By Supna Zaidi
Honor Killings get a lot of attention in Europe, especially the UK and Germany, but what about the US? Honor Killings are murders committed to maintain family honor and dignity by fathers, brothers, and husbands against wives, and daughters after any perceived slight usually related to the woman’s sexuality or sexual life.
Such a premeditated, backwards crime not only gathers little attention in the American media, it is not recognized for its mysoginist roots by the hate crime laws at the federal or state level. The United States must make a very public statement against such foreign and barbaric practices before honor killings become as common here as it now is in Europe.
Consider the following examples:
n On July 7, 2008, it was reported that Twenty-five-year-old Sandeela Kanwal was killed by her father in Jonesboro, Georgia. Her father, Chaudhry Rashid, 54, strangled her at home because she had been asking his permission for a divorce from her arranged marriage for months.
n New Year’s, 2008 On New Year’s of this year, two teen sisters Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and Amina Yaser Said, 18, were found shot to death inside their father’s cab outside a Texas hotel. Their father,Yaser Abdel Said, sole suspect. He left the bodies in his cab.
What crime did these teenage girls commit? They wanted to date like all other normal teenage girls in America. In December of 2007, 16 year old Canadian Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old who police say was strangled by her father, Muhammad Parvez, also a cabdriver. Part of that dispute reportedly had to do with the teen's resistance to wearing a traditional "hijab" or a head scarf. At least these murders will be prosecuted. Consider Rand Abdel-Qader, a 17-year-old Iraqi who was murdered by her father, with her brothers' help, after he learned that she had developed a crush on a British soldier.
There was no evidence of an actual relationship. Only a handful of conversations without reference as to whether the British soldier was even interested in the girl. Leila Hussein, Rand Abdel-Qader's mother was murdered after leaving her husband on May 17 via a drive by shooting. The Iraqi police let Rand ‘s father go after they learned the murder was an honor-killing.
In Europe, Muslim immigrants force old world, repressive social norms by the real threat of murder over "their" women. Part of the fault is that western countries like Germany and the UK do not treat honor killings as the heinous premeditated crimes they are: mental and physical control over women. Women who are not independent human beings, but thought as a little above property like a pet dog or cat. The perpetrators, moreover, are not innocent "simple" villagers who have been transported to the too sophistacted urban west, but cynical and calculating.
In the UK, for example, some honor killings are carried out by contract killers hired by the families. These so-called "bounty hunters" are men and women who profit from the business of tracking down victims.
We cannot control countries like Iraq, but Western countries must actively stop such gender based crimes as honor killings before they become normal practice here. Labeling such acts as hate crimes and treating the perpetrators, minor or adult, without remorse in court will help. But ending arguments of relativism, and honor killings as a "problem of assimilation" will be a more important reality check.
(Supna Zaidi is editor-in-chief of Muslim World Today and an attorney in New York. She can be reached at sapnaz@yahoo.com.)
