International Campaign Against Honor Killings

…It seems to occur most frequently where you have a very rigid inheritance law, justified by tribal and religious law and tradition. If it is permitted for a father or parents to disinherit a child, and find support for that in prevailing law, the so called honor killing pretty much disappears. In contrast, if property and position in the social order is more or less automatically inherited, then the boundaries of sexual association and behavior are rigidly inforced — leading to the acceptance of the idea that the violator must be killed…

I have long wondered whether “honor killings” were not as prevalent in cultures that may have been matrilinear at some point versus patrilinear. I’m afraid what I’ve read of anthropology is a bit rust; weren’t the European fertility cult peopls also more likely to be matrilinear? What I’m suggesting is that is really not an inheritence issue but a genetic control issue. Matrilinear cultures will place a greater emphasis on pregnancy, therefore more control of reproduction will belong to women; patrilinear cultures will place more control in the hands of men, who dictate who will be permitted to breed and with whom.

If this is a trait that is deeply ingrained down at bios level in the human system, we are going to have to work very hard and very differently to deprogram and reprogram cultures. Will take both top-down, bottom-up engagement, and unfortunately not at all likely in the next two years.

Thank you for all you do.

However, the boy’s parents didn’t accept her: they realised it would make trouble with the Yezidi. Du’a was doomed from this point more or less. She went for help to the KDP at Bashiqa (although technically the Mosul area is part of Iraq in reality the KDP control this area) but they handed her over to a mob which have been described to me as Yezidi extremists. Bashiqa KDP said that they didn’t think it would be a serious matter, which, if you’ll excuse my cynicism, means they thought she would be killed quietly. She then went to a Yezidi religious leader and stayed there until dragged out and killed.

The whole matter of the conversion is hard to find a point on: the Yezidi group certainly used a so-called conversion to whip up the mob mentality against her, and subsequently Ansar-al-Sunna used this so-called conversion to spread Yezidi hatred by displaying the girl as a martyr for faith not for love. Yet there is no evidence of any conversion. Yezidi have fled all mixed cities: Yezidi students in Mosul have been evacuated to complete their studies in cities with more security to protect them.

The boy himself is in protective custody. He is only 17 years old himself.

I have seen all the footage and there are only men (and one boy) visible. She was killed by 14 family members while around a thousand cheer and push past each other to record it on their cellphones. After death, he body was set on fire and buried on a trash heap with a dead dog. At the request of her father I think, her body was disinterred and no less than six virginity tests were performed to prove that the girl’s ‘honour’ was not lost which has made the father very proud.

OK..as to the background. Honour killing has a long and dishonourable history in Kurdish regions but the numbers are not stable. It’s highly contingent on the situation. There were 40 in the first three months of this year in Iraqi Kurdistan: since the death of Du’a there were another 12, and an upsurge of threatened women seeking protection.

Religion is dangerous.

It seems to occur most frequently where you have a very rigid inheritance law, justified by tribal and religious law and tradition. If it is permitted for a father or parents to disinherit a child, and find support for that in prevailing law, the so called honor killing pretty much disappears. In contrast, if property and position in the social order is more or less automatically inherited, then the boundaries of sexual association and behavior are rigidly inforced — leading to the acceptance of the idea that the violator must be killed.

You want to look to the ideas of law in culture to understand this phenonema.

It is by no means the same as Lynching. Virtually all US Lynchings were of black men who were accused, mostly falsely, of showing sexual interest in white women who were held to be both totally innocent, and incapable of having any sexual interest in black men. (not true however). Lynching was terror designed to hold a racial line of association. supporting a myth of an inferior/superior race. It was virtually never about property, though at times a black man who had acquired some property was the victim. Lynching was dramaticly reduced in the US in the South when White Women organized through their churches and pushed for sanctions against White men who lynched, or supported lynching. Incidence in the 1930’s drops from several hundred per year down to just single digets by the end of that decade. To explain it you have to understand the White Church Women’s Movement and why it succeeded in just a few years. (some of the leadership came out of the failed — by then — temperence movement.) This is an utterly fascinating part of the story of what women did in various parts of our own culture, with political power once they had achieved it in 1920. In essence, Southern Women used the ballot to tame men — first temperence, and then extrajudicial murder or lynching.

Many Islamic societies that in whole or part base law on the Koran — one or another version of Sharia — have to deal with interpretations of various passages that seem to precisely define inheritance practice. Some schools of Islamic Scholarship seem to get around the problem, and create choices about inheritance that work against the rigidity that produces honor killings by tribes, clans, etc., protecting property or status interests. Other schools of Islamic Scholarship don’t succeed in this respect. So yes it is tied to religion — but it isn’t the religion itself, it is the legal implications of interpretation.

One possible reason so called honor killing never became all that common in Northern and Western Europe has a lot to do with the pagan beliefs that continued as an cultural undercurrent long after the Christian Churches arrived. Pagan’s placed great value on the fertility of women, and a woman who was already pregnant at the time of marriage was high value. Thus you have a very high incidence of pregnancy at the time of marriage in Scandinavia, and Northern Germany in the late middle ages and continuning into the modern period — and in Spain, Italy and Greece, you have the reality of honor killings.

Yes, ironically mostly done to commemorate the event. If photo cell phones had been present during the Holocaust, Rwanda, the “Killing Fields” and East Timor the news would have been out immediately…carried by those involved in the atrocities.

BTW The issue is indeed a complex one.

The Yazidis would feel threatened by an interreligious relationship simply because the children would have to be officially raised as Muslim. As has been pointed out, during the Saddam era (and perhaps earlier) there were many intersectarian marriages (b/w Shiites and Sunnis). How these were resolved in terms of sectarian affiliation I don’t know. But Muslims often will accept an external marriage, but only if conversion to Islam occurs. In fact, it can be a strong mitigating factor.

But Iraq’s minorities (Chaldeans, Yazidis, Nazoreans, etc.) are usually very small in composition (and declining even faster now), and the loss of even one marriageable individual of a certain age group can be a major problem for that sect. And when the size of the group of possible partners tends to diminish to such a small number (leaving distasteful choices) young people may tend to look at “forbidden fruit”.

The fact that these minorities survived in Iraq for millenia suggests that they, and their neighbors were able to reach a fairly stable relationship of “protected minority”. There was no effort to exterminate these groups. But it has been pointed out that, after more than two millenia, the survival of almost all of these groups is now really endangered. THAT can only be attributed to the enmity and anarchy that has resulted from Bush’s invasion.

I do not really buy the argument that this is the symptom of worsening economic conditions. We strangled the economy of Iraq in the 90s yet I do not recall hearing about a rise in honor killings as a result. To be fair, it is not clear as to how much accurate information we have ever been able to get out of that country prior to the invasion, especially in all the little nooks and crannies where even Saddam’s power rarely reached.

The very fact that there are organizations and institutions dedicated to combating this ugly phenomenon is a testament to just how big the problem is.