Winds of Change.NET: Honor-Related Violence: The Feminist Response

Honor-Related Violence: The Feminist Response

by Robin Burk at March 6, 2005 4:20 PM

A few days ago I posted a short, angry article about a sharp increase in rapes within immigrant (and heavily Muslim) communities in Sweden and neighboring communities. That post drew criticism on several grounds. The first was that my post and the blogger I cited didn't prove the nature of the crimes and their connection to the immigrant community. The second was that to speak about the religious affiliation of the immigrant community unfairly stigmatized Muslims and stirs up hatred. The latter concerned me and I didn't want to let that issue just hang out there without responding to it. This is the last of a 3 part series in response to those comments:

NOTE: this is a sensitive subject and needs to be discussed responsibly. Here's what I wrote below: My concern here is the violence against women. I'm interested in the religious and ethnic makeup of those immigrant communities only insofar as it might either condone or foster that violence. But as I documented in Part 1, there are those who would incite racial and religious hatred against all Muslims and they are not shy about using incidents and statistics such as these to gain support.

That fact makes it hard for people of goodwill to talk about this issue. And yet, to fail to do so is to abandon hundreds of thousands of young girls and women in Europe, and potentially millions world-wide. And more broadly, it is to fail to address a serious and troubling problem which itself is a symptom of a larger challenge facing us.

Sweden, Rape & Responsible Speech discussed the marginalization of immigrants, predominantly from Muslim countries, in ghettos on the outskirts of several Swedish cities. I noted scholarly articles, official statistics and press reports, all of which point towards a sharp rise in violent (often juvenile) male crime committed by members of, and often within, immigrant communities in Sweden and neighboring countries. This trend occurs at a time when many Muslims in Sweden have turned to overseas imams for religious guidance on living in a non-Muslim society - an adaptation that would be wrenching under any circumstance for people from a traditional society, and one that is exacerbated by marginalization and ghettoization in Sweden.

Kurds from Iraq are well-prepresented among the Muslim immigrants in Sweden. That makes two recent events noteworthy. First, according to a Swedish scholar, one of the two most influential Muslim preachers among Swedish immigrants is a fundamentalist Sunni leader in the Association of Islamic Scholars in Iraq, a group with strong ties to the Ba'athist and jihadist insurgency there. And second, recent arrests in Sweden include Kurdish members of Ansar al-Islam who are accused of involvement in the terror bombing in Irbil, Iraq last year.

This was the background behind my response to the rape of a 13 year old girl by 4 Kurdish men in Motala, Sweden, who reportedly took the time to videotape her several-hour long ordeal.

It is unclear from reports whether this girl is herself from an immigrant background. But what is clear is that a) there has been a sharp rise in rapes of girls under 15 years of age in Sweden during the last 9 years, and b) what some characterize as honor-based violence against Muslim women and girls is a serious problem in Sweden and France, the European countries with the largest communities of first- and second-generation immigrants from Muslim countries.

My concern here is the violence against women. I'm interested in the religious and ethnic makeup of those immigrant communities only insofar as it might either condone or foster that violence. But as I documented in Part 1, there are those who would incite racial and religious hatred against all Muslims and they are not shy about using incidents and statistics such as these to gain support.

Before examining the response of other feminists to violence against women and girls in Muslim immigrant communities, I thought it might be useful to take a look back at the American experience. We too have faced several waves of massive immigration by people from very different religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. That led to sporadic violence here as well. And yet, to a fair degree, those immigrants were assimilated here in ways that enriched both their religious identity and the country as a whole. Immigrants, Religion and Conflict - the U.S. Experience, long though it is, just skims the surface of this fascinating and complex history.

The Beijing Platform and NOW

In 1995 the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, China. There the United States signed the Beijing Platform for Action, which the National Organization for Women describes as:

a landmark international agreement that committed governments to promoting women's freedom of political participation, increasing their access to education, employment, and health care, and protecting their human rights, such as the right to be free from violence in the home, workplace, and in society at large.

