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Four Arrested In Honor Killing and a New Call for Beheading Taslima Nasrin
May 18th, 2007 | 9 responses
In a horrific Brigadoon, a place that only comes into view once every millennia, a place where everyone seems related by cousin kinship to everyone else, the police chief of Bashiqa in northern Iraq is being replaced. Authorities over him have arrested four men alleged to have participated in the ‘honor killing’ last month of Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi. Without any evidence the alleged killers (one of them a cousin) accused her of seeing a boy of another faith, a Sunni Muslim, converting to that faith, and marrying him secretly… all of which appear to date to be false.
Someone in the witness-mob had a camera-phone and filmed Dua being stoned to death, literally bleeding to death before a crowd of dozens of excited men. She was first dragged into the circle in a headlock by a large man, thrown to the ground, stones half the size of her head used to crush her face and skull. She was kicked in the face and belly as she tried to rise. Police watched impassively.
What really is a grave “dishonor murder of one of God’s souls,” these so-called ‘honor killings’ have in modern times gotten the nod from more than a few village males, while others, as well as women, are often afraid to protest… given the rage and loss of rational thought that seems to go hand and hand in those who commit such murders.
One woman who spoke out and continues to speak out against the dishonor of murdering daughters, is a Bangladeshi woman named Taslima Nasrin, a physician and writer. I came to her work twelve years ago through my affiliation with PEN Prison Project as she was facing imprisonment for writing and speaking out against “honor killings.”
Dr. Nasrin had to flee her country after a fatwa was issued by Muslim fundamentalists who offered money to whomever would kill her to silence her. Month before last, in March 2007, a group in India, calling themselves “All India Ibtehad Council” said they would give 500,000 rupees as an award for anyone who would behead Dr. Nasrin.
There is a saying in curanderismo, which is the ancient healing practice of many Latino groups from Spain through to the New World… that if you if wish to understand how a mad person comes to their conclusions, you must ask yourself what you yourself would have to believe and think to come to the same conclusion…
While we are waiting to understand the inunderstandable, here is one of Taslima Nasrin’s poems, called “NoorJahan,” the name of a young woman who was ‘honor murdered.’
This is from Dr. Nasrin’s book, “The Game in Reverse: Poems and Essays”
NOORJAHAN
by Taslima Nasrin
They have made Noorjahan stand in a hole in the courtyard
There she stands submerged to her waist, her head hanging
They’re throwing stones at Noorjahan
Stones that are striking my body
I feel them on my head, forehead, chest, back
And I hear laughing, shouts of abuse
Noorjahan’s fractured forehead pours out blood, mine also
Noorjahan’s eyes have burst, mine also
Noorjahan’s nose has been smashed, mine also
Noorjahan’s torn breast and heart have been pierced,
mine also
Are these stones not striking you?
They laugh aloud, stroking their beards
Their tupis* shaking with jubilation
As they swing their walking sticks
They with quivering and cruel eyes
speed to pierce her body, mine too
Are these arrows not piercing your body?
*headpiece
Noorjahan by Taslima Nasrin ©1995, All Rights Reserved.
T/h Helaine
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9 Responses to “Four Arrested In Honor Killing and a New Call for Beheading Taslima Nasrin”
It’s shown here.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/18/iraq.honorkilling/
There’s no honor in murder, only the blind hatred of impotent, repressed fools.
DLS, trying to find out who filmed; what motive was. Appears there may be more than one film accdg to news reports “filmed two hours”.
blackshards: I thought you might like this saying: ‘They produced more history than they could consume locally’… meaning that education and evolution go on (in thinking) but it is too much of a flood of ‘better ways’ for some who are backward to take in
dr.e
A couple of thoughts on the subject.
The Spanish media showed the cellphone video at primetime. I was slow to the remote control and then so horrified I couldn’t move. For the upenteenth time I wondered what kind of a society we have, where showing millions of people the slow murder of a young girl is A-OK but if they showed two adults having consensual sex there would be an uproar. It really defies the imagination.
