ajiss Honor-related Violence in the Context of Patriarchy, Multicultural Politics, and Islamophobia after 9/11 Nihan Altınbaş Abstract Many women are exposed to domestic and/or sexual violence by their family members on a global scale, forced to marry before reaching maturity, mutilated for the sake of preserving their chastity, and deprived of their right to education and of any inheritance rights. Honor-related violence is an extreme, worldwide form of violence that after 9/11 has been increasingly associated with Islam, as if it were perpetrated only by Muslims living either in diaspora com- munities or in Muslim-majority countries. This stereotyping has lent ideological support to unequal power relations that have been shaped mainly by western economic interests since colonialism. This essay contextualizes honor-related violence in relation to pa- triarchy and a society’s economic wellbeing, to migratory expe- rience in terms of multicultural politics and, finally, to critiques its use in post-9/11 misrepresentations of Islam. It argues that un- equal power relations and patriarchal domination, as opposed to religion, shape this global phenomenon. Introduction As a term, honor-related violence encompasses a wide range of violations of women’s human rights and crimes committed in the name of honor. Various forms of domestic violence, forced marriages, and vendettas count among honor crimes.1 Honor-related violence also encompasses crimes of passion, during which a husband kills his wife upon witnessing or suspecting adultery Nihan Altınbaş is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 1 on her part.2 Crimes in the name of honor reach their extreme when a woman is murdered by her family members if she is suspected of having violated the social norms that regulate sexuality. However, interpretation of the concept of violating honor-related sexual norms is quite ambiguous, in that it ranges from dating to flirting, having an extramarital affair, getting pregnant, and even to being raped. In any of these cases, other members of a woman’s family may decide to have her murdered or force her to commit suicide3 because such events are believed to destroy the family’s honor-based status.4 However, accusations brought against women could be merely a matter of gossip.5 In some societies, loss of honor can also mean incurring material losses. It is believed that the male members of a family that has lost its honor-related status will be unable to make good marriages. This also increases the burden on the female family members, in that their lives and behavior are kept under strict surveillance and control. John Peristiany argued that in the patriarchal social system, honor and shame are crucial elements in defining a man’s claim to pride and acknowl- edgement in society.6 In this system, certain roles are ascribed to women, and their bodies are understood to be repositories of male honor and property.7 Actually, the problem of honor-related violence is one of patriarchal societies, in which women are viewed as servants to their families, both physically and symbolically.8 Hence, an unchaste or adulterous woman puts her male rela- tives’ lineage rights in danger, as there is a possibility that she may give birth to an illegitimate child.9 Therefore, any violation of a man’s property would end in severe punishment for women, such as honor-related violence, under the patriarchal system. From time to time, however, men may also be the vic- tims of such violence.10 This type of violence is also related to the society’s economic wellbeing, as there is an inverse relationship between the level of prosperity and the fre- quency of honor-related violence. In prosperous societies, those who are ac- cused of transgressing moral norms receive relatively mild punishments, such as being kept under observation or forced to marry to the person with whom the crime was committed. However, when a society’s prosperity level is low and some groups grow poorer than others, the relatively poor people frequently become more conservative and attach greater value to their moral norms and traditions.11 These people usually display no tolerance toward those who com- mit such offences and they are, therefore, are usually punished severely. According to the UN’s Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment for Women and the Muslim Women’s League,12 honor-related violence is preva- 2 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 2 lent in almost all societies with patriarchal attributes, whether western or east- ern. There are similar patterns of family honor in Latin American and Mediter- ranean societies, among Kurds and Bedouins of the Middle East, within various Indian castes, and in China.13 Instances of honor-related violence have been observed among Muslims, Christians, Jews, Yezidis, Druze, Sikhs, and Hindus,14 as well as among people not professing any religion.15 More specif- ically, historical and legal documents point to the fact that this type of violence is seen in Israel,16 Russia,17 Mexico, Brazil,18 Ecuador and China,19 Italy,20 Spain,21 Greece,22 Bulgaria,23 Macedonia,24 Slovenia,25 Egypt and Kenya,26 Jordan,27 Central Asia and India. The statistics below further highlight the issue: In the year 1993, 14,500 women were killed and 56,000 women were ex- posed to violence in Russia. In the same year, it was reported that 42% of women were subjected to domestic violence by their husbands in Kenya. In the year 1990, 4825 women were killed during fraternal fights emerging from inheritance problems in India. In Canada, 18% of women between 18 and 64 claimed that they had been sexually exploited by their family mem- bers before they were 16. 