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Dear Reader,
In a recent article titled "Sodomy 'For the sake of
Islam'," Raymond Ibrahim, an associate fellow at the Middle East
Forum, reported that Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, who plotted to assassinate
Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef in 2009 with a bomb hidden in his rectum, had
apparently relied on a fatwa by an obscure cleric permitting sodomy to
"widen" his anus to accommodate the explosives.
Benjamin Doherty of The
Electronic Intifada website denounced the Ibrahim article, claiming that
he fell for a vulgar hoax.
The Middle East Forum has looked both into
this criticism and Mr.
Ibrahim's rebuttal. We find no evidence to substantiate the charges and,
accordingly, the Forum stands by Mr Ibrahim.
The Middle East Forum
Hindu vs. Muslim Honor Killings
  Be the first of your
friends to like this.
Although the overwhelming majority of honor
killings worldwide occur within Muslim communities,[1] one would not know this by reading
the mainstream media. Fearful of being labeled "Islamophobic," the
American press has given only glancing attention to the widespread,
honor-related ritual murder of Muslim women in the Middle East and South Asia
while treating periodic honor killings among Muslim immigrants in the West as
ordinary domestic abuse cases.
Over the last few years, however, the media
has published a flurry of articles about Hindu honor killings in India, the
only non-Muslim-majority country where these murders are still rampant.[2] Apologists for Muslim culture and
civilization rushed to herald the upsurge in Hindu (and Sikh) honor killings
as evidence that the practice is "a universal problem, not an Islamic
issue."[3]
While India is indeed a striking exception to
Islam's near monopoly on contemporary honor killings, the following
preliminary statistical survey shows Hindu honor killings in India to be
different in form and commission from those of Muslims in neighboring
Pakistan. Though no less gruesome, the Hindu honor killings seem largely
confined to the north of India and are perpetuated by sociocultural factors
largely specific to India. The millions of Indian Hindus who have immigrated
to the West do not bring the practice along with them.
The recent spike of honor killings in India
is likely the product of a clash between traditional and modern values,
intensified by high economic growth and increasing social mobility. The spike
may also reflect growing media coverage of this crime. The democratically
elected government of India has taken important, if long overdue, steps to
combat the practice of honor killing, and some progress has been made.
Not so in Pakistan where officials at all
levels of government are either unable or unwilling to cope with honor
killings. For Pakistan and many other Muslim countries, which have yet to
experience the social stresses of rapid modernization or build the kind of
political institutions that can eradicate a practice so deeply rooted in
traditional beliefs—especially as Islamists now dominate—the worst may be yet
to come.
The Social Milieu
Honor killing is the premeditated murder of a
relative (usually a young woman) who has allegedly impugned the honor of her
family. It tends to predominate in societies where individual rights are
circumscribed by communal solidarities, patriarchal authority structures, and
intolerant religious and tribal beliefs. Under such conditions, control over
marriage and reproduction is critical to the socioeconomic status of kinship
groups and the regulation of female behavior is integral to perceptions of
honor, known as maryada in many Indian languages and as ghairat
in Urdu and Pashto.
In such an environment, a woman who refuses
to enter into an arranged marriage, seeks a divorce, or fails to avoid
suspicion of immoral behavior will be viewed by her family as having
dishonored them so grievously that her male relatives will be ostracized and
her siblings will have trouble finding suitable spouses. Killing her is the
only way the family can restore its honor, regardless of whether she actually
is or can be proven guilty of the alleged offense. In sharp contrast to other
forms of domestic violence, honor killings are frequently performed out in
the open, and the perpetrators rarely act alone. Unni Wikan, a social
anthropologist and professor at the University of Oslo, observed that an
honor killer typically commits the murder "as a commission from the
extended family."[4]
The lead author of this article documented this in 2009[5] and 2010[6] for honor killings both in the West
and in Muslim-majority countries.
