Shafia murder trial reveals negligence and failure of child protection authorities 2
December 6, 2011 - 2:14am
http://rabble.ca/babble/national-news/shafia-murder-trial-reveals-neglig...
See #97 in the previous thread.
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Jews and Christians — I must have missed those stories.
Yup...you missed them Rosie...and you call yourself a reporter?
From here:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1097462--dimanno-kingston-can...
C'mon demonize de udder man.
K, seriously, I need some feminist analysis. Rosie DiManno's claptrap is bothering me. I need to shut up as a man. Rosie says our western men would never act like this. We can't compare this to a woman being shot for bad eggs or bothering you after a late night with the Penguins. Don't date bad guys either or I'll kill them. "Honour killing" my ass. Same old, same old.
Iranian-born U of T Women's Studies Profressor Testifies:
The keenly anticipated testimony came from Shahrzad Mojab, an Iranian-born University of Toronto professor of women's studies who has lectured and written on the topic for many years. She told the trial of three Afghan-Canadians charged with murder that in some cultures, family honour is prized more highly than life.
In traditional, male-dominated societies where honour killings take place as a means of "cleansing" a family from disgrace, honour resides within the female body, and that translates into a ruthless control system that polices and constrains women's every move, Dr. Mojab told the packed courtroom on Monday. And women often participate, she added.
Honour killings - of which there are thousands worldwide each year, the United Nations has reported - don't need be prefaced by actual deeds, Dr. Mojab told the trial as the three defendants stared at her stone-faced.
"Even the assumption [of non-marital relations] is seen as a huge violation of the family honour," she told the jury. "It doesn't need to be actual. Even a rumour can cause the killing of a young woman."
But it is wrong to blame religion, Dr. Mojab testified, because honour killings predate all the great faiths.
The practice "doesn't have any definite connection with religion at all," she said, listing Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity among the major religions, along with Islam, that have provided a rationale for such murder.
...Worldwide, honour killings are on the rise, Dr. Mojab testified, but in North America they remain extremely rare. In 1989-2008, just 13 were identified in a 2009 article in the Middle East Quarterly cited by defence lawyer Patrick McCann, and only two took place in Canada.
And they differ from other types of domestic murders in two ways, Dr. Mojab said: A range of male relatives - fathers, sons, husbands, uncles - often take a role; and in some circles the phenomenon retains a certain acceptance among the killer's peers, who understand that the family's reputation hinges on the behaviour of its female members.
This is a very strange case. I have started to wonder if these poeple are guilty or in fact innocent. The evidence against them is rather flimsy. It doesn't quite fit a typical honor killing profile you hear about either. The defence lawyer should have asked (or maybe he did?) Dr. Mojab if she thinks the accused fit the profile.
The country's imams had a busy day across the country at Friday prayers. The message: the Koran's word on it all...in case culture practise overstepped the word.
This is a very strange case. I have started to wonder if these poeple are guilty or in fact innocent. The evidence against them is rather flimsy. It doesn't quite fit a typical honor killing profile you hear about either. The defence lawyer should have asked (or maybe he did?) Dr. Mojab if she thinks the accused fit the profile.
There's a good post on "Loonwatch" that summarizes the evidence against the family, which is actually rather damning, and also reflects ascerbically upon what a gift this case is to people with an Islamophobic agenda:
http://loonwatch.wordpress.com/tag/code-of-hammurabi/
“That is one of the black and white statements I can make. There is absolutely nothing, either in the Qur’an or in the Hadith, or even in any secondary source that says that honor killing is something that Muslims should do or can do or that is lawful.”
Honor killing is an ancient practice that can be linked to the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, circa 1700 BC. Barbara Kay, a harsh critic of Islam who previously sparked controversy with her column, “The Rise of Quebecistan,” says the first honor killing in Judeo-Christian civilization is recorded in the Bible in Genesis 34. She relates the story here.
Some Muslims, a minority mistakenly believe that “honor killing” is permitted in Islam, and Mohammad Shafia’s statements in the wake of his daughters’ deaths suggest he shares this misconception, conflating culture and faith. For this reason, it is important to spread the news that Islam does NOT condone these killings, yet anti-Muslim bigots who claim they care about Muslim women are doing the opposite.
Just as 911 truthers are propped up in their delusions by the fact that the Sept 11 attacks were so convenient to the Bush administration that they must have orchestrated it, I think there's the danger of falling into the same fallacious thinking here, that maybe the family is innocent because this case props up Islamophobia everywhere.
I have seen no convincing evidence to date that:
1. The three accused are just innocent victims of circumstance.
2. That the actions of which they stand accused had anything whatsoever to do with Islam, or with their own religious beliefs (as described to date by themselves), etc.