5% of women claimed that they had been raped, and 27% had been molested by their boyfriends.28 Thus, honor-related violence is found across all religions and faiths on a global scale. However, the trend toward associating honor-related violence with Mus- lims has increased, together with the rise of Islamophobia that developed rap- idly after 9/11: A growing number of Islamophobic organizations in North America and Europe, as well as a great many reports in the Western29 media,30 tend to label any murder occurring among Muslims as ‘honor-related vio- lence,’ even when no honor dynamics are involved. Although the rates of rape, sexual harassment, and murder are high in North America and Europe, the media singles out Muslim and other immigrant communities for perpetrating honor-related violence.31 Honor-related issues are exclusive to patriarchy. However, patriarchy can- not be totally decoupled from religion. An embedded ideological discourse within many religious traditions, whether monotheist or not, enforces patriar- chal gender relations to varying levels. In fact, it is misleading to stereotype Islam as innately more patriarchal than Christianity and Judaism, and to en- vision honor-related violence to be an issue exclusive to Islam. However, the reified political discourses and media coverage of Islam and Muslims blur the explanation of honor-related violence dynamics. Exploration of this violence Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 3 requires an in-depth analysis of patriarchy, the prosperity levels of a society, the experiences of immigration and multiculturalism, and paying attention to the Islamophobic tendency of blaming all ills on Islam. Patriarchy and Honor-related Violence Patriarchy is a system of social structures and practices that institutionalizes male power over women and children in the family. In such societies, women are devalued and relegated to a lower status than that of men. This institu- tionalized male dominance and even oppression over women is also extended in the society.32 In the ensuing hierarchical order, standards of honorable be- havior for men and women also differ. Men are expected to actively protect the dignity of their families by controlling and even oppressing their female family members and relatives. However, whether it is a kinship group, a vil- lage, a region, a class or a caste, women are the bearers of group identity in patriarchal social structures and thus should always be chaste and pure for their families.33 Via employing the honor/shame rhetoric, patriarchal social structures try to keep group boundaries closed.34 To demarcate the group’s boundaries, a woman’s integrity must be safeguarded.35 For instance, in the Hindu caste sys- tem a woman is responsible for her caste’s purity and her adultery might in- troduce impure blood into the lineage.36 In Sri Lanka, women may not have sexual relations with lower caste men, as they are believed to become irre- versibly polluted as a result.37 Likewise, in nineteenth-century Cuba women were agents of transmitting family attributes through generations, and the mix- ing of races via marriage or an extra-marital affair would bring dishonor to a family.38 The patriarchal social order is kept intact through the use of coercion and force over women.39 Forcing women to marry before reaching adulthood, beatings, preventing access to higher education, and/or not allowing them to work and earn their own money, and denying them their property rights are other means of reproducing the established patriarchal order.40 However, par- adoxically, such a society’s values are internalized by its female members, who continuously transfer them to future generations.41 Patriarchy, like all other hierarchical systems, is intrinsically built on the judicious use of actual or implied violence. Although it favors men over women, this does not mean that all men are equal or that men are not expected to refrain from harming the honor of other men. Hence crimes of honor are assumed to be legitimately punishable offences. For instance, the Human 4 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 4 Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that during 1998-97, men were killed together with 158 women in karo-kari homicides.42 Yet women suffer dispro- portionately and are always punished even in circumstances where men may not be, as in cases of incest and family rape.43 Throughout recorded history, women have been treated unfavorably in patriarchal societies.44 For example, the legal and historical history of the Mediterranean Basin reveals a great deal about the relationship between the influence of patriarchal culture and honor-related violence. A certain notion of honor – the loss of which is associated with female sexuality and impurity – has existed in almost all Mediterranean societies.45 According to William Ian Miller46 and Victoria Goddard,47 a man’s honor in this region has con- sisted of making sure that his female family members and relatives remained pure. However, the content and significance of honor in this region has varied and undergone crises.48 Socioeconomic events after the Second World War and at the end of the region’s fascist regimes impacted the understanding of honor. For instance, in Spain, a belief in the old pre-modern sense honor is now confined to elderly Francoist and Catholic conservatives of Castile, An- dalucía, the Basque country, and to Gypsies. Similarly, northern Italy has seen no vendettas and honor-related issues for quite some time, although such vi- olence continues to exist in the center and south of the country as a lingering ghost of the past.49 Patriarchy is intrinsically built on the judicious use of actual or implied violence. In fact, the Greek,50 Spanish,51 and Italian,52 penal codes used to recognize honor as a mitigating factor in crimes of violence, including homi- cide. In the contemporary Spanish penal code, a special title of honoria causa (a crime committed for the sake of honor) is still reserved for a hus- band who kills his adulterous wife.53 Similarly, the Italian penal code of 1889 accepted honor as a mitigating factor, as it was believed that an adul- terous woman caused a psychological disturbance in her male relatives. From 1968-69, a new set of arrangements made honor an issue of civil law. Under the new civil law, adultery by either a woman or a man was accepted as a reason to grant divorce, with material sanctions imposed on the guilty party.54 As explored above, honor-related violence is closely tied to and histor- ically rooted in persistent forms of patriarchy. The Austin Report (2009) men- tioned this system as the main reason for honor-related violence and emphasized that no religion approves of such violence. However, the typical media coverage of honor-related violence and honor killings overempha- Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 5 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 5 sizes religion’s role55 and fails to examine the socioeconomic