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Real Issues Obscured by Term "Honour Killing"
 Posted
7/13/2010 1:32:00 PM
There's lots of talk about so-called 'honour killings' this week -- I'm both encouraged and disappointed.
I'm encouraged because it inevitably leads to a discussion on human rights, and by extension, ways to curb violence against women -- I'm disappointed because this type of discussion will also inevitably lead to unnecessary and unfair attacks on the Muslim faith.
Since 2002, there have been 15 supposed "honour killings" in Canada involving those who describe themselves as Muslims. That's 15 too many. Over the same period, however, Stats Canada says one to two women are murdered each week by a current or former partner. That's at least 416 too many.
Those murders are committed by Christians, Jews, Hindus, Atheists etc, etc, yet -- for whatever reason -- it seems as if there's a growing push to treat murders committed by Muslim men against Muslim women differently.
Why?
These honour killings, the ones people are focusing on, involve Muslim men killing Muslim women over some offence -- real or imagined -- that goes against the man's religion.
Why can't the same label -- honour killing -- be applied to cases involving Canadian men, born and raised, who kill women over an offence -- real or imagined -- that goes against a man's moral code? Maybe he thinks his wife is cheating on him, maybe she left him, maybe she's threatening to take the kids.
The common thread in all of these scenarios, "honour killings" and otherwise, are power hungry men who believe women should live by a different standard. If they don't, they deserve to die.
The federal justice department has already shot down comments from Rona Ambrose (The Minister for the Status of Women) who suggested amending the Criminal Code to include so-called honour crimes. It's unnecessary as we already have a section of the criminal code covering these acts -- it's called first degree murder.
Something that should be amended is a call by Ambrose to submit "project proposals" for government funding to prevent future violence.
These proposals should not be focused on men who immigrated to Canada from the Middle East. These proposals should be focused on men. Period.
It doesn't matter if you've lived in this country for 30 days or 30 years -- violence against women is not restricted to a particular area of the world or religion.
The sooner everyone realizes that -- the sooner we can begin taking concrete and meaningful steps to address the problem.
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Nathan Smith
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Murder is wrong. Period.
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Posted By
Danny Baylis
On
7/21/2010 8:28:10 PM
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