Homa Arjomand

homawpi@nosharia.com

416-737-9500

Jan 29, 2012

Justice Robert Maranger and Jury did their duties well by finding Shafia’s Family guilty of murder. Now it is the society’s duty to complete the task and put an end to honor Killing by enforcing integration rather than multiculturalism.

We need to emphasize on the concept of the equal and universal rights for all citizens, irrespective of their country of origin, race, gender or religion. The reality is that the honor killing has a great tie with the growth of anti-women culture and religious movements, in particular Islamic movements in the West. And as long as they have the support of the states in the West, we would witness more women being subjected to violence and brutal slaughter for refusing to obey the traditions of their family’s culture.

Imagine a girl is born in an Islamic family, in a community surrounded by people from the same country. Imagine her daily activities from the time she is born to the time she goes to school in heart of Canada but in a community where polygamy, arranged and forced marriages are practiced at a very young age. In fact her father has two wives, and her sister is arranged to get married to her first cousin. She is encouraged or forced to cover herself head to toe. Her friends, neighbors and her relatives meet at the mosque down the road at least once a week. At the mosque, through the lead man, she learns having a boyfriend is a serious crime and might cost her, her life. She also learns disobeying her family, in particular males of the family, and not adopting to the culture of her so called Islamic society, will unquestionably bring her misery, torment and death by honor killing. So she learns to put a cap on what ever she desires. Only a few become brave enough to take a rule of being in the forefront of this battle. Unfortunately they are left alone to get slaughtered in this huge battle. The system itself has surrounded a thick wall, much thicker than the Great Wall of China, around her community under the name of multiculturalism. There is no way she can penetrate through this thick wall of cultural sensitivities alone. Even police, workers of Children Aid Society, teachers, social workers at schools, nurses, doctors, and shelter workers dare to pass through this cultural sensitivity. As they have received hours of training, how to be sensitive towards other cultures and religions and put the culture above the individuals needs. She has learned in a harsh way that this system denies universal rights of women and promotes tolerance and respect for so-called minority opinions and beliefs. She leant her parents’ religion, her parents’ culture and tradition has more of an upper hand than her safety and life. She sees the system leaving her at the mercy of her parents’ culture and the community head man, the sheik, the mullah, her faithful father and brother, to impose oppression and cruelty on her even more. In addition human rights activists, women’s rights campaigners, and children’s rights advocators have downgraded the honor killing to domestic violence or chose to keep silent. As a result every year thousands of these brave, fearless young women and teens are slaughtered.

Justice Robert Maranger and Jury did their duties well by finding Shafia’s Family guilty of murder

Now it is the society’s duty to complete the task and put an end to honor Killing by enforcing integration rather than multiculturalism. We need to emphasis on the concept of the equal and universal rights for all citizens, irrespective of their country of origin, race, sex, sexual orientation, gender or religion. It is time to stand up firm and build a political campaign that promotes a political solution and motivates all social activists and concerned global citizens to join forces to end honor killing for good. And the banner of this campaign must be integration and the concept of the equal and universal rights for all citizens, irrespective of their country of origin, race, gender or religion.