context, mul- ticultural politics, and rise of Islamophobia as they relate to his particular form of violence. Economic Wellbeing and Honor-related Violence In economically prosperous and democratically administered societies, a family’s honor and social position is not considered as being either made or broken by how its female members behave,56 although such societies may have patriarchal attributes. In those societies, it is difficult to observe honor- related violence because women have economic power and the security pro- vided by specific laws that protect them.57 In fact, Lynn Welchmann and Sara Hossain argue that almost all legal arrangements favor men over women re- garding domestic violence and the physical force that women face.58 How- ever, in relatively prosperous countries the position of women is made relatively stronger through the passing of criminal laws that protect them from violence.59 In both the poor parts of prosperous societies and the underdeveloped areas of modernizing states, incomes are low, formal education is lacking, and upward mobility is almost impossible.60 In those societies, while honor- related violence is rare among the educated and urbane, among the poorer and less-educated people it is a common occurrence. For instance, among the Middle East’s Kurdish and Arabic tribal societies, both of which have long traditions of self-administered justice, honor-related violence and killings are frequent. The chastity of a woman belonging to such a tribal so- ciety defines her family’s honor and status, and women are expected to adhere strictly to the moral norms of their group, be they ethnically or religiously defined. Contemporary socioeconomic determinants and experience of migration also impact the understanding of honor. The religious, ethnic, gender, and class dynamics of the country and the immigrants’ position within it impact the dynamics of honor-related violence.61 In some European countries, honor- related violence can be seen as an indicator of the social exclusion and poverty of migrant families, who usually survive on low incomes and expe- rience unemployment. The immigrant families among which honor-related violence is observed are often poor and socially excluded. The authors of the Resource Book for Working against Honor-Related Violence62 stated that such families’ low income levels negatively impacts the men’s status and power, given that they are supposed to provide for their families. Consequently, their 6 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 6 loss of status within the family also turns into increased oppression of the fe- male members. When the process of integration into the host country is slow, belonging to a group identity serves as a security or social welfare system and leads mi- grant families to become even more conservative and enforce their original culture’s traditional patriarchal aspects within their communities. For instance, Fadime Şahindal, a Kurdish migrant to Sweden, was murdered by her family for having a Swedish boyfriend. Before she was killed, she told the Swedish Parliament that if Swedish society had accepted and helped her family, her situation might have been avoided.63 The fear of losing their identity also makes migrants more introverted, in that they tend to stick to their traditional and patriarchal values and norms.64 The risk that young female family members may adopt the host country’s lifestyle, values, and norms alarms families. The authors of the Resource Book for Working against Honor-Related Violence65 notes that for a migrant man, controlling the sexuality of his female family members and keeping them under control means receiving respect from others and having access to certain rights in the group to which he belongs. In fact, many traditional, cultural beliefs and practices may become stricter in the diaspora than they are at home. Hence, in migrant communities, females are strictly controlled and any honor-related “misdeed” is punished, as in the case of Fadime Şahindal. In some of the media discussions and public debates in Canada, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, honor-related violence is linked not to the economic situation or social status of Muslim migrants, but to their religion. Negative stereotypes are produced to blame Islam for all sorts of honor-re- lated violence.66 Rather than searching for the real reasons, Muslims are openly blamed in the discourse frequently encountered in some of these coun- tries’ media outlets.67 Governments and certain political forces offer immi- gration controls and assimilation policies as a solution. However, the employment of such policies and the multicultural rhetoric in some European countries hinders finding a real solution to the problem, which needs further exploration. Honor-related Violence and Multicultural Politics Multicultural politics have been employed by some western societies to build cultures of tolerance and equality for all citizens. The politics of multicultural identity legitimize people’s differences and uniqueness in the public as well Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 7 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 7 as in the private spheres.68 However, the states that apply these policies usually do not deem it necessary to establish a space in which various groups and eth- nicities can coexist.69 Hence, multicultural policies may cause people of dif- ferent origins to stay away from each other. The ongoing debates on multicultural identity politics have centered on the presumed incompatibility between western and Muslim religious values, as though the Muslims living in Europe or North America were a single homogenous entity. Issues of gender in Islam have been discussed to show this alleged incompatibility.70 However, such violations of women’s rights in Europe and in North America as sexual harassment, beatings71 and rape are found among almost all groups.72 According to Mikael Kurkiala, the number of women killed in honor killings committed by Muslim migrants is minute when compared to the number of women killed by ethnically Swedish men.73 Yet according to the results of one study, Dutch and German media outlets portray honor-re- lated violence as directly stemming from Islam.74 Quite frequently, they pres- ent the predicament of a Muslim woman either positively (e.g., if she is