âMasculinity so fragile a woman only has to breathe to hurt it.â via https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=715254455292305&substory_index=0&id=544675915683494 Art: Raheem Yar Khan
A new law in Pakistan makes âhonor killingsâ harder to get away with
Pakistanâs parliament passed a law Thursday making it harder for perpetrators of so-called honor killings to be vindicated. The televised vote, which involved participation of both the lower and upper houses, will allow family members of a slain woman to exonerate her killers by closing a loophole.
On July 16, Pakistani social media personality Qandeel Baloch was strangled to death by her brother in what is known as an Honor Killing. She died because she posted sexy selfies on instagram in what family thought was dishonorable behavior. Honor killings are so common thereâs a law in Pakistan that says the murderer can be acquitted of all fault if family members forgive them.
While no one has tried to kill me yet I am too familiar with the mentality - and the threats. An article in the Atlantic put it well:
âHonor violence is rooted in the perception that the behavior of a woman or girl, betraying her chastity, is an affront to the honor of her family and community. Examples of such dishonorable behavior include premarital relationships, dating someone not accepted by the family, or simply wearing clothing considered to be immodest or âtoo American.â
At first, relatives attempting to control a girlâs sexuality may simply impose non-violent restrictions on her social life, access to education, health care, employment opportunities, and civic participation. But if such forms of pressure do not suffice, a girl may be subjected to threats, harassment, assault, rape, kidnapping, torture, and even murder.â
There are girls who are murdered for talking to boys their age. There are girls who are murdered for wearing tank tops. There are girls who are murdered for not wanting to marry. It happens in the western world too, except thankfully thereâs no forgiveness law here.
Iâve known too many girls who have had to live double lives for fear of being disowned - or *worse* - for nothing more than living on their own terms. I know this kind of thing can be difficult to grasp for someone on the outside but I want to be clear when I say itâs not the fault of specific religions or cultures - itâs more of another violent expression of patriarchal ideals.
Many years ago I did a lot of research into the prevalence of honor killings around the world, but had to stop when I couldnât stop crying at the long lists of girls who died at the hands of their own family. This story brought all that back. I had to draw something, only appropriate since I had to fight many threats and restrictions just to go to art school.
âWomen are not your property. They do not exist to serve your misogynistic bullsh*t. What they do does not concern you & shouldnât upset you. They are not your âhonourâ. How they dress or behave is absolutely none of your business. You do not own them. You do not have the right to control them, police them or murder them. Oh, and newsflash: there is no honour in killing your sister.â  (ramblingofjamz.tumblr.com)
ICYMI: CEO and Cofounder of #MuslimGirl @amani used Australian TVâs #QandA to tackle issues like honor killings, Neo Nazism, Western culture pressure, and social media!
Honor killing is the act of murdering an family member, usually planned by a family memberâ but in most cases carried out by the whole family. The act is committed due to the belief that the victim has disrespected the perpetrator(s) and brought shame to the family. One such case of honor killing is that of Palestina Isa, who was murdered by her Palestinian father, Zein Isa and Brazilian mother, Maria Isa. The murder occured on November 6, 1989 after another conflict the Isaâs had with Palestina about her job at a fast-food restaurant, which her family didnât approveâ mainly due to the fact that the Isaâs wanted her and their other children to work at home. Palestina also began dating an African American boy, which her parents didnât support as well. Prior the killing, Zein Isa occasionally talked to other family members about Palestinaâs behavior towards him and his wife, portraying her as a rebellious teenager. The last decision Palestina made ultimately led to her death. She was repeatedly stabbed with a boning knife by Mr. Isa. Unbeknownst to the Isaâs, the whole murder was recorded. In 1987, Federal Agents secretly installed audio devices in the familyâs apartment in order to detect if Mr. Isa had been involved in illegal activities. On the tape, the Isaâs frequently shout at Palestina and tell her that sheâs going to die, to which she responds with screams of help. In 1991, Zein and Maria Isa were sentenced to death for the murder of their daughter. After serving six years, Zein Isa died in prison in 1997. Maria Isaâs sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
This is the future we chose. Honor killings have become regular. Women are murdered for falling in love -confined for life within the rigid religious lines carved out on the backs of millions of women who have suffered through it for over 1,400 years.
