Danish tragedy

The murder of a Pakistani girl in Denmark by her family has sparked a fierce debate about the role of Islam and Pakistani culture in honour killing

By Abdullah Khoso

Uzair Jaleel, like several other Pakistanis in Europe, was worried over the killing of Ghazala, 19, in full view of several on-lookers and in broad day light by her elder brother. When on September 23, 2005 the news of this so called honour killing spread like a wildfire and reached Uzair, he was shocked. The incident made him look at himself to see if he wanted the same identity for himself as the girl's brother who shared with him the country of his origin -- Pakistan. While travelling in a train on the way to downtown Copenhagen, this is how he comments on the issue: "Everyone is pointing an accusing finger at us by denouncing Ghazala's death in one of the world's most democratic countries. These fingers symbolically make us conscious of not only what's being done now but also since unknown times.

"Reports say that Ghazala, a day before she was killed, married Abbas, a 27-year-old man of Afghan origin, supposedly without the consent of her family. Before their marriage, the couple escaped from their homes in Copenhagen's Amager locality to a nearby city called Jutland where they married secretly at the city hall. Ghazala then told one of her female relatives about her secret marriage. She did not know that she will be betrayed. In the attack that followed, her husband survived by a hair's breadth.Ghazala's killer was arrested soon after the murder, and after a month police arrested six more members of his family, all allegedly part of the conspiracy to hunt down and kill the unfortunate girl.Reports say a strong network of taxi-drivers is also involved in hunting her down. This is a fact acknowledged by Anne Mau, secretary of Denmark's National Association of Women's Crisis Centres, in an online newsletter 'Modern Tribalist'. Her association has provided protection to many immigrant women on the run from their families. She says Pakistani taxi-network works systematically to find the women out who flee their families. The drivers, she says, alert these women's relatives about their whereabouts. The families usually send a picture around of the wanted woman through the mobile phone. "Then the hunt begins," Mau says. "This way many women have been discovered on the street, caught, and delivered back to their families." Only few of them manage to make good their escape though it's not sure how long can they stretch it.


Ghazala, however, suffered something much more cruel than the disgrace and humiliation of a forcible reunion with the family. Belonging to a Gujar family, she apparently forgot that death was the only option for her family to 'redeem' its 'honour' which stood 'soiled' by her act of defiance. This is what several innocent girls suffer silently in her native country. "It is a horrible thing. Her family should have come to terms with her decision instead of her trying to reconcile with them. Her family should have realised that they live in Denmark which is not a fundamentalist society," says Jonathan Staav, a Canadian studying in Denmark. "I cannot even imagine doing what her brother did to her. There is millions of miles of distance between her brother's act and my thinking.


"It's quite logical for people like to connect an individual's act with the values and customs of the whole society where Ghazala had come from. "This act shows the society in question has failed to inculcate a true picture of good social and religious values in its members," is how a German student commented on the issue. Though many moderate Muslims would like to oppose honour murders but unluckily for them ever new stories about these murders keep being splashed in the media, taking in their range societies as distant and diverse as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Britain and Jordan. "This kind of act demeans the whole humanity, turning it into something inferior -- verging on beastly," says Shanker, an Indian-born Dane. Another Dane writes to Dhimmi Watch (an online news magazine), "It's primitive fascism." Still another local resident comments: "it is, a horrible, pre-meditated, senseless murder of the worst kind of a defenceless innocent woman, more so because it is done by people from her own family." In his anger, he forgets the difference between the individual and the collective and ascribes it to the "animalistic attitude" prevalent only among the Muslims. "There is no hue and cry from the Mullahs or any Muslims demonstrating against this murder of an innocent girl. (She was not even marrying a non-Muslim)."When western watchers and readers of acts like Ghazala's murder trace their relation to values of a country or Islam, it is comprehensible as well as painful for someone coming linked to them.


These acts provide Islam-bashers mouthful stuff to spit on the values of Islam. Which Mette, a Dane, is apparently right to say that "honour killing does not save honour". It rather brings down the honour of a whole family, a culture and a country.But at the same time these westerners should be forgiven if they see crimes like honour killing in broad day light in a religious and cultural context. Someone writing to Dhimmi Watch says the (gender) inequality, sanctioned by the Quran and strictly enforced by the Muslims, can only bring sorrow to those less equal. "Societal oppression is a foregone conclusion" under these circumstances. "Systemic theofascism would be a good pathological description for Islam."Like most people writing for this magazine, the identity of this person is not revealed. His/her anger leads her to rather drastic conclusions: 'Honour' murder is the kind of thing that comes to mind when I hear peaceful, moderate Muslims speak after each and every atrocity. They ceaselessly disavow terrorism while their own holy book and culture promote the same horror on their own flesh and blood. It's hard to wrap the mind around such twisted logic.

"Mohammad Ali Baloch, 32, who has been staying in Denmark for the last three years, opines that it's not others' fault if they blame Islam or Islamic culture for the crimes like honour killing. "Not everywhere one can and should practice obsolete tribal traditions, though they are central in our cultural system." Like everyone else back home, he was also taught how to value honour because it's important in the society back home "what people will say" if a woman of the family acts defiantly. During his years in Denmark, Ali seems to have become quite aware of the human rights and the value of upholding them. No wonder, he categorically condemns innocent Ghazala's killing for she had committed no sin.Jonathan Staav, the Canadian, is one of the few foreigners willing to see Ghazala's murder as an individual as an individual act, and not as a part of the whole called Islam. "Murder is murder; we should consider it no part of Islamic culture because Islam does allow his followers of any gender to marry as per their wish.


"Ihsan Miran, a Pakistan studying in Denmark, takes this opinion further and with much more vigour. "It has nothing to do with Islam and Pakistan, though people consider it an expression of something in Pakistani culture. But our constitution and Islamic teachings want us to be moderate human beings rather than act like barbarians as Ghazala's killer has done," he says.