assimilated) or with negative overtones directed against her community’s re- ligious and cultural milieu.75 Multiculturalism as a policy faces some valid criticisms in Europe, one of which is the toleration of violence or abuse against migrant women under the guise of cultural difference. According to Archana Agarwal, this policy’s moral relativism is also a challenge for international human rights standards.76 On December 20, 1993, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) decided that member states were responsible for preventing violence against women and that states must protect the victims of such violence. In Beijing in 1995, attendees at the UN meeting decided that the culture, tradition, or re- ligion of any migrant cannot be accepted as an excuse for any state not to pro- tect its women from domestic or honor-related violence. However, the situation of migrant woman with regard to honor-related violence has not changed drastically, despite the solutions offered by the UN. What seems to be happening is that “western values” have become con- flated with “universal human values,” with the subtle implication that Islam fails to respect basic human rights. Nevertheless, this judgment frequently leads to an outrage against Islam’s “barbaric cultural practices” and motivates liberals and elite feminists to save the poor Muslim women from their terrible prison.77 However, in such a situation the culprit chosen is not the general sys- tem of patriarchy that victimizes migrant women, but rather Islam. It should be acknowledged that there are multiple Muslim discourses, all of which are affected by gender, class, and degree of piety. Blaming Islam and Muslims 8 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 8 for honor-based violence is a result of Islamophobic ignorance, which was aggravated after 9/11. Honor-related Violence and Islamophobia after 9/11 Islamophobia is the fear that Islam threatens the established western order. According to this type of thinking, Islam is backward, inferior, and hostile to- ward modernization and western values. The period after 9/11 has seen the stigmatization of Islam by equating it also with such cultural practices as arranged marriages, female genital mutilation, and the violation of women’s rights.78 This situation has been boosted by the increasing amount of media attention given to the oppression of women and human rights violations in some Muslim countries in an exaggerated manner.79 One result of this approach has been that Muslims who were previously identified according to their national or regional origin (e.g., Pakistani, Saudi, Iranian, Indonesian, and Moroccan) are now commonly represented as if they were an internally unified and homogenous entity.80 After 9/11, a large section of the mainstream media in Europe and North America have increasingly overlooked the diversity of Islamic communities and attributed negative char- acteristics (e.g., being oppressive, barbaric, and misogynist) almost to all Mus- lims.81 As a result, honor-related violence became the focal point of difference and incompatibility between Muslim migrants and westerners.82 In fact, after 9/11 some of the western audience became more inclined to believe that Mus- lims are prone to terrorism, as they are perceived as extremists capable of murder in cases of honor concerns.83 Hence, equating Muslims and their cul- tures with the risk of terrorism, bigotry, and honor-related violence84 has boosted intolerance toward Muslims in Europe and North America. Honor-related violence is conceived within a largely orientalist frame- work,85 which enables one to equate Islam with terror and backwardness. However, Gayatri-Chakravorty Spivak argues that western intellectual thought is, in many ways, complicit with western international economic interests.86 After all, during colonial times the colonial administrators tried to persuade local populations that they were backward, primitive, and needed the colo- nizers’ modernizing, civilizing mission to exploit the indigenous resources in- definitely and without compensation.87 In order for the West to claim moral superiority over bigotry and backwardness of the rest, its colonial and mis- sionary cadres problematized polygyny in Africa, widow immolation in India, and veiling in North Africa and the Middle East.88 The colonial narrative de- picted local women as being in need of rescue from the “local, brutal, brown Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 9 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 9 men” and such barbaric traditions as sati,89 child marriage, and foot binding.90 As such, the image of the white man as “the saviour of local woman” was produced and legitimized the colonial powers’ existence and exploitative ad- ministration in those lands.91 Apart from legitimizing its existence in the colonies, the colonial admin- istration also left its mark on the ex-colonies’ legal cultures. For instance, the laws of most of the once-colonized French nations excuse honor-related vio- lence. However, it is also argued that those laws are derived from the Napoleonic Code, the 324th article of which reads that a husband may be ex- cused for murdering his wife if she has committed adultery.92 Hence, according to Rochelle Terman,93 in the colonized lands the Napoleonic law became en- tangled with local and tribal customs and eventually became a tool to justify social norms that exploit women.94 Like the colonial image of “brutal brown men,” the idea of the “violent Muslim man” has also been produced by means of various post-9/11 literary and academic works.95 Many documentaries, short films, and novels96 give undue credibility, at least in the minds of the European and American publics, to the link between honor-related violence and Islam.97 According to such works, the colonial era’s emblematic images of eastern backwardness – the veil and sati – have now been replaced by honor-related violence.98 However, the “terrorist Muslim” stereotype strengthens the conservative and racist backlash in the United States and Europe and inevitably makes the lives of their Muslims difficult.99 For instance, Liz Fekete explains that after 9/11 the German government proposed establishing a centralized population register in which data on third-country nationals living in the EU would be stored.100 This process was