A Veil of Silence Over Murder

September 2009

I should say straight away, when it comes to Jordan, that there was, and still is, reason for hope. Obviously, Queen Rania has never believed any of this lethal nonsense and she has often verbally condemned it as an anachronism. Even saying that much couldn't have been easy, but she has contrived to back her words with action, and it was partly due to her influence that the notorious Article 340 of the Jordanian criminal code was at last modified so that men who murder women on a point of honour no longer automatically walk free straight away. But they still walk free soon enough to make you wonder if an enlightened ruling elite, and even a reformed justice system, really has much chance against the ingrained prejudices of the culture. We know that the present monarch, King Abdullah II, and his elegant wife have done what they can for the liberal reform of the Jordanian justice system. But we also know that they would be receiving less praise for their bravery and originality if the Jordanian justice system had been less recalcitrant. Or, to cut the irony before it starts softening the enormity, it is a fair bet that the culture, in Jordan, goes on treating women like dirt.

Upon investigation, this proves to be the case. In Jordan, to expiate the shame brought upon a family by loss of honour, a woman is murdered every two weeks. Not only the crime of having been raped brings loss of honour. A rumour can bring loss of honour. Apparently there is little to encourage fathers in these cases to the consideration that there might be loss of honour involved in murdering their helpless daughters. The King and Queen have tried: they have spoken out for reform. The lawyer Asma Kadaar and a journalist on the Jordan Times have bravely devoted a good part of their working lives to the cause of sanity — particularly bravely because they are both female, and thus potentially subject to the self-righteous vengefulness of any mentally challenged male with honour on his mind. These advocates of elementary justice are people of influence, but they count for little against the collective dementia of the culture.

One says "the culture" because one is not allowed to say "the state". The state, we are assured, isn't really like that. Theoretically, in Jordan, a father must go to jail for killing his daughter. And so he does, but he is out again soon enough to be in good shape for a hero's welcome. In response to the influential liberal voices, the Jordanian system of justice is currently, in August 2009, tying itself in yet another series of knots as it strives to assure the world that the courts will not admit a plea about "honour" when it comes to murder committed "in a fit of fury caused by an unlawful act on the part of the victim", and that a convicted murderer in such a case, instead of being let out after three months — six months in severe cases — might have to serve the full term of two years. (A 29-year old man who stabbed his raped sister 12 times was sentenced to 15 years but has just had his sentence halved. Will anyone be stunned when the sentence is halved again?) It seems to occur to nobody, not even the concerned royal family, that the sentencing policy is laughably unjust even when it is strictly applied. What a threat: if you murder your daughter because you think she has been raped you might very well go to jail for months on end.

We are told that when it comes to a case of honour, Jordan is one of the more progressive Islamic communities. In Jordan, only one quarter of all homicides are cases of honour. In the Palestinian sectors of the West Bank and in Gaza, the proportion is two thirds. In Pakistan about 1,000 women get killed every year, and a startling, if lesser, incidence of ritual murder is true wherever Pakistanis live in the outside world. When a girl in a British Pakistani community is set on fire by her brothers, or has her face ruined with acid by a rejected candidate for the role of husband, we hear about it in the newspapers, although seldom for long. But in Pakistan such incidents aren't news at all. They happen three times a day. They are part of the culture. It was news in Britain when, on 14 July 2006, in London, a gifted Pakistani girl (her name was Sumari) was slain by her father, brother and cousin. It needed all of them to do it, because apparently she had to be stabbed 18 times. Her crime had been to disobey them, and she died of the proof that they had been well worth disobeying. Taking it on the lam, the father — who, while thicker than any brick, had at least been smart enough to spot the lack of congruity between British law and his own beliefs — holed up in his land of origin, Pakistan, thus providing yet another statistic in one half of the two-way traffic whereby potential victims, if they are lucky, hide out in the West, whereas perpetrators flee the West to hide out in the East. That two-way traffic should surely be enough by itself to define the nature of the horrible cultural interchange, which is mainly a matter of our culture failing to provide sufficient protection against the consequences of theirs.

