Honour & justice in a chauvinist society

They have all ignored the real issues over and over again — in their public speeches. Imran Khan speaks about revolution and cleansing the Augean Stables. Tahirul Qadri speaks about justice and abolishing the current system. Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif speak about stability and preserving democracy. But there has not been a word about women’s rights from any of them. Not even a whimper about the practice that has besmirched whatever image the country had acquired in the past. I am, of course, referring to the assassination of women in what is euphemistically referred to as Honour Killing.

In legal terms, the practice can best be described as the homicide of a member of a family or social group, due to a perpetrator’s belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonour upon a family or community. This could be due to a number of causes. A refusal to enter into an arranged marriage; being in a relationship that is disapproved by relatives; indulging in intimacy outside of wedlock; dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate … and becoming a victim of rape. The injured party is invariably a woman and at times the temporal existence of an alleged male paramour is also terminated. The practice occurs in certain cultures. But it is highly prevalent in Muslim societies, where female victims often outnumber their male counterparts by four to one. In the West, such reasons would be deemed highly capricious.



Such crimes are committed often for the flimsiest of reasons. Once, when a wife slayer had been apprehended and the policeman asked him why he had performed such an outrageous act, he said that his wife had shared a bench in a hospital waiting room with a complete stranger! The latest incident that has come down the pike is the case of the woman who had been shot by her husband … because she had been raped. When Mukhtarran Mai had been gang-raped on the orders of a panchayat, the only two voices of protest that were heard in the National Assembly at the time were those of Sherry Rahman of the PPP and Qazi Hussain Ahmed, ameer of the Jamaat-e-Islami. The rest of the assembly, which included a number of veiled women, didn’t say a word.

The phrase “honour killing” does not exist in the Pakistan Penal Code. In chapter XVI, which is devoted to offences affecting the human body, there are different types of punishment. In Clause 302 (a) the crime is punishable by death. Clause 302(c) covers life imprisonment. Statistics have been compiled by various agencies, including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Amnesty International. The latter’s figure for 2010 which shows 960 incidents of women slain in the name of honour, is truly staggering and outnumbers the figures from the Gulf and the Maghreb. The problem is such sensational statistics often go largely unnoticed in a misogynistic and testosterone-fuelled society like ours, while casualties in the war against militants take centre stage. Concepts of honour and justice remain deeply entrenched, especially in the rural hinterland, where at times the slaying of women and girls is not necessarily regarded as a criminal act. In fact, by an astonishing reversal of roles, the killer is at times regarded as having dispensed justice, whereas the victim becomes the perpetrator of the crime. Unless a determined effort is made to change this rigid mindset, all this talk about growth and progress and development is meaningless; especially to the poor wretched children who gaze, bewildered and hollow-eyed at their mother who has just been slaughtered in the Name of Honour.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.