Honor Killings Research Articles

Love, Betrayal and Violence: A Female Subjugation in Shakespeare’s Play Othello

Women across historical, social and religious boundaries have been pitted against the asphyxiating patriarchal norms and rigid cultural constructs which bestow power, dominance and freedom on man, and push her into the margins of both, society and domestic space. The current paper attempts to explore the mechanics of domestic violence, and its treatment in William Shakespeare’s Othello. The aim is to ascertain how the playwright addresses the issue of crime against women within the familial and social world of his times. Based on the theme of power politics within domestic hierarchy, the play not only lays bare a grim picture of domestic abuse and violence against women in matrimony, but also offers an insight into the psyche of abusers. The dialectics of power struggle in the play written in the 16thcentury is a reflection of the playwright’s sensitivity towards the existential reality of women of his times and his negation of male hegemony and criminal violence in conjugal relations. . Vishal Bhardwaj adopted Othello to make the film Omkara in 2006. Bringing the 17th century Elizabethan society in the 21st century Indian setting, Bhardwaj deftly pointed out the present scenario. There are numerous cases of a father’s restriction on daughter’s freedom of choice, brother’s threat to the sister for not to disgrace their family apart from ‘honour killing’. This continues even in the household of her ‘soul mate’ for whom she dares to defy every challenge. The predicament of modern Desdemona’s in the hand of Othello bears the testimony of Shakespeare’s immortal creation and its never ending relevance. The universality of Shakespeare is still rejoiced due to his experiment on the core region of the human psyche which fails to alter even with high-tech service or ‘progressive’ education.

"The Mosques Are the Biggest Problem We've Got Right Now": Key Agent and Survivor Accounts of Engaging Mosques With Domestic and Honor-Based Violence in the United Kingdom.

This article considers the role of mosques in addressing domestic violence (DV) and honor-based violence (HBV) in the United Kingdom. Utilizing data extracted from interviews with 38 key agents and survivors, this article will highlight that some mosques can be difficult to engage with when attempting to raise awareness on violence against women (VAW). Participants explained that the patriarchal nature of mosques contributes to this difficulty together with their exclusion of women within organizational structures. Some mosques also deny that VAW is even a problem within their communities. This is a worrying trend as those on the pulpit often possess significant powers of influence across large congregations and are perfectly placed to help provoke dialogue on these issues. Furthermore, it adds yet another layer of inequality experienced by Muslim women that makes reporting abuse and seeking intervention that much more difficult. In the face of this resistance, this article will consider some ways in which mosques can raise awareness about VAW and where Muslim women can access support. It will also explore additional strategies and recommendations in relation to overcoming mosques unwilling to support VAW initiatives.

Relationship Between Patriarchy And Customary Social Practices Affecting Women’s Life In Pakistan

Explaining the nature and prevalence of patriarchal culture and eight anti women socio-cultural practices (i.e. Dowry, Watta Satta, Walwar, Honour Killing, Wanni, Swara, Marriage with the holy book of Quran, and Child marriage), this paper explores a relationship between people’s perceptions about patriarchy and anti women socio-cultural practices as sources of crime and violence against Pakistani women. The paper is based on primary data collected through survey conducted with a close ended questionnaire developed by the researcher. The collected data was statistically analyzed to test hypotheses. It argues that socio-cultural practices and the patriarchy are perceived as factors leading to crime and violence against Pakistani women. It is found that the respondents scoring higher on the scale for assessing perceptions regarding “patriarchy as a factor leading to crime against women” also score higher on the scale for assessing the “socio-cultural practices as factor leading to crime against women” in Pakistan. Therefore, it is inferred that there is a positive correlation between respondents’ perceptions regarding patriarchy and socio-cultural practices as factors leading to crime against women in the country. It means patriarchy is the basic system that fosters crime and violence against women through the tools of anti women socio-cultural practices in Pakistan.

Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe. By Richard Alba and Nancy Foner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. 336. $35.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe. By Richard Alba and Nancy Foner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. 336. $35.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Honor Crimes in the United States and Offenders’ Neutralization Techniques

ABSTRACTHonor crimes are violent acts that are experienced among different religions and ethnicities. This type of offense can be justified, either before or after the crime, by the offender’s perceived need to protect honor-based values. This study used Sykes and Matza’s neutralization theory to explain the offender’s justification of honor crimes. We used data from the United States Extremist Crime Database, which has incident, victim, and perpetrator level indicators for the population of honor crimes in the United States (N = 16). Using open source search files for the cases, neutralizations and justifications provided by the offenders are presented.

Poems & Photos

Poems & Photos Stephanie Rauschenbusch (bio) Old Ballerina Club Sharon Olinka Dos Madres Press www.dosmadres.com/shop/old-ballerina-club-by-sharon-olinka/ 108 Pages; Print, $18.00 To The Dogs Roberta Gould Flame Tree Press www.robertagould.net/product/to-the-dogs 80 Pages; Print, $12.00 "Little Book" in Sharon Olinka's Old Ballerina Club gives the reader a clear sense of Olinka's style of writing poems. She speaks from the viewpoint of a small cookbook saved by chance or design from the Mosul Library in Iraq. The stanzas are brief, the lines telegraphic: "The spines of my / friends shake. // I am the lucky one... / Saved by a man's hand, / stuffed in a coat pocket." The small book seems to represent its author, who by the poem's end, speaks quite anthropomorphically: "Within me voices / whisper of flour, cinnamon and honey. // Who will see / my page on pudding, / and smile?" The endearing simplicity of this poem belies the seriousness of its theme—things and people lost in wars—and its short phrases like "deemed dangerous" and "missing my home" do not upset its continuity. In musical terms, this is Satie, not Chopin. "Pan de Muerte" works in a similarly light and elegant way, while "Old Ballerina Club" seems over-emphatic and less satisfying once we understand in the first stanza that the aged ballerinas now use canes and speak only of scandals long ended. Why should there be such lines as appear in stanza two: "Babies gone, houses, landscapes bits / of green paint on a moving stage. / Done with work. Done with men"? The core of this stanza is the very original observation that the dancers live in a stage set reality of painted landscapes. Why throw in any less poignant phrases? The idea of stanza three is that the dancers eye the poet skeptically; stanza four unnecessarily projects the "I" out onto 57th Street in New York, among a crowd of "losers and whores." So the sharp focus of stanza one completely changes, and its intelligence is lost. This is a frequent occurrence in Old Ballerina Club. Most of the final stanzas are out of focus, blurred, or as embroidery-worthy as "When I stood / with others, / knew their joys, / sustained work, / and what they had lost, / what life took from them, // only then / did I know real love" from "Old Photo." "The Angel Raphael Speaks to God" is a thoroughly adventurous poem in which the angel begs God to prevent the World Trade Center disaster. "The Honor Killing," perhaps the most powerful poem in the book, is about the stoning of a woman in Diyarbakir in Turkey. Here the telegraphic style with its lists works powerfully from the first stanza to the last. Here is the first stanza: Why did youdo it, Maryan?Go with that boy.Your parentsneeded you. We needed you.We knew something was wrongwhen you sewed redsequins on your head scarf.Like a movie star.Then came love noteshidden between tworocks. They say afterthe first rock hits,then the third, the tenth,a girl passes out.Your slits of eyespeered at usin the hospital. I saidIf you hear me,blink. And you did. "The Old Hipster" is a fine poem about disillusioned love, just as "Raw Freedom" chronicles the passage from careless youth to careful middle age. "Ode" is a description of adolescent sex: "The blood flower of your mouth... / moist skin, cock hard / in tight jeans. The flower blooms / especially in hell." I sense that Olinka has almost too much to write about and is sometimes able only to sketch all the subjects she needs to draw in much greater detail. This is clear in "Time and A Mirror" in which we find a bewildering list of autobiographical facts: "Neighbors / leave the Bronx / for suburbs. Abandon me and my crazy mother. // I live in a slum, see corpses. My ear hurts, beat up by a gang of girls..." The corpses alone deserve a whole poem. "For a Man with a Guava in His Mouth" sketches a real love story we would like...