The horrendous and sickening statements about women - his own children - made to date by Shafia are indicative of profoundly hateful, exploitative, dominating, and murderous attitudes towards women in many (perhaps all, to greater or lesser extent) human cultures, including "our own" (whichever one we lay claim to). These attitudes have their basis in very real power relationships in human civilization where women have been regarded as less than human for many thousands of years. To attribute such ideological and practical hatred to "faith" or "beliefs" is to simultaneously whitewash the abusers and to unjustly sully the masses of adherents of many religions (not just Islam) who are repelled by such violence and hatred.
Crimes based on such hatred must be condemned and punished without getting diverted, as Sineed says, into thinking "oh, poor people, they may be the victims of Islamophobia". Islamophobia, like other xenophobia which serves exploitation and domination, operates at a far higher and more dangerous level than getting the public to hate Shafia. Shafia does that job extremely well by himself, and it has nothing to do with Islam.
Imam Abdu Mannan Syed spoke to a packed Waterloo mosque at Friday prayers, telling believers "that domestic violence of any kind is 'totally unacceptable,' and the killing of women and girls is forbidden in the Muslim faith.
" 'You have no right to treat family unjustly, whether emotionally, physically or any other way. It is forbidden in Islam,' Syed said during his 20-minute sermon at the Erb Street mosque.
" 'You will lose the pleasure of Allah,' he said. Syed never mentioned the Shafia family murder case directly, but his words and that of many other imams across the region and the country at Friday prayers were to reinforce to all Muslims and the community at large that Islam is a religion of peace and love that comdemns all violence."
There's a good post on "Loonwatch" that summarizes the evidence against the family, which is actually rather damning, and also reflects ascerbically upon what a gift this case is to people with an Islamophobic agenda:
http://loonwatch.wordpress.com/tag/code-of-hammurabi/
Thanks for the summary. However, the main unconvincing point to me is the method the police claims they were killed: Another car allegedly driven by their brother or father, pushing their car into the canal. Four individuals - adult and teenagers - wouldn't stay in a submerged car until they are drowned. I recall a case of a submerged car a while ago where a nine-year old managed to open the window to get out of the car and swimmed to safety; and none of the four victims could do that? No evidence of fighting back? Also the story doesn't explain why the car was near the canal in the first place.
Are you really convinced by this official story?
The testimonies against them is also not strong: One comes from an ex-boyfriend of one of the girls and the other from the enraged family of the first wife, both with sufficient motives to lie or exaggerate.
As for the honor killing aspect, it was said the father was angry at the two eldest daughters for their social behaviour. However there is no evidence or indication that he was angry at his first wife or the youngest child. Why killing them then? This has not been explained. Surely it would not have been hard for him to arrange an "accident" involving the rebelious daughters only if he was on a murderous rampage against them. And googling "Where to commit murder"? That's ridiculous. I am wondering how "Kignston Canal" would come up in that search.
I am not saying that the family is innocent; just that the offical story is really weak.
True. The autopsy revealed that they were already dead when the car went into the water.
The 1st wife was a defender of the girls. And perhaps the 3rd daughter appeared to be following the same path as her older sisters. And damage to the 2nd car showed that it was the same vehicle that pushed the car with the girls in it into the water. Did some stranger drive it?
True. The autopsy revealed that they were already dead when the car went into the water.
Ok, that theory makes more sense. But the autopsy also confirmed they definitely died of drowning. So is the crown suggesting that they were drowned elsewhere and brought there? And if so, where and how?
So is the crown suggesting that they were drowned elsewhere and brought there? And if so, where and how?
Do you have an alternate theory about these deaths?
So is the crown suggesting that they were drowned elsewhere and brought there? And if so, where and how?
Do you have an alternate theory about these deaths?
No, I admit I really don't. At he beginning I was thinking murder-suicide, i.e. the girl killing herself and also her sisters perhaps to save them from her father's abuse, but there has not been any solid evidence or indication for suicide either. However, my main problem is that whether someone should be punished based on a weak theory with lots of holes or unexplained circumstances.
So is the crown suggesting that they were drowned elsewhere and brought there? And if so, where and how?
Do you have an alternate theory about these deaths?
The articles I've read seem to be suggesting that they were drowned first then put in the car, then the car was pushed into the water. The victims also had bruises on their heads. They could have been held down in a sink full of water. I have to admit I've been reading every article I come across on this case - it's like a train wreck, that I can't look away from. I don't see how anyone can think the father and brother are innocent. The brother had searches about places to commit a drowning and whether prisoners can still control business or property interests from jail on his web history. The police can place the second car at the locks and none of the three accused have been consistent in their stories. The only question mark for me is whether the mother will be found guilty. It's unclear what her role was. The defence might succeed in creating reasonable doubt there.
The only question mark for me is whether the mother will be found guilty. It's unclear what her role was. The defence might succeed in creating reasonable doubt there.
