Honor Killing

There’s a real long article in the New York Times magazine about the recent “honor” killing of a Syrian teenager named Zahra al-Azzo. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/magazine/23wwln-syria-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=magazine

I just wanted to point out this part:

In shawarma sandwich shops and juice stalls, most men had heard of Zahra, but more than half of them believed that the practice of honor killing is protected — or outright required — by Islamic law. A man named Abu Rajab, who ran a cigarette stall, described it as “something that is found in religion” and added that even if the laws were changed, “a man will kill his sister if he needs to, even if it means 15 years in prison.”

Yet the notion that Islam condones honor killing is a misconception, according to some lawyers and a few prominent Islamic scholars. Daad Mousa, a Syrian women’s rights advocate and lawyer, told me that though beliefs about cleansing a man’s honor derive from Bedouin tradition, the three Syrian laws used to pardon men who commit honor crimes can be traced back not to Islamic law but to the law codes, based on the Napoleonic code, that were imposed in the Levant during the French mandate. “Article 192 states that if a man commits a crime with an ‘honorable motive,’ he will go free,” Mousa said. “In Western countries this law usually applies in cases where doctors kill their patients accidentally, intending to save them, but here the idea of ‘honorable motive’ is often expanded to include men who are seen as acting in defense of their honor.

“Article 242 refers to crimes of passion,” Mousa continued. “But it’s Article 548 that we’re really up against. Article 548 states precisely that if a man witnesses a female relative in an immoral act and kills her, he will go free.” Judges frequently interpret these laws so loosely that a premeditated killing — like the one Fayyez is accused of — is often judged a “crime of passion”; “witnessing” a female relative’s behavior is sometimes defined as hearing neighborhood gossip about it; and for a woman, merely speaking to a man may be ruled an “immoral act.” Syria, which has been governed since 1963 by a secular Baathist regime, has a strong reputation in the region for sex equality; women graduate from high schools and universities in numbers roughly equal to men, and they frequently hold influential positions as doctors, professors and even government ministers. But in the family, a different standard applies. “Honor here means only one thing: women, and especially the sexual life of women,” Mousa said. The decision to carry out an honor killing is usually made by the family as a group, and an under-age boy is often nominated to carry out the task, to eliminate even the smallest risk of a prison sentence.

The Grand Mufti Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun, Syria’s highest-ranking Islamic teacher, has condemned honor killing and Article 548 in unequivocal terms. Earlier this year, when we met for a rare interview in his spacious office on the 10th floor of Syria’s ministry of religious endowments, he told me, “It happens sometimes that a misogynistic religious scholar will argue that women are the source of all kinds of evil.” In fact, he said, the Koran does not differentiate between women and men in its moral laws, requiring sexual chastity of both, for example. The commonly held view that Article 548 is derived from Islamic law, he said, is false.

In our interview, the grand mufti told me that he believed Article 548 would be struck down by the Syrian Parliament within months, and given his government ties he might be expected to know. Still, women’s rights advocates are not so optimistic. They point out that Syria’s educated elites have long opposed honor killing, though there is often a squeamishness about discussing a practice that is embarrassing to them. They say that some conservative Syrians are having second thoughts about the custom thanks to the efforts of their Islamic teachers, but that their numbers are small.

Saudi Women Seek Right to Drive, Again

Article from Middle East Online: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22337.

Saudi Arabian women are seeking the right to drive again, seventeen years after the last time they tried it.

The personal costs of speaking out have always been high. The women who staged the first public challenge to the driving ban were denounced as whores in mosque sermons, were banned from working for two years and had their passports temporarily confiscated.

I don’t know exactly what was accomplished by confiscating their passports. They can’t travel anywhere without their male “guardian’s” permission, anyhow. I digress, but here’s an article from 2005 about Saudi ID cards, which women were going to need for the first time instead of just being included on their guardian’s family ID card: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=60371&d=13&m=3&y=2005

I guess there was some confusion:

In fact, according to Al-Suwaileh, a Saudi woman who has a valid passport can apply and obtain her ID card without needing a male guardian. Only in the case of a Saudi woman not owning a passport, does she need a male guardian to verify her identity.

An official, however, told Arab News differently. “A Saudi woman’s passport without the approval of a male guardian would only suffice in the case when she doesn’t have any male guardian,” said Turki Mohammad Al-Malafekh, the director general of Jeddah Civil Status Department. “Other than that a male guardian must come in person and apply, provide approval and verify her identity by signing on the back of her photograph,” he added.

“A Saudi woman can only obtain a passport with the consent of her male guardian, so what’s a national ID card in comparison to the license to travel?” asked Noura Al-Ghamdi, a Saudi female applicant for an ID card at the Jeddah Civil Status Department.

Now back to the issue at hand, women driving in Saudi Arabia.

There is nothing in Islam that prohibits women from driving. Clerics from Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of thought, which preaches a strict segregation of the sexes, justify the ban by saying it prevents women from mixing with unrelated men.

But the drivers are men! I’m sure this somehow makes absolute sense to the men who dreamed it up.