I sent hundreds of emails to all the people who had emailed me, attaching the list of errors, the letter sent to the publishing house and Malcolm Knox’s story. Only a few people bothered to respond. None were apologetic. One woman wrote, commending my work, and told me that she now understands what really went on in Jordan and concluded that Norma Khouri was a con artist. But the damage had been done.
A woman named Klea wrote this in August 2004:
I feel that your so-called ‘proof’ that Forbidden Love is a fake can at the least be called questionable. I’m sure that men in Jordan and other Muslim countries were outraged and embarrassed by Norma’s words being published all over the world … You can defend the puny attempt to veil the truth of what is happening to women in these Middle Eastern Muslim countries, but Khouri has already succeeded at opening the world’s eyes. Those defending equality and human rights will continue to fight against you and those you shield.
Many international writers and columnists wrote several articles after the book proved to be a hoax, arguing that the Australian government had used it as a means to convince people that there were strong moral reasons (namely, the supposed severely abusive treatment of all Muslim women in the Middle East) for Australia to take part in the war in Iraq.
Nada Jarrar, a Lebanese novelist, wrote an interesting piece in the Guardian on 24 November 2004, saying Khouri’s book should never have rung true, even as a work of fiction. She wrote:
In what fictional world are all the female characters victims, and all the men tyrannical or just plain stupid? How did a work of ‘non-fiction’ so entirely superficial and written in such a facile manner ever get published – and why did it then get such an enthusiastic response from the public?
The tragedy of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, might have increased western interest in the Middle East and in Islam … It has also fuelled a desire to have certain preconceived prejudices about the Arab world – and Arab women – confirmed by publishers and the media. There is a whole new market for books, fiction and non-fiction, that depict Arabs as people with no sense of – or vision for – the world around them, who feel no love for life or each other, who have created monolithic societies where nuance does not exist.
She added: ‘Khouri’s betrayal of her fellow Arab women is only a microcosm of a much larger deception. Greed and hunger for power – in so far as writers can be powerful – seem to have been her chief motivations. It is sad that she was able to find so willing an audience in the west.’
Joseph Wakim, founder of the Australian Arabic Council and a former Multicultural Affairs Commissioner, wrote an article in the Canberra Times on 28 July 2004, entitled ‘A sexed-up story of honour killings’, saying, ‘Whether deliberately or not, the book’s release in 2002 in the shadows of the September 11 attacks, has undoubtedly capitalized on the tidal wave of Islamophobia that is sweeping across most of the non-Muslim continents … Given the current Islamophobic climate, Khouri did not even need to claim that hers was a true story. The tide was already on her side … she merely reinforced an image that many western readers already possess.’
Ihab Shalbak wrote a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald on 2 August 2004, arguing that the book ‘helped provide a moral case for war to the hesitant public in Australia’.
‘Curiously,’ Shalbak wrote, ‘while many Australians welcomed Khouri as a refugee, and bought 200,000 copies of her book, large numbers of Australians [have since] voted in a new government with an extremely tough migration policy. What’s more, we know there are hundreds of Arab and Muslim women in detention centres around the country.’
Exposing so-called honour crimes in one’s own society is like igniting an uncontrolled fire. Sometimes, it is all too easy to play into the hands of other people who have their own agendas. People like Khouri have taken advantage of the huge publicity generated by our campaign to release false information about the issue, in this case portraying all Arab and Muslim men as evil murderers.
Now that publishers have realized the massive interest in and market potential for books on this subject, many other non-fiction books about honour killings have since appeared. Publishers (and authors) owe the world a duty of care to check non-fiction stories before they are published in future. Stories like Khouri’s fictional tale have enormous amounts of influence, and the damage caused by misinformation can be incalculable.
CHAPTER 11
A World of Honour
Honour is concept that has been widely interpreted by different societies, cultures and classes throughout history to promote behaviour that is beneficial to the community. The roots lie with early man, who wanted to ensure his genes were passed on. The simplest way for him to do this was to make sure that ‘his’ woman did not have sex with other men. Men who controlled ‘their’ women were seen as strong leaders of high status and therefore were honoured by others in the tribe. As time went on, the honour of a group (or individual man) depended on the behaviour and morality of its female members (or his female relatives).
A sexualized form of honour continued to develop, with women being seen as a form of property, a valued commodity to be traded. So women’s bodies and sexuality gained a monetary value, which led their husbands and families to regulate and guard their sexual behaviour. Intact women were prized by the community – who all stood to benefit from the alliances and profits that would arise from her marriage to a member of another tribe. As patriarchal notions of morality and culture became more deeply entrenched, these idealizations of women’s sexual behaviour gradually came to be reinforced by dress codes and notions of right and wrong. As men created and dominated the religious, cultural and judicial elements of society, women became subordinate, as they were legally, culturally and religiously bound by their husbands and male relatives to keep the family honour. Maintaining this honour meant that women had to be restricted so there would be less chance that this precious commodity would be lost.
