Hi everyone!
A verdict was decided yesterday in a Canadian courtroom in the three-month trial for the murders--"honor killings"--of Ms. Amir Mohammad, age 53, and Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti Shafia, ages 19, 17, and 13 respectively. In 2009, Ms. Mohammad and the three girls, who were of Afghan descent, were discovered locked and submerged in a car in a 19th century canal near Kingston, Ontario.
The defendants are Mohammad Shafia, aged 58, the father of the three girls and husband of Ms. Mohammad; his second wife, Tooba Yahya, aged 42, and their 21 year-old son Hamed. According to trial transcripts, Ms. Mohammad arrived in Canada from Afghanistan in 2007 under the guise of being Mr. Shafia's cousin, not his first wife, as polygamy is illegal in Canada.
Apparently, Mr. Shafia was disgusted by the thoroughly Westernized behavior and dress of his daughters. Police wiretaps had recorded him expressing extremist views in regards to his daughters: "They violated us immensely," he is heard saying in one tape, "There can be no betrayal, no treachery, and no violation more than this."
It is still unclear how exactly the murders were committed; however it seems the three girls and Ms. Mohammad were dead before their car was pushed into the canal. Charges were based in part upon diary entries by Ms. Mohammad that chronicled a long history of abuse by all three defendants, and particularly by the son Hamed whom the girls were said to have feared.
While a sentence has yet to be determined, according to Canadian law, first-degree murder carries a compulsory sentence of life in prison with no chance for parole until after 25 years.
As horrific as these murders are, unfortunately, they are really just the tip of the iceberg. Honor killings are widely practiced in parts of India, Pakistan, and throughout the Arab World. And although there have been other cases of honor killings in the U.S. and Canada, this most recent example is one of the first to gain so much attention in quite some time.
The first reported case here in the U.S. was in St. Louis in 1989, committed by a father, Zein Isa, and his wife against their 16 year-old daughter, Palestina. Together Mr. and Mrs. Isa stabbed the girl thirteen times for, among other "offenses," having an African American male friend (who wasn't the girl's boyfriend) and for asking a school counselor for help because she was being beaten at home. Both Palestina and Geeti, one of the girls killed in the Shafia case, had also asked to be placed in foster care. Another similarity between the two cases is that none of the defendants expressed any remorse about their crimes. In fact, all have declared that they themselves are the injured parties, not the people they have killed.
I've chosen to focus on these cases today as a means of highlighting the fact that for a religious community that complains of being misunderstood and marginalized here in the West, particularly post-9/11, such behavior as honor killings and female circumcision and the general subjugation of women isn't going to help the Muslim cause for winning Western hearts and minds. I realize of course that these are examples from the fringe. And, as I've written before, I believe that in order to better integrate the Muslim way of life into contemporary Western society, governments and communities need to improve their system of integration starting at the grass roots level. But it seems that for every step forward taken by the Muslim diaspora, we hear or read about another example of behavior that causes most of us non-Muslims to scratch our heads and wonder and, frankly, turn away in disgust.
I realize that honor killing is a tradition that's been around for well over a thousand years. (Look at the story of Romeo and Juliet, or even Othello.) But isn't it time we put an end to this senseless barbarity? Islam is a religion based on peace and shared ethical values. Can someone please explain to me what drives men such as Mohammad Shafia and Zein Isa--not to mention their wives--to commit such heinous acts in the name of religion? Please. Explain it to me.
Ciao.
No comments:
Post a Comment