I don't know exactly what she did either. Except that the girls' step-mother stood up for them, and died for it, while their mother either helped drown them or did nothing to stop her husband and son. Unimaginable. I hope she is found guilty of something.
Guilty. On all charges. Four first degree murder convictions each.
Not good...after all, the women they murdered are still dead...but as good as can be expected, and some small consolation.
Yep. Sickening, sickening crime. May the four of them rest in peace.
Thanks Unionist for your above insighful words.
The jury delivering their verdict in this case is the supposed reason that crap CBC News Department stopped broadcasting the NDP Leadership debate on Newsworld, except that for the 1st half hour all they did was have some useless reporter commenting from outside the courtroom prior to the verdict being handed down. Take about a setup to deprive the NDP of major media coverage of their Leadership debate. The last I heard the NDP is the Official Opposition in Canada, although watching and listening to the CBC News jerks one would never know it.
The event was jointly covered by CPAC and CTV. The "news jerks" of CBC tend to vote NDP but they are not involved in budgetary/political decisions. We should strive to be fair-minded and realistic in all things, cultural and political. :)
Difficult as it is to use the concept "fair-minded" in connection with such a heinous, sick act, where feelings of individual status and pride can be brought to override the natural act of protective love for one's children.
.
2. That the actions of which they stand accused had anything whatsoever to do with Islam, or with their own religious beliefs (as described to date by themselves), etc.
Islam didn't appear to be on trial, or at least it wasn't used to frame a motive in particular...thus the reason why you didn't detect evidence in that respect. The overriding factor of course was patriarchy, violent examples of which abound everywhere in our society; to battered human beings behind closed doors from coast to coast, to popular fashion, entertainment and culture. I think we make a mistake however in ignoring all of the various supportive and influencing factors - as if patriarchy in any age needed further support - from the correct sense of refusing alignment in any way, shape, or form with the racial and cultural dichotomies found throughout the public lie. None of these heinous ideologies, aka the big three or any of the other transcendental persuasions should be given a pass in this. I would say that patriarchy is the base philosophy for this form of violence, which in itself is derived from the apparently eternal quest for dominance within power relations that has brought us to today's brink of destruction, and that religion constitutes part of the library of oft consulted 'how to' manuals which were developed along the way. I call these things inhuman...and I know you do as well. Why obscure the point just to put ourselves in a favorable and ‘progressive' light? Refuse instead the simple night and day choice that is offered to us by reactionary politics, the ‘with us or against us' idiocy. As you put it succinctly in the past...it is all shit...and this is only one tragic example of everyday life that is supported by all manner of influences in all societies
Slumberjack, my comments related back to some ridiculous arguments in the previous thread. Some people were trying to insert Islam into the conversation. Others are opposed to the term "honour killings" (which these obviously were), because they mistakenly believe that honour killings are connected to Islam, and they don't want to be seen as Islamophobic - or because they think that when you call murder of women "honour killings", you're somehow approving of them, because "honour" is a nice thing - I know, I know, it's dumb, but what do you say when you hear spokespersons of some organizations say that?
You know me. I never give religion a pass. But in this case, there was no religion involved. I just wanted to affirm that point.
Yes, of course this trial had nothing to do with the ongoing "clash of civilization" narrative that has dominated the twenty-first century and legitimated the West's ongoing imperialist project in the Middle East. What a "ridiculous" notion.
It is certainly being used for that purpose CF, and utterly expected as part of the daily regurgitation.
And to your point Unionist; I can't seem to agree that religion wasn't involved in these acts. Ultimately the patriarchal excuse is capable of extending its justifications where necessary, beyond the everyday offering which says that's just the way things are, because we're the boss of things. It needs as well something to point at and interpret as required, something which says...there, because it is written. The fact that religion didn't factor at trial as a motivating influence is likely a matter of sensitivity to the various mainstream practices, which would risk having them all subjected to public cross-examination for the purpose of comparative behaviorism. The way around that is to build a case around culture, civilized versus it's opposite, etc, which is much easier to press forward with in this society.
Get your sarcasm right, please. I said it had nothing to do with religion. Honour killings (called by that name) are a rampant crime not only in Afghanistan, but far more so in Pakistan, India, and the whole region. They transcend religion, appearing in Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and other communities. There is (ineffective) legislation against the practice in Pakistan, and some kind of law now being proposed in India. Honour killings in India frequently involve children marrying into the "wrong" caste. There is no issue of race or religion here. That's what I said in the last thread, and that's what I said here. So get my view straight and then ridicule it appropriately.
Does that mean I support the remarks of some judge trumpeting the alleged superiority of "our" "civilized society" over someone else's? Sure, if you haven't read a single one of my posts here for the past six years.
But if you want to deny the very existence of "honour killings", because you fear it might abet imperialist projects in what you call the "Middle East" (how did the Middle East get into this discussion???), then feel free to fill your boots.