Though neither Islam nor Hinduism directly
sanctions honor killing, both play a role in legitimizing the practice in
South Asia—if for no other reason than that such societies have not
prosecuted this crime, have issued light sentences, or have failed to use
their religious authority to punish and abolish it. Hindu society is divided
into religiously mandated castes, membership in which is hereditary and
effectively permanent. At the lowest rung of the ladder are roughly 150
million Indians who are called Dalits (the oppressed), commonly known in the
West as "untouchables." Although many Dalits have reached high
political office, notably former president K. R. Narayanan,[7] they are still held in low regard
by many other Indians.[8]
According to Hindu religious law and
tradition, marrying or having sexual relations with a member of a different
caste is strictly forbidden. So, too, is romantic involvement with someone
from the same sub-caste (gotra),[9]
a proscription that contrasts notably with Muslim cultures where first cousin
marriage is widely accepted. The vast majority of Hindu honor killings target
young Indians suspected of violating one of these two commandments. In
northern India, the murders are often explicitly sanctioned or even mandated
by caste-based councils known as khap panchayats.[10] Although the Hindu Marriage Act of
1955 made inter-caste and intra-gotra marriages legal, both remain
unacceptable to the large majority of Indian Hindus. According to a 2006
survey, 76 percent of the Indian public oppose inter-caste marriage.[11] In some areas of the country, any
marriage not arranged by the family is widely regarded as taboo. "Love
marriages are dirty … only whores can choose their partners," one
council leader told an Indian reporter.[12]
Although Islam does not specifically endorse
killing female family members, some honor killings involve allegations of
adultery or apostasy, which are punishable by death under Shari'a (Islamic
law). Thus, the belief that women who stray from the path can be rightly
murdered is consistent with such Islamic teachings. The refusal of most
Islamic authorities to unambiguously denounce the practice (as opposed to
merely denying that Islam sanctions it) only encourages would-be honor
killers.
While the Qur'an preaches the equality of all
Muslims (or at least all Muslim males), and Islamic leaders frequently bemoan
the evils of India's caste system, vestiges of caste identification are
evident among some Pakistani Muslims, who are descended from Hindus who were
forcibly converted to Islam in the Middle Ages and were part of India before
1947.[13]
Empirical Trends
It is difficult to accurately estimate the
number of honor killings that take place in Pakistan and India as the vast
majority are believed to go unreported. In 2010, there were roughly 900
reported honor killings in the northern Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, and
Uttar Pradesh alone while 100-300 additional honor killings took place in the
rest of the country.[14]
Also in 2010, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 800 women
were killed for honor in Pakistan.[15]
Both figures likely represent only the tip of the iceberg. According to the
Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani human rights organization: "At least 675
Pakistani women and girls were murdered during the first nine months of the
calendar year 2011 for allegedly defaming their family's honor." Almost
77 percent of such honor cases ended in acquittals.[16] A similar study, published in 2011
by the Research and Development for Human Resources Women Rights Cell, found
that 605 women and 115 men in Sindh were honor murdered or murdered in domestic
disputes that same year.[17]
In order to compare and contrast honor
killings in India and Pakistan, a sample was taken of 75 Hindu honor killings
in India, including 50 cases that were specifically caste-based and 25 where
the motive was not clearly specific to caste. The Indian cases were compared
to 50 Muslim honor killings in Pakistan and 39 Pakistani Muslim honor
killings in the West. Hindu honor killings in the West have been too rare to
allow for valid statistical comparisons.[18] The researchers relied on English
language media reports for data,[19]
selecting the first cases that met the criteria of being a Hindu or Muslim
honor killing and about which most of the following seven variables were
known: location/religion; gender of victim; motive; the presence or absence
of torture; age; number of victims per incident; and whether it was the
woman's or the man's family who committed the killing.
The average age of all of the victims in this
study, both male and female, was 22, with no statistically significant
differences among the groups. Overwhelmingly, it was the women's families
that committed the honor killings even in cases in which there were male
victims. In India, 94 percent of the killings were carried out by the woman's
family of origin. Four percent were killed jointly by both the man's and the
woman's families of origin; in one case it was the allegedly shamed husband
of a woman who did the killing; in no cases was it just the man's family of
origin. In Pakistan, the woman's family of origin was responsible for 78
percent of the killings while husbands of "adulterous" wives
accounted for another 16 percent. In 3 cases (6 percent) it was the man's
family of origin that committed the murder. The number of husbands who were
killers was highest in Pakistan because a large percentage of the Pakistani
victims (30 percent) had been accused of adultery. Among Pakistani Muslims in
the West, 97 percent of the killings were by the woman's family. This is to
be expected, as it is women who are considered the keepers of male and family
honor and responsibility to enforce society's honor code falls on the women's
families.