These are words I wholeheartedly support. The devil, however, is in the details of interpretation and emphasis. How do (especially traditional) societies get from "here" to "there"? What is the right balance between a go-slow, evolutionary approach (which in some countries equates to a stonewall) and a revolutionary, tear-up-the-roots approach to traditional cultures?

This dilemma is at its most stark and most contentious regarding abortion. And the roots of contention are religious.

An ongoing UN women's conference adopted on Friday a declaration reaffirming a UN platform for action toward women's equality after the United States dropped all proposals to amend it, including inserting anti-abortion language.
The statement, approved by consensus later Friday by the 40-member UN Commission on Status of Women (CSW), endorsed the platform and a declaration adopted with it at the Beijing world conference on women in 1995.

The meeting in New York, dubbed "Beijing at Ten: Achieving Gender Equality, Development and Peace," is reviewing the world's progress toward gender equality after the Beijing conference.

The two-week event, which will conclude on March 11, had been overshadowed by the controversy triggered by the US attempt to amend the statement.
While reaffirming the Beijing platform and other UN documents on women, the US amendment would have specified that "they do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion."

As Xinhua reports, the U.S. made its position clear.

Addressing the CSW after the declaration's adoption, Sauerbrey reiterated the US administration's stance against abortion, drawing boos from audience, among them representatives of hundredsof non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
"We have stated clearly and on many occasions ... that we do not recognize abortion as a method of family planning, nor do we support abortion in our reproductive health assistance," she said.

"The United States understands that there is international consensus that the terms 'reproductive health services' and 'reproductive rights' do not include abortion or constitute support,endorsement, or promotion of abortion or the use of abortifacients."
The US attempt to amend the declaration was denounced by many other nations and NGO representatives as "playing politics with women's lives."

In fact, many people in the NGO and feminist world DO believe that abortion is a key part of reproductive rights for women, the assertions of some progressives notwithstanding. In Beijing, the U.S. position was supported by several Islamic countries plus the Vatican. In NY this past week, the Islamic leaders were silent and the U.S., the Vatican and two other Catholic countries from Latin America stood alone in opposing abortion as a reproductive right.

Catholics constitute 1/3 of the U.S. population. Several other religious groups in the U.S. also either oppose abortion availability or wish to see it used in limited circumstances only. And here we see one effect of the phenomenon that Hirshman points out, cited in Part 1-A:

Although religious faith provides continuity with experiences prior to immigration, the commitment, observance, and participation are generally higher in the American setting after immigration than in the origin country.

The belief that abortion is a reproductive right that should be extended to all women is reflected in the priorities of the National Organization for Women, the predominant feminist organization in the U.S. My own experience with NOW in the mid-late 1980s (see Part 1 ) is consistent with their webpage and public activity. I saw a big emphasis on legalized and subsidized abortion and on gay rights - but little emphasis on practial aid to immigrant women from traditional societies, for whom abortion was morally and religiously unacceptable.

Implicit in the NOW position, and that of many feminists, is the belief that the only way for women to be free of oppression and violence is for them to become secularized westerners and to embrace the western feminist agendas.

This is IMO both naive and deeply unhelpful. Even if I agreed with the diagnosis -- and I don't -- at a practical level such a stance is guaranteed to produce a backlash in which women and children will suffer the most. Which is why I was interested to learn what feminists in Sweden and related countries are saying and doing about the violence in immigrant Muslim communities there.

Responding to Rapes and Other Honor-based Violence

In October, 2003 the International Herald Tribune published an article about gang-rapes of girls in the French cit�s, the concrete ghettos that ring Paris and other major cities, which are home to Europe's largest population of first and second-generation immigrants from Muslim countries.

