The
Horrors of Honor Violence: Terrorism At Home
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
June 18, 2018
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 She was a
15-year-old student at San Antonio's Taft High School with a soft smile and
dark eyes. Like most girls her age in Texas, she favored blue jeans. Unlike
most girls her age in Texas, in 2017 she was promised in marriage to a man
10 years her senior, who would pay her parents $20,000 to take her as his
wife.
But the Iraqi-born Maarib Al Hishmawi had no intention of marrying so young,
least of all to a man so much older and whom she hardly even knew. She
refused.
Her parents, who had moved to the United States from their native Iraq
two years prior, were furious. They "choked her almost to the point of
unconsciousness," said Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar. They beat her
with broomsticks. Her mother, 33-year-old Hamdiya Sabah Al Hismawi, threw hot oil on her body.
Maarib escaped, running away from home in January. Claiming they feared
she'd been kidnapped, her parents called in local police and the FBI to
help track her down. But even from the start, Salazar told CBS News, it was clear to him that "this
wasn't an ordinary missing persons case." When police found her in an
undisclosed location some weeks later, Maarib explained her story. She and
her five brothers were taken in by Child Protective Services and her
parents immediately taken into custody. Her father blamed Maarib for his
arrest.
This is not just a story about domestic abuse. It is a story about
cultural mores, institutionalized violence against women and girls (and
occasionally young men) in the name of family honor. And it happens to
thousands of them every year, not just in places like Afghanistan and
Somalia and Iraq, but in America, England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia,
France, and elsewhere across the Western world.
Honor violence, according to Phyllis Chesler, the author of A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killings and several
studies on the subject, is a form of "tribal violence." It
differs from domestic abuse in that honor violence involves "carefully
planned conspiracies and may be perpetrated by multiple family-of-origin
members." Honor violence also differs from domestic abuse in aim: rather
than violence directed at a woman's immediate behavior, such as coming home
late, or failing to serve a perfect meal, honor-based violence aims to
punish women who "are seen to be acting too 'western' or who have
relationships or friendships which transgress gender, caste, ethnic or
religious distinctions," according to a 2008 CIVITAS report. "Women's behavior which is viewed as
'unacceptable' by families and communities can include having a boyfriend
of different race, religion, caste or wearing 'western style clothing and
listening to 'western' music."
Such violence is also not limited to Muslims, says Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini, author of Murder in the Name of Honor. "While
some Muslims do murder in the name of honor – and sometimes claim
justification through the teachings of Islam – Christians, Hindus, Sikhs
and others also maintain traditions and religious justifications that
attempt to legitimize honor killings," she writes.
Weapons of choice often differ from non-honor-related abuse, involving
acid attacks, burning, or hot oil as with Al Hishmawi. Many rights
organizations, including the Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA) Foundation, also
consider forced marriage and female circumcision, or FGM, to be forms of
honor violence.
While Chesler's work focuses on honor killing and not honor violence in
general, her observations about the nature of honor killings applies as
well to honor violence. "Brothers, uncles, fathers, and other male
relatives usually commit the murder, although mothers have also been known
to collaborate in the murders of their daughters; sometimes, they are even
hands-on perpetrator," she said in a recent e-mail. By contrast,
"Batterers who murder in the West are usually acting in an unplanned
and spontaneous way. They alone are the perpetrators. Their own families do
not assist them nor does the victim's family of origin." Moreover, she
adds, "In the West, batterers and wife killers are not celebrated—they
are shunned. If possible, they are also prosecuted." Yet those who
commit honor killings and honor violence, she said, "are viewed as
heroes who have saved their family's honor. Thus, they feel no shame or
remorse."
Indeed, even the victims may feel they "deserve" their fates,
or at least show understanding of their abusers. When 19-year-old Aiya Altameemi was spotted talking to a boy near their
home in Phoenix, Ariz., her mother and sister padlocked her to a bed so she
could not escape and then beat her severely. Officials handling the case
learned later that Altameemi's father also once held a kitchen knife to her
throat and her mother burned her with a hot spoon when she refused an
arranged marriage. Yet at their trial, Aiya wailed that she wanted her mother back, and later defended her to reporters. "We are Muslim,"
she said. "Our culture says no talking to boys."
While growing attention to the phenomenon of honor killings has led to
greater oversight by most Western governments, many of which now recognize
such murders as a distinct category, honor violence remains largely
overlooked and misunderstood. Too often it is grouped with domestic
violence, which ignores the true and most insidious nature of the threat.
