Missing the Point about Honour Killings
When I first read Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom’s Does God Hate Women?, I had an almost overpowering sense of claustrophobia. It was hard to breathe as I read page after horrifying page of what religion does to women, how it marginalises them, beats them, kills them with stones, cuts off their genitals, hides them behind walls and forces them to walk around in bags, unseen by the world of men — the world which all this oppression of women is meant to protect and secure.
One of the latest manifestations of this world, at least in my country, came to lurid light in the trial of the Shafia family in Ottawa, who, because their daughters refused to be limited by the man’s world represented by the father, began to integrate into the society around them, wearing clothing that did not hide their bodies, wanting boyfriends instead of dutifully waiting to marry the men chosen for them by their father. So they were murdered by the very people who should have protected them, their father, mother, and brother — along with a second wife who, it seems, had become an encumbrance.
The response to this horrible crime — four lives ended to preserve a medieval sense of family honour dictated by a religion – has been telling. The Muslim community in general seems to have been largely silent, yet a few Muslim women in Windsor have taken a stand and affirmed that killing for honour is in no way part of Islam, which does not prescribe, we are to understand, this form of barbarity. The subtitle of the story on the CBC website is: “Local women say so-called honour killing is simply violence against women.”
Mark that: “simply violence against women.” As Issa, one of the women said:
“It’s really sad to hear that these thing exists during this day and time,” said Issa, a Muslim woman from Somalia who moved to Canada 19 years ago. “My concern is that this is an act of violence against women, regardless of what you call it. Whether you call it an honour killing or a crime of passion, it’s just wrong and it’s unacceptable, and it’s about time we put an end to this kind of practice.”
But, as I say, this simply misses the point. It’s not simply violence against women. These murders are continuous with the way that women are regarded in Islam. It is often said that in Islam the honour of a man lies between the legs of a woman. And so long as Muslim women are kept in subjection, being treated, as they so often are, like cattle, with rules about modesty that restrict how they can participate in the society around them, they will go on being mistreated and sinned against.
Islam simply cannot escape responsibility for these crimes. Just as, in evangelical Christianity, the level of violence against women is significantly higher than it is in more liberal Christian homes, so, in Islam, where women are conceived of as having less value than men — where their right to inherit is half that of a man, and their testimony must be confirmed by another woman, since one woman’s testimony is worth only half a man’s. If a woman is considered as having less value in this way, then she will be mistreated, and if she is required to conceal herself from other people, by wearing concealing clothing that disallows a woman to be an independent person, standing on her own, then she will be treated by the man or men upon whom she is dependent in high-handed and peremptory ways.
In an article by Phyllis Chesler that I put up as a post a few days ago, she has this to say about her experience in Afghanistan as the wife of an Afghani man:
In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.
In America, my husband was proud that I was a natural-born rebel and free thinker. In Afghanistan, my criticism of the treatment of women and of the poor rendered him suspect, vulnerable. He mocked my horrified reactions. But I knew what my eyes and ears told me. I saw how poor women in chadaris were forced to sit at the back of the bus and had to keep yielding their place on line in the bazaar to any man.
I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes — one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male “prison”-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence).
This is not just a cultural quirk of the Afghani society; it is the product of centuries of Islam, and its devaluation of women. It can be seen at work all through the Islamic world. It is simply implausible that this is not the product of Islam.
This morning we are told that the Afghan embassy in Ottawa condemns these murders:
The Afghan Embassy in Ottawa publicly condemned the Shafia family murders on Tuesday, calling the honour killings of three teenagers and their father’s first wife “a heinous crime against humanity.”
“There is nothing (honourable) about violence against anyone, especially against innocent women,” says the embassy’s written statement.
“(Honour) killing is unacceptable in Afghanistan Constitution and its Justice System.”
Yet we all know that this kind of violence is endemic in Afghanistan, that women are disadvantaged, teachers of girls are killed and their schools razed, and girls who want to learn are victimised. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General at the time, said in 2001, that “there cannot be true peace and recovery in Afghanistan without a restoration of the rights of women.” This is nonsense. He should have said recognition, not restoration; for the rights of women in Islam have never been recognised, so they cannot be restored. The Qu’ran speaks of women as being possessed by men, as being men’s tilth, that is, land to be ploughed, and they may plough them whenever and however they choose, except when they are “defiled” by menstruation. (Edmund Standing has an enlightening article on women’s rights and Islam over at Butterflies and Wheels. The Qu’ran, as Standing points out, is a book written by men and for men. It is a manual, to some extent, on how to control one’s women.) Crocodile tears from the Afghan embassy will scarcely answer for the unacceptable state of women’s rights in Afghanistan, and the embassy’s hypocritical concern is contemptible. They must face the role that Islam plays in this, and until they do, anything they have to say is of little value.
The point about honour killings is this. Women are devalued, and because they are devalued what happens to them is of no concern to others. This is solely the concern of those under whose control they come. They are, essentially, owned, and owned women, unlike free women, do not have the same rights, even in a free society, as free women. Canadian women, and Western women generally, have fought and won a large measure of freedom that was denied them as recently as one hundred years ago. It is intolerable that women come from other countries, and are welcomed here as immigrants, and yet our laws do not extend to them and protect them, because their religion does not enable them to claim equal rights under those laws. This is an intolerable situation, and begging imams to speak out against domestic violence will not help. Muslim women who are prevented, by the laws and customs of Islam, from integrating into Canadian society as full members, are being deprived of the human rights that belong to all Canadians, and so long as this is the case, Canada is hindering their full participation in the freedoms that many of them came here to enjoy. It is a scandal that Canadian laws do not protect them.
