Few things repulse and shock me more than stories of "honor" killing. As correctly noted in the article below, many of us would rather not think about it since it is a source of shame and embarassment. But ignoring it is tantamount to endorsing it.
The NYT Magazine article below recounts the details of Zahra's tragic death and its repercussions in Syria. I hope the title subheading, that Syrians are rethinking this tradition, is correct. It is high time. Sometimes it takes a single person standing up and breaking the taboo of silence before many more follow suite. Fawaz, Zahra's husband and his family were such people; they have stood up, against tremendous societal and tribal pressures, to say that this abhorent practice, cannot under any circumstance be acceptable.
Dishonorable Affair
'How the murder of Zahra al-Azzo, a 16-year-old rape victim, has led Syrians to rethink the widespread acceptance of honor killing.
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
NYT Magazine, September 23, 2007
The struggle, if there was any, would have been very brief. Fawaz later recalled that his wife, Zahra, was sleeping soundly on her side and curled slightly against the pillow when he rose at dawn and readied himself for work at his construction job on the outskirts of Damascus. It was a rainy Sunday morning in January and very cold; as he left, Fawaz turned back one last time to tuck the blanket more snugly around his 16-year-old wife. Zahra slept on without stirring, and her husband locked the door of their tiny apartment carefully behind him.
'How the murder of Zahra al-Azzo, a 16-year-old rape victim, has led Syrians to rethink the widespread acceptance of honor killing.
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
NYT Magazine, September 23, 2007
The struggle, if there was any, would have been very brief. Fawaz later recalled that his wife, Zahra, was sleeping soundly on her side and curled slightly against the pillow when he rose at dawn and readied himself for work at his construction job on the outskirts of Damascus. It was a rainy Sunday morning in January and very cold; as he left, Fawaz turned back one last time to tuck the blanket more snugly around his 16-year-old wife. Zahra slept on without stirring, and her husband locked the door of their tiny apartment carefully behind him.
Zahra was most likely still sleeping when her older brother, Fayyez, entered the apartment a short time later, using a stolen key and carrying a dagger. His sister lay on the carpeted floor, on the thin, foam mattress she shared with her husband, so Fayyez must have had to kneel next to Zahra as he raised the dagger and stabbed her five times in the head and back: brutal, tearing thrusts that shattered the base of her skull and nearly severed her spinal column. Leaving the door open, Fayyez walked downstairs and out to the local police station. There, he reportedly turned himself in, telling the officers on duty that he had killed his sister in order to remove the dishonor she had brought on the family by losing her virginity out of wedlock nearly 10 months earlier. (Read More)
3 comments:
I read this article in the NYT, too, and share the outrage. In fact, I just published a book about this same ugly phenomenon as it goes in neighboring Jordan. It's pretty much the same there. . .three penal code articles offer such leniency to "honor" killers that the average sentence is only six months.
However, I conducted a nationwide survey of the Jordanian public's attitudes and opinions about this. And a full 89% of the people in my representative sample support toughening the sentences for these crimes (another 3.5% are neutral, and 7.5% like things just the way they are). So the people seem to be far ahead of the leadership on this issue. One wonders why they just don't overturn those laws and treat these cases like other murders.
I, too, found the confusion among the public as to whether Islam condones these crimes. It does not, but about one in five people in my sample thinks it does and that, thus, they must kill when they believe their family honor has been besmirched in some way. There's definitely room in the mosques and in the schools to correct this misconception. And for people who know better to lean heavily on these folks.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
Saddening. Does anybody know whether this is a phenomenon tied to a particular social strata or ethnic group?
It might vary from country to country. But, in my research in Jordan, the only statistically significant variables I was able to unearth were: (1) age (older more likely to believe in them); (2) educational level (uneducated and less educated more likely to believe in them); and (3) employment status (retired more likely to believe in them). I looked and looked and looked for all the usual suspects (e.g., male versus female, village versus urban, impoverished versus wealthy, religious versus not) and found no statistical significance. A lot of people in Jordan have notions about who is most likely to think this way, but most of them are not supported by the empirical evidence.
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