By Tarek Fatah

Source / Courtesy: The Huffington Post, Canada

In Khaled Hosseini’s soul-piercing novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the character Nana, a poor unwed mother, tells her five-year-old daughter, Mariam: “Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

Hosseini’s novel is about life in Afghanistan, but in the 30 words above he sums up the way men govern the lives of women across most of the Muslim world. Like Mariam, millions of Muslim girls are told very early in life by their mothers that their place in society is one of submission; submission, not to God, but to man.

This ownership or possession of Muslim women by the men in their families was summed up best by professor Shahrzad Mojab of University of Toronto as “the crude Arabic expression that ‘A man’s honour lies between the legs of a woman.’ ”

Hosseini could not have imagined that the fictional characters he created in his novel about Afghanistan in 2007 would come to real life in Canada two years later. Since 2009, the country has been caught in the drama unfolding in court where a father, brother and mother are being tried for the alleged honour killing of three daughters and their step mother. In hushed voices and measured commentary, the media is shedding light on the practice of honour killing and its relationship to Muslim culture and Islam.

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star sums up the question all non-Muslim Canadians have on their lips, but dare not ask:

“What did the females do that was so deplorable, so unendurable, in the eyes of their family accusers — if not to the point of homicide, which is for the jury to decide, but to engender the chronic mistreatment that made their existence a misery, as attested to by a slew of witnesses?

Zainab pushed for marriage to a Pakistani man deemed unsuitable — a union that was dissolved within 24 hours. Sahar had a boyfriend. Both teenagers dressed provocatively when they left the house. Geeti was caught shoplifting. All three chafed against severe restrictions imposed, wanted to be more like their Canadian friends; to date, to socialize, to discard the hijab. And Rona, after two decades in the ménage à trois, reduced to a peripheral role in the family and ejected from her husband’s bed — purportedly, at Tooba’s insistence — had requested a divorce.”

Despite the propensity of facts that show honour killings as most prevalent in Islamic societies (with some occurrence among non-Muslim Indians and Christian Arabs) the Muslim leadership in Canada has once again tried to deflect attention from the evidence and denied any links.

First it was the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) who came out with a statement denouncing the use of the term “honour killing,” suggesting the use of the phrase “customary killing” instead, as if this would make any difference.

Then on Dec. 2, 60 Muslim organizations came together to denounce the deaths of the four women. However, they refused to acknowledge the links between Islamic teachings and honour killings, instead describing the tragedy as “Domestic violence… in the extreme.” They said, “practices such as killing to restore family honour violate clear and non-negotiable Islamic principles.”

These self-anointed leaders had a great opportunity to come clean about the links between honour crimes and Sharia law, but instead, they tried to deflect attention and spin-doctor the truth.

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