The boys were patient, standing in line and waiting their turn to rape. .
Their two victims, girls of 13, were patient as well, never crying out, at least that is what the neighbors said, and enduring the violence and abuse not once, but repeatedly over five months.
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That was three years ago. Late last month, 10 young men, now ranging in age from 18 to 21, were convicted of rape in a closed courtroom in nearby Evry and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to five years. Seven others will go on trial in November. The fact that they are being brought to justice at all is highly unusual.
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The phenomenon of gang rape in France has become banal. It occurs - how often is unknown - in the concrete wastelands built as cheap housing for immigrants on the outskirts of France's big cities. Here, according to sociologists and prosecutors, teenage boys, many of them loosely organized into gangs, prey on neighborhood girls.
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Many of the boys are raised in closed, traditional families and are hopelessly confused or ignorant about sex; others are simply street toughs. In this world, women enjoy little respect; often girls who appear weak, or who wear tight-fitting clothing or go out unaccompanied by their fathers or brothers are considered fair game.

The response of girls and women to this violence is to adopt, at least outwardly, the signs of a traditional Muslim woman:

To avoid trouble, many girls of the projects have taken to wearing loose-fitting jogging clothes and hidden themselves behind domineering fathers or brothers; others have organized themselves into their own gangs. Many of the Muslim girls have donned head scarves - more for protection than out of religious conviction.

However, that may be of little use. As the IHT article notes, boyfriends have lined up their peers to rape girlfriends who agree to have sex. One young woman was burned alive by an angry boyfriend.

Young girls in this situation may not get much support from their families:

"What were the girls doing in the afternoons down in the basements?" asked one women who lives on the first floor of the building ... The neighborhood butcher, who is from Algeria, spoke as if the suburb was a world apart. "If a girl goes out, she is going to get in trouble, especially with Arabs and blacks, because they are not used to seeing girls outside", he said. "The boys have needs. Where I come from it is not normal that a girl goes outside at night. If I tell my sister not to go out, she obeys me. This world is not like France."

But in fact, it is in France. The IHT article goes on to note estimates that reported gang-rapes in France increased 4-fold in 20 years, in part perhaps because more girls are speaking out. However, the price is high - girls are harassed, spit upon, attacked or watch their fathers kill themselves in response to being dishonored.

I am ambivalent about the term that many European feminists are using to discuss this growing problem: "honor-related violence". But the term does point indirectly at an important characteristic of these rapes and of the community's response to the girls and women afterwards. This is not random violence. It has a cultural / religious context and motivation. (And in traditional societies it is very difficult to separate culture and religion.)

Consider this comment by a Swedish Kurdish leader in response to the harassment and eventual murder of a young woman:

The killing happened after four years of harassment by men in Ms Sahindal's family who were outraged by her choice of a white Swedish boyfriend and her decision to pursue higher education.
Ms Sahindal became a cause celebre four years ago when she refused to give up the boyfriend, Patrik, and took court action to halt threats of "rape, murder and partition" from her father and 17-year-old brother. Within a month of the court case, in which her father was fined and given a suspended jail sentence, her boyfriend died in an unrelated car crash.

She was living alone under an assumed name in another town and it is not known how her father tracked her down.

Leif Eriksson, Ms Sahindal's lawyer, said she had gone to her sister's house to say goodbye.

"It is not clear how he knew she was there," he added. Ms Sahindal spoke of her difficulties in 1998, saying: "All of this is based on my parents' fear of Swedish society.

"They can't read and have difficulty in understanding Sweden. They are surrounded by their own people and a satellite dish that lets them see Turkish television.

"I don't know how many times I've told my mother that Swedish girls are not whores, but her reply is simply, 'Don't you think I can see with my own eyes?' "
"If a girl goes out with a boy without being married then she's a whore," said Kamaran Shwan, chairman of the Kurdish Association in the southern town of Malmo.

How to respond to such incidents - and to the non-assimilation of immigrants into Swedish society which enable them?

In researching this issue I found two key documents, both produced with strong input from feminist organizations in Europe. The first is the European Resource Book and Good Practice , "For prevention of violence against women and girls in patriarchal families".

The second is the proceedings from the European Conference on Honour Related Violence within a Global Perspective: Mitigation and Prevention in Europe, held in Stockholm this past October.