My view is different, as you know. We must vigorously oppose imperialism - our own first of all - and interference in the affairs of sovereign countries and nations under any pretext. And here, in Canada, we must just as vigorously work every day, exercise our own sovereignty, to rid our society of every trace of gender inequality, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, colonial subjugation of indigenous peoples, denial of the right of Québec to self-determination, and exploitation of workers and of human beings in general.
While some may not grasp the difference, we must stop waging wars and invasions against other countries under the pretext that they won't let their girls go to school - and in Canada, we must never allow any subgroup or religious group or sect or municipality or whatever treat girls or women like property, under the guise of respecting multiculturalism or the like.
What we must tolerate in others (because they are sovereign and we have no business committing aggression), we must never tolerate in ourselves.
Is there some other term we can use that specifies that a killing derived from someone's twisted sense of honour, without actually using the words "honour killing"? Cause when you put it together, it sounds like the person saying it believes there was honour in the killing.
What we must tolerate in others (because they are sovereign and we have no business committing aggression), we must never tolerate in ourselves.
This deserves its own thread. What if others commit genocide (Rwanda)? Is the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" nothing but an excuse for imperialism? Does "never again" mean anything?
For that matter, should we really "tolerate" countries that deny women the vote, and almost all other rights, to the extent that we treat them as sovereign equals?
What we must tolerate in others (because they are sovereign and we have no business committing aggression), we must never tolerate in ourselves.
This deserves its own thread. What if others commit genocide (Rwanda)? Is the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" nothing but an excuse for imperialism? Does "never again" mean anything?
You're right about the separate thread. And I never said we must tolerate everything in others. For example, the international community no longer "tolerates" (in theory at least) a country committing aggression against others. We have the right, if appropriately sanctioned by the U.N., to intervene (although even then we must make our own sovereign decision, because the U.N. can and does get it wrong). Likewise with crimes against humanity, but there again, unilateral action is hard to justify and hard to distinguish from imperialism. Too many examples to cite, but you know them all. Rwanda is a tough one, and I don't know enough to comment.
Yes "we" should, Wilf. It doesn't mean we have to be nice and touchy-feely with them. It does mean that we must not "liberate" them. Otherwise, let me know where to sign up for the expeditionary force against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the rest. The Catholic Church on the corner here doesn't allow abortion, divorce, contraception, women priests... The fast-food joint on the other corner hires women as servers and men as higher-paid cooks. The hotel down the road has only women cleaning rooms - the men get the better jobs. We've got work to do here before we go liberate Libya and Rwanda.
Is there some other term we can use that specifies that a killing derived from someone's twisted sense of honour, without actually using the words "honour killing"? Cause when you put it together, it sounds like the person saying it believes there was honour in the killing.
Patriarchy.
Is there some other term we can use that specifies that a killing derived from someone's twisted sense of honour, without actually using the words "honour killing"? Cause when you put it together, it sounds like the person saying it believes there was honour in the killing.
Sure, if we want to live in denial, we can call it something else. But it's a term used around the world (check my links re Pakistan and India) to describe a real and specific phenomenon. If we're face to face with that phenomenon, why not call it what it is? And I'm not too concerned that if you say it was an "honour killing", that I'll think you found the killing to be honourable. Let's get real, please.
Patriarchy.
Patriarchy.
Patriarchy.
Patriarchy.
It might have different titles. It might be recognized as a war. Or not.
Same damned thing. Patriarchy.
The guilty verdict in the Shafia murder trial is being met with mixed emotions in Canada's Muslim community, an Ontario imam says.
Imam Sikander Hashmi, with the Islamic Society of Kingston, said the conclusion of the three-month trial has been met with "relief" and "a lot of sadness" among members of Ontario's and Quebec's Muslim community.
"It was just so tragic in so many ways," Hashmi told CBC News from Kingston, Ont. "So I think now there's probably some relief that's this is finally over and hopefully we can move on."
Hashmi said imams will continue to speak out against domestic violence, and that there is sadness for the three remaining Shafia siblings, who face a life without their parents and older brother, and without their three older sisters.
"The jurors and the court have done their job. Our job as community leaders and members of society is that we have to be very clear about our position on domestic violence and such crimes," Hashmi said. "We need to speak very strongly, and we need to take concrete action."
Islamic religious leaders banded together last December to denounce honour killings from the country's mosques and educate Muslims about the call for gender equality at the heart of their faith.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/01/30/shafia-trial-verdict-reac...Imam Abdu Mannan Syed spoke to a packed Waterloo mosque at Friday prayers, telling believers "that domestic violence of any kind is 'totally unacceptable,' and the killing of women and girls is forbidden in the Muslim faith.