As an example of what I have in mind, here is a short piece of a video where Maryam Namazie speaks about banning the whole body chador. I agree with her; this is an important step for providing equality for Muslim women, an equality that a conservative form of Islam would deny them, keeping them separate from the surrounding society. This simply increases the likelihood that women will be abused even further. The requirement of the full body bag is, as Namazie says, already and abuse of women, and we should not pretend otherwise.
Alas, we are failing in this here in the UK too. You might find this article of interest Eric. http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed95364
…..and also this one: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/18/the-new-muslim-suffragettes-of-the-united-kingdom/
I don’t see how the law is supposed to help Muslim women specifically, without some sort of brute-force move that will violate other rights and probably worsen the situation. One of the bigger problems is this: how do you separate the women who are willing participants from the ones who are not? After all, one of the wives was complicit in these murders.
As for the general violence, just look at the famous Milgrom experiment. If people were willing to inflict fatal levels of electricity on other people, based on nothing more than the say-so of a stranger in a lab coat, what will they do if they come from a culture that insists on the inferiority of women, allows for their abuse and murder, and comes with the approval of their deity?
Improbable Joe. Despite widespread disagreement of the justice of doing so, I see no problem at all with forbidding the use of concealing gaments, the sequestration of women at home, and the need for women to be accompanied by men wherever they go. This is not only oppressive to the women involved, but is also oppressive to women who live nearby, because men who think of women as chattel tend to regard other women as chattel as well.The idea that people should be permitted to import cultural disadvantages for women when they immigrate is one that should be questioned, and firmly ruled against. Would this make the situation worse? I don’t think it would. If we want to do something about violence against women, then women must be treated equally. As for distinguishing people who are willing participants in the devaluation of women: what difference does it make? Devaluing women is devaluing women, and should not be tolerated in a free society. In what way is insistence upon women being treated equally an offence against human rights? That some women are prepared to accept this, and to choose it actively, because they want to be devout, and devotion includes the sequestration and devaluation of women, is not a good enough reason to allow them to accept something which immediately disadvantages those who do not so choose. Enough of this spineless liberalism that turns liberalism into a new way of imprisoning those who should be free, and whose freedom should be protected. We do not preserve freedom by allowing practices which, wherever they are followed, devalue and marginalise women. I note that many Muslims agree. If people want to live in free societies, then they cannot be free to do things which diminish freedom.
Omitting Islam in the discussion of honor killings strikes me like omitting racism in the discussion of lynch mobs. The blind spot is so large and specific it is almost certainly a deliberate effort of closing your eyes to what you do not want to see.
The hell are you talking about “spineless liberalism”? What you seem to be talking about is an anti-Muslim police state, where authorities will come into people’s homes and instruct adults how to live whether they like it or not. What will do you, rip off women’s burqas, force them into jeans and a halter top, and march them up and down the street to assert their “freedom”? Restrict the number of times married couples have sex to a state mandated weekly total, and have a monitor get written permission from the woman for each encounter? Mandate college degrees for every Muslim woman, and then mandate work outside the home, in jeans and halter tops?
How do you think a law mandating “Western” behavior for Muslims should work in practice, outside of your simplistic declaration banning the free practice of religion? And when you’re done, will you dissolve some Amish communities and insist on the Catholics appointing female priests and ban nun’s habits?
There is absolutely no reason at all why the determined application of existing UK equality and discrimination laws would not assist muslim women to overcome the very common incidence of domestic violence, forced marriage, honour killings and other forms of repression provided that it is made crystal clear that Islamic law does not supervene domestic UK law. It certainly doesn’t help that authorities have done, and still do, turn a blind eye to the abuses that take place on in Islamic communities because of deference to the culture and practice of Islamic communities under Sharia law. Also a powerfully clear message should be sent to the people threatening violence and death to the muslim women who are trying to help other muslim women assert their rights under law that such will not be tolerated and will itself be prosecuted. There has been some improvement here (North West UK) in recent years in challenging some of these obnoxious practices more proactively.
Compromises in allowing Sharia to take any further precedence over domestic law have been disastrous for muslim womens rights and will continue to be so if permitted.
I swear I don’t come here looking for a fight… so I’m going to try to take myself down a notch.
Eric, I agree with you about what the problem is. I’m just not sure how you solve it without causing bigger problems and sacrificing liberal values. It just doesn’t seem like something that can be done from government mandate, any more than you can declare an end to sexism and racism by a president or prime minister and that makes it so. And sort of like more general domestic violence, if a cop doesn’t witness it and the victim refuses to press charges the government’s hands are largely tied.
Now, if we can get Muslim women to make that first step and report that they are being abused, the government’s hands are untied and I’d love to see an active program of sheltering, counselling, protecting, and integrating these women and their children into Western society at their own speed and on their own terms, while also pressing criminal charges against the men. I think what you propose goes too far, will cause Muslim men AND women to circle the wagons and become even more insular, and it will make it even harder for women to get out of the cycle of abuse.
Improbable Joe. Thanks for powering down. Your first response was not very helpful, for I was not suggesting any such thing. But your second suggestion is not satisfactory either. Why should the defence of women’s rights depend on their being able to launch complaints? Something that would probably be very dangerous for them to do. Besides, I am not talking about forcing people to live in a certain way in their homes. I am suggesting that people should not be forced to obliterate themselves in public, that to break down this particular aspect of women’s oppression would be the appropriate thing to do, and that many good things might follow from it. Conservative Islam is deliberately trying to drag women back into another society, that will separate them from the surrounding society into which they have come, and make it difficult for them to exist without dependence on men. This is intolerable, and it is intolerable that it should be thought appropriate in a liberal society to allow this kind of “freedom” which is not freedom at all. Some may choose, but many do not,. and even some who say they choose may not have chosen at all. Why is this kind of limitation of freedom thought to be desirable in a liberal society? This is not Mill’s liberalism at all. It is a surrender to a repressive society which sets up its repression in the midst of a free society and then dares that society to call it repression. Well I think we should call their bluff. It is an unacceptable limitation of the freedom of women to allow any part of society to treat women as second class persons, and that’s just what this does. I am adding a video above of Salman Rushdie saying, quite plainly, that this is not okay. An it isn’t. Why should anyone think that it is? (Changed my mind and put up one by Maryam Namazie instead.)