A number of statistically significant
differences are notable.
Gender of Victims. In 40 percent of
the cases, Indian Hindus murdered men while Pakistani Muslims murdered men
only 14 percent of the time in Pakistan and 15 percent of the time in the
West. The higher percentage of male victims in India underscores the fact
that Hindu honor killings are more often about caste purity than sexual
purity. While sexual purity is traditionally a female responsibility, the
religious mandate to maintain strict boundaries between castes is an
obligation for all Hindus, both male and female.
Motivation. The reported motivations
underlying the killings varied significantly across the three groups. The
researchers identified four major motives among Indian Hindus: caste-specific
motives, "immoral character," "contamination by
association," and non-caste-specific illicit relationships, which
included interfaith relationships, adultery, pregnancy out of wedlock, and
illicit relationships that were considered shameful for unspecified reasons.
"Contamination by association" victims were killed not because they
had done anything wrong but because of their association with the guilty
party (mostly children of mothers who had been accused of violating sexual
norms).
"Immoral character" victims were
considered rebellious or licentious but were not suspected of being
romantically involved with a specific individual. For example,
Pakistani-Canadian Aqsa Parvez was lured to death by her mother and murdered
by her father because she did not wear a hijab (head covering).[20] A 14-year-old Indian girl, S.
Rajinilatha, was murdered by her father not because she was involved with any
particular man but merely because she wrote love poetry.[21] Meena, an 18-year-old Hindu girl,
was shot to death because she left her village for three days, and her family
was not satisfied with her explanation of where she had been.[22]
In the case of Pakistani Muslims, the
researchers identified three motives: illicit relationships,
"contamination by association," and "immoral character."
Only 4 percent of Muslim victims in Pakistan were killed because they were
romantically involved with someone from a different caste, and caste was
never a motive among Pakistani Muslims in the West. Consequently, the motive
in this small number of cases was classified simply as "illicit
relationship."[23]
The reported motivations of Muslim honor
killers in Pakistan differed from those of Pakistani Muslims in the West. In
Pakistan, 12 percent of the victims were "immoral character"
victims. In the West, 65 percent of the victims were "immoral
character" victims. This may be because there are so many more
opportunities for "immoral" assimilation/independence in the West,
and young Pakistani women living there may be pushing boundaries more
forcefully.
There were also significantly more
"contamination by association" victims among Pakistani Muslims,
both in Pakistan and in the West, than among the Hindus in India. For
example, one Pakistani Muslim case in the West involved the murder of an
adult sister-in-law, her young child, and a father-in-law who happened to be
in the battered wife's new home at the time. Only 4 percent of the Indian
Hindus killed were "contamination by association" victims (n=3),
compared to 22 percent of the Pakistani Muslim victims in Pakistan (n=11) and
19 percent of Pakistani Muslim victims in the West (n=7). The overwhelming
majority of Hindu killings are caste-related, generally targeting young men
and women shortly after they eloped and before they could have children.
Pakistani Muslim honor killings are more often about obedience in general,
especially sexual purity, and a woman's sexual and moral purity can be
challenged as long as she lives.
Torture. Some victims were killed in a
manner clearly intended to maximize pain. For example, 17-year-old Anup Kumar
of Haryana was electrocuted in 2011 for being in a relationship with a girl
from the same sub-caste.[24]
In Islamabad, 40-year-old Elahi Husain's brothers tied her to a tree and
stoned her to death in 2007 for being in a relationship of which they
disapproved.[25]
The torture rate for Hindus in India (39
percent) was significantly higher than for Muslims in Pakistan (12 percent).
Many of the Indian Hindu victims in this study were burned alive,
electrocuted, or hacked to death. Even in cases where there was no torture,
the bodies of the victims were often desecrated,[26] grimly displaying the family's
determination to restore its honor at all costs. It is possible that the
torture rate in Pakistan is comparable to that in India and that Pakistani
police and media are more circumspect in revealing gruesome details.
