Honor killing motive should matter to us

By ROD DREHER

DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Were Amina and Sarah Said, the Lewisville, Texas, Muslim teenagers found shot to death in their father’s taxi, victims of an honor killing? And would it really matter if they were?

It would, and you’d think a lot more people in the media would be exploring that question, particularly because their slayings have so much in common with the honor killing pattern we see in Muslim communities in the West and the Middle East.

True, the only person who can definitively answer the question, Yaser Abdel Said, is on the lam, pursued by police as a suspect in his daughters’ deaths. And Said’s teenage son, Islam, while apparently conceding that his father killed his sisters, denies that religion had anything to do with it.

But several of the girls’ friends told reporters that Said was furious at his daughters for having boyfriends and had threatened to kill them. The girls’ great-aunt, Gail Gartrell — to whose house Patricia Said fled with her daughters out of fear of her husband — used the words “honor killing” to describe the murders.

“She ran with them,” Gartrell told The Dallas Morning News, “because she knew he would carry out the threat.”

If Said killed his children, is his motive significant? After all, domestic violence is found across religious, social and economic lines. Some would say that to speculate on whether Said’s background — Egyptian immigrant and Muslim — played a key role in his daughters’ slayings is merely to search for another reason to bash Muslims. One suspects that has a lot to do with the by-now routine media incuriosity when it comes to news stories that might reflect poorly on Islamic culture.

Yet news outlets are wrong to play down or ignore the honor killing angle, and here’s why:

“Honor killing” is the term used to describe a practice in which one or more males kills a female relative who has, in their view, dishonored the family — usually by breaking a strict taboo governing sexual behavior or gender roles. To be sure, it is not a practice historically limited to Islamic societies. Nor is there clear sanction for it in the Quran, though Islamic proponents interpret the Quran to do so.

Significant support

Honor killing enjoys significant support in some Muslim societies — and among some immigrant communities in the West. Last week, Jordanian authorities charged a man there with gunning down his unmarried 30-year-old daughter. He suspected her of dating and reportedly confessed to police that his homicidal act had “cleansed” his family’s honor.

Several years ago, the Jordanian parliament voted down attempts by Jordanian women and human rights activists to end honor killing, which takes the lives of 20 to 30 Jordanian women each year. Parliament upheld lenient sentences for men guilty of honor killing as necessary to protect traditional Islamic social mores against Westernization. Human rights activists there complain that there is little political will to fight honor killings because the barbaric practice is so culturally entrenched.

The legitimacy of male violence against rebellious women is by no means an extreme view among Arab Muslims. A columnist in the Yemen Times last week argued that violence against women is sometimes necessary to “preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us.” In Arab culture, where honor is prized and female sexual purity exalted, a family can be cast out if a female member brings shame upon it. Traditionally, the only way to restore peace is through violence.

According to a Dallas Morning News report, Yaser Said was a rage-filled, troubled man. Almost 10 years ago, his wife and daughters told police he was molesting the girls; they later recanted. He was not faithful to his prayers or his mosque. He was, it appears, a sociopath obsessed with female purity and willing to use violence to enforce his will. This kind of man exists in every society. But Mr. Said comes from a shame/honor culture in which this form of sociopathy is not only tolerated but validated as a positive social value.

What’s more, experts say that while educated, urbane Arab Muslims don’t practice honor killing, they tend not to condemn it, either. And not all Muslims leave this barbaric code behind when they emigrate to the West.

Defending violence

In two separate meetings with members of this newspaper’s editorial board, Mohamed Elmougy, a prominent North Texas Muslim community leader and Egyptian immigrant, defended violence, even deadly violence, against women and homosexuals.

Though the term “honor killing” did not come up in either discussion, Elmougy explained that violence against sexual outlaws is acceptable to defend the family and the social order.

“The way we view it, we don’t look at it as violent,” he said. “We look at it as a deterrent.”

The Said girls had a funeral at the Dallas Central Mosque. One imam talked about the primary importance of the family in Islam and of the responsibility parents have to keep their families strong. These are arguments used to justify honor killing.

X Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.