Women students in Pakistan's Swat Valley

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Graham Davis

August 30th, 2009
12:08 PM

It is right to encourage feminists to make a stand against Islam as women are one of its main victims. However what is really required is a united front by all of us who are concerned about freedom and liberty. Am I exaggerating by comparing Islam to the rise in Fascism in the 30’s? The similarities are remarkable, a supremacist ideology, a ruthless opposition to libertarian values and an aggressive policy of expansion along with a political class largely indifferent to the threat. All religions would like to muddy distinction between church and state but only one, Islam, seeks to remove it altogether. Sharia is not a folksy neighbourhood arbitration service, it is a parasite that seeks to destroy our secular legal system and replace it with its own, misogynistic, homophobic and barbaric practices. Take a look at Saudi Arabia if you want to see what Sharia is like for all but the privileged few. For many Moslems the goal is a global caliphate where no authority is tolerated other than their own. As the film Fitna aptly demonstrates the Quran provides ample justification to pursue any amount of barbarism so long as it is sanctioned by the word of “God”. And what are we doing about it? Nothing and the reason is that we are not willing to assert the superiority of our own values. The fear of offending minority interests and the assumption that multiculturalism, so favoured by the left, is the only policy, has allowed the wooden horse of Islam to take root in many of our cities. So what about moderate Moslems who simply want to get on with their lives? Of course they are not all fellow travellers of the 9/11 or 7/7 terrorists, but polls have shown that when push comes to shove many tacitly sanction the use of terrorist tactics when Islam is threatened, wherever that may be. The problem is that most Moslems identify primarily with other Moslems, rather than their fellow countryman, regardless of the country in which they live, their ethnicity or even the language they speak. Wherever they settle be it Bradford or Brisbane their allegiance is first to God. This is why creeping “islamification” needs to be confronted. We Brits are famed for our tolerance and moderation but if they blind us to a threat to our way of life that is moving inexorably towards us, they will have served us poorly and we will live to regret it.

Sophia

August 29th, 2009
5:08 PM

Thank you, thank you for this blunt, uncompromising polemic on the hypocrisy of "multi-cultural" feminism -- I write as a "Classical" rationalist feminist of the old school. It seems any atrocity can be excused as long as it occurs in a homoginized middle-distance of the mind where individuals and their suffering cannot be made out and the choreography of "culture", and its internal consistencies, are the only values. It all gives cultural imperialism a good name.

kimserca

August 29th, 2009
3:08 PM

oh god the usual guff about 'australian intellectuals' blah blah. No-one ever named or quoted, save for a stray quote by greer, who resides in the UK. a shoddy, self-indulgent, rambling exercise saying nothing new. doubtless you'll be coming out against the afghan govt, now theyve endorsed such laws, Clive? you know, the one we're expending blood and treasure defending?

Tina Trent

August 27th, 2009
7:08 PM

We need to come to terms directly with the phenomenon of justice movements as progenitors of virulent misogyny. South Africa, Australia, throughout the revolutionary Islamic world -- in every one of these places, liberation of a formerly oppressed population is followed by a whiplash of rage against all female populations, some of it directed inward, some outward, but always at women. In the United States, you can see a similar phenomenon in the hate crimes movement, which declares war on "hate motivated" crimes "in the name of justice" with one hand while working hard to deny that women represent by far the greatest number of victims selected on the basis of identity. Whether it is Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young trading on his civil rights credentials to whitewash Saudi gender apartheid in corporate America, or President Obama's transition from a paid anti-racial-apartheid worker to an apologist for Islamic gender apartheid, the legitimation of woman-hating through the mechanisms of liberation movements goes a long way to explaining (though not at all justifying) the silence of the feminists: they know perfectly well that silence is the price they must pay for a place at the table. So perhaps it is not the feminists who most urgently need to change their views.

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