The advantages of keeping sexual honour intact are numerous. It provides increased security and large families (in the sense that marriage prospects for a family’s children will be good); it is used to keep a family stable, particularly in immigrant communities where honour may also help give a sense of superiority, self-awareness and pride; and a family’s high status will lead to good business contacts and opportunities.
As we have already seen, honour may be lost for any number of reasons: women having sex before marriage, committing adultery, being raped, defying parental authority and becoming westernized in immigrant communities. However, most commonly in my experience, honour can simply be lost through gossip and rumour about a woman suspected of immoral behaviour. Generally, an immoral act does not become dishonourable until it becomes public knowledge – hence the reason for gossip being so damaging.
The sheer numbers of so-called honour murders are undeniably shocking. As mentioned in the introduction, in 2000 the UN Population Fund estimated that over five thousand women die in honour killings every year. Some experts insist that the true figure is much higher, simply because of under-reporting and because many so-called honour killings are disguised as suicides, accidents and disappearances. In countries where this form of violence is considered an acceptable check on women’s behaviour rather than a serious crime, the perpetrators remain unpunished. A 2005 report from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, prepared by Swiss UN Ambassador Theodor Winkler, entitled ‘Slaughtering Eve. The Hidden Gendercide in Women in an Insecure World: Violence against Women. Facts, Figures and Analysis,’ stated that around two hundred million women and girls are ‘demographically’ missing because of gender-related violence. Winkler listed examples of such violence which included abortion of female foetuses, deprivation of food and medical care and honour-related murders.
Thankfully, over a relatively small number of years, it has become apparent that there is a widespread desire for change. In 2002, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 57/179 and comm
itted to ‘working towards the elimination of crimes against women and girls committed in the name of honour’. The resolution called upon states to ‘investigate thoroughly, prosecute effectively and document cases of crimes against women committed in the name of honour and to punish the perpetrators’.
The resolution also urged states to intensify their efforts to raise awareness of the need to prevent and eliminate crimes against women committed in the name of honour and work to change the attitudes towards these crimes within each country’s community.
An updated resolution, co-sponsored by seventy-nine countries, was presented jointly by Turkey and the UK in 2004 to the UN General Assembly. This ‘Resolution on Working Towards the Elimination of Crimes against Women and Girls Committed in the Name of Honour’ acknowledged in its title that girls could also be victims of these crimes, and called on the international community to introduce measures to prevent so-called honour crimes and introduce effective legislation.
Meanwhile, many people in Jordan and countries such as Pakistan and Turkey have voiced their disapproval of the way foreign and sometimes local media have handled the issue of so-called honour crimes.
In Jordan many feel that we are targeted as if ours is the only country where so-called honour crimes take place; that we’ve been singled out, attacked and blackmailed by western countries who have threatened to block financial aid if the Kingdom does not change its discriminatory laws against women.
These feelings are mirrored in Pakistan where, in September 2005, I attended a regional conference on violence against women in Islamabad. At this conference, the then President, General Pervez Musharraf, pledged to protect and empower women in his country, but spoke strongly against individuals and foreign organizations that ‘singled out’ Pakistan for criticism on the issue of so-called honour crimes.
‘What hurts me is that Pakistan is singled out when it comes to violence against women. I would not be with people who single us out alone. Let us all raise the issue together. Never single out Pakistan. That I will always oppose with my will and power,’ the President told the gathering.
This is perhaps because Jordanian and Pakistani campaigners have led the way in exposing the problem and so international coverage of the issue in these countries has indeed been very intense. The sheer volume of work that has since been conducted by governmental and non-governmental organizations in these countries, and by other activists and journalists, has made Jordan a pioneering country in the region in terms of combating violence against women.
Nevertheless, so-called honour killings and other forms of violence against women continue to occur, and not just in Jordan and Pakistan. Reports submitted to the UN Commission on Human Rights indicate that these crimes occur in countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, the UK, Palestine, India, Israel, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, Yemen, Uganda and the USA.
After our campaign became internationally known, I began to receive correspondence from all over the world about so-called crimes of honour. I was invited to speak at dozens of conferences where I was asked for advice about running campaigns to raise awareness or how to effect a change in the law.
It soon became very clear to me that so-called honour crime is one of the most serious global problems currently faced by women. As I visited dozens of different countries and conducted my own research, I was shocked and appalled to learn that the problem was far greater than anyone seemed to realize – particularly those who were in a position to do something about it. The next section of this book describes my experience of so-called honour crimes around the world, starting with the other country that has received as much, if not more, international attention than Jordan: Pakistan.
Pakistan
In Peshawar, in the North-West Frontier Province, twenty-nine-year-old Samia Sarwar was married off to her first cousin in 1989. During her decade-long marriage Samia was subjected to all forms of abuse by her husband. She left her husband briefly in 1995 after he pushed her down the stairs while she was pregnant with their second son.