" 'You have no right to treat family unjustly, whether emotionally, physically or any other way. It is forbidden in Islam,' Syed said during his 20-minute sermon at the Erb Street mosque.
" 'You will lose the pleasure of Allah,' he said. Syed never mentioned the Shafia family murder case directly, but his words and that of many other imams across the region and the country at Friday prayers were to reinforce to all Muslims and the community at large that Islam is a religion of peace and love that comdemns all violence."
I should imagine that the imams are up on current interpretations of this act.
Excuse the sarcasm, Unionist. It might have something to do with the way you talk to and about people with whom you disagree.
It seems you are making the jump from "The Shafias didn't kill those women because of their race or religion" to "This case and anything associated has nothing to do with race or religion" rather easily. I agree with the first contention, and disagree strenuously with the second, and I'm baffled that someone with your record of analyzing the niceities of imperialist discourse and tools is so stubborn in his refusal to recognize its error.
For one, the only time the West mentions the words "honour killing" is in reference to brown people (or people from nations the West assumes contain brown people), which, regardless of their actual geographical location or religious views, is enough to feed into the usual civilized/unicivilized narrative that justifies the war on "terror." You need only look at this thread to see that the statement "this case has nothing to do with Islam" is patently false: Canadians have an incessant need to bring up Islam whenever they talk about it.
I'm also baffled you insist on calling this an "honour killing." What's wrong with "murder"? Or, "misogynist murder"? theleftyinvestor's question is a good one: it has nothing to do with honour, so why do we accept the labels of the murderers and oppressors? Yet you make some pseudo-anthropological attempt to "show" that "honour killings" are a distinct cultural phenomenon in a certain part of the world that just happens to be targeted by Western xenophobes with a keen eye for moral failings.
I heard the chief prosecutor talk about the tragedy of these women's deaths because they "loved freedom" so much. Yes, he paused to talk about their love of freedom. Why do you suppose he did that?
The freedom to experience our form of exploitation and submission.
This deserves its own thread. What if others commit genocide (Rwanda)? Is the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" nothing but an excuse for imperialism? Does "never again" mean anything?
NDPP
excuse the drift but despite the nonsense widely held here, Rwanda was indeed an imperialist venture - a US mounted regime change operation and invasion from Uganda to install Paul Kagame as President. Both Romeo Dallaire and Louise Arbour were complicit. There is lots of material on this in the 'African Affairs, Western Agendas' thread:
http://rabble.ca/comment/1166339
[formatting edited by moderator]
Excuse the sarcasm, Unionist. It might have something to do with the way you talk to and about people with whom you disagree.
It seems you are making the jump from "The Shafias didn't kill those women because of their race or religion" to "This case and anything associated has nothing to do with race or religion" rather easily. I agree with the first contention, and disagree strenuously with the second, and I'm baffled that someone with your record of analyzing the niceities of imperialist discourse and tools is so stubborn in his refusal to recognize its error.
For one, the only time the West mentions the words "honour killing" is in reference to brown people (or people from nations the West assumes contain brown people), which, regardless of their actual geographical location or religious views, is enough to feed into the usual civilized/unicivilized narrative that justifies the war on "terror." You need only look at this thread to see that the statement "this case has nothing to do with Islam" is patently false: Canadians have an incessant need to bring up Islam whenever they talk about it.
I'm also baffled you insist on calling this an "honour killing." What's wrong with "murder"? Or, "misogynist murder"? theleftyinvestor's question is a good one: it has nothing to do with honour, so why do we accept the labels of the murderers and oppressors? Yet you make some pseudo-anthropological attempt to "show" that "honour killings" are a distinct cultural phenomenon in a certain part of the world that just happens to be targeted by Western xenophobes with a keen eye for moral failings.
I heard the chief prosecutor talk about the tragedy of these women's deaths because they "loved freedom" so much. Yes, he paused to talk about their love of freedom. Why do you suppose he did that?
rather denying reality by making up the lie that "the west" invented honour killings why not study the history yourself. Men kill women in Europe and North America and South America; Why must you insist that every culture in the world is the same when they are clearly different and men often kill women for different reason depending on culture.
You end up defended offensive cultural practices by your need to say Canada is just as bad all the time. Yes canadian women live under patriarchy but it's still different - Canada isn't Pakistan and Pakistan isn't Israel and Israel isn't Brazil and so on.
Not that you will even respect my point of view likely but - you are wrong and I have to say it.
"Why must you insist that every culture in the world is the same when they so cleary different and men often kill women for different reason depending on culture."
Interestingly enough, the women of the various cultures are equally dead. Dead. Dead.
Oh, the angels on the head of a pin, and the privilege of debating the colours of their wings! How lovely it must be!
Excuse the sarcasm, Unionist. It might have something to do with the way you talk to and about people with whom you disagree.
