Because next to African women, their plight is probably the worst on the planet.
What would you think the definition of an "honor killing" is, in relation to Iraq?
I turned on the radio at lunch today in the middle of KCRW's To The Point. They were talking about how bad The Situation is and how the women bear the worst of it and according to some NGO study, an AVERAGE of 90 women a day have been made into widows since the beginning of the Iraq war. This is based on direct and indirect causes. Indirect being things like deaths resulting from the lack of health care systems or destroyed infrastructure etc. They got into talking about how this alludes to what the total # of dead must be, and how its really hard to come up with any real numbers because so many deaths are not reported there, and even less is reported about women because of their status in society etc. Then came the part that prompted me to write this entry.
Here and there they had mentioned the term "honor killings" which I took to mean something like the killing of women to reclaim some kind of honor. Makes sense. Im aware that Sharia law sometimes calls for stoning to death one's wife if she is caught cheating for example. So I figure as barbaric as this would be, being cheated on is very embarassing and dishonoring and in stupid male dominated, machismo, beating-the-women-is-okay cultures, an "honor killing" might have to do with some twisted yet kind of understandable desire to regain lost "honor."
They used the word a couple times and it occurred to me that Warren Olney is usually so on top of jumping in and explaining when a guest uses a name or a term that might be unfamiliar to listeners.
"NGOs being, Non-Government Organizations."
So I was surprised that honor killings had been dropped 2 or 3 times without a clear definition from Warren. Until he asked this question: " So what do you say to that Dr. al Ali, are you surprised then, that there is documentation that shows that uh, atrocities are occuring to women detainees? Even to other... women police officers, uh, within the Iraqi police system?
"Not at all. What I think is important to point out is that there is a very big taboo around the issue of sexual violence against women. So whether they are outside, or in the police force or in prisons, it is very difficult for them to speak about it. To the extent that they might even risk their lives. I mean, it is certainly the case that honor killings--again not amongst educated middle class people, but in certain sectors of society-- that if a woman is raped she needs to be killed. Because the honor of the whole family has been violated."
So here I was thinking: big taboo about sexual violence to women, uber-conservative religious extremists, honor killing.... hmm, must have something to do with killing the perpatrators of sexual violence as a matter of honor.
Or worst case, "honor" killing had something to do with killing the woman to regain honor from being cheating on or divorced or something. Turns out, if your sister or your mom gets raped, you're supposed to kill her. THAT'S what's honorable. I guess you never can under estimate just how barbaric Arab cultures can get. If your sister is raped, you might think an honor killing would be in order, ie: finding the bastard that did it and fucking killing his ass. No, no, that would be far too civilized. In Arab cultures when your sister is raped you kill your sister because she has dishonored the family by allowing herself to be raped (because you know she was asking for it.) Somehow its honorable to kill the victims of atrocities and domestic violence. I suppose if your brother's house is raided and he is executed and left in the gutter in a very dishonorable way, you should then turn and kill his orphaned children because Sharia law says that its honorable to kill the victims of atrocities. By that logic, when I steal bread from the market they should really be cutting off the shop keepers hand, not mine. Or if I'm leaving for work in the morning and find that someone has keyed my fender, the good Muslim thing to do would be to blow up the car, because it has been dishonored.
So the basic ideal from which an honor killing stems from seems to be this:
When something dear to you is disgraced, exherting physical dominance over it to the point of its destruction somehow un-disgraces it.
How mature.
