The Mohammad Shafia Honour Killing
I’m going to go ahead and say from the get go that although I profess to makin an attempt to understand that cultures differing from mine have drastically different values and I don’t believe we need to ‘save women from the veil,’ honour killing is victim blaming at its worst. Whether it is for misogynist, religious, or just plain psychotic reasons, to understand the real cause is important but I can’t justify it in any sense.
To be fair in an analysis, however, one must ask a fairly impartial question. First I will outline briefly the concept of honour killings and explain the Shafia case. Second, I will pose and discuss the question: Were Mohammad Shafia’s wife and daughters victims of what Jiwani (2010) calls “death by culture”(p. 79) or simply killed by Mr. Shafia. The reason I ask that question is whether or not the blame should be put on Islam’s more unsavoury interpretations or an extremely disturbed man. Somewhere in the middle might fit for someone like myself, as I think that it takes a deranged mind to take religion that far. On the other hand, this is more shocking in Canada than it would be in Pakistan. So maybe the cultural context does matter.
Honour killing is considered both a cultural and religious practice. These categories are not mutually exclusive, nor are they exhaustive. The simple idea is that someone, normally a female, has shamed the family or group and is murdered to restore honour. Honour killings are normally associated with Islam but the phenomenon is in no way an exclusively Islamic one. That being said, honour killings have been committed in the name of Islam, and part of Shafia’s reasoning for killing his wife and daughters was religious, although it would be imprudent to assume this is a widespread Islamic phenomenon and not just some fringe interpretation. What is most striking is the belief that it is a necessarily Islamic phenomenon and not a problem of more widely applicable patriarchy and misogyny that is one subject most cultures and religions seem to be in the good old boys club about.
Mohammad Shafia killed his daughters and wife by drowning them in a car he pushed into a canal. In news quotes he likens his daughters to prostitutes who brought shame to his family by being too Western. The exact reason he killed his wife is not clear yet. He claims in his testimony that it was an honour killing but as to whether or not it was religious, cultural or of his own exclusive motivation is not clear. What is clear from the media analyses and normative interpretations of Western media is what Jiwani refers to as the process in which “…Muslim men are presented as proactive aggressors, Muslim women as passive victims” (2010, p. 75). The media does not treat this as a contained event within one family or even one man’s interpretation of religion or culture. Were Shafia’s wife and children victims of death by culture? I would say that Jiwani’s offering of the term as an explanatory model for the interpretation of Western media representations of honour killings is an apt tool for analyses.
Had this been a white, Western family, religion would most likely have not been the focus. The focus would have been on either the domestic violence element, being some sort of invocation of patriarchy; though most likely not explicitly. Also, Shafia would still be portrayed and a socio/psychopath due to his lack of remorse (he confessed that he would do it again). This would not be because of his culture or religion, but simply because he is deranged period. Would it truly be any different had Shafia been a white Christian fundamentalist? Would the fact that he is a polygamist matter if he were a Christian polygamist? Would these things be mentioned as a mere oversight, mentioned at all, or be central to the media’s explanation of Shafia’s actions? I can’t answer these questions by simple speculation based on one article or in this much space but I feel that Jiwani offers the tools to get at the heart of the matter when it comes to what is important about this case in the eyes of the West and Western media.
References
Jiwani, Y. (2010). “Doubling Discourse and the Veiled Other: Mentions of race and gender in Canadian media,” in States of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century. Razack, S.H., Smith, M. & Thobani, S. (eds.). pp. 59-86, Toronto: Between the Lines.
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