Lemme see - there must be some way I can compartmentalize and blithely dismiss you in exchange - damn, nothing comes to mind. Thanks for the slam, ma'am!
First of all, "honour killing" is used by everyone - not just "the West". It is used, first and foremost, by the people in those countries where patriarchal murder of female relatives for violating some family code has epidemic proportions - countries like India and Pakistan. I gave you the links above. I could have given you any number of them. But you know that, don't you?
So there are two possible approaches: 1) Persistently expose and reject and condemn (as appropriate) any attempt to link gender-driven murder to brown people or particular countries, by demonstrating that the culture of subjugation of women and associated violence is a feature of every single human society - as I pointed out in the previous thread (you didn't like my use of the word "culture" in that context - a legitimate disagreement between us); OR 2) Attack the use of the term "honour killings" - to the point of denying the very existence of this very particular phenomenon - because you don't want to or don't know how to avoid some baggage which "the West" places upon the term.
Well, Catchfire, if you think denying the use of the term (and the existence of the phenomenon) can help to defeat Islamophobia, as I said, go for it. But make sure you also explain to the imams and Muslim associations in Canada and around the world that they should stop using the term and stop their efforts to eradicate the phenomenon from certain of their communities, as a way of fighting Islamophobia.
Or, if it's just the particular words that bother you, would you be ok with using the term: "killing women in the name of protecting the family’s honour"? That's the expression used in the November 15, 2011 joint communiqué endorsed by 65 Canadian Muslim organizations, 6 allied organizations, 27 Canadian Imams and Muslim Scholars, and 35 community leaders?
That's why it's important to continuously explain to "Canadians" that this case has nothing to do with Islam.
You are exhibiting some kind of denial which I think I understand but don't share. Honour killings are murder. They are misogynist murder. Their origin is the same patriarchal subjugation of women that exists in every human society of which I have been made aware (there may be exceptions, I'd love to hear about them). But if you close your eyes to the symptoms and signs - or what physicians call "differential diagnosis" - because you're concerned about the term (which is in universal use, not just by "Western xenophobes") or because you're concerned that someone will think you think such killings really are connected with "honour" - then we'll have a hard time preventing and curing the disease.
Not sure. Can't speak for him. What was the context? That these women loved the freedom of dressing any old way they pleased, choosing their own friends and lovers freely without parental constraint? Or did he mean that they loved Western parliamentary democracy and not the U.S.-Canada-NATO puppet regime in Afghanistan? Or that they loved the Judeo-Christian vs. the Muslim tradition? Which of those is most likely?
"Why must you insist that every culture in the world is the same when they so cleary different and men often kill women for different reason depending on culture."
Interestingly enough, the women of the various cultures are equally dead. Dead. Dead.
Oh, the angels on the head of a pin, and the privilege of debating the colours of their wings! How lovely it must be!
I don't understand yr point - yes dead is dead. Every woman killed for whatever reason is equally tragic but I was responding to the idea that Honour killings are not unqiue in their own way.( but I do feel like this is much less important now - so maybe I do understand yr point)
This may be a bit too much, but I've plagiarized myself and tweaked my words from another thread. They seemed appropriate to quote here, in this thread.
[O]ur society teaches that [gender] is about power-over. Men learn this. Women learn this.
....
In a world defined as "whoever has the most power can do what they like", this is the inevitable result.
Until our world changes, this will not change. This will not change no matter how many laws are created to put more [murderers] in jail. And if more [murderers] are put in jail .... it will not change the rates of abuse [and murder], since we create more [murderers] every day, as a society.
Our society creates and nurturers many kinds of predators. Until we stop doing this, they will continue to exist.
I said the above in a clearly feminist way, and I quote it again, here, with as much feminist injection as possible. Here, in a discussion about violence against women. In a thread dominated by men.
Imagine that.
Thanks writer and Maysie, for sticking around and making your voices heard.
I think you are flattening my posts with a simplified gloss in which I don't find anything similar to what I wrote. I don't agree at all with the above statement about what I "insist."
Most feminist activists I know think violence against women is epidemic in most countries, including Canada. I have never said that "honour killing" is only used by the West. What a ridiculous notion you've picked up. I said that the West only uses it in reference to brown, 'Islamicized', folk. White people don't do honour killings. I call that a false distinction, and I call it tied up with the usual, garden-variety Islamophobia which legitimates imperialist violence, etc. etc.
This is slightly disingenuous of you. "Honour killing" is a packaged phrase with all sorts of attendant ideologies wrapped up in it (see above: "islamophobic," "imperialist," etc. etc.). The phrase used in your linked letter--only once--is not a stock image, but a description of the flawed motives claimed by the killers. It's not a "term" in the same sense at all, as you falsely claim. My argument is rooted in the fact that when we read "honour killing" on the CBC's website, we are meant to conjure up a basketful of other meanings: that's why the presiing Judge was moved to call the crime "uncivilized" and the chief prosecutor was moved to describe the victims as "freedom lovers." Show me a judge and crown using these terms the next time a jealous boyfriend murders his ex and I'll retract.
