Shafia murder trial reveals Negligence and Failure of Child Protection authorities

The father himself brings up [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/14/man-accused-of-killing-daughters-shafia-kingston_n_1092663.html ]honour [/url]:

The crown is trying to prove motive, but they did not raise the issue of this being an "honour killing", Mohammad Shafia did. 

Precisely my view. Which is why I objected to the article and quoted the comment in response to it which expressed this view ("This is not a case against Islam").

In the end, this case is prove that there is a big need for team of specialy train police officer and investigator to

investigate when a case of violence is reported and then the complain is cancel in an odd way. Today way of managing such case is a good start but we can do much better.

When the daugther was in woman protection house an investigation should have start imediately and been unstopable.

Unstopable because the abuser will put heavy preassure to stop the investigation.

Speaking generally, there is one important thing to remember about the cases presented by the prosecution and defense in an adversarial system:   fairness, or even trying to arrive at the truth are not the main objective for either side. 

One side is trying to secure a conviction, and the other side is trying to prevent it, and if that means they have to play on misconceptions and discrimination, and use technicalities to reach those goals I expect they are going to do whatever they think they can get away with. They wouldn't be doing their jobs otherwise.

Is it right that sensitivity gets thrown under the bus, excuses are made where they probably should not, and blame gets cast where it is not necessarily deserved? 

Of course not, but that is how the game is played.

The press on the other hand, along with other commentators who aren't wrestling over the fate of the accused, don't have any excuse for resorting to those same demonizing  and xenophobic tactics.

@ Wilf Day

I hear what you are saying, and that is a good reminder. 

I wouldn't say my point is dead wrong, though. A prosecutor is going to choose jury members he or she thinks will help secure a conviction, not based on fairness. And if making a case means attacking the credibility of a witness, perhaps unfairly then that is part of the job too. To say that lawyers sometimes play to biases doesn;t mean that they throw all notion of fairness out the window, but I think the rules are a little differnent for them than they are for the general public, or the media.

Thank you for sharing your story, cco.

I agree that this is a cultural issue, not a religious one.

Secondly @ everyone who seem uncomfortable and unable to use the term honor killing, why not?

It is an honor killing. You may feel disgusted by it, it may revolt against your sense of what hnour means to you, it may be completely incongruous and seem insulting when you consider what seems honorable to you...

but it is the term that is used to describe the killing of females to restore honor to a family.

It is not an invention of the main stream media, nor does it need to be talked about in apostrophes, nor do we need to insert "so-called" in front of it. Have the courage to call it what it is, so that Canadians can finally be aware that such things exist, that they require different ways of dealing rather than the blanket "domestic violence" umbrella when providing protection for women and girls.

Tarek Fatah addresses this much better than I ever could - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2XI-U4PRgM

that they require different ways of dealing rather than the blanket "domestic violence" umbrella when providing protection for women and girls.

I think that "honour killing" is to "domestic violence", as "sexual abuse by Catholic priests" is to "sexual abuse".

Obviously, a Catholic priest abusing children is no worse than an old man in the park doing the same thing. I'd certainly never argue that a priest should be punished more severely for that crime than anyone else. 

But when we read about, for example, the abuse scandals at Mount Cashel in Newfoundland, it's pretty clear that, morality aside, we are dealing with a somewhat different cultural situation than we are with the old man in the park. Because, unlike the old man, the abusive priest is part of an institutionalized hierarchy that has invested him with a certain status in the comminity. and which, in many cases, has shown itself willing to cover up, and even facilitate, the crimes in question.

So when we ask "How can we intervene to investigate and prevent sexual abuse by priests?", the answer is going to be rather different than when we ask the same thing about run-of-the-mill abusers. For starters, depending on the community, the priest might have a whole flock of supporters, including local law enforcement, willing to cover up for him. Whereas the people living next door to the old man probably don't care if he gets arrested for his crimes(at least not to the same degree that the priest's fan base would care).

Coming back to honour killings, I think there is a pretty qualitative difference(though again, not one of morality) between a guy shooting his wife because he thinks she was flirting with another man, and a guy killing his daughter, with the assistance of his sons, because she picked the wrong boyfriend(or whatever). It's obviously a rather different family dynamic at work in the latter situation, and that would need to be taken into account by anyone seeking to intervene in that situation or ones similar to it.

But yes, at the end of the day, when they're both standing in front of the judge convicted of their crimes, the honour-killer and the self-perceived cuckold should both get the same sentence.

Er, abusive Catholic priests are punished far less severely than "anyone else," if they're punished at all. If they're exposed and convicted at all. Which very much proves the point: the reason why the Catholic church is germane to the discussion of abuse by its priests, is because the power of the organization enabled its members to perpetrate their crimes because of its privileged position in Western culture. Indeed, it provided a haven for abusers, thus attracting them to the Church to make good on their libido.

