By now, most everyone has heard some sensational story about “honor killings,” which we’re convinced happen most often in the Middle East and are perpetrated almost solely by those of Muslim faith. Stories like these give us great reason to demonize the Islamic faith and justification for painting Middle Easterners in a less-than-human light.
For instance, stories such as that of Farzana Parveen, a 25-year-old Pakastani woman who was stoned to death outside a courthouse for marrying the man she loved rather than the man her family ordered her to marry, inspire the media to tell us about things that happen “in patriarchal societies like Pakistan” and inform us about “honor killings in the Middle East and Central Asia.”
It is a piece featured in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Toronto Star, however, that highlights the hypocrisy of demonizing this culture while we ignore what happens to women in our own.
Judy Haiven, a professor from St. Mary’s University, wrote in to the Toronto Star about dismissing “honor killings” as something that happens outside America.
Haiven correctly cited statistics from the United States that three women are killed per day by an intimate partner. Of all homicides committed by an intimate partner, women make up two-thirds of victims.
Forced marriage also happens in our country, and it certainly isn’t limited to non-Christian faiths. Stories of fundamentalist Christian sects selling their daughters into marriage are not new, although they’ve typically focused only on fundamentalist Mormon polygamist sects. When these girls attempt escape, their families disown and sometimes track them down and abuse them for dishonoring their families and their religious beliefs.
How quickly we forget, though, when pointing fingers at fundamentalist Muslim sects, that this happens in the name of Christianity, as well. How easy it is to demonize those patriarchal Middle Eastern countries while dismissing claims that our culture is also patriarchal here in the good old United States of America.
While we demonize other cultures for committing these atrocities, we dismiss, minimize, and ignore the voices of women in our own culture who say that they are in danger, that they suffer abuse, stalking, rape, and even fear for their lives.
If you or someone you love has been the victim of domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).
Featured image by BRQ Network via flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
