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Shifa Asher
Instructor Furrha Ahsan
SS100 Writing and Communication
13 December 2018
Honour Killing in Pakistan
To what extent are honour killings a result of our social, religious and legal shortcomings?
Samia Shahid’s odyssey began when she divorced her abusive husband and ran off to
Dubai to marry the man she loved. Two years later, she flew to Pakistan to visit her family
under false pretences; she was informed that her father was dying. Only a week after her
arrival, she was raped by her ex-husband and strangled to death by her own father for her
defiance – an “honour killing”. They threw her body on the road and walked away, thinking
they had restored the family’s good name (Nelson “Samia Shahid Death”).
It is estimated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) that approximately
five thousand girls are murdered annually in the name of honour. About 25 per cent of these
cases belong to Pakistan only, where about a thousand women are brutally murdered every
year to protect family’s reputation. These figures do not show the true picture however,
because a large number of cases in Pakistan go unreported. It is therefore of no surprise that
Pakistan is ranked the 3rd most dangerous country in the world for women by 213 gender
experts from five continents (Thomson). Pakistan is one of the world’s leading Muslim
nations. It is said to be a modern democracy, but in many ways remains a deeply conservative
society. When these two worlds collide, it is the women who pay the price. Pakistan’s.
failure. to. act. against. honour killings. stems. out. of a male- controlled. socio-cultural
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backdrop, an. insufficient. and inefficient. legal mechanism. and misinterpretations. of.
Islamic. jurisprudence.
Honour killing, locally. known. as ‘karo–kari’, ‘siyahkari’, ‘tor tora’ and ‘kala kali’, is
a. multifarious problem. whose. description. has varied over time. and across. cultures. It can
be best defined as “actions that remove a collective stain and dishonour, both gendered and
locally defined, through the use of emotional, social, and physical coercion over a person
whose actual or imputed actions have brought that dishonour” (Hossain and Welchman, 50).
In Pakistan, 93 per cent of honour killing victims are women (Weforum); they are perceived
to bring shame to the family if they indulge in ‘immoral’ behaviour such as being in a
relationship other than marriage, seeking for a divorce, escaping from a forceful marriage etc.
Acts as normal as liking someone who is not acceptable by the family or dressing up in a
western manner can lead to honour killing in our society. There is a wide range of activities
that can trigger honour killing for instance, “In June 2003, two girls aged 15 and 16, living in
the far north of the country, were killed after they were found running around and dancing in
the rain. Their stepbrother saw their video of enjoying the rain and considered it to be ‘an
assault on the honour of his family’ and thus planned and carried out the attack” (Crilly
“Pakistan: were smiling sisters murdered”). Moreover, it is not necessary that the
allegations of engaging in ‘immoral’ activities are true; mere suspicion is enough to
befoul the family’s honour. Even if a small seed of doubt is sowed in the minds of the
family members, it is made sure that the woman’s life is taken away, so she does not get the
chance to prove them right. Such was the case of Hacer Felhan, whose thirteen-year-old
brother shot her to death, because she was dedicated a song on the radio by a boy who the
brother thought might be the boyfriend (Lesnie “Dying for the Family Honour”). According
to the human rights commission of Pakistan, 86 per cent of those accused of honour killings
are the family members of the victim (Nasrullah, Sobia and Kristin, 194). Such statistics.
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compel a person. to raise questions about. the underlying reasons. that drive. one’s. own. kith
and. kin to. murder. them.
Firstly, one of the causes behind this heinous crime’s pervasiveness is the
subhuman status of women in Pakistan. In our country, the patriarchal values are embedded
in the societal norms due to which women have always been and are still treated as inferior to
men. Their value only lies in their power of reproduction and ability to fulfil the sexual
desires of their husbands. A woman is treated in our society like a commodity which is meant
to be transferred from one man (her father) to the other (her husband). She is not allowed to
have an identity of her own and her life revolves around that of a man and all that he desires.
The honour of the entire family, especially that of the men, is forcefully tied to the women of
the household; any act of a woman that does not fall in accordance with the rules and
regulations that the men have set, is said to bring shame to the entire family. When a woman
breaks through these shackles and exerts her fundamental rights, she is tortured to death for
standing up to the males of the family and ‘destroying’ their reputation. In male-dominated
societies, like that of Pakistan, women. are. viewed. as repositories. for. familial. izzat.
(respect); women. represent. it and. men. protect. it. Every social element is seen relative to
men – women have value only so far as their association with men. Men are asked to respect
women because they are their daughters, wives and mothers. Women are entitled to respect
not because of being a citizen of the world but because of their relationship with men.
Women are not seen as autonomous or absolute beings, but as relative beings, whose value is
derived from their male protectors. Men therefore gain control of not only all sorts of
expression of women but also their very identity, and do not hesitate to crush any semblance
of an action that challenges their authority. This can be seen in the example of Qandeel
Baloch, Pakistan’s first social media celebrity who defied all society’s standards for morality
and was thus strangled to death by her brother in the name of ‘ghairat’ (Boone). The accused
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women, much like Baloch, are often not given the opportunity to defend themselves before
their male family members decide to take the law in their own hands and punish them to
restore the family’s honour. In honour-based societies, where a person is valued based on
their integrity in society’s eyes, such actions taken by the family members are justified and
considered as appropriate consequences for those who dared to violate and harm the
traditional honour code. It is perceived in our community that when a man murders in the
name of honour, he is not only removing the disgrace brought upon the family by the victim
but is also dramatically demonstrating the power of his masculinity (Hadi “Patriarchy and
Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan”). Thus, women in Pakistan continue to pay the cost of
patriarchy with their lives.
It is important to note that in Pakistan, the patriarchal norms and mindset is not only
found in socio-cultural context but is also seeped into the legal system of the counrty. It was
