty-first century woman disobeys 7th – 8th century Arab peninsula standards for female behavior, even slightly, or if she has been raped, she, not the rapist, is the one who has “dishonored” the family. She can be killed for this. … Honor killings are mainly a Muslim-on-Muslim crime. …
In half of the honor killings I studied, the murders were particularly gruesome and barbaric and involved stabbing the women 8-23 times, setting her on fire, first raping her, then immolating her, slashing her throat, decapitating her. The ferocity of the violence is equivalent to what serial killers do to prostituted women who are strangers to them or what Islamic terrorists do to stranger-infidels.
Beheading, too, is a distinctly Muslim phenomenon – as our troops in Iraq and the families of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and contractor Nick Berg know all too well. In a 2005 article for The Middle East Quarterly, “Beheading In The Name of Islam,” Georgia Perimeter College’s Timothy Furnish, Ph.D., who runs the Web site MahdiWatch.org, explains why:
Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited by both state and non-state actors to legitimize beheadings. And two major aspects of decapitation in an Islamic context should be noted: first, the practice has both Qur'anic and historical sanction. It is not the product of a fabricated tradition. Second, in contradiction to the assertions of apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, these beheadings are not simply a brutal method of drawing attention to the Islamist political agenda and weakening opponents' will to fight. … Islamists who practice decapitation believe that God has ordained them to obliterate their enemies in this manner. Islam is, for this determined minority of Muslims, anything but a "religion of peace." It is, rather, a religion of the sword with the blade forever at the throat of the unbeliever.
Beheadings are a particularly effective tool to terrorize large populations into submission, and were most recently used for this purpose in Pakistan's Swat Valley:
Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing - or a beheading.
Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees - and those they plan to kill.
“They control everything through the radio,” said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.”
Islamabad ceded control of Swat to 3,000 Taliban insurgents earlier this month, and the 1.3 million inhabitants of the region - located just 100 miles from the Pakistan’s capital - are now living under the harsh dictates of Shariah law, reports The Wall Street Journal:
Last year, Pakistanis in the northern Malakand district voted overwhelmingly for the country's secular parties, including the Pakistan People's Party of President Asif Ali Zardari. Last week, Mr. Zardari repaid the favor by agreeing to the imposition of Shariah law in the area and suspending military operations against an encroaching Taliban.
We would call this terrifying, but that may understate matters for the people of the region. For several years, the Taliban and its allies have sought to gain control of the district, particularly its scenic Swat valley, once a popular tourist destination. Gaining control, Taliban-style, meant fighting the Pakistani military to a standstill. It also meant blowing up 180 girls schools and publicly beheading locals who offended them, including barbers who dared trim customer beards.
So what does all this have to do with Aasiya Hassan – and is it accurate to characterize her murder as “domestic violence”?
For the reasons that Chesler details, when a Christian or Jewish man beats up or kills his wife or girlfriend, all other Christian or Jewish women in the neighborhood do not take it as a warning to become “more obedient.” In the typical domestic violence scenario, a specific man is a threat to a specific woman.
But when an honor killing occurs in the Muslim community - and it's not just husbands killing wives, but also fathers killing daughters, uncles killing nieces and brothers killing sisters - all the other Muslim women are on notice they could be next. Sharia law makes all Muslim men threats to all Muslim women in the community.
Additionally, the ritualistic nature of the murders – immolation, beheading - is meant to instill terror in Muslim women throughout the community, just as similar techniques have instilled terror throughout swaths of Iraq and Pakistan.
What happened to Aasiya Hassan - and to scores of other Muslim girls and women in the US , Canada, Europe and throughout the Middle East - is Islamic terrorism, not domestic violence.
Editorial Note: This documentary (video link) shows how the Taliban took control of Swat by terrorizing the populace with beheadings. For Aasiya Hassan, the home she shared with her husband Muzzammil Hassan was a microcosm of Swat.
Best Oscar Speech Ever
The Stiletto did not watch the nearly 3.5-hour long “81st Academy Awards” show, preferring to fast-forward to who won what by reading a handful of articles entertainment and marketing trade publications the following morning. The highlight of the evening appears to be Kunio Katô’s acceptance speech for the best animated short award. With good reason, TMZ.com dubs it “Best Oscar Speech Ever” (the punchline: “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.”). See it now:
Editorial Note: Click here and here to see videos of the winning work, “La Maison en Petits Cubes” (“The House of Small Cubes”).
Comments