Among Pakistani Muslim victims in the West,
however, a staggering 59 percent were tortured. Perhaps this is because the
perpetrators feel so besieged and humiliated by the surrounding culture that
they must take more extreme measures to reclaim their honor and because so
many Pakistani girls and women are tempted to assimilate.
Pakistan's Actions on Honor Killings
In Pakistan, the fusion of Islamic beliefs, a
patriarchal social order, and tribal segmentation have effectively reduced
women to the status of chattel. Pakistan was ranked 133 out of 135 countries
in the World Economic Forum's 2011 Global Gender Gap report.[27] A 2011 survey by the Thomson
Reuters Foundation ranked Pakistan as the third most dangerous country in the
world for women (India was fourth).[28]
According to Homa Arjomand, the Canadian
lawyer who led the successful fight against the imposition of Shari'a law in
Ontario, the lives of most girls and women in Pakistan are routinely
terrible. They can expect that their husbands will rape and beat them
savagely, often breaking their bones and knocking out their teeth; they may
face extreme sadism during pregnancy as well as unhygienic and dangerous
confinement as a permanent way of life; their families will not help them.[29]
The summary execution of female relatives for
a wide range of suspected moral infractions is considered justifiable by many
Pakistanis.[30] Tribal
councils often sanction the practice[31]
while local police turn a blind eye. Because of this impunity, honor killing
is sometimes used as a pretext for other crimes. For example, according to
Muhammad Haroon Bahlkani, an officer in the Community Development Department
in Sindh, Pakistan, a "man can murder another man for unrelated reasons,
kill one of his own female relatives, and then credibly blame his first
victim for dishonoring the second. Or he can simply kill one of his female
relatives, accuse someone rich of involvement with her, and extract financial
compensation in exchange for forgoing vengeance." Bahlkani has a name
for this: the "Honor Killing Industry."[32]
In Pakistan, many honor killings are known as
karo-kari killings, which literally means "black male" and
"black female" in Urdu and refers to cases in which adulterers are
killed together. However, according to Bahlkani, there is an escape clause,
but only for the men who can run away, hide, or pay restitution. Women are
confined to the home, and few people will shelter a female runaway.
Although senior Pakistani officials have
frequently denounced the practice of honor killing, little of substance has
been achieved in combating it. While the penal code was stiffened in 2005 to
impose a 10-year minimum sentence for honor killing,[33] legislative initiatives to protect
women from domestic violence have been repeatedly watered down or abandoned
in the face of Islamist opposition. In 2009, Pakistan's National Assembly
passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, which
strengthened legal protections against domestic violence for women and
children. However, the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body
charged with assessing whether laws are consistent with Islamic injunctions,
issued a statement saying the bill "would fan unending family feuds and
push up divorce rates." After this, the bill was held up in the
Pakistani senate and allowed to lapse. According to Special Public Prosecutor
Nghat Dad, "The government's attitude towards pushing for the cause has
been hopeless ever since the Council of Islamic Ideology's opposition."[34]
Under Shari'a-based provisions of Pakistan's
judicial system, murderers can buy a pardon by paying blood money (dyad)
to the victim's family. Since the family of honor killing victims are nearly
always sympathetic to the honor killer as well as complicit to some degree,
getting a pardon is usually just a formality.[35] Women's rights organizations in
Pakistan have pressed parliament to disallow the practice of blood money in
honor killing cases, but conservative Islamist groups have blocked the needed
legislation.