Celebrating Critical Geographies of Latin America: Inspired by an NFL Quarterback

Celebrating Critical Geographies of Latin America: Inspired by an NFL Quarterback Sharlene Mollett Normally, I have no idea when the NFL football season begins. It seems to simply appear as summer turns to autumn. In 2016, however, the start of the NFL season could not go unnoticed, nor could San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick. For those who managed to miss this story, Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem during a pre-game moment of military appreciation made international headlines. At the time, his one-man protest was as an act of civil disobedience in the face of a long and recent history of police brutality and racial oppression in the United States.1 As Kaepernick insisted, “I’m not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color…there are bodies in the street and people [police officers] getting paid leave and getting away with murder” (NFL.com 2016). Kaepernick’s protest reveals someone who recognizes that racism (and injustices more generally) will not simply disappear by looking away. It is in this vein that I welcome the invitation to reflect on what a critical turn, a move towards more “critical and progressive scholarship,” might look like in the Journal of Latin American Geography (JLAG) (Gaffney et al. 2016: 1). Of course, this is not the first time in recent memory that critical geographers working in the region have sought to reflect on what it means to be “critical.” These efforts have popped up as both special issues and conference presentations since at least 2005 (Sundberg 2005; Kingsbury and Sletto 2005). Also we must acknowledge that there exists a robust mini-subfield of critical Latin Americanists who have made important contributions on various topics including migration and inequality, gentrification, race and urban space, women’s environmental knowledges, indigenous mapping, the politics of biodiversity conservation, extraction, land titling, labour injustice and femicide to name a few (Wainwright 2008; Swanson 2010; Werner 2011; Finn 2012; Mollett 2013; Ojeda 2013; Wright 2014; Hanson 2015; Bastia 2015; Bryan 2015). What is different now, however, is that the new editorial team is calling upon scholars, much like those cited above, to populate the journal with scholarship that offers “a conceptually pluralistic and geographically extensive understanding of Latin America” and research that “explicitly challenges the injustices of this notoriously unequal [End Page 165] region and explores avenues for change” (Gaffney et al. 2016: 1). Such a cogent call deserves celebration, particularly because much of the inequality that occurs in Latin America operates globally as well. Indeed, racial and gender violence is planetary: racial profiling and police brutality, the recent Brexit decision in the UK, the Trump Presidency in the US, the detention of child migrants and refugee claimants, human trafficking; a post-apartheid era that has only galvanizes racial hierarchies in South Africa; impunity for gang rapes in both conflict zones and so-called democratic states; honor killings, disproportionate rates of poverty among indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, the list goes on. Notwithstanding important forms of resistance, the continuity of racial and gender inequalities is so rampant that one wonders if most people unaffected by such events actually move through the world asleep. Kaepernick certainly does not, and nor should we. If we want our work to be meaningful beyond academia, then commitment to more progressive and critical geographic knowledge production is urgent. In this commentary, I reflect on JLAG’s invitation for critical scholarship on Latin America. In doing so, I suggest that this turn should prioritize and counter what has been undertheorized and ignored to date, namely, racial and gendered power. In an admittedly unscientific and superficial peruse of JLAG titles, abstracts, and keywords since 2010, I could not ignore the paucity of research attending to racial power and racialized processes, patriarchy, Afro-descendant peoples, and gendered-based violence. While there is slightly more interest in indigenous peoples, particularly their landscapes, livelihoods, and mapping them both, very few articles engage in racial formations of plantation agriculture or settler appropriation, and there is almost no trace of critical feminist and postcolonial theorizing. While the current (all white male) editorial...