So here’s my problem, I am stuck in a conundrum. Logic tells me that there are roughly the same number of evil and good people all over the planet, regardless of cultural or religious background. However, as hard as I try I can’t imagine any amount of cultural training that could make you gleeful at the sight of stoning an innocent girl to death. My mind screams at me; those men aren’t merely ignorant, they are EVIL. So I’m stuck, if people are equally good and bad all over the world, but you have to be evil to enjoy that sort of spectacle, how can this be?
The options are few. All that occurs to me is that I’m wrong, that backwards ultra-fundamentalist training can make you react with amusement at the suffering of a “sinner”, but that, in my mind, amounts to saying that fundamentalism will make you evil.
Lynx said:
> showing millions of people
> the slow murder of a young
> girl is A-OK but if they
> showed two adults having
> consensual sex there would
> be an uproar
Normal people consider the latter personal and something that belongs private, or at least don’t want children exposed to it.
> people are equally good
> and bad all over the world
This is a mistaken assumption. What about the culture?
> fundamentalism will make you evil
It won’t. It depends on the religion, more than on the literal adherence to it.
Note that honor killings are not solely based on religion; it’s a larger cultural issue (which also involves other ways in which women are treated — “livestock” that are often abused).
“Normal people consider the latter personal and something that belongs private, or at least don’t want children exposed to it.”
While I personally consider our fear of exposing children to the act that created them (as if it were equivalent to sexual abuse) rather strange myself, it’s not exactly that which I was referring to. How is it that showing sex is bad but showing HORRIFIC violence is not? Quite frankly, I’d rather my child saw sex than a girl being stoned to death. At the very least I could understand not wanting to see either one, but reacting with indifference to torture and horror to sex is sick.
I agree with Lynx about violence and sex on television.
The sight of a breast gives rise to outrage.
The sight of kiiling, real and as dramatization, gives rise to passive interest.
The most horrific part of airing the honor killing footage is that it raised no more interest than the latest political debate.
======
Fundamentalism, like all reiigious beliefs, can be used for good and evil; that’s true. I’m not sanguine about that conclusion, thogh.
When believing means shedding the humility of doubt and reaches the arrogance of absolutes, anything and everything is possible. It’s ture in religion and politics and any other arena where people interact.
Dear All: Your thoughts are so thoughtful… as opposed to people who have thoughts without thinking them.
I note amongst my my psychological, psychiatric and psychoanalytic colleagues much ambivlance to NAME what extreme behaviors appear to be.
Yet starting somewhere to name extreme behaviors, rather than labeling for shorthand’s sake only, would give us better means to question ‘it’ by name, and gain some insights, and then test in our minds, some solutions, and progress from there…
Such as, What if… matter X were evil, and one could define ‘evil’ to one’s own satifaction?…not perfectly, but at least peripherally… and then question how such ‘evil’ is formed, and what can intervene
Sometimes, I think we dont call a spade a spade often enough… long enough, to see if thinking about X in ‘just one way at a time’ can be fruitful.
And if not, then moving onto another moniker and seeing if that one fits, and questioning the act or idea under that name…. and if nothing useful forthcoming, then the next name for extreme behavior… It seems to me that much could be learned at each naming point…by questions that cannot be asked at all if the ‘it’ is never named, or clearly named euphemistically
Even though I understand reluctance and ambivalence to name something unequivocally, I think naming it ‘for now’ and seeing what one can see, and doing what one can do… is a progression that can be useful for many of us
I published a paper called “Explaining Evil” as a sortie into trying, trying, trying to see the roots of extreme and harmful behaviors, that are not only dark and hard to see, as would be expected, but sometimes confusing, as the person carrying ‘it’ often has other qualities which are incompatible and/or quite counter to the negative ‘it.’
dr.e