A trade-off between freedom and equality will always exist. The easiest place to promote freedom in the long term and engender equality is in schools – public schools. The move to more and more privatization of education and homeschooling – a certain kind of freedom – will lead to more and more inequality. We solve this by funding schools equally and requiring everyone to attend – does this restrict freedom? Yes, but I see it as the only way to progress.
Why do you think I’m saying that it is OK? And where is the answer to the question of how this plays out in real life, in practical terms? Let’s start with a simple question, and see if you can give any sort of answer.
If you ban the burqa in public, how does an oppressed woman leave her home?
I acknowledge that there may be difficulties in the short term, but are there not problems now about oppressed women being under threat of bodily harm or death if they do not accede to the wishes of their male relatives? We won’t solve any problems at all by allowing ghettos to grow up in our cities and communities, where sequestered women live, and other women feel the threat of the male society surrounding them. This happens now, as I have reason to know from someone who ended up living in such a community. Not a Muslim, but threatened by the male society, men who looked on her with disgust and contempt, and she felt threatened. Only men were seen outside. The town houses all around had the blinds drawn. Husbands would drive up in their cars to pick up their women who made a dash from the front door to the car, and then were whisked away. This is an oppressive society, not only for those women who live in it, but for those who live near it. It is in itself a form of abuse. If they are forbidden to wear body bags in public, they will learn to adapt, and where they are forced to live in the prison of their homes, hopefully, social workers and others will learn to keep their eyes open to the danger signals. But why must a liberal society simply turn a blind eye to this oppression in their midst, and permit people escaping repression to set it up in a free society? There is something very wrong with this picture.
So no actual answer then?
That won’t do, IJ. I gave you an answer, If you don’t like it, tell me why. But don’t just brush me off in that contemptuous way. Take a look at the second artilce Clod links. There are Muslim women who are trying under present circumstances, to gain some freedom from abuse. There is probably no simple answer. But doing nothing is not an option, in my view.
Improbable Joe,
I agree that banning the burqa will do more harm than good. Obviously the custom was rejected by the murdered girls without governmental help. Canadian law sided with the girls’ right to adopt new customs. What more can government legitimately do? The girls themselves showed that the custom will likely fade away into a triviality. Those who want to play submissives will be free to do so. But the vast majority will blend in with the local culture.
So Joe, what is your solution? This seems like evidence for enslavement in many instances – women given to men in forced marriages, imprisoned in their own homes – shouldn’t these individuals be freed if this is the situation?
That wasn’t an answer, that was a restatement of the problem, that we AGREE is a problem. Then you said ” they will learn to adapt” which isn’t really an answer at all. Here, let’s look at it this way: if I cut off your arms, how will you wash your feet? Is “you’ll learn to adapt” a satisfactory answer?
I know there’s no simple answer. I was trying to make sure that YOU know there’s no simple answer. I agree that there’s a huge problem. I agree that something needs to be done. I even agree that there will likely be some level of infringement of people’s rights in the execution of it. We agree that there’s no simple answer. That’s where I’m disagreeing with your ban, because it is a simple action with complex repercussions that I don’t feel like you’ve completely worked through.
Even the answer I gave earlier, about women asking for help and being diverted to aid programs, even the answer I proposed and like better than yours has a whole bunch of problems. How do you balance a father’s right to access to his children? How do you prevent these programs from being portrayed as “anti-Islam reeducation camps”? What do you do about mothers who are invested in fundamentalism but have children who want out, or vice-versa? Who pays for all of it? I’m sure you can find flaws I’d never even consider.
Yeah, we need to do something. What that something is, is going to be a lot more complicated than “ban head-to-toe covering.”
I agree with Improbable Joe’s misgivings about Eric’s proposed solution. Once you give the government the ability to ban certain ways of dress “for your own good,” who’s to decide what’s good for you? And what about women who really want to wear the burqa? Nevermind that some of them might later change their minds about what they “want” – the same issue arises that I brought up here. To wit, it is a tricky thing to do a favor for a person who doesn’t currently exist, and despite the fact that some women will find they enjoy their newfound freedom if others guide them to it, those women as they are today are not going to enjoy having freedom thrust upon them.
Eric, do you believe it’s possible for a person to be genuinely happy in oppressive circumstances because they do not know any better? I do. And it’s a difficult thing to take someone’s happiness away from them on the promise of another, freer happiness further down the road. Offer such happiness? Sure. But legally mandate it? I’m not convinced.
Eric, I’m afraid I have to side with Improbable Joe. I think his sarcasm was completely disproportionate, but you just can’t force freedom on people, it doesn’t make sense. You just can’t go around banning stuff you disagree with. If politics was simply about the person with the most common sense and enlightened rationality being king, then there would be no problems. The truth is, liberal politics is about balancing power, and the fundamental notions of natural rights where everyone has the freedom to choose what to wear, what to believe, what to think, and so on, so long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others. As Joe points out, the problem is that the majority of Muslim women actually want to live and dress the way they do, it’s not about them being automatically the oppressed victim.
Most people don’t have a fundamental motive to be free, despite the rhetoric and propaganda pushed by Bush and Blair, as they triumphantly sacked Baghdad. Those of us who are lucky to understand the importance of free thought, reason and liberal ethics, can’t simply force our enlightenment on the unenlightened. I wish it were that simple.