During this time she stayed with her family. Her father was a businessman who had headed the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, while her mother was a gynaecologist. Samia herself had a law degree and her sister studied medicine.
Although Samia and her husband both wanted a divorce, family pressures meant that the unhappy couple were forced to stay together. When Samia told her family she had fallen in love with an army captain and wanted to leave her husband, they allegedly threatened to kill her.17
Her parents sent her back to her husband and eventually, unable to stand a life of abuse any longer, she ran away on 26 March 1999, while her parents were on a trip to Saudi Arabia. She hoped to secure her divorce before they returned.
That’s when Samia went to see a pair of remarkable lawyers, Hina Jilani and her sister Asma Jahangir, who were known for helping abused women.18 They had founded an all-female law firm in the early 1980s, which included a training school for lawyers along with a shelter for abused women. They were also the founders of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which they had established in 1986.
Jahangir, at just over five feet in height, was a tiny woman with an enormous mission. Along with her sister and her colleagues, they defended people sentenced to death by stoning (including a fourteen-year-old boy condemned to die for scribbling blasphemous graffiti on a the wall of a mosque) and sheltered women whose families wanted to murder them because they had deserted cruel husbands. She investigated the fate of prisoners who vanished in police custody and battled for their release through the courts and in the press. Needless to say, they had made plenty of enemies on the way. ‘People aren’t willing to believe that these injustices happen in our society,’ Jahangir told Time magazine, ‘but it’s all going on next door.’
Their work was controversial and they were often threatened. Extremists once smashed Jahangir’s car, attacked her driver and took her family hostage (they were released unharmed). As a result, the government assigned the two sisters their own police escorts.
The sisters took Samia in. She lived in their shelter and refused to meet with any of her male relatives. Her family then sent word through a government contact that they were willing to allow the divorce to take place and asked if they could meet her.
They also met with lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, leader of the Opposition in the Senate (the Upper House of Parliament) and showed him the divorce papers they had brought from Peshawar, and assured him they only wanted their daughter to be happy. Samia agreed to meet her mother in the presence of Hina Jilani, but refused to see her father because she ‘hated him’.
Samia arrived at Jilani’s office at around 6 p.m., while her mother, walking with a stick, arrived a few minutes afterwards, accompanied by Samia’s uncle, Yunus Sarwar, and Habibur Rehman, their driver.
Jilani instantly sensed something was wrong and asked the two men to leave the room but Samia’s mother said she depended on the driver to help her walk. At this moment Yunus Sarwar stood up and Rehman drew a gun, marched up to Samia and shot her in the head. He then fired at Jilani and fled down the corridor.
Samia’s mother screamed and ran out of the room after the killer, her ‘limp’ forgotten. Someone rang the alarm for the guards downstairs. Samia’s uncle took an employee hostage to use as a shield to hide behind in case the security guards tried to stop him.
As he reached the exit, in a desperate attempt to escape the building, the driver fired at the plainclothes policeman who was supposed to be guarding Jilani. The policeman ducked behind a nearby reception counter and returned fire, fatally wounding Samia’s killer.
Meanwhile, Samia’s uncle and mother escaped with the abducted employee and drove to a hotel where the father was waiting. When they entered the room his first question was: ‘Is the job done?’
Back in her office, Jilani was relieved to find herself unharmed – but Samia lay face down in a pool of blood next to her desk, dead. The following day,
demonstrators marched to the Lahore High Court, where several prominent citizens addressed the gathering and promised not to ‘let Samia’s blood be spilt in vain’. They said that even if her own family had disowned her, she would be ‘buried honourably by us’.
Asma Jahangir proposed to erect a monument outside her office honouring the memory of women killed for ‘honour’. ‘We will cherish and treasure their names,’ she vowed.
After the shooting Jilani spoke to reporters, saying:
On the two or three occasions that I met her personally to discuss her case, she repeatedly expressed fear of death at the hands of her family … She seemed well-educated. However, I had the impression that she lacked confidence. I was surprised that a timid woman like her had resolved to take on the enmity of her family by resorting to legal action for divorce, which, according to her, the family was opposed to even after five years of separation from her husband … Samia was a frightened, unhappy woman who felt very alone in a predicament that she couldn’t deal with confidently.
The fact that the shooting incident occurred in my office during a busy afternoon, it is obvious the perpetrators were convinced they were doing the right thing, were not afraid of publicity as they could count on widespread support and were therefore not inclined to hide their identity. They were possibly convinced the state would not take measures to hold them to account.
Jilani’s comments proved accurate. Samia’s father, who was the head of the Chamber of Commerce in Peshawar, was released on bail along with her uncle and mother. The investigation into their involvement was achingly slow because, the police said, ‘the case was complicated’.
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