incorporated into the European Council’s anti- terrorism roadmap and led to the introduction of a new system of alerts on the Schengen Information System. In the United Kingdom, the media and parliamentary meetings speak of Muslim migrants as if they were the coun- try’s most serious problem.101 Similarly, Elizabeth Poole’s research from 1994- 2003 on how two important British newspapers, the Guardian and the Times, have covered British Muslims concludes that “Muslims are a threat to security in the UK due to their affiliation with terrorism, or a threat to British main- stream values, or create tensions in interpersonal relations due the their cultural differences with the host community.”102 The popularity of honor-related violence in the media and its presumed link with Islam is very much related to recent political developments.103 For instance, during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the United States used its media outlets as tools of ideological and moral justification.104 The attention 10 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 10 placed on the Afghan woman’s predicament was remarkable, in that it was only when the Taliban’s rule collided with British and American interests that the media of both countries paid special attention to it.105 The image of “the white man as the saviour of brown/local woman” is reproduced through the media: In the twenty-first century, the western man has become the savior of Muslim women from the burden of traditions and honor-related violence.106 Additionally, the accompanying media campaign played a key role in ensuring the rhetoric of the violations of women’s rights and honor-related violence to legitimize the invasion.107 Patriarchy affects fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, the Torah, and the Qur’an. However, most western patriarchal and conservative funda- mentalist figures behave as if there is no honor-related violence in western societies or that domestic violence and murder of women does not occur among white western people.108 Actually, the Qur’an, the prophetic practice, and Islamic law do not sanction honor-related violence.109 Besides, lately, rep- utable Islamic scholars and clerics have spoken out against such violence and have issued a religious decree banning it.110 However, presenting this type of violence as an exclusively Muslim issue only contributes to the Islamophobic perspective, which turns religious differences in the post-colonial period into racial differences in the modern world.111 Conclusion According to Goddard,112 honor is not a historical value that has been super- seded by modernity and rationality. Although societies’ socioeconomic and cultural dynamics have changed over time, remnants of the honor-based way of thinking and honor-related violence can still be observed in any society with patriarchal origins; however, the now appear under different titles. But after 9/11, most media outlets have increasingly presented honor-related vio- lence as a practice exclusive to Muslims living in diaspora communities in Europe or in Muslim-majority countries, thereby falsely associating honor- related violence only with Islam. The reified discourses about Islam and Muslims blur the explanation of honor-related violence dynamics. This violence, which is so closely tied to the persistent forms of patriarchy, should be explored along with a society’s level of prosperity, experiences of immigration, and multiculturalism. But any such study would be incomplete if one final factor was not considered: the Is- lamophobic tendency to blame all ills on Islam. As my discussion shows, the Islamic world is not simply misogynist and all European cultures and tradi- Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 11 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 11 tions are not completely devoid of honor-related violence stemming from pa- triarchy. Women are continuously being victimized as a result of honor-related violence globally; and ways to challenge this form of patriarchal domination must be found without being blurred by reified discourses of Islamophobia and/or political ideologies. Endnotes 1. Sibylle Schreiber, “Hunted in the name of Honor,” Fempower 11 (2005): 1. Available at: http://www.wave-network.org/images/doku/layout_fempower11_ engl.pdf (accessed: 7 June 2012). 2. Sharifa Zuhur, “Gender, Sexuality and the Criminal Laws in the Middle East and North Africa: A Comparative Study,” Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR)-new ways. (2005). Available at: http://www.wwhr.org/files/Gender- SexualityandCriminalLaws.pdf (accessed: 7 June 2012). 3. In southeastern and eastern Turkey, where the Kurdish population mostly lives, the number of women committing suicide is high. According to Cengiz Yıldız, those suicides should be considered within the honor-related dynamics of the people living in those regions. See Cengiz Yıldız, “İntihar Bir Töre Cinayeti mi?” International Symposium on the Sociologic and Legal Dimensions of Honor-Related Murder, Diyarbakır, Turkey, 26–27 September 2003. 4. Sharaon Araji, “Crimes of Honor and Shame: Violence against Women in non- Western and Western Societies,” The Red Feather Journal of Postmodern Crim- inology (2000). Available at: http://critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/ vol-8-shaming/araji.html. 5. Aysan Sev’er and Gökçeçiçek Yurdakul, “Culture of Honor, Culture of Change: A Feminist Analysis of Honor Killings in Rural Turkey,” Violence against Women 7, no. 9 (2001): 964-98. 6. John Peristiany, “Introduction,” in Honor and Shame, the Values of Mediter- ranean Society, ed. John Peristiany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). 7. Archana Agarwal, “Crimes of Honor: An International Human Rights Perspec- tive on Violence against Women in South Asia” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Southern California, 2008). 8. Muslim Women’s League, “Position Paper on Honor Killings,” (1999). Available at: http://www.islamawareness.net/HonourKilling/mwl.html (accessed: June 17, 2011). 9. Zuhur, “Gender, Sexuality and the Criminal Laws in the Middle East and North Africa,” 14. 10. Rahila Gupta, From Homemakers to Jailbrakers: Southall Black Sisters (Lon- don: Zed Books, 2003), 46. 