Evading Honor-based Violence

Evading Honor-based Violence

The Special Marriage Act, 1954: A Critique

India is a country with divergent cultural gaiety and religious affinity of people living together exhibiting ‘unity in diversity’. Institution of marriage and value oriented family system are signifying features of Indian culture. The Supreme Court stated that every young man or a woman, has a right to marry cannot be accepted in the absolute terms. Having regard to the age and the biological needs, a person may have a right to marry.4 Arranged marriage, (that to,) or intra caste marriage is the generally accepted norm in the Indian society. ‘Love marriage,’ ‘inter caste’5 or ‘inter religious,’ marriage or ‘registered’ / ‘Court marriage’ is generally is a rarity.6 Parents customarily select bride or groom to their children in the same caste or religion. The society eschews those who marry out of their caste or community. Honor killings7 have been reported every year in India.8 Interestingly, from the statistics of the United Nations, one in five cases of honour killing internationally every year are of India.9 On the other hand, there are some NGOs helping the performance of love marriages and extending protection for such love marriages

Honour Crimes: Transdisciplinary Issue

This article introduces so-called honour crimes (sometimes termed honour based violence), which tends to occur within Islamic communities located within ‘host’ countries in Europe. It is a very specific type of crime, which takes place in the family setting in Muslim families, and is in direct contradiction with the democratic values and legal systems of Western states. The aim of this paper is to introduce the issue and illustrate it in relation to selected cases. It offers both an evaluative and descriptive stance.

Interfaith Marriage for Muslim Women: This Day are Things Good and Pure Made Lawful Unto You

Interfaith Marriage for Muslim Women: This Day are Things Good and Pure Made Lawful Unto You Johanna Marie Buisson Introduction The issue of interfaith marriage in Islam is no frivolous question. It has long been neglected, even purposely occulted, inasmuch it touches upon two extremely sensitive topics in Islamic tradition, namely the close relationship with believers of other religions (specifically the Jews and Christians) on the one hand and the autonomous status and free choice of Muslim women on the other hand. Islamic tradition generally accepts interfaith marriage for Muslim men as lawful (halal), while it clearly prohibits interfaith marriage to Muslim women. This lack of reciprocity, Islamic scholars argue, would be supported by their interpretation of one Qur'anic verse (5:5) and by some ahadith (Prophetic sayings). The Sirah of Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) also indicates that the Prophet of Islam married a Christian woman (Maria, a Coptic Egyptian) and a Jewish woman (Safiyya), which, instead of being interpreted as a sign of reciprocal openness, is traditionally understood as the confirmation of the permission given to Muslim men only, by analogy to the maleness of Prophet Muhammad, to the exclusion of Muslim women. Now, some contemporary authors, Muslim thinkers, and exegetes of the Qur'an (such as Asma Barlas (), Amina Wadud, Riffat Hassan, Khaleel Mohammed based in the United States, Asma Lamrabet in Morocco, Amel Grami in Tunisia, Abdel Kader Merabet in Algeria, Kussay Fakhir Al‐Mousawi in the United Kingdom, and many others) challenge the classical interpretation of verse 5:5 in the name of Qur'anic internal consistency and coherence, linguistics, and reason. This is a burning issue as the disclosure of the Qur'anic meaning may have dramatic consequences on the lives of innumerable Muslim women today, all over the world, but especially in multi‐confessional countries such as Western secular states as well as many African and Middle‐Eastern countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Israel), but also in Asia and Indonesia, where interfaith marriages remain a sensitive topic. In many countries where national law is based on Islamic legislation, on such or such Fiqh, depending on the particular school of law this country adheres to, female nationals are formally prohibited by law to get married to a non‐Muslim man, regardless of his other faith. In many Western secular countries, many Muslim women are being restricted in their marriage choice too, if not coerced into marriage, on the grounds of this religious formal prohibition, cautioned by most religious scholars, therefore also preventing them from socially and culturally mixing further into the society they live in and belong to. In the United States, such interfaith unions are still met with disapproval: In a 2007 survey (conducted by the Pew Research Centre), 30 percent of Muslim men and 46 percent of Muslim women said they oppose interfaith marriage. Religiosity distorts the intolerance further: Many more devout Muslim men (70 percent) than Muslim women (54 percent) think marrying a non‐Muslim is acceptable. Worse, in many majority‐Muslim countries, cases of interfaith marriage often lead to the so‐called honor killings (Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and others) as Muslim family members and neighbors do not tolerate such unions for their female relatives. Here is the verse at stake (Holy Qur'an, verse 5:5), in a standard contemporary English translation by Yusuf ‘Ali: This day are (all) things good and pure made lawful unto you. The food of the People of the Book is lawful unto you and yours is lawful unto them. (Lawful unto you in marriage) are (not only) chaste women who are believers, but chaste women among the People of the Book, revealed before your time—When ye give them their due dowers, and desire chastity, not lewdness, nor secret intrigues. If anyone rejects faith, fruitless is his work, and in the Hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have lost (all spiritual good). Religious authority and the prohibition of interfaith marriage for Muslim women: the verdict of hegemonic patriarchal authority Classical Qur'anic interpreters and commentators, in their vast majority, both Sunni and Shi'ah, stated the prohibition of interfaith marriage for Muslim women, while recognizing interfaith marriage...