Having said that, something has to be done, most importantly the right thing. Islam has to be stopped, so too evangelicalism and organized religion in general. Also, something has to be done about the underlying misogyny without our own culture, as well that of others. Like most others here, I’m desperate to find solutions so long as they do not contradict our core aims.
Indeed.
Rights that are granted are not rights, but contingent privileges that may be revoked.
Rights must be demanded, taken, and then defended.
Which is not to say that imams speaking out against violence towards women is a good thing – because it is/would be. But it’s nowhere near enough.
Oh, look, really. This is not to the point. We haven’t even got to the point of any kind of consensus on this. Before we have achieved some sort of consensus, we’re not likely to have practical solutions to the problems that any decision that is made will raise. But there are problems now, real problems, and we’re doing nothing except saying grandly that it would be illiberal to ban the burqa. Why would it be illiberal to do so? Because it would interfere with “their” freedoms. Whose freedoms did you have in mind? What problems would come? You’ve decided that there will be problems, but obviously people like Namazie and Rushdie think we already have intolerable problems just by allowing men to control women in the way that they do. You say:
How do you know? How do you know that the problems would be greater than the ones we already have? I don’t believe they will be. I think this will begin a process whereby Muslims are permitted to live in democratic, liberal societies, as democratic liberal people, and will not be permitted simply to set up parallel societies as they are doing now, that are disastrous for the people who live in them, and problematic for the society around them. Anything we do will be complicated. So? We will have to deal with the problems when they arise. But permitting the burqa is just a way of hiding problems, and making it well nigh impossible for people to break out. The groups in Britain who are trying save women from what amounts to forms of enslavement are being threatened with death. Why should we allow this kind of unfreedom to exist in free societies? Because of religious freedom? That’s an oxymoron. I think preventing the kinds of things that are developing before it is simply impossible to make changes is the only way we’re going to keep our societies free. Tell me it’s not a solution as much as you like, at least some Muslims think this is a place to start. Here’s a quote from a Candian Muslim’s view:
The rest of it is here; http://www.iheu.org/ban-burqa-canadian-muslim-view
It’s time to say enough. Then we can try to solve the problems that develop. Just leaving women in prison and encouraging them to escape is not a solution to anything. But just telling me that banning the burqa is not at least part of a necessary solution to a growing problem is silly. Of course it’s not all that need happen. Let’s free women first, and then see. And as for women who want to live like devout Muslims, well, they’ll have to go to a society that doesn’t value freedom.
And, as to Egbert. We’re not trying to force people to be free. We are trying to set the parameters for what is acceptable in a free society, and the oppression of women in the name of religion is not acceptable. If they find liberal freedoms intolerable, then they should go to societies where they can live out their lives in repressive conditions; but why should they be allowed to reestablish repression in the midst of free societies? This will have a deadly effect on free societies — I believe — far out of proportion to any value that might be gained by allowing this kind of freedom. I agree with Rushdie. It’s not right, and it catches in its scope so many people who come to Canada and the UK looking for freedom, only to be closeted away again despite their hopes. And this is democracy and liberalism at work! What a sad comment on contemporary ideas of liberal societies.
No, we can’t force Iraq and Iran to be free. But we can make it a requirement that those who come to liberal democratic societies to live and work want to be free.
Egbert,
How do you know what the majority of muslim women really want? If one had asked slaves in the 18th c whether they wanted freedom, what would the answer have been? If the majority had said no, should we have continued slavery? What should we do with the minority who do want to be free?
I had a conversation some year ago with a visiting male student from the UAE who couldn’t get his mind around the freedom in the US – overwhelmed by the choices and knowing that someone wasn’t tracking his every action.
As I said before it all starts with schools and making sure children are raised with as much freedom as possible.
Right… and if we go ahead and ban Islam entirely, it will make Muslims in the West more free. Except for the freedom to choose their own beliefs, of course… but if people disagree with you, how free can they possibly be?
Since you have no answer for how women in burqas will be able to leave their homes if you ban the only outer clothing their husbands allow them to own, I have to question your claims for concerns for their rights and freedoms. Is it about Muslim women at all, or is it about you?
Banning the Burkha
The banning the burkha thing is one that I’ve been conflicted over for some time.
Initially I was dead against it… In fact, until just now I thought I was dead against it, for all the excellent reasons that people have been objecting to it here.
From memory, I think I even commented in opposition to banning the burkha in the comment threads on this blog (although I may be mistaken – memory is a tricky thing sometimes).
That said, just now I’ve realized that my opinion on this has shifted somewhat. I suddenly find myself more ambivalent – torn between two conflicting opinions, both of which I strongly agree with.
On the one hand – yes, I don’t think governments should be in the business of declaring what people can and can’t wear as based on religion. And I also don’t think governments should be in the business of declaring dress codes for seemingly secular reasons as a transparently disingenuous attempt to cover the fact that the underlying reasons are in fact motivated by religion. It’s a freedom of conscience, religion, and speech issue.
But on the other hand: Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.
And I do agree that maintaining a cultural/relgiious norm that women must be fully covered and accompanied by men at all times, etc, etc, is inherently intolerant towards women.
So while I accept that some women do wear the burkha freely, I also think that the prevailing norm places a lot of pressure on other women to conform. Not just violence-and-threat-of-violence methods either, but all the other little poisoned ways of social pressure that religion (and ideology in general) coerces people to conform to the status quo.
So on the question of banning the burkha, I’m torn… Nearly evenly.
I still come down on the side of opposing the ban on freedom-of-conscience grounds.