Even when such arrangements do not take
place, honor killers are rarely prosecuted for lack of cooperative witness
testimony. For those few who happen to be convicted, a light prison sentence
is far preferable to dishonor. According to the Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan in a recent report: "The legal, preventative, and protective
measures needed to provide effective protection to women against violence
perpetrated in the name of honor remained absent."[36]
India's Actions on Honor Killings
Indian society at large is no less
misogynistic than that of Pakistan. Since boys are preferred and girls are
seen as a burden, an estimated four to twelve million selective abortions of
girls have occurred in India in the past three decades.[37] The 2011 Indian census found 914
girls for every 1,000 boys among children six or younger.[38] Dowry burnings, the practice of a
man and his mother dousing his wife with cooking oil and burning her alive so
that a new bride and dowry can be obtained, are as big a problem as honor
killings in India.[39]
As the Indian media have fastidiously
documented,[40] there
has been a marked increase in the number of reported honor killings in recent
years. In 2010, a government-funded study on the prevalence of honor crimes
in India found that they are most common in regions dominated by khap
panchayats and increasingly involve inter-caste, rather than
intra-sub-caste marriages.[41]
In these regions, local politicians turn a blind eye to the murders and
resist efforts by the central government and parliament to deal with the
problem while local police collude in honor killings[42] or help cover them up, often
mischaracterizing the murders as suicides.[43] In 2011, theaters in Haryana
refused to screen an Indian film on honor killings because of threats by khap
panchayats.[44]
According to Prem Chowdhry of the Delhi
School of Economics, honor killings were less frequent in the past
"because elopements didn't happen … livelihood was so clearly tied to
the land, and the land was so clearly enmeshed in these relationships."[45] Greater socioeconomic mobility has
weakened these bonds. As khap panchayats struggle against
modernization, preserving their traditional power means retaining control
over reproduction, and they have resorted to violence to achieve this.
In sharp contrast to their Pakistani
counterparts, Indian government officials have vigorously condemned honor
killings in their country.[46]
So, too, have liberal Indian media outlets,[47] some of which have done aggressive
investigative reporting on the issue. In 2010, an undercover reporter working
for the Indian television channel Headlines Today found two policemen from
the northern state of Haryana who boasted about their willingness to hand
over a young woman to be honor murdered. "Cut her into pieces and then
throw her in some river," one said.[48] A number of Indian nongovernmental
organizations are working to defend women from honor killings. The Love
Commandos, with 2,000 volunteers and a 24-hour national hotline, are devoted
to protecting newlyweds who defy their families.[49]
In 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
ordered a cabinet-level commission to draft national legislation designed to
eradicate honor killing.[50]
The proposals included an amendment to the penal code allowing khap
panchayats leaders to be prosecuted for sanctioning murders as well as
the revocation of the 30-day notice period required by the Special Marriage
Act, which has enabled families to track down and preemptively kill the
couples.[51] In
2011, the Law Commission of India, under the Ministry of Law and Justice,
drafted a new bill—The Endangerment of Life and Liberty (Protection,
Prosecution and Other Measures) Act—designed to prevent khap panchayats
from denouncing couples who violate caste restrictions. According to the
bill,
It shall be unlawful for any group of persons
to gather, assemble or congregate with the … intention to deliberate, declare
on, or condemn any marriage or relationship such as marriage between two
persons of majority age in the locality concerned on the basis that such
conduct or relationship has dishonored the caste or community or religion of
all or some of the persons forming part of the assembly or the family or the
people of the locality concerned.[52]
The fate of this legislation is uncertain,
however, as the khap panchayats' control over local voting blocs has
enabled them to blunt legislative reforms in the past. The government has
made more progress on the judicial front. In 2010, India's Supreme Court
instructed the governments in Haryana and six other states to take steps to
protect potential honor killing victims.[53] In 2011, it decried honor killing
as a "barbaric and shameful" practice that must be "ruthlessly
stamped out."[54]
The court also declared honor killings ordered by khap panchayats to
be illegal and warned that government officials who fail to act against honor
crime offenders will be prosecuted.[55]
Although fear of caste ostracism makes it
difficult to find cooperative witnesses, Indian courts have begun aggressively
prosecuting honor killers and their accomplices. In 2010, a Haryana court
sentenced five men to death for the honor murder of a young couple who had
married despite being members of the same sub-caste while giving a life
sentence to the head of the khap panchayat that ordered their deaths.[56] In November 2011, an Indian court
sentenced eight men to death and twenty others to life imprisonment for
involvement in three honor killings.[57]
Increasingly, local police officials have been suspended and even arrested
for collusion in honor killings.[58]
India still has a long way to go. While the
Indian government continues to face resistance and evasion of responsibility
on the part of local officials, it has not encountered the same kind of
virulent, often violent, opposition to women's rights typical of Pakistani
Islamists. There is little doubt that India is determined to win what
promises to be a long battle against honor killing. The Western media's
interest in Hindu honor killings developed only after Indians themselves
began exposing the practice and pressing for change.
