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On June 28 2008, the Canadian Human Rights commission dismissed the complaint against Maclean’s magazine (Rogers Media) concerning an article by Mark Steyn, and rightly so. (The complainants held that the article, among others, established a pattern of discrimination, and following repeatedly rebuffed attempts to respond in Maclean’s magazine, felt compelled to bring further action).
As many of you are aware, one article, “The Future Belongs to Islam”, is an opinion piece in which Steyn employs demographic information to support his opinion that the future of the Western world is in peril/doubt because of the spread of Islam.
While I am not a fan of Mark Steyn’s “neoconservative” ideology, as a self-described left-of-center civil libertarian I am certainly a fan of freedom of expression. Even if you do not agree with his arguments, he should have the right to express them without remaining worryingly susceptible to the retributive power of the state.
In fact, if it is held necessary that a body is to rule on the acceptability of certain speech, in order to protect vulnerable groups, the bar should be set exceedingly high. And according to previous rulings, the Supreme Court agrees. From the recent Maclean’s decision:
“The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 892 that this legally prescribed limitation of fundamental Charter rights [Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act] was reasonable and justifiable, but warned that caution and restraint would be required in the application of the section so that the limitation on free speech would be minimized to the greatest possible extent.”
From Taylor:
“The guarantee of freedom of expression is not unduly impaired by s. 13(1). The section is not overbroad or excessively vague. Its terms, in particular the phrase “hatred or contempt”, are sufficiently precise and narrow to limit its impact to those expressive activities which are repugnant to Parliament’s objective. The phrase “hatred or contempt” in the context of s. 13(1) refers only to unusually strong and deep‑felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification…”
The test was whether Steyn’s writings were so extreme and malicious in nature as to elicit hatred or contempt against the subjects:
“The court interpreted ‘hatred’ to mean a feeling of extreme ill-will that allows for no redeeming qualities in the person towards whom it is directed while ‘contempt’ “encompassed looking down upon or treating as inferior the object of one’s feelings.”
In an earlier related case referred to in the decision, Warman v. Kouba, it is made clear as to what type of material is considered to warrant intervention and censorship. Steyn’s writings certainly do not meet this benchmark. Hence, the commission concluded that the views expressed in the article:
“when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court.”
A decision is pending from the BC commission.
Anver Emon on Honour Killings
Anver M. Emon of the UofT Faculty blog shares an editorial he published in the National Post recently on the case of Aqsa Pervez.
As a professor of Islamic law, I teach my students about its history, doctrines and modes of analysis. We shift back and forth from common law reasoning to Islamic doctrines. We analyze the differences between the values of the Islamic system and our own value commitments.
Although he does a great job of explaining that there is no basis for these practices in Islamic law, he fails to identify that the tradition this draws from is a cultural one that predates Islam.
An Ancient Code
Laura Jamison explains this pheonomenon in Legalized Murder, in Amnesty International Magazine. She quotes Norma Khouri, a Christian Arab and author of Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan:
The tradition underlying honor killing defines a woman’s chastity as her family’s property. It “comes from our ancient tribal days, from the Hammurabi and Assyrian tribes of 1200 B.C.,” Khouri explains. (In Pakistan, it is said to be a Baloch and Pashtun tribal custom). “This practice predates Islam and Christianity. Christian women are being killed this way, too.”
When honour killings, as they are often termed, occur in more pluralistic societies, their occurance is often higher in rural non-Muslim Arab communities than Muslim communities around the world.
Bassam Al-Qadhi, journalist and activist, states that religion is not a factor in the killings,
The idea is a societal one, and isn’t linked to particular sects. It doesn’t have a religious basis, but rather a social inheritance.
Legalization of Honour Killings
Jordan, perhaps the best country to illustrate this, has a significant problem with honour killings because it is de facto justified by law. Gendercide watch explains,
According to Article 340 of the criminal code, “A husband or a close blood relative who kills a woman caught in a situation highly suspicious of adultery will be totally exempt from sentence.” Article 98, meanwhile, guarantees a lighter sentence for male killers of female relatives who have committed an “act which is illicit in the eyes of the perpetrator.” Julian Borger notes that “in practice, once a murder has been judged an ‘honour killing,’ the usual sentence is from three months to one year.”
Similar provisions are found in the Syrian code,
Article 548 of the Syrian law code, for example, stipulates lenient penalties for a man convicted of killing his sister, wife or daughter if they are found having sexual intercourse with a man other than their husband. Article 242, meanwhile, sets down similarly light punishments for a man convicted of killing a female relative on the mere suspicion of infidelity.
But the incidents are just as prevalent, often moreso, among some rural Christian Arabs.
The Guardian reports a rise in honour killings among Palestinians in recent years. Chris McGreal relates the story of a 22-year old Christian Palestinian murdered by her father for her affair.