But I also think that the freedom of conscience of the women in Islamic communities that don’t want to be forced, threatened, or coerced into wearing a burkha need to have their freedom of conscience defended as well.
When two sets of free consciences conflict, on which side will we err?
It’s a messy problem. I want to champion the side of the women who don’t want to be oppressed into wearing a burkha. Really badly.
But I also have to acknowledge that there are some women who do want to adopt that lifestyle. I don’t suppose that all human beings everywhere have a drive for independence that so characterizes my own life and motivations. Unfortunately, I accept that many people like being told what to do, to be handed a pre-packaged set of norms and values that sets their roles and responsibilities in society so they don’t have to think or question or decide – just obey. Obedience is familiar, easy, and carries an illusion of safety.
Independence is hard. Totally worth it in my view – but hard. Or at least, harder than just bowing your head and doing as you’re told.
…
I started writing this in the hope that by the time the comment was finished, a general position or conclusion would have emerged.
But at this point, I’m still as conflicted as I was at the start.
…
I still come down in opposition to banning the burkha, however. I don’t like the position, but it’s where I’m stuck.
It seems to be the politician’s four-legged-cat fallacy:
1) Dogs have four legs.
2) My cat has four legs.
Therefore
3) My cat is a dog.
Or as explained in Yes, Prime Minister:
1) Something must be done.
2) This is something that can be done.
Therefore
3) This is something that we shall do.
Or as applied here:
1) Something must be done about the position of women in Islam, particularly where women are coerced to wear full body coverings.
2) Banning full body covering is something that we can do.
Therefore
3) Banning full body coverings is something that we shall do.
I agree very, very, very strongly with 1). The women that are in these societies that don’t want to live under the pedestals that have been erected to contain and control them need to be defended. And the indoctrination of young girls into the society that enforces and encourages this form of coercion needs to end.
But making laws that directly restrain the freedom of conscience and religion are something that shouldn’t be done. It’s a core value…
Yet at the same time, we should not be tolerant of intolerance…
…
Fuck.
I just can’t get out of this bind.
It’s a nasty one.
I’m with you Daniel. I’m against the burqa too, but I don’t know how you get rid of it without causing other problems, and sacrificing one principle for another. The burqa is a symptom of a larger problem, and that problem may actually be exacerbated in some ways by an outright ban. I don’t think we can just throw up our hands and say that the problem is too big to do anything at all, but we’d damned well better have these conversations and work through the likely issues before making any new laws.
The ground gets very unstable when you start enforcing behaviors on people against their wishes “for their own good”. The moral dilemma is to completely trample the person’s individual freedom to satisfy your own ideals. If we are to prevent women from wearing burqas even if they want to, we are in a similar position to the Catholics demanding terminally ill people suffer rather than have the authority to terminate their own lives. Our own idea of what makes a person free cannot override personal freedom any more that the Catholic idea of the value of life can.
My heart breaks for the person that feels trapped and too inferior to even try to escape a bad situation, but at the basic level they need to liberate themselves. Nobody else can do it for them. This is not to say that we cannot provide options and support mechanisms that allow them to make the better choice, but the choice has to be their own. Anything else ends up as tyranny, regardless of the good intentions.
I cannot endorse laws banning the burqa to promote gender equality anymore than I could endorse a mandatory head of hair in order to try and prevent skinhead ideals. Specifically in the case of burqas, the laws end up treating the symptom more than the problem. It is the symbolism and meaning that the Muslim religion places on the burqa that is the problem, not the physical garment. The beliefs cannot be policed or legislated, so the law ends up as mostly an insult to those who have that kind of lifestyle more than anything else, creating only an animosity towards the government and not making any changes in the views of those legislated.
Consider the Warren Jeffs case in the US where the closed polygamist community was raided, children put in foster care and Jeffs arrested. Should US authorities simply have let this continue under the guise of “freedom of religion?” Child marriage, ok? forced marriage, ok? minimal education for girls, ok?
This idea that not wearing a burqa is equivalent to giving up Islam is dubious. It is like a colleague who commented to me after an argument with a student who was slightly late to lab because the student was praying at the mosque during Ramadan, ” what god won’t hear him if he doesn’t pray at the right time?”
Islam can adapt to the west and remain Islam – there will always be those who long for the past, but so what?
Actually, just as I left the page I had a thought.
Secular governments can make the call that parents who deny their children medical attention for treatable lethal (or otherwise simly chronically debilitating) diseases on religious grounds are criminally negligent to do so, because they have a secular duty to care for their children as guardians regardless of their religious views on medical treatment. It is their failure to live up to their secular duties as parents for which they are being punished – their religious conscience is immaterial.
Does the same line of argument apply here?
I’m excited, because I suspect it might. And as stated above, I think that there are many, many women living under these conditions that want to be free of them that require our support.
That line of argument might be a way in – that the restriction on the burkha is about enforcing secular social responsibility towards respecting and maintaining the equality of women.
Similiarly to the medical argument above, any penalties or fines levied out by a secular government are justified by the failure to live up to the stated secular responsibility being enforced. The religious beliefs of the people being penalized are immaterial – it is their failure regarding their secular responsibilities that is in question.
…
I’ve only just had this thought right now, so I haven’t had time to chew it over yet. So color me tentative.
But just on first impression I like it a lot.
For those that are interested or inclined: You criticism of this line of argument would be greatly appreciated!
It’s an important issue. I want to get this right.
Eric, something else that you haven’t factored in is that we don’t actually live in free liberal societies, a great majority of people are authoritarian in their thinking, politics leans toward socialism, and the ruling classes lean toward conservatism. You and I may be free thinkers, bohemians, artists (and without being too pretentious ‘enlightened’) but the vast majority of people are not thinkers, are not morally concerned, are not free.