Honour Killings As Multiple Violation of Woman's Human Rights

This paper explores Honour killings through the lens of International Human Rights Law to broaden our understanding of honour related violence. I explore the relationship between honour, patriarchal control, and law which provides a deeper understanding of the motivations behind the honour killings. The thesis highlights that honour operates as a form of socio-economic currency and argues that honour must be reframed to position women as potential holders of honour property and to disassociate honour from the social regulation of women’s sexuality. I also analyze the legal framework and the ways in which existing laws, meant to protect women from violence, are interpreted and implemented by the Courts. There are flaws in the legal framework, which contribute to impunity for the perpetrators of human rights violations. Therefore, I argue that international human rights law provides the framework for bringing states accountability for the acts of honour killings. It provides comparative analysis of honour crimes while suggesting that these crimes are not unique to Islamic countries or third world cultures. I demonstrate that these crimes are manifestations of unequal power relations that reinforce men’s control and domination over women. It is a part of our patriarchal society that sees women in certain roles and their bodies as repositories of honour or the property of men. Religion and culture, as a result, just become tools to enforce these roles and to assure compliance. Law, thus, must play a more important role in protecting women from honour killings.

Interpreting Culture in Italian Courts: A Proposal of a “Cultural Test”

Abstract Through a series of analyses of relevant cases – such as Roma begging, genital alterations, and honor killings – this article intends to show the multiple ways in which Italian judges use, and sometimes misuse, the concept of culture. Placing Italy in the broader context of Western democracies, these analyses show the need for more certain standards to fairly assess cultural differences. The aim of this article is to suggest a legal tool to be used by judges when facing multicultural conflicts: a test consisting of a sequence of pre-established reflective questions every judge should answer when legal claims involving cultural rights are at stake. The cultural test proposed here is inspired by similar tests existing on a comparative level, and aims to offer judges a guide so as to avoid the erratic reasoning on cultural matters sometimes deployed in Italian courts.

In the Name of the National Multicultural Family: The Documentation of Honour Killings and the Pedagogy of Pain

This article focuses on Shelley Saywell’s documentary film about honour killings, In the Name of the Family, which won the Best Canadian Feature Award at the 2010 HotDocs Documentary Film Festival. Saywell stated that her hope in making this documentary was that it would help educate in order to break the cycle of abuse. This goal will be explored to see if in fact this documentary can allow the audience to hear these young women who are the victims of honour killings and whether this translates into the pedagogic potential for which Saywell hopes. Saywell’s documentary is framed within a binaristic “clash of cultures” narrative, where the fate of these young Muslim women are the limit case of a crisis of multicultural tolerance. This framing obscures the material realities which underpin gendered violence and racial exclusion in Canada even as it secures the national fantasy of a tolerant multicultural society. Ultimately, this article argues that the epistemological constraining of the patriarchal violence in this film as a specific form of culturalized and essentialized patriarchal traumatic violence serves only to entrench a larger project of white settler multicultural nationalism and limits the possibilities of knowing to the primacy of the viewing subject.

