shafia trial
A question of honour: How we remember the dead in Canada
How is it -- simultaneous with a Missing Women inquiry that excludes the families of many hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal women -- that this nation has learned the names of Zainab, Sahari, and Geeti Shafia, and Rona Amir Mohammad, as the only newsworthy examples of women murdered in Canada? This is a question of honour: in a nation that has shown itself incapable of respecting the dead, how do we honour the memories of women killed by their families? And what is the etiquette for "remembering" people we meet only posthumously? How do we honour the fullness of their lives?
Violence against women and the Shafia case
The Shafia case is so unsettling that it seems to unleash the search for a single key to explain it. Then you could toss away other keys that don't work, and even lock the door to a recurrence. But I don't think that's the way to go.
For instance, people ask: Was it about honour killing or domestic violence? Yet honour killings are domestic violence. You lose something in understanding if you discard either category. And domestic violence is a case of violence in general. The same holds when you try to decide if the murders are social, cultural or religious. Religion and culture are social. Why choose?