“I’d rather see you dead, little girl/than to be with another man … .” (Lennon/McCartney) The new year is only a few days old, but 2008 isn’t shaping up as a banner year in the battle to halt violence against women.
Already, there have been three high-profile murders. One woman was famous, from a world away. The other two were high school students from a suburb uncomfortably close to home. The common link: Benazir Bhutto, Amina Said, and Sarah Said may all have been victims of “honor crimes.”
Human Rights Watch defines honor crimes as “acts of violence committed by male family members against female family members, who are thought to have brought dishonor upon the family” – whether through adultery, suspected adultery, or simply refusing to conform to societal norms. Like most other acts of domestic violence, honor crimes are about men controlling women, and the U.N. estimates that more than 5,000 such crimes are committed each year.
As I write, nobody has claimed responsibility for the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. While Bhutto was viewed positively in the West, she had more than her share of political and social enemies. Psychotherapist Phyllis Chesler has written extensively on women’s rights issues and conflicts in the Arab world. She sees Bhutto’s assassination as “a political and cultural version of an honor killing.”
The slogan “Well-behaved women rarely make history” might have been coined for Bhutto. The daughter of a wealthy Pakistani landowning family, she was educated at Harvard and Oxford universities. And Bhutto did not wear a traditional Muslim woman’s khimar, the scarf that would have covered her hairline down to her neck.
As the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation, Bhutto “symbolized an unacceptably Western form of female ambition and achievement,” Chesler said. “Islamist fanatics decided that Bhutto was … too Western, and they sentenced her to death.”
Honor crimes are certainly not specific to the Muslim faith – in fact, they are a problem in some Latin American countries. Although Muslim men use the Quran as justification for such crimes against women, there is nothing specifically in the Quran that sanctions domestic violence. But like the Torah (Old Testament) and New Testament, the Quran can be twisted to justify almost any action.
Yaser Said is being sought by police in connection with the murders of his daughters Amina and Sarah. The girls’ brother, Islam Said, has told reporters emphatically that the killings were not honor crimes. However, substantial evidence points to domestic violence. Friends reported that the girls were concerned about their father’s reactions to their activities and friendships. The girls, along with their mother Patricia, had recently quit their jobs at their local supermarket at Yaser’s demand – a pattern of social isolation common to domestic violence. Sarah’s friends say she was afraid of her father, who monitored the comings and goings of his wife and daughters “like a stalker,” according to one deDELETEion. Two young men who described themselves as the Said girls’ boyfriends said that Yaser Said was upset at the prospect of his girls dating non-Muslims.
The girls’ deaths have produced a backlash of local and national anti-Muslim reaction. But Mary Lee Hafley, president and CEO of SafeHaven of Tarrant County, said that domestic violence occurs in every culture. And in many places, the prevailing view of “honor” may determine whether the abusers are punished.
MADRE, another human rights organization, reports that honor crimes even occur here – as recently as 1999, a Texas man who murdered his wife was given a paltry sentence of four months in jail. The mitigating circumstances: She was having an affair, which of course forced him to commit his “crime of passion.”
“Crime of passion” defense statutes existed here and in many countries until fairly late in the 20th century – another version of men being allowed to kill women to revenge “dishonor.”
T
he common link between the deaths of Bhutto in Pakistan and those of the Said sisters in North Texas is that in both cases – as in thousands of deaths around the globe each year – women were judged by men to be guilty of some “crime” against the honor of their family or society.
As long as women are viewed as property to be exchanged, valued for their reproductive capacities alone, and subjected to men’s control for enforcement of societal norms, we will have reason to watch, and to fear.
Laurie Barker James is a local freelance writer.