11. Filiz Kardam, “Namus Gerekçesiyle Öldürülme ya da Kendi Canına Kıyma: Kadın Cinselliği Üzerinde Baskıların Benzer Koşullarda Farklı Sonuçları mı?” 12 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 12 (“Committing Suicide or Being a Victim of Honor-Related Murder: Are they Different Results of a Same Pressure on Women’s Sexuality in Similar Con- texts?”). Available at: http://www.huksam.hacettepe.edu.tr/Turkce/SayfaDosya/ namus_ger_oldurme.pdf (accessed: August, 2009). 12. “United Nation’s Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment for Women, Facts and Figures on Violence against Women.” Available at: http://www. unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php (accessed: 11 May 2011). 13. Sherene Ortner, “The Virgin and the State,” Feminist Studies 4, no. 3 (1978): 19-35. 14. John Austin, “The Urgent Need to Combat so-called Honor Crimes” (2009), 10. Council of Europe, Committee on equal opportunities for women and men. Council of Europe, document of European Parliament, 11943. Available at: http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc09/EDO C11943.htm (accessed 17 May 2011). 15. Rochelle Terman, “To Specify or Single out: Should we use the Term ‘Honor Killing’?” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights 7 (2010): 1-39. 16. Veena Meetoo and Safia Mirza, “There is Nothing ‘Honorable’ about Honor Killings: Gender, Violence and the Limits of Multiculturalism,” Women’s Studies International Forum 30 (2007): 187-200. 17. “The Russian Parliament’s reply to the European Center for Parliamentary Re- search and Documentation’s (ECPRD) question number 195,” dated December 10, 2003. Available at: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/secured/de- tailreq.do?id=196 (limited access: August 10, 2010). 18. In Brazil, attorneys in murder cases used the “honor-defence” as an excuse to defend husbands who killed their wives; however, honor is not among the mit- igating factors listed in the Brazilian Penal Code. It is reported that in Sao Paolo in only one year, 722 men confessed that they had killed their adulterous wives in order to protect their honor (1980-81). See James Brooke, “‘Honor’ Killing of Wives is outlawed in Brazil,” New York Times, March 29, 1991. 19. A Resource Book for Working against Honor Related Violence, Based on the Project: Honor Related Violence in Europe – Mapping of Occurrence, Support and Preventive Measures. Funded by the European Commission DG Social Af- fairs and Employment, (2003) Kvinnoforum: Stockholm. Available at: http://uu- denmaanpiiri-mll-fi-bin.directo.fi/@Bin/d5a9e5085e2521530ae638ee2ca78da6/ 1307452392/application/pdf/126548/HRV_resourcebook_rapport1.pdf (ac- cessed 7 June 2011). 20. “The Italian Parliament’s reply to ECPRD’s question no. 195,” dated December 10, 2003. Available at: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/secured/ detailreq.do?id=196 (limited access: August 10, 2010). 21. “The Spanish Parliament’s reply to ECPRD’s question no. 195,” dated Decem- ber 10, 2003. Available at: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/secured/ detailreq.do?id=196 (limited access: August 10, 2010). Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 13 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 13 22. “The Greek Parliament’s reply to ECPRD’s question no. 195,” dated December 10, 2003. Available at: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/secured/ detailreq.do?id=196 (limited access: August 10, 2010). 23. Genoveva Tisheva, “Problem not yet identified: First Research on Honor Related Violence in Bulgaria,” Fempower, 11(2005): 9, http://www.wave-network.org/ images/doku/layout_fempower11_engl.pdf (accessed: June 7, 2011). 24. “ Macedonian Parliament’s reply to ECPRD’s question no. 195,” dated Decem- ber 10, 2003. Available at: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/secured/ detailreq.do?id=196 (limited access: August 10, 2010). 25. “The Slovenian Parliament’s reply to ECPRD’s question no. 195,” dated Decem- ber 10, 2003. Available at: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/secured/ detailreq.do?id=196 (limited access: August 10, 2010). 26. Mahnaz Afkhami, Greta Nemiroff, and Haleh Vaziri, Safe and Secure: Elimi- nating Violence against Women and Girls in Muslim Societies (Bethesda: Sis- terhood is Global Institute, 1998), 21. 27. Sev’er and Yurdakul, “Culture of Honor, Culture of Change.” 28. Afkhami, Nemiroff, and Vaziri, Safe and Secure, 10. 29. Throughout this paper, I use “West” to refer to the mainstream, white Judeo- Christian culture in Europe, the United States, and in Canada. There is no ho- mogenous “West” and “Western” culture, just as there is no homogenous “East” and “Eastern” culture, though. See Rochelle Terman, “To Specify or Single out: Should we use the Term ‘Honor Killing’?” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights 7 (2010): 1-39. 30. The concentration of media ownership in Europe and the United States has a breadth of public discourse. The field is dominated by certain media giants, which also dominate public opinion. However, the media is not totally mono- lithic, for there are also alternative media sources, which also inform the public. 31. Terman, “To Specify or Single out.” 32. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), 239; Sylvia Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Pub- lishers, 1990), 20. 33. Victoria Goddard, “Honor and Shame: The Control of Women’s Sexuality and Group Identity in Naples,” in The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, ed. P. Ca- plan (New York: Tavistock Publications, 1987), 166-67. 34. Nancy Baker, Peter Gregware, and Margery Cassidy, “Family Killing Fields Honor Rationales in the Murder of Women,” Violence against Women 5, no. 2 (1999): 164-88. 35. Goddard, “Honor and Shame,” 173. 36. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1966). 37. Nur Yalman, Under the Bo Tree: Studies in Caste, Kinship and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 180. 38. Verana Martinez-Alier, “Elopement and Seduction in 19th Century Cuba,” Past & Present 55 (1972): 91-129. 14 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 14 39. Archana Agarwal, “Crimes of Honor” (2008): 44. 40. Afkhami, Nemiroff, and Vaziri, Safe and Secure. 41. Kardam, “Namus Gerekçesiyle Öldürülme ya da Kendi Canına Kıyma: Araji, “Crimes of Honor and Shame”; Purna Sen, “Crimes of Honor,” in Honor Crimes, Paradigms, and Violence against Women, ed. Lynn Welchmann and Sara Hossain (Australia: Spinifex Press, 2005), 48. 