Meanwhile those native to the relative safety of the West who claim to care about diversity, womenâs rights and minorities will once again ignore this because it undermines their narrative, and because they have the luxury of being able to look at life under Islam with one selective eye only.
To those people: If you canât even do the minimum of acknowledging the dangers minorities face at the hands of other minorities (and because of your refusal to blame anyone but white people) then can you honestly say you genuinely care about them?Â
The women marchers shouted slogans: "Women are here, harassers must fear!" Male bystanders gaped and shook their heads. It was a milestone event.
We were hundreds of women, marching on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan.
We shouted slogans. ââAurat aiee, aurat aiee, tharki teri shaamath aiee!â (Women are here, harassers must fear!)
We raised our fists in the air, smiling, laughing.
We wore what we wanted to wear: burqas, jeans and designer shades, brightly embroidered skirts, the traditional tunic and baggy trousers called shalwar kameez.
Men gaped, shook their heads, filmed us from passing cars as we walked by, disrupting traffic.
We did not care what the men thought of us.
We were free to stand, walk, dance, with nobody to tell us to sit down, be quiet, be good.
It was the first time in my life that I saw women gathering in public, in strength, in numbers.
This was the Aurat (Urdu for âwomenâ) March, the first of its kind in the conservative Muslim country of Pakistan. There were actually three marches â in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad â all held on March 8, International Womenâs Day.
Word spread through Facebook and Twitter posts among the various networks of women involved in grassroots work â in education, health, microfinance, womenâs shelters, workersâ rights.
Objectives were ambitious: a demand for the recognition of womenâs rights and gender equality, and an end to the hideous scourge of gender violence, among other aims.
But the overriding intent was to raise the morale of Pakistani women. The constant drip of misogyny can turn life into a misery, where you are considered a lucky woman if you have a husband who doesnât beat you. The Aurat March wanted to remind women that the bar doesnât need to be set that low.
Before the march began, activists took to the stage and spoke of their struggles and triumphs. Veeru Kohli, a member of the Dalit community in the Thar Desert (low-caste Hindus known by the epithet of âuntouchablesâ) related how she escaped a life of slave labor to become a political activist. Kainat Soomro, a victim of gang rape at 13 who is trying to take her rapists to court, described her as yet unsuccessful 11-year fight for justice. An activist from the Christian community excoriated the government for ignoring the scourge of forced conversions, where Muslim men kidnap minority women, force them to convert to Islam and marry them against their consent.
The March brought together women across class, ethnic, and religious lines. University students cheered on older feminist icons. Placards in English and Urdu read âPatriarchy is Fitna (sedition)â, âKebab Rolls not Gender Rolesâ, âWoman is Kingâ and âStop Killing Women.â Children waved orange and yellow flags with the Aurat March logo, and 97-year-old folk singer Mai Dhai sang and banged enthusiastically on a dhol, the traditional Pakistani drum played at weddings, stirring women and men to dance together in a spirit of festivity and celebration.
For the first time, I felt as though the invisible ties that held me back, those hundreds of written and unwritten rules about Pakistani womenâs behavior in public, had been cut through with a blowtorch.
A small group of trans women watched from the edges, nervous and scared, but they soon joined in, along with the procession of nuns bearing giant crosses and the Dalit women from the desert. We marched behind women in red, members of the working womenâs union, bussed in from Hyderabad. We marched, hair bare or covered, to the beat of the drums and the pounding of our hearts.
Itâs been three decades since members of the Womenâs Action Forum were beaten on the streets for protesting the Islamization laws of dictator General Zia in the early 1980s. Pakistani women in 2018 still find themselves trampled under decades of discrimination and oppression. But the Aurat March has motivated them to demand equality and justice. The Aurat March has uncovered an undeniable truth: The revolution has arrived in Pakistan â and it is a womenâs revolution.
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