Killed For Honour, Again

A young woman, standing at a bus stopis shot many times. Within minutes, she is dead. Two women are stabbed to deathin front of their own children. Another is strangled. Another drowned in a bath-tub. What is common to all these murders is that all of them were committed byvery close relatives of the victim. Some by husbands themselves, some by youngerbrothers. Often the whole family is involved in the conspiracy to kill andmostly the younger brother is chosen to perform the act, since he will getlesser punishment on account of his being juvenile. 

The only fault of these women was that they wanted to liveaccording to the choices that they had made in their lives. In the process, theydefied the ascriptive roles which their society and family had given them toplay, unthinkingly, unreflectively, like mere cogs in the wheel called family,run by men and adhered to by women. Killed because they wanted to live freely,wanted to go out, wanted to work. Killed because they were seen talking to othermen, men not from their own communities, alien men, men without religion andvalues, men whose mere shadow was enough to have a corrupting influence.Basically killed because they wanted a life every human being aspires to.

Yes we are talking about ‘honour’ killings, not in NWFP,but in one of the most advanced industrial societies in the world. All the aboveexamples are from the heart of Europe, all the victims are Turkish Muslims andall these murders took place in Germany.

The latest one in the series of murders took place as earlyas in first week of March. A young woman, Hatin Surucu, was gunned down at aBerlin bus stop. She was a Turkish Muslim, 23 years old, single mother. Forcedinto marriage at the age of 16, she came to Germany later on, divorced herhusband and was bringing up her five-year-old son alone. She paid the price ofthis individualism. The men who killed her were her own brothers. She hadbrought shame to the family honour. Firstly by defying the dictates of thefamily to remain with her husband, secondly by throwing out the hijabwhich every ‘pious’ Muslim woman should wear, thirdly by intermixing withGerman men, polluting, de-cultured, lax and perhaps more importantly not one ofthem. 

And yet she is not the only one to have paid such a price. Inthe past six months, there have been as many honour killings in Germany. If thepolice are to be believed, there have been as many as 45 honour killings inGermany during the past eight years among its Muslim population.

Even if we doubt the claims of the police as exaggerated, itis beyond doubt that such killings have a long precedent in Germany. Yet whathas made this murder much talked about is the opinion of Turkish school childrenliving very near to the place where Mrs. Suculu was murdered. It is astonishingthat these 15 year old school children called her ‘a whore who lived like aGerman’, thus blaming her for her own murder and in a way legitimizing theactions of her killers. 

What’s wrong? 

Conservative German opinion knows forsure that it is about Islam. School principals across Germany are quick to pointout that such sympathy for the killers is widespread among Muslim children. Theyargue that the fault lies not in the schools but in their very rearing up. It isthe Muslim families, which need to be reformed first; since it is there that thechildren are taught to articulate sympathy for such murderers. 

Similarly sections of the German press have used the murderof Mrs. Surucu to imagine and transmit Islam as a violent religion in whichwomen are considered no better than slaves of men. They advocate a greatersurveillance of Muslim families, linking it to the fact that Mohammad Atta wasvirtually unnoticed in Hamburg till 9/11 happened. It is within these familiesand mosques -- "dark hidden spaces", as they call them  -- that Islamicfundamentalism is not only thriving but also conspiring against Europe.

It would be more fruitful perhaps if the German conservativeopinion also looked inwards rather than simply blaming Islam and Muslims. Formany decades, the German state did not have a well laid out policy for theproper integration of the Turkish immigrants. They were perhaps in a fantasy-land hoping that immigrants would head home when they were not needed. There wasno proper schooling framework for the education of Turkish children in a lessalienating environment. Things haven’t turned out the way they thought itwould. 

The German state now realizes that the immigrants are here tostay and that provisions need to be made for their proper integration. Thesooner the conservatives also realize this, the better it will be them and forthe country as a whole. Rather than putting the blame squarely on Muslims, theyshould also look at the ways in which the German state has failed theimmigrants, by not planning for them well in advance.

This is not to say that the immigrantMuslims are aboveboard. To start with these killings are happening only amongthe Turkish Muslim community. Why? What is amazing is that the so- called Muslimleaders in Germany shamelessly failed to even call a protest demonstrationagainst the killing of Mrs. Surucu; the lone march being called by Berlin’sgay and lesbian organization. This is not excusable. 

These very same leaders organized thousands on the issue ofheadscarves in school. These same leaders are very active when it comes tolobbying for a new mosque or opposing mixed physical education classes mandatoryin German schools. Where lies the priority of Muslims in this country and byextension in the whole of Europe? 

There is an urgent need among the Muslim community to talkabout these horrendous crimes and seek ways to address the situation and weedout the evil. And merely issuing statements that such acts are un-Islamic willnot help. The victims did not get killed only because of their defiance ofreligion. The Muslims need to recognize that they have to talk about notions of‘honour’ which they have internalized and that these notions have becomearchaic in modern settings. 

More importantly perhaps, they need to talk about theposition of women in their society. For, it simply cannot be overlooked that menare easily pardoned when they transgress matters of religion as compared towomen. It seems plausible to argue that current practice of contemporary Islamin Europe, as elsewhere, is nothing more than those issues which relatespecifically to women. Why after all, men are allowed to dress in jeans (even Mullahs dothat) while for women it is considered un-Islamic, although Quran stipulatesmodesty of dress for both men and women.

If such issues are not debated withinthe Muslim society, then they will have to suffer in the long run. Alreadythings are not looking good for the Muslims in Europe. According to the EuropeanMonitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, Europeans are becoming intolerant ofimmigrants and one in five want them sent home. In the same survey, nearly fiftypercent expressed that there should be resistance to immigrants. 

Similarly, the Helsinki based International Federation forHuman Rights in its latest report highlights the "growing distrust andhostility" towards Muslims in the European Union. Muslims are feeling thatthey are being discriminated against on grounds of religion. Verbal and physicalattacks on Muslims have increased and so have attacks on their properties andinstitutions. The report sketches a grim picture of the future of Muslims inEurope, since in the eyes of most Europeans; Islam has become synonymous withterrorism and violence.

It is not that the Muslims alone are to be blamed for such asorry state of affairs. The Europeans themselves hardly know about thecomplexity of Islam, doctrinal as well as territorial. Fed and brought up onOriental images, Islam for them is nothing more than a religion in which a manis allowed to have four wives, and where women are not considered fit to workoutside the home. 

To their lopsided general knowledge on Islam, 9/11 and morerecently the Madrid bombing have added two new terminologies: terrorist andsuicide bombers. Amidst such a criminally lax understanding of other religion,the European states put the onus of integration among the immigrant Muslims.They have to learn the languages and they have to internalize the new culture ofEurope. What they are forgetting perhaps is that the average European also needsto learn as much about Islam and about the cultural of the immigrants.

But this should not deviate us from the role of Muslimsthemselves in inviting trouble. Incidents such as the murder of Mrs. Surucuserve to imprint a negative image of Islam among the German and other Europeans.What is worse is the failure to even come out with a public condemnation. 

The Muslim leaders need to get their priorities right.Struggling for religious space within Europe should go hand in hand withproblems that beset their own community. There are problems of qualityeducation, of employment, of gender equality as well as internal racism. Bysimply fighting for spaces to build mosque and being criminally silent on theseimportant issues, Muslims will never gain the moral acceptance in Europe thatthey so much desire.

Arshad Alam is International Ford Fellow, Department of Muslim Religious and Cultural History, University of Erfurt, Germany.