But our societies are vastly different to the medievalism and primitivism of others, that is true, but only recently. Least we forget how not so long ago homsexuality was legalised, women were given the vote. Let us not forget that only 50 years ago, Europe was practically destroyed in the bloodiest of world wars. We’ve progressed very fast, but now it seems as if we’re going backwards.
I think what you’re doing is seeing the problems of society, that can be fixed by the state, as if the state is not itself open to corruption, or does not have its own authoritarian agendas. Let us not forget the warnings given by Orwell, and echoed also by Hitchens, lets not forget recent history, the civil rights movement, two world wars and the french revolution. These are all historical lessons that tell us that power is corrupting, that its not a simply case of gaining power and doing whatever we want, without thinking about the law or constitutional fundamentals.
I am very open to pragmatic solutions, and I agree something urgently needs to be done. But I stand by those core liberal values.
Eric, a couple of corrections to your second paragraph: the murders and the trial occurred in or about Kingston, not Ottawa. Also, the victim Rona Amir was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, not his second. He married the co-convicted Tooba Yahya after his first wife Rona could not bear him any children.
While the discussion here is largely about niqabs and burqas and the like, I have noticed that very few of the publicly available pictures, taken both before and after the crimes, show any of the Shafia women wearing any headgear at all, and none of them obscure the wearer’s face. Apparently, Shafia was incensed that his daughters were wearing fashionable clothing while he wanted them to dress conservatively, but I don’t recall any mention of him wanting them to wear even a hijab.
Improbable Joe, since you so petulently insist on an answer to your question, I’ll provide it: she opens the door and walks through. She has the (proposed) law on her side. If anyone prevents her from leaving, she should have him/her charged with forcible confinement or kidnapping. If she is beaten, charge the assailant with assault and battery. If a law prohibiting any headgear that obscures the wearer’s identity is passed and adequately publicized to current citizens, residents, visitors and prospective immigrants, there will be no excuse for this despicable behavior on the part of the patriarchs. Of course, this new law should be buttressed with improvements to the social safety net. Evidence at the trial showed that all three daughters’ predicaments had come to the attention of the schools and agencies that should have protected them but didn’t. Hopefully, that will change. Also in evidence, apparently Rona Amir wanted a divorce, which, it was claimed by the prosecution, was the reason she was also killed along with the ‘rebellious’ daughters. More or better women’s shelters with better outreach to vulnerable communities like recent immigrants would hopefully prevent others from suffering Amir’s fate.
βPer
Daniel, it would be the moral thing to ban religion altogether, but we just can’t do that, it’s illiberal. Yes, there is a conflict between the good and the right.
Sorry, slightly off topic but this shocking news about a football riot in Egypt is just breaking:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/9055387/Dozens-killed-in-Egyptian-football-stadium-riot.html
I disagree with you a little bit there.
Freedom of thought and conscience, and freedom of/from religion are moral positions. So saying that banning religion is in violation of these positions is saying that doing so would be immoral.
But legislating penalties for failure to live up to secular duties of care is different.
In such situations secular government is required to be neutral on the subject of religion – neither for nor against any particular denomination or lack thereof.
If someone fails to live up to a legislated secular duty of care for explicitly religious reasons, the correct secular position is that the religious reasons are not the business of a secular government. The religious motives and beliefs of the offender should be ignored, counting neither for or against the offender’s defense. Ergo, the secular punishment for the infraction of a secular duty stands unless a successful secular defense can be mounted against it.
I’m liking this so far.
#28 Daniel
Be careful in that line of reasoning, you are equating children with full grown women. In the case of children there really is no such thing as truly informed consent, which is not the case with adult women. The state is more justified in intervening on behalf of children because it is unreasonable to expect children to be able to make reasonable choices on their own behalf.
To use your medical care example, if an adult were denied care by a spouse against their will, yes the state should intervene. If this adult explicitly wants no medical care, nobody is justified in forcing it upon them. All this hinges on the idea that the injured adult understands the consequences of their actions. In the case of a child, understanding is not a given, so the state should indeed intervene on a child’s behalf more aggressively.
And with the point about freedom, again: if a woman asks for help, the full weight of the government can and should come down on her husband/father/brothers/whoever who are oppressing her. By the same token, if you want the government to have that kind of power, you’ve got to set up an entire support system for them and their children.
There’s a lot to be sympathetic with on both sides of this. One of the unfortunate things about this is that for women who appear in public places in a burqa are shamed from both sides – in their religion they’re shamed for being female, and in liberal society they’re shamed for being the very symbols of female oppression in Islam.
Since burqa bans have come up more than once on this blog, I think a productive way for the conversation to move forward would be to find a liberal society that bans the burqa and examine how the legislation is worded, how it is enforced, whether it has been effective, and whether there have been unintended consequences. I’ve been trying to say in my comments that any proposal like “ban the burqa” need to be attended with the “and here’s how to do it” proposal, otherwise it’s just wishful thinking. I dont have enough imagination to come up with a solution that will settle my misgivings, which match Improbable Joe’s.
This is, as many have pointed out, a very sticky question. Ban the burqa in public, and then you have another question: If children of Islamic parents deserve that protection, what about the children and women living in Bountiful? Or, how about the practice of telling children they will burn in hell unless they are saved by God – and by the way, you have to hope for the best if you’re a Calvinist there. I used to not be able to sleep as a child, wondering if I was going to burn or not.
At some point, you have to let people break away for themselves without coercing them to do so. Finding that point is the rub, and is terribly difficult to do.