To be clear: I'm not as interested in how Pakistan and India try to fix the social problems they see and diagnose in their own country as I am in the rhetorical uptake and sensationalism Canada and Canadians enact and circulate; especially when it is exclusionarily applied to a specific subset of the population already under attack by--you name it--prejudiced immigration laws, economic bias, practices of social exclusion and warfare.
Thank you Gerry Caplan. From July 2010.
For some reason, the term honour killings seems to be reserved for murders committed by male family members against daughters or sisters in South Asian or Middle Eastern communities. These unimaginable crimes have been receiving much high-profile notoriety in the Canadian media, as they surely deserve. All Canadians must now know of the tragic murder of 16-year old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga, strangled to death three years ago by her brother and father.
But I'm confident that not one in a million is aware that in Ontario alone, from 2002 until only 2007 (the latest data), 212 women have been killed by their partners. That's 42 every year, compared with 12 so-called honour killings in all of Canada in the past eight years. Women killed by partners are known as domestic homicides, and, unless especially gruesome, are barely worth a mention in the media. Maybe there's just too many of them to be newsworthy.
....
Let me rush to be clear here. I don't for a moment minimize the horror of 12 girls and women in Canada murdered by members of their immediate family. To steal a phrase, one would be far too many.
There is no conceivable excuse or justification for doing anything but condemning such murders in the most unequivocal way. There is no cultural tradition, no sensitivity to the different values of other societies, that can ever justify or even "understand" how a father or brother can kill their daughter or sister, or how a mother can be a sympathetic witness to such a savage act. It is beyond any rational understanding.
What accounts for the high profile of these relatively small number of murders in Canada? Why do we know little or nothing about the larger epidemic of women killed, almost routinely it sometimes seems, by boyfriends or husbands? Is it less terrible to be strangled to death or shot or have your throat slit by them than by family members? Is it just too commonplace to bother paying attention to? Do we still harbour that sneaking suspicion that women murdered by partners have somehow brought it on themselves?
Yet both kinds of murders have a common root. Both are honour killings, reflecting a twisted, pathological male sense of honour. Both are executed by men who feel they haven't received their due deference, men who consider "their" women, whether daughter or partner, to be their chattel, to do with as they choose. Have we smug white Canadians forgotten that you don't have to be a Muslim or South Asian to regard women this way?
Exactly. You don't have to be a Muslim or South Asian to regard women this way. Let's ensure we repeat that over and over until the message is received and understood. Our society is fundamentally patriarchal and misogynistic. Women pay for that daily, in earning 70% of what men do, in being compartmentalized in "women's" jobs, in being treated as domestic child-bearing cooking cleaning hyper-sexualized slaves, and in being assaulted, injured, and killed. Our duty as progressive people is to identify and uproot the causes of this economic, social, political, and physical violence against women, here in Canada - and to sympathize with and support those who are engaged in the same struggle internationally.
But you do the MSM and the westernized meme a favour by arguing as you do Unionist, don't you? I hear what you're saying but it does seem a convoluted and painstaking education process to reach the same result that we'd all prefer?
It is interesting the way you pose it Unionist and seems to be a bigger picture lens which I shall think about and in a way have always been leaning to. Just not sure of the vocabulary and picture framing still existent.
The discussion could do with everyone's honest perspective within the framework provided, because it involves the type of society we do not want, which happens to be the one we currently have.
No, you don't have to be a Muslim, or a Catholic pro-life advocate and wannabe manager of wombs, or an Orthodox Jew who spits at female children on their way to school because of the way they're attired, or a secular misogynist etc. You could be just about anyone at any level of society. I see no particular need to provide a berth around the appropriate descriptions when arrangements between religion and patriarchy form ever more unhelpful and destructive combinations.
For one, the only time the West mentions the words "honour killing" is in reference to brown people (or people from nations the West assumes contain brown people), which, regardless of their actual geographical location or religious views, is enough to feed into the usual civilized/unicivilized narrative that justifies the war on "terror."
I doubt this is factually accurate. Although the Sikh faith is totally in support of women's equality (more so than most others), some Sikhs have committed honour killings who were as light-skinned as any Brahmin, and I have no doubt some Brahmins have also done so. Calling India a "nation the West assumes contain brown people" is a statement I strongly suspect many north Indian residents would find over-generalized (which equals discriminatory) if not outright offensive. Skin colour seems irrelevant to me.
Oh man, some people really seem determined not to get it.
I doubt this is factually accurate.
You've failed to refute anything with links?