Islam, on the other hand, which does not enjoy such a priviileged place in Western culture, finds itself singled out as a cause, a co-occurent with an extreme sense of entitlement and ownership over the female body. The West's (imperialist, self-serving, orientalist) interest in villifying or compromising Islam-as-Islam (cf. Tarek Fatah) very much feeds this narrative. Which is why we have to fight it whenver it rears its ugly head.

So too with your explanation of the Bountiful "marriages." They had nothing to do with honour. The Shafia killings have nothing to do with honour. That's the point. "Honour killing" is a smoke screen for murderous masculine heterosexual desire. The alternative is to believe that Shafia's honour really was stained in some way--an idea obviously odious to us all.

That's correct (speaking for my own opinion).

No one in this case killed anyone because of Islam. What a deluded and dangerous notion.

Israel does not treat Palestinians like subhumans and wage aggressive wars because of Judaism.

Catholic priests do not abuse children because of their faith.

To say otherwise is to do three very bad things:

1. Excuse the criminals.

2. Tar others who profess the same faith with crimes they haven't committed and would never dream of committing.

3. Identify the wrong cause, thereby ensuring that solutions can't be found.

In each of the cases mentioned, we are talking about criminals who are backed up by institutional strength, power, and domination, inherent to the structure of the society in which they function. Without attacking those root causes, looking at "religion" simply is tantamount to xenophobia and diversion.

I agree with that statement - but it doesn't point to causes or solutions. The culture of misogyny (which apparently is an incorrect term) pervades virtually every human society, past and present, with differences of how it is manifested. Abusive asshole fuckwads will continue to be produced in all these societies until complete equality and emancipation of women is realized.

Thanks so much for sharing this, cco. It's hard for everyone following the details of this trial, but I can't begin to imagine how it must be for you and your family.

Actually, cco, with all due respect, "we" ought not use that term, for the reasons I stated above.

Under patriarchy, men want to control women. Some women buy into and support these values of controlling women, including themselves. These men (of course not all of them in any given community) and their female lackeys will perpetuate, and justify, all manner of despicable actions and behaviours. Your wife's story is one example. But this practice isn't a newsflash, and I'm talking about the Canadian context in which this occurs. Canada IS a society where these types of murders happen, by Canadian men from all backgrounds and ancestries. Women's lives are devalued here in Canada every day. Women are murdered in Canada at a rate of one every 3 days.

"We" certainly do NOT "have" to use the terminology of the abusive asshole fuckwads, whether it's a phrase like "honor killings" or the lanugage of "dinner wasn't on the table on time". It's actually completely irrational to do so, giving the abusers the lead in how this is talked about, and in offering possible remedies.

In fact, allies and supporters, in my humble opinion, need to actively divest our brains from taking the perspective of the asshole abuser, and the asshole context in which the abuser lives (for example, patriarchal Canada). This includes picking apart their idiot "reasons" and calling their "reasons" what they are: bullshit.

Do thinking men and women use terms like "loose woman"? Is there a language of "she deserved it" and "she should have listened to her husband/father", etc.? I surely hope not. You see where I'm going with this?

Er, abusive Catholic priests are punished far less severely than "anyone else," if they're punished at all. If they're exposed and convicted at all. Which very much proves the point: the reason why the Catholic church is germane to the discussion of abuse by its priests, is because the power of the organization enabled its members to perpetrate their crimes because of its privileged position in Western culture. Indeed, it provided a haven for abusers, thus attracting them to the Church to make good on their libido.

Islam, on the other hand, which does not enjoy such a priviileged place in Western culture, finds itself singled out as a cause, a co-occurent with an extreme sense of entitlement and ownership over the female body. The West's (imperialist, self-serving, orientalist) interest in villifying or compromising Islam-as-Islam (cf. Tarek Fatah) very much feeds this narrative. Which is why we have to fight it whenver it rears its ugly head.

I wasn't suggesting that Islam enjoys the same status as Catholicism in the west. I was simply pointing out that there are factors in both honour killings and in clerical-abuse cases that make them different from the more typical of their respective crime categories.

In the case of Catholic priests, it's the institutional framework within which the crimes occur. In the case of honour-killers, it's the ability of the ringleader to convince other members of his family to participate in the murders.

As for whether abusive priests, once caught and tried, receive lighter sentences than anyone else, I don't know what the stats are on that. I do know, as it is patently obvious, that the institutional and political power of the church made it virtually impossible to detect these crimes for years on end. Hence, the decades worth of abuse stories that have come to light within a relatively short period of time.  

