General

Honor Killing


Written By: Ahmad Babar
What started off as a joke on a friend’s profile picture a couple of days ago ended up making me ponder over the true gravity of the issue at hand, ‘honor killing’. Having grown up in a civilized society, I was always told to respect women and it was made a point that I understand the spirit of our religion.
Ever since the advent of media, the dark secrets of the ‘civilized’ society that I grew up in have started to come to the forefront, bringing with them a gruesome picture what what is going on around us. Our oh-so-ever efficient media, despite of the numerous negative points does end up doing a decent job or two at times (when it has no cross border star studded wedding to report on!) And one of these things is highlighting the plight of the women who are subjected to two simple words, ‘honor killing’. Not only in villages and tribal areas, but also in the metropolitan cities these horrendous acts take place and on more occasions than not, the culprits get away with them!
Having thoroughly studied Islam, especially on this issue, I have no doubt in my mind that Islam, which is cited as the reason for most, if not all, of these killings, doesn’t even remotely allows for such acts of violence, in fact, they are against the teachings of Islam. So, that makes me wonder what leads these men, who are in a lot of these incidents supported by women of their clan for one reason or the other, to go for them? Culture? Maybe.  Bolted Egos? Yes! Other reasons? Who knows!
Despite of whatever reason cited by these criminals, who in my humble opinion should be hanged and stoned in the middle of the Mall Road, what they do is simply wrong. But, is just pointing this out and writing about this enough? No! What is needed is to educate our people, and by that I not only mean education at schools, but rather we should educate them about Religion, morals, basic human rights, etc.
And trust me, we don’t need a large movement to bring about this change, all we need to do is to A. Make sure that we ourselves don’t do any of these things, B. We educate those around us about them and C. Whenever we see these atrocities taking place, the least we should do is to say that they are wrong.
So ladies and (especially) gents, bring about a change!
Happy Reading! Stay Pink!

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3 comments

Majid May 9, 2010 at 7:19 pm

well, interesting article. Indeed violence in any form for any reason is simply not justified and it should be discouraged and ideally stopped.
But. it is also more important to find out the reasons behind any type of violence and abnormal behaviors.
there is always some fire behind any smoke.
I am not defending Violence and do not want it. I also discourage it and want to stop this. But my theory is Diagnosis first and then cure, as I don’t believe in temporary pain killer tablet type short term solutions.
Eastern Media specially invests too much (on business basis, in form of foreign aid to NGO’s to disturb our family system) on women issues, crime/violence against women. how many times we read or find women crimes against men? or do you think they don’t even exist? I agree that these might be in lesser numbers But women crimes against men do exist?
Behind both crimes’ against women and against men, i think its small things that are loosing importance in our society.
rationality, respect, patience, moral values(truth, honesty, integrity,commitment, dedication etc. etc.)’very unfortunately these small things are being vanished from our society (in both genders)’ majority of our illiterate population doesn’t pays importance to it and even Minority of so called literate and Highly Educated population also gives them shit,in the name of modernization and westernization. Extremism is the problem here(extreme ignorance, extreme modernization/westernization). and more and most important reason is Socio-Economic.

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zesh malik July 8, 2010 at 11:46 am

How exactly do you plan on ‘educating’ people in rural areas where most of the honor killings actually take place? Better yet, how exactly do you plan on ‘seeing such atrocities take place’ and ‘saying they are wrong’ since i am confident that they usually happen behind fairly closed doors (especially if they do at all happen in major cities). I’m sorry, but you have absolutely zero perspective on this mate. You cant just write an article on a topical issue without ACTUALLY researching on it! If you HAD RESEARCHED on it, you might have discovered that this is not a stand-alone issue…its connected to the general lack of education which more than 70% of our population suffers from. You give them education, and you’ll get at least a measure of control over crime, corruption, poverty and yes honor killings too! Your 3 step approach towards solving honor killings is too funny mate! I wouldn’t even advice such a solution to stop a trivial matter such as littering or chewing gum with your mouth open, forget killing females!

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zesh malik July 8, 2010 at 11:49 am

and Majid, you’re just talking shit mate. go back and invest your time on websites which enthrall you with man dominating woman and woman dominating man videos

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