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Anatomy of Honor-Killing
By: Sabah Salih
July 10, 2007
In Kurdish society, as in all societies where custom, the tribe, and religion
continue to play a significant role in shaping public perceptions and patterns
of thinking, people’s way of life (or what these days glorified as culture in
multicultural circles) can be a scary thing. This is because many people tend to
view cultural norms as permanent and sacred rather than changing and man-made.
Multicultural dogma wouldn’t have it any other way.
Cultures of this sort tend to be big on punishment. I still remember clearly the
price my father and his family had to pay for his dissent. By labeling my father
as “Awla, the drunk,” my childhood culture severely undercut our social status.
Wherever we went, we would be met with the dreaded label. Of course, being a boy
gave me the means (mostly unprintable words) to get back at my harassers. But
because the culture did not allow females to act aggressively and gave them far
fewer rights than it gave the boys, all my sisters could do was cry and seek
refuge in the good name of a relative.
But cultural punishment can be a lot severer than that. In some cases, nothing
short of the elimination of a human life, more commonly known as “honor
killing,” can satisfy a culture’s thirst for revenge. As gruesome as the act is,
those committing it know full well the culture is with them on that, or at least
a big chunk of society is supportive, including some whose job is to make or
enforce the law.
The very term “honor killing” actually implies that, for isn’t the term, to
begin with, a clever invention by culture to make murder an acceptable price to
pay for certain behaviors that the culture has decided against? Honor killing is
not killing for killing’s sake; this is killing for a cause. The killers do not
have the slightest doubt in their mind that what they are doing is right. By
linking the word “killing” with the word “honor,” the culture in effect turns
murder into an honorable act.
Societies like the one I’m describing bestow a very special status upon the idea
of honor, making the payment of any price in its defense seem like a reasonable
price. This is because the term and its opposite (dishonor) almost always apply
to the behavior, reputation, and choices of females rather than males. So, you
see, how inseparable the idea is from the way men and women are defined by
society, and you can also see why to be a female is a risky affair to begin
with. How the female manages her body, where she goes, what she does, who she
socializes with, what she wears, what people say about her: any of that can land
a female in a great of trouble. Let us face it, many in Kurdish society,
principally because of Islamic impositions, continue to regard such basic
biological necessities as falling in love a cultural crime, a sin, something so
dishonorable that only by murdering the female can it be cleansed off. That is
why a lot of parents try to prevent a potentially dangerous situation from
developing by arranging an early marriage for their daughters. How eager the
culture is in endorsing such arrangement can be detected in a satisfied mother’s
words afterwards: “Girls are a big headache; I’m glad I got rid of my girls
early.”
Such cultural discrimination is easily reflected in the way Kurdish is used. To
praise a man, one can say “He is quite manly,” but the reverse, “He is quite
womanly” can be dangerously insulting. It is the ultimate praise to refer to a
man as “the son of men,” and it is the ultimate insult to call him “the son of
women.” Men are routinely referred to as orderly and wise and capable and
trustworthy; women--well, you can guess how they are referred to. To make
matters worse for women, the culture pins the idea of honor on them, in effect
making them prisoner of the word. So family honor almost always means how the
females in that family are seen by society.
Honor killing has its tentacles deep inside a people’s way of life. To combat
it, a mammoth effort is needed to reeducate society about what it is and why it
is wrong. A week a year can be set aside to focus everyone’s attention intensely
on the problem. Presidents and parliamentarians should take the lead in
remembering the victims of this gruesome crime; their names should be treated
like the names of our nation’s martyrs--carved in stone and read aloud as
victims of oppression.
Dr. Sabah Salih is professor of English at Bloomsburg University.