42. Lynn Welchmann and Sara Hossain, “Introduction: Honour, Rights and Wrongs,” in Honour Crimes, Paradigms, and Violence against Women, ed. Lynn Welchmann and Sara Hossain (Australia: Spinifex Press, 2005), 5-6. 43. Ibid., 4. 44. Goddard, “Honor and Shame,” 167. 45. Andrea Smith, “Murder in Jerba: Honor, Shame and Hospitality among Maltese in Ottoman Tunisia,” History and Anthropology 15, no. 2 (2004): 107-32. 46. Willian Ian Miller, Humiliation (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). 47. Goddard, “Honor and Shame,” 170-71. 48. Ibid., 171. 49. Amadeo Cottino, “Sicilian Cultures of Violence: The Interconnections between Organized Crime and Local Society,” Crime, Law & Social Change 32 (1999): 103-13. 50. Stephanos Kareklas, “Yunanistan’da Namus Cinayetlerinin Ayrıcalıklı Ele Alınışı Yunan Ceza Hukuku ve Toplumdaki Küçük Olasılıklar,” in the Interna- tional Symposium on the Sociologic and Legal Dimensions of Honor-Related Murder, Diyarbakır, Turkey, September 26-27, 2003. 51. Victor Gomez Marvin and Dulce Maria Santana Vega, “Sosyo-psikolojik, Hukuki ve Kriminolojik Açıdan İspanya’da Ölümle Sonuçlanan Aile İçi Şiddet,” in the International Symposium on the Sociologic and Legal Dimensions of Honor-Related Murder, Diyarbakır, Turkey, September 26-27, 2003. 52. Massimo Donini, “İtalya’da Zanardelli Kanunu’ndan Rocco Kanunu’na, Namus Nedeni ile Adam Öldürme,” in the International Symposium on the Sociologic and Legal Dimensions of Honor-Related Murder, Diyarbakır, Turkey September 26-27, 2003. 53. David Crespo, “Demokrasinin Kuruluşundan Önce İspanya Ceza Hukuku’nda Aldatmadan Dolayı İşlenen Eş Cinayetleri,” in the International Symposium on the Sociologic and Legal Dimensions of Honor-Related Murder, Diyarbakır, Turkey, September 26-27, 2003, 221-3; Marvin and Vega, “Sosyo-psikolojik,” 242. 54. Donini, “İtalya’da Zanardelli janunundan Rocco Kanununa,” 270-72. 55. Sev’er and Yurdakul, “Culture of Honor, Culture of Change,” 965-66. 56. Julian Pitt-Rivers brings an example from Andalucía, where the propertied class was relatively free from honor constraints in terms of sexuality, as honor was considered a birthright and its existence was guaranteed for aristocrats. See Ju- lian Pitt-Rivers, “Honor and Social Status,” in Honor and Shame: The Values Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 15 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 15 of a Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 57. Meetoo and Mirza, “There is Nothing ‘Honorable’ about Honor Killings.” 58. Welchmann and Hossain, “Introduction: Honor, Rights and Wrongs,” in Honor Crimes, 13-17. 59. Aisha Gill, “A Question of Honor,” London Community Care (2003). Available at: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/Article.aspx?liArticleID=40153& PrinterFriendly=true (accessed: May 11, 2011). 60. Douglas Jehl, “For Shame, Arab Honor’s Price: A Woman’s Blood” New York Times, June 20, 1999. 61. Anna Kortewag and Gökçe Yurdakul, “Religion, Culture and the Politicization of Honor-Related Violence: A Critical Analysis of Media and Policy Debates in Western Europe and North America,” United Nations Research Institute for So- cial Development, Gender and Development Program paper number 12, October 2010. Available at: http://korteweg.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/kortewegyur- dakul-2010-hrv-unrisd1.pdf (accessed: June 14, 2011). 62. A Resource Book for Working against Honor Related Violence. 63. Uni Wikan, In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 27; Terman, “To Specify or Single out,” 30-39. 64. Aylin Akpınar, “The Honor/Shame Complex Revisited: Violence against Women in Migration Context,” Women Studies International Forum 26, no. 5 (2003): 427-28. 65. A Resource Book for Working Against Honor Related Violence. 66. Anna Kortewag and Gökçe Yurdakul, “Religion, Culture and the Politicization of Honor-Related Violence: A Critical Analysis of Media and Policy Debates in Western Europe and North America,” United Nations Research Institute for So- cial Development, Gender and Development Program paper number 12, October 2010. Available at: http://korteweg.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/kortewegyur- dakul-2010-hrv-unrisd1.pdf (accessed: 14 June 2011). 67. Certainly not all media outlets and NGOs target Muslims, and not all politicians are racist Islamophobes. The aim is not to reify media, politicians, or NGOs in the West, for such generalizations run the risk of Occidentalism. 68. Nira Yuval-Davis, “Fundamentalism, Multiculturalism and Women in Britain,” in Race, Culture, and Difference, eds. J. Donald and A. Rattinsi (London: Sage, 1992), 281. 69. Nilüfer Göle, “Islam in European Publics: Secularism and Religious Difference,” 142. Paper presented at the Conference of Religion, Secularism and the End of the West, Center on Religion and Democracy and Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Laxenburg/Vienna, Austria, 3 June 2005, 142. 70. Anna Korteweg, “The Sharia Debate in Ontario: Gender, Islam, and Represen- tation of Muslim Women’s Agency,” Gender & Society 22 (2008): 438. 71. It was reported that in Denmark every year, women aged from 20-35 summon the police due to violence from their husbands or partners. In fact, 29 women 16 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 16 were murdered by their husbands or partners as a result of jealousy. Especially women from eastern Europe, who are married to Danish men with higher life prospects, complain about being continuously beaten up and being restricted to the role of housekeepers and child bearers. See Hasan Cücük, “Dani- marka’da Şiddetin Mağduru Doğu Avrupalı Kadınlar” Zaman, August 11, 2011. 72. For instance, shelters for battered wives were initially set up in Britain to deal with British domestic violence rather than migrant women. See Pnina Werbner, “Veiled Interpretations in Pure Space: Honor, Shame and Embodied Struggles among Muslims in Britain and France,” Theory, Culture & Society 24, no. 2 (2007): 161-86. 73. Mikael Kurkiala, “Interpreting Honor Killings: The Story of Fadime Şahindal (1975-2002) in the Swedish Press,” Anthropology Today (2003): 6-7. 74. Anna Kortewag and Gökçeçiçek Yurdakul, “Islam, Gender and Immigrant In- tegration: Boundary Drawing in Discourses on Honor Killing in the Netherlands and Germany,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32, no. 2 (2009): 234-35. 