Here is a portion of the comment I submitted to Butterflies and Wheels: http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/01/some-women-have-a-hell-of-a-nerve/
“The first 13 minutes of today’s (January 30) “Connect with Mark Kelley” are instructive. The social worker and activist that Mark Kelly interviews wants the government to take measures to prevent crimes committed in the name of religion, but she doesn’t mention what religious leaders should do.”
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV%20Shows/Connect%20with%20Mark%20Kelley/ID=2191595259
Eric
You say, “begging imams to speak out against domestic violence will not help.” I think imams should speak out and make a strong statement. There seems to be a disagreement about whether honour killing is discussed in the Koran; however, if even if it is in the Koran, that’s not the point. Imams should speak and write to their followers that whether or not honour killing is in the Koran or part of the religion, it is a tenet/practise that all should ignore.
One imam, interviewed on a Canadian news station, said that he was saddened by the Shafia family murders. Saddened is is too mild a word; a better word would be outraged.
Let us not forget that Western society is not that far ahead in terms of giving equal rights to women. The christian tenth commandment list the neigbours wife along with his other property. Women were given the vote in the USA in 1920 (only 90 years ago) about 60 years after “free men of colour” were given the right to vote. It was not possible to try a man for raping his wife in North Carolina until 1993! And still today domestic violence is a significant problem in Western cultures.
All of these womens rights were a long hard battle to obtain (thanks to our suffragette ancestors). In time, all women in the world will obtain these rights, unfortunately it will probably take several generations. I am honestly not sure what the solution to this problem is, other than continued efforts to prevent discimination, and promote equality for women (all people for that matter).
I’ve tussled over this issue too: http://sirlancsallot.blogspot.com/2010/09/balls-and-burqas.html and there is no simple solution. There will be evidence forthcoming from countries that have taken a tough secular position on this and we can examine the outcome of that. It’s terribly easy to get sidetracked into a never ending session of ‘but whattaboutery’ when discussing this, isn’t it?
I really can’t respond to everything that has been said. What a lively discussion! I do not think that the wearing of full body covering is a core value of anything, and it does not offend against any core values of liberal polities, so far as I can tell, to prohibit such illiberal things. That doesn’t mean that we should outlaw religion or religious belief, which would in fact offend against core values. But wearing the burqa is a different matter. It is designed to hide women, and to keep them dependent. It is unacceptable for the women themselves; it is also terribly threatening to other women who live around them — more threatening than I hope you can imagine — women who can’t go out into their backyards in light summer clothing for a BBQ. or simply to sun themselves. This is an unacceptable constraint on both burqa clad women and other women. and indications in Tower Hamlets in Londdon suggest that once this kind of thing takes over a neighbourhood there is a kind of religious entitlement that goes along with it. This is not acceptable behaviour in a liberal secular society. People should have freedom of belief, but they should not have the right to wear their religion so publicly that it (i) shows that members of the religious group are oppressed, or (ii) imposes restrictions on those who live around them.
Of course, Veronica, imams should speak against domestic abuse in season and out of season, but the subordination of women in Islam is so strong — the Qu’ran does in fact justify the beating of women — that this is unlikely to happen, and if it does, it won’t have the effect that we might hope for, I’m afraid.
As to my mistake about the place of the murder, I just learned something about geography. I was not aware that the Rideau Canal extended from Ottawa to Kingston. Hearing Rideau Canal I though Ottawa. My mistake. Also my mistake about the first wife. Thanks for the corrections.
There is no way to settle the dispute. I simply think we are asking for trouble if we allow this kind of separate Muslim community to grow up in our society, and who considers all the rest of the society with contempt as infidels. Religion should be seen but not heard. People may be religious, but it should not extend into secular space. That is not the way that things should go, and so in principle I oppose the tendency of Islam to isolate itself in the way that it does in such public and antisocial ways. It is a great danger to the freedoms that people in our society long before us struggled to achieve. I do not think we should surrender them without a fight, and this is at least one place where we should be fighting. Islam needs to learn that it is simply an association of people gathered around a myth for comfort. It has no right to our respect or support, and it has no right to impose it on the rest of society in the way that it strives to do. This is a dangerous religion and this is an obvious sign of the danger that it poses to us. We need to make sure that people are not brought to Canada or any other free country — yes, I know, not absolutely free — and kept in subjection of ancient myths that have not a shred of credibility. The French notion of laicité is important. We need to remember that that is as important as other aspects of liberal freedoms.
@John K. #33
Hmm… That wasn’t my intention. But I see where you’re coming from.
If I read you right, you’re questioning whether or not we can establish that there should be a secular duty towards preserving the equality of women in the first place… But that you take for granted (or at least, have not questioned) that, if there were such a secular duty in place, then enforcing punishments for violating irrespective of religion or the lack thereof would be a routine issue.
Correct me if I’m wrong on that.
Anyway: You’re right. By using children in one leg of the analogy and adults in the other, it does skew things a bit. In hindsight it does come over as rhetorically underhanded.
For what it’s worth, that wasn’t what I was going for. I intended the common property between both legs of the analogy to be that punishments for violating secular duties should be enforced equally regardless of the religious motivations (or lack thereof) underlying them.
I intended to leave the question of whether or not there should be (or already is) an enforceable secular duty regarding the equality of women as a secondary issue that I needed to think about some more. It wasn’t supposed to be part of the analogy at all… But that wasn’t clear from what I wrote, so your reading is fair.
That said, I do think you’re oversimplifying parental duty of care when you try and reduce it down to the informed consent of the child. It is a significant component. But there’s more to it than just that. That’s not a digression that want to bog myself down in right now though, so I’ll drop that line of thought here.
Thanks for the criticism. I’ll mull that over some more.
I’m keen for more if anyone else is interested.
—
Incidentally John, there’s an interesting point to be made that’s lurking beneath your critique.