I apologize for the horribly long post but it really riles me when people in their desire to not be "racist" actually cause harm to those that they claim to be defending.

"It's my view that the modifier "Honour" needlessly and deceptively racializes the crime--the media doesn't throw the phrase around (that I've seen) when a non-Muslim or non-brown man murders his wife, sister, child for asserting her independence."

I don't understand what is deceptive or needless about identifying the category of crime that occured instead of sweeping it under an umbrella of violence against women.

"honor killings" are a category of violence against women - using the term doesn't excuse it, nor diminishes the crime (unless for e.g. you are going before a court in Pakistan or Turkey).

It doesn't make the criminal less of an "abusive asshole fuckwad".

Honor Killing isn't just murder for "asserting independance". It is the murder of females to restore honor to a family because it is suspected that she acted in a way that shamed the family. Usually this is in relation to her being perceived to not be modest or chaste.

I suspect that most Canadians are so repulsed by the term "honor" because it doesn't align with the generally culturally held belief of what honor is in this society. However, it is what it is and happens in the thousands every year worldwide. When someone mentions an honor killing to me, I know exactly what it is because I grew up understanding that concept of honor. Let's not be afraid to call it what it is.

If I hear the word "bride burning" for example, it neither diminishes nor excuses the crime - it identifies the crime clearly as what it is - burning of a wife that may or may not result in her rather painful death. The motivators in this case are not a concept of 'honor' but rather usually for dowry purposes or because she is being punished for some perceived failure on her part as a wife.


Identifying a particular category of a heinous crime doesn't lessen it or excuse it.
It allows us to be better educated about the forms of violence that women face in different cultures.
It allows us to understand the dynamics involved.
It allows us to better protect against it by identifying groups that are vulnerable to that particular form of abuse and to better target education and support programs as well as any legal measures that may eventually be enacted to help women.

In a world of finite resources knowing the dynamics of various crimes would help to identify and target vulnerable groups as well as to hopefully target help efforts.

For example, the UK has legislation against forced marriage. This finally acknowledges and identifies a very specific problem - the large number of young especially South Asian females who were being taken on "vacation" to the parents home country where they would be forcibly married off to settle family debts, to gain some advantages financial or otherwise, etc.

There's nothing needless or racializing about this law or the identification of the "forced marriage" crime.
The law is just as applicable to anyone - even the white anglo saxon protestant man who forces his daughter to marry someone against her will - although I don't know of any such cases - in the rare case that it happens it can be prosecuted too.

However what it does is it helps the people who really need it - South Asian women - by identifying a specific crime that occurs against them and taking steps against it.

The broader public is now educated that such a crime occurs, South Asian women's groups have educational programs that address the rights of a woman to choose her husband, her rights to obtain and retain her own identification as well as action plans of what to do should they find themselves in a certain country facing forced marriage.
British Consultates in India and Pakistan are aware of this issue and have support as well as action plans available to UK citizens who call in reporting that they are in a forced marriage situation.
British Police are aware and support girls who call in with the suspicion that a forced marriage may be in the works.
Due to proactive action that actually targets the majority of victims of this crime, this is finally on the conscious of that society.
Due to the new legislation, persons who force their daughters into marriage can now be prosecuted and punished.
Due to the recognition of the dynamics of this crime, girls are educated in the UK about their rights and know that they can approach the British consulate and police for help.
There are cases where police have intervened and have successfully thwarted such crimes for example by talking to the parents and educating them that it is a crime, etc. This prevents a crime before it can happen.

That is what happens when we identify and acknowledge a crime.

Would you rather sweep this crime under the umbrella of violence against women and wring your hands endlessly because white anglo saxon protestant men beat their wives too, there are polygamists in Bountiful who forcibly marry their daughters too and this is all about control of women? To deny specific crimes in a desire to not "needlessly racialize" a crime is the same as holding the hands of the bastards who commit these acts on their own daughters.

Consider this:
If child Protection Services and the police were more aware that honor killing is a possibility, would they perhaps have acted differently?
Would it have increased the Shafia womens' risk rating or changed the police's assessment of the situation prior to the murders when they were called?

Would they assess it from their own background of "Yes I shouted at my own daughter when she wore a mini skirt" or would they assess it from the knowldege that women are actually murdered for not acting chastely?

Would Sahar's boyfriend have understood the depth of her fear if he had a clue about "honor killings" when they were spotted cuddling by her younger brother?

Would teachers/ social workers and police take a teenage girl of Afghan origin saying "my brother saw me cuddling a boy, now my father will KILL me!" more seriously than a young white anglo saxon girl saying the same thing?

What is wrong in acknowledging that in the former situation there is a distinct possibility of it actually happening and providing the girl with the support she needs to stay alive?