Banaz Mahmod is the latest in a depressing line of ‘honour’ killings whereby young Muslim women are murdered by their family to preserve the so called family honour. It is closely linked to forced marriage and officially there are 12-15 killings a year. However everyone admits that this is a false figure because many more young women are forced to commit suicide (young Muslim women have 3X the suicide rate of the rest of the population), disappear but are not reported, or are sent back to the ‘Homeland’ where they disappear. Given women’s rights in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kurdistan etc the murders will not attract any interest from authorities.
Killing is also just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the pressures put upon young Muslim women to conform to the family demands of ‘Honour’. Beatings are common, imprisonment, the threat of alienation from the family and community and a very common practice of taking them ‘On holiday’ to visit relatives where they are then forced to marry someone against their wishes or left. A survey in Bradford a few years ago of Muslim children’s progress threw up a result that no one anticipated. This was the disappearance of huge number of Muslim girls by the age of 16. No one is suggesting that they had been murdered (who knows) but the only conclusion the report could come to was that they had been sent away to get married. The number of boys at 16 was consistent with the numbers enrolled at school but there had been a 10% unaccounted for loss of girls of the same age.
Amazingly Muslim mothers participate in the barbaric treatment of their daughters and in Banaz Mahmod’s case; it was her mother who lied to her about her safety that persuaded her to return home to her death. The Kurdish community then conspired to get rid of evidence and hamper the police investigation and Banaz’s sister has had to go into hiding to protect herself from the wrath of the community after being the main force behind the police investigation.
It is beyond the average liberal western mind to understand why Muslim parents, brothers and uncles would kill/torture their own female family members and force them into marriage out of some barbaric ‘Honour’ code. But it is important that we try to understand, if we are to reduce the terrible treatment metered out to Muslim women, guilty of not wanting to be forced into a marriage or even worse (in many male Muslim eyes) of being seen talking to a man who was not of their immediate family. So let’s look at Benaz’s sad life and try to work out why her family killed her and why her mother and the general Kurdish community colluded in it.
Banaz like many Muslim women had an arranged (forced) marriage to someone much older than her. She was beaten repeatedly and left him. She then returned home where she was told she had ‘Shamed her family’. The family was particularly sensitive to shame because Banaz’s sister Bekhal had been taken into care by the authorities after a catalogue of physical abuse by her father. Banaz then literally signed her own death warrant by becoming a girlfriend of a Kurdish man from another tribe who was a family friend.
Her father and his brother tried to kidnap the boyfriend but he was protected by his friends. Benaz had gone to the police to ask for protection but was persuaded by her mother to come home as ‘She would be safe’ and not go to a refuge. The next day she was killed and her body put in a suitcase and buried.
Crucially in this case Benaz had come forward to the police and they had evidence from the boyfriend and her sister. The community itself closed in and tried to prevent the police investigation. The police were also hampered because of PC which means that their every action in relation to Muslims is tempered by the fear of being called racists or even worse Islamaphobic. They thus sadly (but understandably) leave the community to police itself in a way they would never do if it was a young white women being mistreated. Eventually they succeed and the father and uncle were imprisoned along with 2 other men who participated. A number of other men have however fled to Kurdistan after being helped to escape by the Kurdish community (the irony is that the family were accepted as political refugees from Iraq).
So what lessons can be learned?
1) Police must investigate all indications of abuse of Muslim women by family members with the utmost rigour and there must be safe houses where they can be moved to. The presumption should be the women is telling the truth and there is an immediate threat.
2) School teachers should be given training on the signs to look out for in terms of abuse as they are one of the few institutions that have access to Muslim women without their fathers being in control.
3) An education campaign must be undertaken by the Muslim leaders to stress that women are equal and must not be abused (it would be great if the unelected MCB did something useful like this for a change)
4) All Muslim refugees/asylum seekers and new immigrants must be instructed in terms of basic civilised values in the treatment of women. They should sign a code of conduct that stipulates their acceptance of basic human values and the men’s right to remain in the country should be affected by any mistreatment of women.
5) A law banning forced marriages must be passed (a bill was rejected last year because the government did not want to alienate Muslim leaders).
Of course little of this will happen because the government is prepared to sacrifice Muslim women on the alter of PC in order to avoid being called Islamaphobic. This Guardianiata approach can be summed up by the Guardian Newspaper reporting which stressed the police’s fault and had no condemnation of Islamic values in relation to women, the Kurdish community or even the Mother (who has not been charged).
Could any of the Islamists on this site tell me why so many male Muslims hate women so much and treat them so badly?