What if I did update both legs of the analogy to involve children below some context-appropriate age of consent?
I’m up against my own ignorance here; is childhood/adolescent burkha wearing a widespread thing? If so, then the informed consent objection doesn’t apply – and suddenly the analogy becomes a bit tighter.
This then dovetails nicely into Dawkin’s campaign against childhood religious indoctrination.
Well, this time I am far more on Eric’s side… but what of education? Because of Blair there has been an outbreak of ‘faith’ schools and schooling in Britain, and somebody – I think it was Eric – mentioned unregistered Islamic schools in Canada that encourage young Muslims to drop out of public schooling. I think a good way to start would be to insist on secular principle (by which I mean not favouring any one religion) in all education, insist also on ‘secular’ clothing at schools, and clamping down firmly on unregistered instillers of religious nonsense (and on registered ones, such as those imams who preach hatred towards kaffirs, Jews, homosexuals et al). I absolutely agree that the wearing of the burqa needs to be discouraged.
Core values seem to be a discussion we all need to have, not only here but much wider in the atheist movement.
Egbert
Who gets to define what these core values are? I cringe every time I read or hear the word values; it’s a slippery word.
Discussing core values in the absence of a context in which they are to be applied is an excercise in futility. We’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever achieving a consensus.
Yet even if we did, that consensus would disintegrate as soon as the first real-world situation came along that didn’t fit our assumptions and presuppositions… In my experience, reality rarely lives up to our expectations.
We should be adult enough to make sensible value-judgements in response to the context with which we’re presented at any given moment. Trying to get that sort of thing squared away in group consensus is a trick the religious use to delegate responsibility for thinking to the group. And that’s where the problems start.
Humbug on discussions of core values.
Religions should not be allowed to perpetuate misogyny – the tiny Y chromosome with it few genes is present in almost all mammals. Supernatural beings could not have endowed males with anything extra-special when passing out souls or consciousness or whatever nonsense the theistic evo-creationists are peddling. A son is easily more similar genetically to his mother and sisters than to another male in a population other than his father and brothers. As far as I can tell the genes on the Y are not known to confer any theological superpowers. So to say, that male priests are needed for the free practice of religion can only be nonsense and that females need to be segregated and protected and covered can only be also.
Oughts and should and other moral pronouncements are all very well, and I agree with the many oughts and shoulds given here and elsewhere, but it achieves nothing. If we want political change then we’re going to have to define or at understand what our shared values are. I’ve hinted at liberal values, and I’m suggesting we examine what those values are. Otherwise shoulds and oughts are merely venting personal discontent and frustrations.
@ Daniel #42
I do think that government has a secular duty to promote equality; the sticking point comes when you attempt to foist equality on someone regardless of their desire for it. If a husband attempts to force his wife to wear a covering and she refuses, the duty of the government to protect her from harm is clear. I would endorse having government support to allow her to leave such a situation, and things like restraining orders if there is evidence of threats against her. If a husband insists his wife be covered and his wife does so without complaint, we are in the difficult position of determining what her real opinion on the matter is. Thoughts and beliefs are not something you can legislate against, mostly because we have no effective way of determining what a person is “really thinking”.
Admittedly there is more to parental duty than informed consent; it was just the main difference I noticed in your analogy. You also rightly note that things become much more complicated when we consider childhood indoctrination into such beliefs. We can no longer just take the word of a child that they do not mind what is happening, they cannot be expected to fully understand. Generally speaking the rights of children are deferred to their parents, except in extreme circumstances.
The line on when to intervene on parents is very blurry. I am uncomfortable with the notion of removing children from a household that teaches them oppressive beliefs, yet somehow I have no such qualms about removing a child from a household that is denying them an education. I have no good answer to that problem.
I want children to be the responsibility of their parents. I want parents to be able to raise their children in whatever manner they think will be best for them, even if I disagree somewhat. Naturally there are some methods that go too far and cannot be tolerated, but each case needs to be carefully considered. I am unable to come up with an ironclad methodology to come to an answer in every case. Hopefully we can sort things out once people reach the age of consent, but I think our hands are mostly tied up to that point.
Again, the burqa is more of a symbol than anything else. Laws against wearing one would be about as effective as banning swastika displays. Mostly I think the cudgel of law is not going to work against the bad ideas.
Veronica,
In answer to your question, “who gets to define what these core values are?” Then it I who get to define them, and you too. We are our own authors to our own values. These are values we share with each other in consensus, not values we impose on each other. That is the difference between liberal values and authoritarian values.
I need to point out that some of the facts in the article are a bit exaggerated. Some Muslims at some points have noticed how horrible the core of Islam can be and have thus broken up into different schools of Islam that vary from more to less tolerant.
Speaking of Sunni Islam, there is some kind of reasoning and many rights are granted for women. However, I have always felt these rights were granted for them as a way to “make up” for all the parts where they are deeply oppressed.
An example would be the laws of marriage and divorce in Islam that somehow plot for the victory of men, both in sexuality and financial property. Women lose in Islamic marriage in many ways, one is having to obey their husbands who may demand them to stay indoors and forbid them to work and be independent. And when a woman seeks a divorce, it’s called khulu’ and she has to return all dowry money to the husband when, at the same time, he may never have given her permission to work and she has not held a job for a single day in her entire life. And so, it is more than natural that she does not own any money and has probably not held to the dowry money. She is thus dependent and becomes a slave in the biased Islamic legal system.
The Quranic law is very tangled and requires very deep analysis, which is why I felt the article was over-simplifying things. I don’t deny that the Islamic System seems to be and overall anti-feminist conspiracy which advertises freedom of speech and freedom of rights of women and when they join it, they give them ‘trap’ rights that only destroy their liberty more instead of making them equals.