Those facing honor violence have nowhere to run – not their mothers, their
sisters, their imams. Consequently, treating the problem of honor violence
is far more complicated than handling domestic abuse, or simply putting the
husband or other family in prison.
What's more, Western countries are only now starting to recognize the
magnitude of the problem, said Amanda Parker, senior director of the AHA
Foundation, an organization that fights honor violence, female genital
mutilation and forced marriage. "Across the board, when you see the
data being collected in each of the countries, the consensus from experts
is that the estimates are low because these are crimes that are not
reported, are kept under wraps within families and then there is a judgment
call among those who are collecting the data," she said in a recent
phone conversation. "Are they going to actually define it as 'honor
violence'?"
Even official estimates can vary widely. In the Netherlands, the only
country with a special police force dedicated to honor crimes, officials registered 452 incidents in 2015. But police receive
approximately 3,000 reports of honor-related violence each year, claims criminologist Janine Janssen of the National
Expertise Center for Honor Related Violence and author of the Dutch
handbook Focus on Honor. According to Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant, 80 percent of these incidents
take place in Turkish-Dutch families, 20 percent in Dutch-Moroccan, and 10
percent in Iraqi, Afghan, and Kurdish homes. Others occur in families with
roots in the Balkans, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, and in Hindu families from
Suriname.
These numbers seem relatively consistent Europe-wide. In the UK, for
instance, the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organization (IKWRO) registered 2,823 incidents in 2011, a 57 percent
increase over 2010. It is not clear whether the increase in reported
assaults is due to an actual rise in the number of incidents, increased
bravery among victims in reporting, or better awareness of the problem by
law enforcement itself.
And in Sweden, where in 2016 a man cut off his wife's nose and upper lip before stabbing
her 66 times in her home, 97 people were serving time for honor-related
crimes, according to a 2017 State Department report. A separate 2007 report estimated that
1,500-2,000 women "had been subjected to honor-related violence"
that year alone, exclusively among Muslim immigrant families. The State
Department report quotes cabinet minister Nyamko Sabuni, a Congolese
immigrant, as saying that honor violence against women had reached
"urgent proportions."
None of these figures, however, seem to reflect the problem of FGM,
which is at least as urgent in the West. "Forced marriage and female
genital mutilation are acts of violence in that they are acts of physical
or emotional force that are intended to preserve or improve the family
honor," said an Honor Violence Study Report produced by the
Maryland-based research outlet WESTAT. The numbers are shocking. The State
Department report cites data showing 53,000 victims in France, most of
whom were "recent immigrants from sub-Saharan African countries."
In Germany, the numbers are similar, at an estimated 48,000 victims, with about 9,000 adolescent girls at risk; and in the Netherlands,
an estimated 29,000 have suffered FGM, with 40 to 50 young girls are still
at risk each year according to a 2013 report.
Although FGM is illegal in all of these countries, prosecution is
sporadic. "Despite having legislation in place since 1985, the United
Kingdom has failed to prosecute any perpetrators of FGM," the AHA
Foundation noted, this while the country recorded 5,391 incidents in
2016-2017. Moreover, "only 26 states in the US specifically ban
FGM," the foundation reported last month, yet more than 110,000 women and
girls at risk live in the 24 states that do not. Worse: according to Amanda
Parker, "The Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than half
a million women and girls are at risk of FGM in the US." And if that's
just for FGM, she says, "the numbers facing honor violence have to be
giant."
Parker and others are also concerned that recent immigration crackdowns
in the United States may make the matter worse, as immigrant women and
girls become more fearful of seeking help. And the lack of training among
law enforcement makes it difficult to prosecute honor crimes when women do
report them. "The main thing is that those who are best-placed to
count these incidents are really law enforcement, and they aren't sure what
they're looking at when they see it," she says. Training, as has been
done in the Netherlands, is therefore crucial. "If there were a box
they could tick that said 'reclaiming family honor,' that would work,"
notes Parker, "but we are very far from that at this point."
Still, she and other activists against honor violence remain hopeful.
"As slowly as things are moving," says Parker, "they are
actually moving."
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, honor
violence, Maarib
Al Hishmawi, Phylis
Chesler, Rana
Husseini, Ayaan
Hirsi Ali Foundation, Amanda
Parker, Aiya
Altameemi, female
genital mutilation, Janine
Janssen, Kurdish
Women's Rights Organization, WESTAT
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