Although the Sikh faith is totally in support of women's equality (more so than most others),
That's really offensive.
some Sikhs have committed honour killings who were as light-skinned as any Brahmin, and I have no doubt some Brahmins have also done so. Calling India a "nation the West assumes contain brown people" is a statement I strongly suspect many north Indian residents would find over-generalized (which equals discriminatory) if not outright offensive. Skin colour seems irrelevant to me.
This is not about skin colour, where is the failure to communicate?
Shafia Trial Reaction (and vid)
http://ezralevant.com/2012/01/shafia-trial-reaction.html
http://ezralevant.com/2012/01/tolerating-the-intolerable.html
attempting manufacture of consent for increased Islamophobia and legitimization of war on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and the ' War on Terror...'
I doubt this is factually accurate. Although the Sikh faith is totally in support of women's equality (more so than most others), some Sikhs have committed honour killings who were as light-skinned as any Brahmin, and I have no doubt some Brahmins have also done so. Calling India a "nation the West assumes contain brown people" is a statement I strongly suspect many north Indian residents would find over-generalized (which equals discriminatory) if not outright offensive. Skin colour seems irrelevant to me.
Wilf, I'm having trouble seeing what your post finds "factually inaccurate," as it doesn't address the passage of mine you quoted.
Well well well... My dense head is finally starting to melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew...
My conscience is telling me I was wrong upthread. I was wrong. It doesn't matter whether such killings are called "honour killings" in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. To call them that here in Canada is, in fact, to absolve "ourselves" and blame the "other" for being steeped in barbarism - when we all know that the very opposite is the truth.
I was wrong.
And here's the short item which hit me over the head this evening and brought it right home to me. From the MSM, of all unlikely places:
Should we call it "honour killing"? No. It's a false distancing of ourselves from a too-common crime: the murder of females
But we mustn't wind up like Maggie Thatcher and say that there is no such thing as society,it must be understood that some people in some cultures do positively sanction the idea of taking action to defend one's honour. I believe that that is the only qualification needed. Otherwise one can lose status in the community.
I know. I hate it when my white, male, Canadian buddy gives me grief and shuns me because I ask him to stop hitting his wife and get counselling. She defied him. But only some people and some cultures, eh?
Wait a minute, if you look at actual numbers, this whole notion that honour killing is a unique shame for the South Asian and Middle Eastern communities becomes a lot weaker. South Asians and Middle Easterners are 5.4% of the population. If honour killings are a unique outsized evil, then this groups' proportion of domestic homicides against women would be higher than their proportion of the population. From Caplan's figures and from StatsCan, it's actually lower and significantly so.
How about if Shafia is just a psycho, and as with any psycho there are cultural and religious factors that come into play to rationalize the murderer's deeds? Plenty of that in the majority population.
Sigh.
It does get exhausting.
If one demographic was killing, maiming, torturing, raping, controlling and otherwise abusing another demographic over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again ... not *all* of one demographic against *all* of another, but a significant proportion from each ... at what time, exactly, would there be even a little bit of an ahah moment of recognition that this isn't about "psychos" or rare, extreme misdeeds or very particular cultures (not ours!)? It's about a global system of oppression.
At what point?
Because that's what has been happening. Overwhelming by men. Overwhelmingly against women. For, I don't know, a while.
Maybe we're better suited for the hockey thread or something. Does Lafleur still play?
How about losing the offensive language? I'm talking about "psycho". This link is also good.
Okay.
For (hopefully) the last time:
This isn't about what the abuser says!! For fucks sake!!!
This is about violence against women.
Sometimes the abuser/murderer says "I hit her/beat her/raped her/killed her because she wasn't as religiously pious as I demand, which is disrespectful to me".
Sometimes the abuser/murderer says "I hit her/beat her/raped her/killed her because dinner wasn't on the table on time as I demand, which is disrespectful to me."
WHY are some here giving the words of the abuser(s), and in this case, one of the MURDERERS (!!) the final say on what happened, on what the dynamic was in the family????
Abuse is abuse.
Canada's 'Honour Killings': Where Is the Sense of Honour? - by Eric Walberg
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_64291.shtml
"As Canada continues to pour troops and money into American wars and intrigues in the Muslim world, the media focuses on so-called honour killings...
How many innocent Afghans, not to mention freedom-fighters, have Canadian soldiers and mercenaries killed since 2002? Surely many thousand times the 13 deaths attributed to honour killings on the home front.
And just why are the Shafias with their un-Canadian ways even living in Canada at all? It is a direct result of the destruction of their homeland...
The shameful, very noisy trial of the Shafias distorts the real news about Canada's relations with Afghans, a perfect metaphor for the high-tech imperial centre presenting itself (through the embedded media) as the world's sole source of progress and reason,
even as it drags that world down into chaos and destruction..."
The Shafia Murders, Immigration, and Misrepresenting Canadian Violence Against Women; by Sean Kheraj