Are women in Islamic culture a property than a mere human being?
A married woman can leave her husband only in a coffin- is a famous epitaph in most of the chauvinistic driven Islamic countries.
The tornado of self-destruction in form of self-immolation in Afghanistan have now moved towards Turkey where the women in order to escape from the suffocating shroud of chauvinism prefers to give way to suicide.
In Diyarbakir, a small village, a 21-year-old woman, Sahe Fidan, unable to bear the hardships in her husband’s house decides to go to her parents’ place but was unable to find solace even there and finally ends up in committing suicide.
This is not the only case hovering around the region instead there are numerous such instances where the girls or the woman are victimized in the name of ‘honor killings’.
Some of them are:
1. at least 200 girls and women are murdered each year by their families
2. a woman was stoned to death because she was unmarried and pregnant
3. of the total, 40% support for the practice of ‘honor killing’
4. 70 women are murdered annually in honor killings in southeast region
Thousands of women have died, been attacked or compelled to commit suicide by male relatives who think the females have brought shame to the family’s honor, an atrocity that has plagued Turkey and other Islamic countries for generations.
Whenever the fairer sex has unwrapped their wings towards liberation, they have faced nothing except detestation from this bigotry-plagued nation as they have tried to bring down the so-called ‘family honor’. This has lucidly proved that ‘honor’ is another name of sticking to dogmatic values and resisting change.
A woman who is raped is often charged for the crime and risks punishment, even death, at the hands of her relatives. At times, she is given the ‘option’ of marrying her rapist, on the theory that no one else will want her and that the marriage swabs away the shame.
Under the mounting pressure from the women’s movement and in a desire to win approval from the European Union, the government of Turkey finally thought of taking some action against these ‘honor killings’.
Bottom line:
Certain penal codes were amended last year that made it harder for a court to reduce sentences in case of crime offenses.
I guess it was just a formality on the part of the government, since just 10 months back, in a usual case, the life sentence of a young man who had murdered his sister was considerably reduced because the judges decided he had been ‘provoked.’ He had buried her up to her neck in rocks after she was impregnated in a rape.
Turkey’s failure to improve the status of women has long been one of the impediments to its integration into Europe.
While the custom originates from a cultural and historical context, the legal framework is also gender discriminatory in the sense that the current law is insufficient to address the complicated issues inherent in a family murder.
Gangsters and thugs everywhere, throughout history, always seek to justify their gruesome deeds. ‘Honor killing’ just sounds like another justification from people who don’t want to own up to or change their bad behavior.
I doubt whether ‘honor killings’ are mandated by the Koran or Islam?