I could (but won't) write another 2 or 3 long essays based on these two documents. Here are some points I took away from reading them:

1. Swedish society has historically run on a consensus and welfare model that worked well for a small population that is ethnically, culturally and religiously (now non-religiously) homogenous. It is very badly equipped to deal with signficant diversity, especially as the generous welfare state must shrink. Swedish authorities lack even authorization to keep track of honor-based violence statistics. In general, most Swedes are still reluctant to publicly acknowledge the nature of the problem although there is a growing concern among the general populace. Those who are open about the extent and nature of the problem are, in some cases, ultra-right nationalists and possibly racists.

2. Travel across national borders, and especially ease of travel to and from countries of origin, makes it easy for traditional families to impose forced marriages on unwilling girls and women. These women are sometimes forced to remain in highly restricted situations in those countries despite holding Swedish citizenship. They have little or no recourse and any protest may result in honor violence against them.

3. Swedish NGOs, including womens' groups, have had some modest success in offering safe houses. However, as the Sahindal case shows, unless a woman is willing to totally separate herself from her family and community, that may not help.

4. Although the Swedish schools emphasize language studies for new immigrants, heavily segregated schools in the ghettos result in more, not less, pressure for girls to adopt traditional Muslim behavior, dress and restrictions.

5. Attempts to involve community religious and social leaders in a dialogue have, in many cases, proven counterproductive. Rather than ease the dichotomy between the traditional communities and wider Swedish society, these patriarchially- and religiously-dominated groups have used this dialogue to identify women and girls who are acting outside their strictures and to identify potential legal action that they oppose.

Summing Up the Situation

Historically, waves of immigrants into the U.S. have been assimilated through religious structures and as a result of economic opportunities. In Sweden and France, neither mechanism seems to be working in a productive way. The result is a serious and growing degree of violence against girls and women, and reinforcement for angry violence on the part of young men from immigrant backgrounds.

I'll end this series with a quote from the Stockholm conference. I don't agree with everything Haideh Daragahi (who IIRC is ethnically Kurdish) says, but it is worth hearing:

In relation to this particular issue, i.e. honour related violence, I want to first and foremost, to emphasise the global nature of this category of crime. If we miss the political and the global aspect of this, we have made local efforts which may be helpful here and there, but which cannever go far enough.
Because a lot of the anti women tendencies among the people that I call European citizens of a non-European origin do not originate here. The minorities I talk about get their inspiration and their intellectual feedback from the most reactionary governments or political reassure groups in the countries where a lot of these minorities come from. When it is not direct financial support, proving which is a police work, it is ideological support activating tendencies that we can assume exist passively.

Also going beyond Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, one can also mention and emphasise the political and global nature of these tendencies. For instance when George Bush puts a ban on American aid to countries or governments with organisations that support abortion it is not only the money these organisations are deprived of; it is a green light for the most reactionary governments in these parts of the world to oppress their women.

In Canada right now, in the state of Ontario, an example of this, justified in the name of respect for other cultures. They are considering, and the lady put in charge of the study is very positive towards this reform being adopted, that in legal matters or family disputes concerning the minorities the court should have a consulting body of Islamist lawyers. This means two kinds of laws in Canada for women, one for women from these minorities and one for the white majority. This is scaring a lot of these women. The women�s� movement in Canada has also taken a stand, but so far a very weak one.
It is worth speculating whether this decision has anything to do with the fact that the state of Ontario is also the state where the previous Iranian President, Rafsamjani, who was also the head of the parliament, has a large part of his investments. There are economic and political dimensions connected to what we are talking about. We cannot afford to be naive about that.

Your comments, thoughts and responses are welcome. I hope that this 3 part series has clarified what I was thinking and where my anger was aimed in my original short post.

Full Series:

Swedish Rape Stats: Where's The Outrage?

Sweden, Rape & Responsible Speech
Immigrants, Religion and Conflict - the U.S. Experience
Honor-Related Violence: The Feminist Response

Persons wishing to contact the author of this article for reprints etc. should put a request in the Comments section, or send an email to "joe", over here @windsofchange.net.