Conclusion
Although Hindu honor killing is a gruesome
and sordid affair, it differs in many important respects from honor killing
in neighboring Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Indian Hindus murder men
for honor more often than do Pakistani Muslims, and they murder for reasons
mainly related to concerns about caste purity.
Perhaps the most striking characteristic of
Hindu honor killings is the fact that Indians abandon the horrific practice
when they migrate to the West whereas many Pakistani Muslims carry it with
them. Part of the explanation may lie in their different patterns of
acculturation upon immigrating to the West. Young Hindus in the West are no
less prone to violate traditional social codes than young Muslims, and their
parents may be no less furious when they do, but Hindu families in the West
do not feel the same degree of public humiliation and shame as they might
experience back in India. They are eager to preserve their cultural identity
but not at the expense of alienating their adoptive communities. The absence
of dreaded khap panchayats no doubt mitigates the consequences of dishonor.
Due in part to the spread of radical Islamist
ideology, Muslim immigrants in the West are either radicalized or socialize
predominantly within Muslim-only communities, and their conception of honor
reflects this. Even affluent young women of Pakistani descent in the West can
face the credible threat of death or severe bodily harm. Actress Afshan Azad,
who played Padma Patil in the Harry Potter film series, was beaten and
threatened with death in 2010 by her Pakistani father and brother for dating
a non-Muslim.[59]
If she can be victimized, anyone can.
While it is alarming that there are so many
honor killings in India and Pakistan, there may yet be cause for hope. Every
honor killing begins with a rebellion against tribalism and patriarchy—or
with a fear that tribal and patriarchal values are under attack. Many of the
victims in our study were people who believed that they could push
traditional boundaries, that they could get away with asserting their rights.
They were wrong, and they paid the ultimate price for that mistake, but the
key is that they tried. More rebels will follow.
Phyllis Chesler is emerita professor
of psychology and women's studies at the Richmond College of the City
University of New York, author of fourteen books, and co-founder of the
Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network. Nathan
Bloom, a recent graduate of the University of Chicago, is a former
assistant to Phyllis Chesler. The authors thank Tchia and Avraham Snapiri of
IDEA-Management and Economic Consulting Ltd., for performing the statistical
tests for this study, and Petra Bailey for help in gathering the data.
[1] Phyllis Chesler, "Worldwide
Trends in Honor Killings," Middle East Quarterly, Spring
2010, pp. 3-11.[2] For example, see The New York Times, July 9, 2010, June 4, 2011; The Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2008. [3] John L. Esposito, "Honor Killing: Is Violence against Women a Universal Problem, Not an Islamic Issue?" The Huffington Post, Sept. 4, 2010. [4] Unni Wikan, "The Honor Culture," Karl-Olov Arnstberg and Phil Holmes, trans., originally published as En Fraga Om Hedre, Cajsa Mitchell, trans. (Stockholm: Ordfront Forlag AB, 2005). [5] Phyllis Chesler, "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?" Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 61-9. [6] Chesler, "Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings," pp. 3-11. [7] The New York Times, July 26, 1997. [8] "Caste-based Discrimination in South Asia," European Commission (Brussels) and the International Dalit Solidarity Network, June 2009; "Broken People: Caste Violence against India's 'Untouchables,'" Human Rights Watch, Washington, D.C., Apr. 1, 1999. [9] The Australian (Sydney), Apr. 3, 2010. [10] Times of India (Mumbai), Mar. 30, 2010. [11] The New York Times, July 9, 2010. [12] Times of India, Sept. 8, 2009. [13] See Yoginder Sikand, "Islam and Caste Inequality among Indian Muslims," Asianists' Asia, first published in Qalandar (Paris), T. Wignesan, ed., Mar. 2004; Anatol Lieven, Pakistan. A Hard Country (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), pp. 101-2. [14] The Hindu (Chennai, Madras), July 11, 2010. [15] Dawn (Karachi), Aug. 9, 2011. [16] Business Reporter (Karachi), Jan. 5, 2012. [17] Ibid., Jan. 9, 2012. [18] Chesler, "Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings," pp. 3-11. [19] For Indian Hindu cases: The Times of India, The Hindustan Times (New Delhi), Press Trust of India News Service (Delhi), The Independent (London), The Washington Post, Reuters, The Hindu, Indian Express (Chennai, Madras), Outlook India (New Delhi), Thaindian News (Bangkok), Indo-Asian News Service (New Delhi), and the BBC. For Pakistani cases: Associated Press, The Pakistan Daily Times (Lahore), stophonourkillings.com, The Daily Telegraph (London), The News International (Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad), The Regional Times of Sindh (Hyderabad and Karachi), Dawn, and Pakistan Today (Lahore). The Indian honor killings took place between 2001 and 2011; those in Pakistan between 1999 and 2011. The Pakistani honor killings in the West took place between 1998 and 2009. [20] The National Post (Toronto), Dec. 12, 2007. [21] "'Honour' Killings on the Rise in Tamil Nadu," Stop Honour Killings, London, Sept. 16, 2010. [22] Times of India, Feb. 16, 2011; Mid-Day (Mumbai and Delhi), Feb. 15, 2011. [23] See Sikand, "Islam and Caste Inequality among Indian Muslims." [24] Times of India, Jan. 28, 2011. [25] The Daily Telegraph, Jan. 31, 2007. [26] Reuters, May 16, 2008; The Economist, Apr. 15, 2010. [27] The Global Gender Gap Report 2011, The World Economic Forum, Geneva, Nov. 2011. [28] "The World's Most Dangerous Countries for Women," Thomson Reuters Foundation, New York, June 15, 2011. [29] Homa Arjomand, "Effect of globalization of political Islam on women," www.nosharia.com, accessed Mar. 28, 2012. [30] See, for example, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong, May 12, 2011; The China Post (Taipei), Mar. 10, 2012; BBC Urdu, Aug. 29, 2008. [31] Lieven, Pakistan, pp. 101-2. [32] Correspondence with Muhammad Haroon Bahlkani, 2010, 2011. [33] USA Today, Dec. 28, 2005. [34] Iffat Gill, "Can legal reforms protect women in Pakistan?" Worldpulse.com, Portland, Ore., Mar. 29, 2011. [35] BBC, Mar. 2, 2005. [36] "State of Human Rights in 2010," Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Lahore, Apr. 2011, p. 206. [37] Prabhat Jha, et al., "Trends in selective abortions of girls in India: analysis of nationally representative birth histories from 1990 to 2005 and census data from 1991 to 2011," The Lancet, May 24, 2011, pp. 1921-8. [38] The New York Times, May 24, 2011. [39] BBC, July 16, 2003. [40] The New York Times, July 9, 2010. [41] The Tribune (Chandigarh, India), May 14, 2011. [42] "India: Prosecute Rampant 'Honor' Killings: Amend and Enforce Laws to End Barbaric Practice," Human Rights Watch, New York, July 18, 2010. [43] See, for example, Times of India, Mar. 15, 2011. [44] Indian Express, July 30, 2011. [45] The Australian, Apr. 23, 2010. [46] See, for example, Times of India, Aug. 1, 2010. [47] "Barbarian Face," ibid., July 4, 2007. [48] India Today (New Delhi), Sept. 17, 2010. [49] The Guardian (London), Oct. 10, 2010. [50] Times of India, July 9, 2010. [51] "India: Prosecute Rampant 'Honor' Killings," July 18, 2010. [52] The Hindu, June 8, 2011. [53] Times of India, June 21, 2010. [54] BBC, Apr. 20, 2011. [55] "Crime and Punishment," Times of India, Apr. 27, 2011. [56] The Australian, Apr. 3, 2010. [57] International Business Times (New York), Nov. 16, 2011. [58] The Australian, Apr. 3, 2010. [59] The Telegraph, Dec. 20, 2010. |
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