[The] father wept as he assured his daughter there would be no more beatings, no more threats to her life and that she was free to marry the man she loved, even if he was a Muslim. All he asked was that Faten return home.
Other Arab communities also struggle with the issue.
The TimesOnline reports a case of a 17-year old Druze girl stoned to death for dating a Muslim boy.
Earlier last year, a Yazidi woman was stoned to death in Kurdish Iraq for dating a Sunni Muslim man.
The entire shocking episode was filmed on a phone.
Warning: Video below contains graphic images.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77-6OMB50Vo[/youtube]
Per capita, these incidents are more problematic among non-Muslims of rural Arab culture than they are among Muslim in general (given their proportionately smaller populations).
There are even rarely publicized incidents of honour killings in traditional Catholic 
European families.
Karen Tintori has through her geneological research discovered that her Sicillian grandmother in America was murdered as well after eloping with her barber, but the incident was completely covered up.
But nobody is suggesting this is attributable to their faith, nor should they.
Religious Stance
Haider Ala Hamoudi, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh said on his blog,
First, where the “Islam is evil” crowd goes awry is in the failure to grasp the absence of a strong link between the practice of honor killing to Islamic doctrine. Neither foundational text, meaning Quran and hadith, nor classical exegeses, nor even prominent scholars throughout the Muslim world say very much, if anything, in favor of the practice of honor killing. The few Islamic defenses of honor killings when posted on blogs, or stated by perpetrators in interviews on Arab television or in newspapers, hardly are coherent, let alone sound. It’s wrong to point to the absolute absence of a link, most disturbingly, Jordan’s Islamist party has, even while arguing that honor killings broadly should not be tolerated, argued vociferously and repeatedly against the repeal of a law, Article 340 of the Jordanian Criminal Code…
The New Islamic Directions blog explains the Islamic position on dating,
In the case of dating, there is no Islamically-mandated punishment for a male or a female seeing a member of the opposite sex against the wishes of their families. Such situations should be handled with counseling, compassion and a healthy dose of common sense.
They continue, even elaborating on the absurdity of trying to tie these incidents in with any specific faith,
At the end of the day, attacks such as the one that resulted in the death of Aqsa Parvez are acts of domestic violence resulting from rage that emanates from a total neglect of Islamic teachings. Ms. Parvez lost her life due to such violence and perhaps there are a few other instances where Muslims women in Canada or here in the United States, have been similarly victimized. However, these instances should be kept in perspective. In the United States there are approximately 1,200 women killed every year by their husbands or intimate partners. There are other “Christian” nations where murders of this type are even higher.
However, Ellen R. Sheeley, author of Reclaiming Honor in Jordan, says,
Some of us know “honor” killings pre-date Islam by centuries and, in fact, are un-Islamic…
When I recently conducted a nationwide survey on “honor” killings in Jordan, over 20% of my representative sample of respondents told me they believe Islam tells them they must avenge affronts to family honor by killing. So there is a dire need for mosque education if we want to prevent even a fraction of these people from acting on this belief.
But condemnations are not limited to autorities in the West. Ahmen Badr al-Din Hassoun, Grand Mufti of Syria, states,
He who kills on claims of honour is a killer, and should be punished. Islamic jurisprudence doesn’t allow people to live by their own laws.
Similar condemnations have been issued from Christian and Druze community leaders.
Proposed solutions
The author on New Islamic Directions proposes:
Practical steps include the following:
1. Emphasize that such killings have no sanction in the Qur’an, the Prophetic practice, or in Islamic law.
2. Declare anyone guilty of involvement in honor killings to be a cold-blooded murderer.
3. Encourage judicial authorities to enact the harshest penalties possible for anyone accused of involvement in such killings.
4. Educate our Muslim communities, especially in the West, about the un-Islamic nature of honor killings, and the pressures, nuances, challenges and complications facing young Muslims, male and female in the West.
5. Work to eliminate the double standards, and to expose the hypocrisy that exist in our communities, generally, concerning attitudes and standards relating to the indiscretions of males as opposed to females.
Hassoun in Syria also suggests also criminalizing the act even further, as well as imposing harsher punishments for offenders to deter them.
He proposes this because religious sanctions by all religions in the region have been ineffectual to date. Those inclined to commit these crimes do not rely or depend on formal religious justifications.
Conclusions
Yes, honour killings are a problem, especially in places where it is legalized.
But to suggest that faith, any faith, plays a significant role in encouraging it is misleading and erroneous, and fails to identify any legitimate solutions.
Those that mistakenly believe that it has justifications in their faiths are usually uninformed. Faith leaders can do more, both within their communities and globally, to clarify their beliefs.
But stakeholders involved have identified the solution in secular legislation supportive of the practice which should be modified to further criminalize and discourage the practice of honour killings.
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