The Cost of Pride: Honour killings

Would you kill for pride?

20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, an Iraqi Kurdish woman, was raped and strangled by her father and uncle.

Her crime? Leaving an abusive arranged marriage and seeking out divorce. 

16-year-old Jordanian Kifaya Husayn, raped by her brother resulting in pregnancy and later married off to a man 34 years her senior, was killed by her brother after her husband divorced her to cleanse family “honour”.

And 16-year-old Pakistani Sumaira was murdered with a kitchen knife by her brother for being caught in the act of talking to a boy over the phone.

The cases above are classified as honour-based violence. 

What distinguishes them from traditional domestic violence is the intentional targeting, planning, and justifying of the murder of the teenage or adult women victims by the family of origin. The motive behind the murder also involves a deep acquaintance with the family’s "honour," to uphold and regulate female behaviour. It is through this subsequent purge that the family’s honor may be finally restored.

In instances like Arab society, this may be understood through the concept of sharaf, the honour of an entire social unit, and ird, the honour of a woman through her chastity and purity. 

“A woman is like an olive tree. When its branch catches woodworm, it has to be chopped off so that society stays clean and pure." 

- Tarrad Fayiz, a Jordanian tribal leader

Honour has two distinct dimensions.

The first being the subjective honour, which is how an individual feels in relation to their entitlement to respect, compared to objective honour, which involves societal interpretation by a community of an individual's worth. Honour can be defined through virtue, which is usually upheld in these communities by women, and can also be defined through dominance, which is upheld, of course, by the men in the community. 

What follows a breach of these honour codes, is often a deep shame. This is different from the traditional sense of shame, in that it is felt publicly and relationally throughout the community rather than just by an individual. Honour and shame both constitute social phenomena that depend on the perception of others to function and facilitate the intention of murder to cleanse.

Honour killings usually operate on a combination of principles of sexual anxiety, masculine fragility, narcissistic injury, and the shame-based identity structures introduced above. What usually transpires is that a deviation from a woman’s sexual chastity is interpreted as a psychological assault on male authority in the community, which inherently causes a breach in the male's own sense of “honour” in the community as he interprets it through others. 

The threat is seen as damaging to family identity and causing deep public humiliation. This blow to the identity, narcissistic injury, then prompts the man, and indeed compels him, to use violence to cleanse this damaged self-image through necessity. The perpetrators often recognize that murder is wrong; however, they frame the nature of honour killings in particular as being different from the norm and hence, acceptable to do. 

Rumors and suspicions are oftentimes enough for the family to take action.

66% of honour-based killings are done by the family of origin and often involve multiple perpetrators acting together to fulfill community expectations and enforce shared belief systems and also due to a fear of social exclusion.

Additionally, victims often fall into two distinct age groups: younger women and girls that average 17 years of age and older women that average 36. More than half the women in the analysis cited are tortured before execution. Fathers are responsible for all honour murders of the youngest victims. Common reasons for the murders include choosing their own partner, seeking education, refusing dressing norms, or asserting autonomy or any form of independence. 

Another explanation is the Norm-Enforcement Model. Honour killings often persist in areas where laws are lenient, in close-knit communities where reputation being damaged may be damning, and where communal cohesion is seen. Additionally, an inverse U-shaped model is seen where, contrary to expectation, violence is not the highest where norms are stricter but rather is higher where norms are contested, oftentimes the bridge between modern and traditional environments. 

Lenient legal structures also perpetuated such honour-based violence through legal shielding. Some of which have since been repealed and are often cited to reduce capital punishment to years or prison sentences to nothing at all.

For instance, in the Jordan Penal Code Article 340, a man who discovers his wife or one of his mahrams (a female relative not permitted to marry him) committing adultery and kills or commits violence on either member found partaking may be exempt from all penalty.

Or, Article 98 is where he who commits a crime due to extreme anger caused by illegal or dangerous acts by the victim benefits from a reduction in penalty. 

Syria’s article 548 rewards catching female relatives in adultery, whilst Lebanon's article 562 functions similarly to excuse murder done in a “fit of fury” upon discovery of the adultery of those of female relation. 

Despite this alleged “fit of fury” explanation by courts, most cases of honour killing appear to be premeditated, instructed beforehand by the family of origin, and carefully planned. 

Although many have since been repealed, judicial leniency still persists. Courts see "honour" as mitigating in many cases. 

Another instance is honour based killing in Pakistan, where family honour (izzat) is tied to female sexuality, marriage choice, and ability to obey, supported in foundation by a patriarchal social structure with male dominance of the utmost importance in households and decision-making, women’s decisions, and of course, women’s chastity.

These are further compounded by illiteracy and a lack of understanding of legal consequences to follow, or where legal reach is very limited. 

Qisas (retaliation) and Diyat (blood money/compensation) laws enforced the right to demand an execution in return for intentional murder, or alternatively financial compensation with the right of the family of those murdered to forgive the perpetrator. 

It is clear that in honour based killings where the perpetrators are fathers, brothers, uncles, and husbands, the perpetrators would be of the same family and lineage as the victim. In other words, a structural loophole allowed a formal “forgiveness” of the killer and a symbolic "compensation." This would prevent any legal action against the murderers. 

After reforms in 2016, murder was no longer a compoundable offense and can now be tried by the state; this does not solve many problems. Since honour killings usually take a community, evidence collection, witness intimidation, and intentional sabotaging of investigations still persist, and honour killings are still allowed to continue. 

Social beliefs also reinforce the murder of innocent individuals.

“Whether we like it or not, women are not equal to men in Islam. Adulterous women are much worse than adulterous men because women determine the lineage."

-Islamic politician Abd al Baqi Qammu of the Jordanian senate, who endorsed honor crimes by the Jordanian Islamic movement.

Furthermore, a possible explanation for men policing women’s sexuality, particularly in politically unstable and impoverished countries, is the exercising of masculine identity they were raised with but not allowed to exercise.

Men raised with entitlement to dominance as men and the promise of policing female chastity,

When they realize they cannot express this dominance and only face political or economic insecurity, they often turn to their promised form of expressing this entitlement, which is over women’s purity and allows them to lessen this humiliation.

P.S... I didn’t include the debate about whether we should call them honour killings, because I agree with the label, and I do think they constitute a unique kind of murder, and we should distinguish them as such, and anyone who thinks otherwise can just fight it out with me. No, I’m not reading your article, Rochelle L. Terman.

Sources:

• Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings

By Phyllis Chesler

• Making Sense of Honor Killings: American Sociological Review

By Ozan Aksoya and Aron Szekelyb

• Honor Killings in Modern Societies:  A Sociological Perspective

By Alina Zvinkliene

• The Dynamics of Honor Killings and the Perpetrators’ Experiences

By Recep Doğan¹" 

• Sex, Honor, Murder: A Psychology of “Honor Killing"

By Reza Barmaki

• Honor Killing Phenomena in Pakistan

By Qian Hongdao¹, Muhammad Bilawal Khaskheli², Hafiz Abdul Rehman Saleem², Jonathan Gsell Mapa²

Written By Sunday