75. Meetoo and Mirza, “There is Nothing ‘Honorable’ about Honor Killings,” 187- 93. 76. Archana Agarwal, “Crimes of Honor.” 77. Ayaan Hirshi Ali is one of those cases. A Dutch woman of Somali descent, she became a public figure in Holland after spelling out her anti-Muslim sentiment: Muslims are intolerant, barbarous, and un-enlightened misogynists. Afterwards, her career skyrocketed to the point that Time Magazine elected her as one of the world’s “100 Most Influential People.” See Saba Mahmood, “Feminism, Democ- racy, and Empire: Islam and the War of Terror,” in Women’s Studies on the Edge, ed. J. W. Scott (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 81-115. 78. Ibid., 83-98. 79. Ibid., 83-98. 80. Yuval-Davis, “Fundamentalism,” 284. 81. Liz Fekete, “Racial Profiling and the War on Terror,” in Muslims and the News Media, eds. Elizabeth Poole and John Richardson (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 40-41. 82. Purna Sen, “Crimes of Honor” in Honor Crimes, 42-45. 83. Mahmood, “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire,” 96-97. 84. Meetoo and Mirza, “There is Nothing ‘Honorable’ about Honor Killings,” 194. 85. Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978); Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 86. Gayatri-Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London: Macmillan, 1988), 271-72. 87. Sen, “Crimes of Honor,” 45-49; Ramon Grosfoguel and Eric Mielants, “The Long Duree Entanglement between Islamophobia and Racism in the Modern/ Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 17 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 17 Colonial Capitalist/Patriarchal World System an Introduction,” Human Archi- tecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self Knowledge 5, no. 1 (2006): 2-8. 88. Sen, “Crimes of Honor,” 45. 89. Sati is a Hindu custom of burning a wife alive with her deceased husband. 90. In pre-modern China, it was believed that women with small feet can marry a wealthy man. For this reason, the process of wrapping girls’ feet upon the com- mencement of their menstruation was practiced to inhibit the normal growth of their feet. 91. For instance, Spivak explains that abolishing sati is recounted as if it were a case of western white men rescuing local women from their brown, backward, and brutal males who attempted to kill them by burning them alive. See Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 271-72. 92. http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/france/penalcode/c_pe- nalcode3b.html, as quoted in Rochelle Terman, “To Specify or Single out (ac- cessed: June 14. 2011). 93. Terman, “To Specify or Single out,” 10-11. 94. Islam has also been used by power-seeking groups to justify patriarchy in prac- tice. Examples of mullahs and religious clerics sanctioning tribunal law can be found as far back as the Umayyad dynasty (661-750), which mostly preferred not to disturb local customs to make their administration easier. However, ac- cording to the Qur’an and Hadith, Islam opposes both tribalism and honor-re- lated violence. 95. Post-9/11, many NGOs in the United Kingdom have been given money to work on honor-related violence (see: Meetoo and Mirza, 2007). In Sweden, especially after the murder of Fadime Şahindal was covered extensively in the media, many NGOs focused on issues related to honor-related violence. See A Resource Book for Working against Honor-Related Violence 2003; Sherene Razack, Casting Out: Race and the Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 96. After 9/11, many female writers who identify themselves as insider victims wrote autobiographic novels. According to Saba Mahmood (2008), these books and their writers had been on the agenda for quite a long time with the claim that they told the stories of Middle Eastern women who had constantly been under pressure and were victims of violence. For Mahmood, those books were influential in disseminating Islamophobia among the western public. Among them were Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran (New York: Random House, 2004); Ayaan Hirshi Ali, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (New York: Free Press, 2006); Norma Khouri, Forbidden Love: A Harrowing Story of Love and Revenge in Jordan (New York: Bantam Books, 2003); and Carmen Bin Laden, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia (New York: Warner Books, 2004). 97. It should also be mentioned that criticizing the abuse of women’s rights by groups of some Muslim extremists is not necessarily Islamophobic, unless this implies a universal hatred for all things Islamic. 18 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 30:3 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 18 98. Sen, “Crimes of Honor,” 42-45. 99. Fekete, “Racial Profiling”; Razack, Casting Out. 100. Fekete, “Racial Profiling,” 35-45. 101. Werbner, “Veiled Interpretations in Pure Space,” 170-79. 102. Elizabeth Poole, “The Effects of September 11 and the War in Iraq on British Newspaper Coverage,” in Muslims and the News Media, ed. Elizabeth Poole and John Richardson (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2006), 101-02. 103. Meetoo and Mirza, “There is Nothing ‘Honorable’ about Honor Killings,” 193- 95. 104. Razack, Casting Out; Terman, “To Specify or Single out.” 105. Grosfoguel and Mielants, “The Long Duree Entanglement,” 6. 106. Saba Mahmood, “Feminism.” 107. Meetoo and Mirza, “There is Nothing ‘Honorable’ about Honor Killings.” 108. Terman, “To Specify or Single out,” 21. 109. Ibid.; Saida Douki, Fathy Nacef, A Belhadj, A. Bouasker, and R. Ghachem, “Vi- olence Against Women in Arab and Islamic Countries,” Archive of Women’s Mental Health 6 (2003): 165-71; Zaid Shakir, “Islam and Honor Killings (2007), available at: http://ezinearticles.com/?Islam-and-Honor-Killings&id=758099 (Accessed June 8, 2011); Muslim Women’s League “Position Paper on Honor Killings” (1999), available at: http://www.islamawareness.net/HonorKilling/ mwl.html (Accessed June 17, 2011). 110. Katherine Zoepf, “A Dishonorable Affair,” New York Times, September 23, 2007. 111. Grosfoguel and Mielants, “The Long Duree Entanglement,” 2-3. 112. Goddard, “Honor and Shame, ” 171. Altınbaş: Honor-related Violence 19 ajiss303-for hasan_ajiss 6/14/2013 3:38 AM Page 19