Disonorare la violenza. La violenza maschile tra reputazione e discredito

The author explores the concept of honor with particular reference to the problem of honor killings and tries to answer two questions, the first theoretical and the second ethical-political. Is the ideal of honor inextricably connected with typical forms of domination and gender violence of patriarchal cultures, or is the concept of honor redeemable and distinguishable from those codes and mentality? In order to contrast the honor-based violence is it preferable to completely break with tradition and the language of honor or is it better to try to challenge from within the logic of honor, through the spread and entrenchment of a new ethos that links the ideal of honor to respect and non-violence, especially in gender relations?

Impact of Gender Inequalities on Women Violence: A Case Study of Ghotki District Sindh Pakistan

The Current research Explore the Impact of Gender inenqulities on Women Violence: A Case Study of Ghotki District Sindh Pakistan.   Data were collected from 200 respondents from Ghotki and their vicinity. ResearchStudy reveals that male child preference; forced marriages in early age, illiteracy and women dependency on men are key factors of inequity on the basis of gender.Apart from that honor killing is also an evil custom victimizing the ladies since long and even increasing in the area despite the fact that literacy rate has been improved and media has played vital role for public awareness to address the issue. It was also observed that female are being dealt as slaves and male are wasting their time in unhealthy social activities in local hotels without consideration of economic responsibilities of family.

A Detailed Study About Honour Killing

The present paper makes an attempt to recognise and interpret the concept but while Honour killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women. Women are considered the property of the males in their family irrespective of their class, ethnic, or religious group. The owner of the property has the right to decide its fate. The concept of ownership has turned women into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold.

An honour killing in Aintab: The issue of killing fornicators in the Ottoman Empire

An honour killing that took place in Ottoman Aintab at the end of the 16th century is examined in this paper. As it seems the qadi (kadı) of Aintab did not punish the murderer at all. What underpins the qadi’s decision is the opinion held by shari’a jurists indicating that anyone who commits adultery could be killed and the killer, by doing so, will not be punished for the crime. The issue of killing fornicators has been generally addressed through the fatwas of the Shaykh al-Islam. How the qadis reached a verdict regarding this type of cases has been largely ignored. Thus, the issue has not been made clear completely and there have been certain misinterpretations on this subject. We aim to ascertain how the qadi gave a verdict by looking closely at a particular murder case, which is not frequently encountered in Ottoman qadi records. For that purpose, the opinions of Islamic jurists related to the issue, the fatwas of Ottoman Shaykh al-Islams and Ottoman criminal code have been examined together with the verdict of the qadi of Aintab. It is also studied which juridical opinions the parties referred to in their statements and how those references affected the verdict of the qadi.

‘Understanding the concept of Honour Killing within the Social paradigm: Theoretical Perspectives’

-The present paper titled „Understanding the concept of Honour Killing within the Social paradigm: Theoretical Perspectives‟ aims to outline the holistic concept and genesis of Honour Killing while analysing its theoretical perspective. The paper would deliberate upon the theoretical perspectives of social exclusion that leads to confrontation of conflict affecting right to life of the youth, particularly women which brings them directly in clash with therigid and redundant norms of their families and social communities. This paper consequently presents a detailed analysis on the theories of patriarchy, cultural relativism, feminist and Marxist theories that logically trace the instance of Honour Killing as a phenomenon that plagues not just our Indian society but the International community and pragmatic suggestions of how to tackle the present dismemberment of our society.

Honour Based Violence: A Threat to Humanity

The present paper tries to theoretically examine the notion of “Honour” that is enjoyed as a privilege for violence and people challenging the community and traditions who act as a catalyst for these “Honour Based Violence”. Here this paper is also an attempt to highlight the numerous cases and high profile honour violence that has surfaced in the recent past globally and specially in India. “Honour” being considered the pride of a community or family, the work purports to see if media representation indirectly and unintentionally acts as an instrument to ignite fear and set examples for the challengers of the cultural ideologies and customs. The researcher also attempts to mark if these types of violence are gender skewed. The work is completely based on information from secondary literary sources.