Other than in war, women suffer the most violence in countries where secular law is non-existent or subservient to religion, patriarchy and custom. Currently, no-where is this more prevalent than in Islamic cultures – a fact that apologists and political correctness cannot conceal.

According to a 1999 Amnesty International Report, in Punjab province alone, 286 women were victims of honor killings in 1998. The Shirkat Gah, a Pakistani women's organization, claims that around 1,000 women are murdered each year. This number excludes unreported cases where women simply vanish, or where honor killings are disguised or subsumed into other crimes.

Most honor killings are carried out by close male relatives, fathers, brothers, husbands and even sons. Sometimes a tribal council or "jirga" will condemn a woman to death and even choose her killers. The charge is almost always immoral sexual conduct, whether real, fabricated or suspected. Exactly what constitutes immorality or the evidence for it are irrelevant. Merely talking to an unapproved male, receiving a glance or showing independence can be enough to incur a death sentence or physical disfigurement. Women have even been killed because their husbands dreamt their wives had been unfaithful.

Once a women is under suspicion of immoral or un-Islamic behavior, she has destroyed the "izzat" or honor of her family. What matters above all is the public perception of the stain on family honor. Incredulously, it is the "dishonored" males who are regarded as the real victims and not the woman facing death. Once honor has been lost, the besmirched males can only regain it by killing the offending woman. Since the dishonor was public, the killing is often done openly. In truth, the killers know there is little chance of prosecution.

The psychology behind honor killings is simple and brutally feudal. The woman, especially in rural areas, is the property of men and, like speechless chattel, she is passed from father and brothers to husband and sons. Despite her low status and being an object of lifelong sexual suspicion, she is also, paradoxically, the repository of male honor–honor that is to be maintained through her obedience, virginity before marriage and faithful domestic servitude as a wife. It is contradictory that a culture that lays the burden of family honor on women, also barters them in marriage deals like objects to settle legal or other disputes.


Honor killings are also linked to rape since raped women are deemed to have dishonored their families by having been raped and are now liable to be killed. This perverse injustice is perpetuated by Islamic shariah law, which demands that a women alleging rape must produce four Muslim male witnesses (the testimony of non-Muslims is worthless under shariah). If the victim cannot produce the witnesses, she may stand accused of unlawful sex. Since a rape victim cannot possibly meet this cruel and farcical standard, she had better stay silent and pray no-one discovers she was raped.


There is another category of rape, almost beyond belief, that was brought to international attention by a Punjabi woman, Muktaran Bibi, in 2002. Muktaran's teenage brother was seen talking to a girl from a superior clan. Men from this clan took revenge by beating and raping the boy. Not satisfied, they eyed the boy's older, unmarried sister, Muktaran. The village council or " panchayat" gave the green light. Muktaran was summoned and taken into a locked room where she was gang-raped and then paraded. Class too played its part in this outrage. Muktaran was poor and powerless and, like a medieval serf, she was easy prey for her feudal superiors. It is also cruelly paradoxical that Muktaran was raped to restore male honor while thousands of other women are killed on mere suspicion of having sex.

Honor killings do not occur in an ideological vacuum. Certainly custom, patriarchy and feudalism are all responsible for the violence inflicted on Pakistani women. However, blame must also be laid at the feet of Islamic law, which implicitly provides the moral justification and thus the incitement to kill. Islamic law is bent on maintaining jurisdiction over honor killing and rape cases by treating them as religious issues outside secular law, which it regards as alien and subversive to Islam. The aim is simple–to keep women in perpetual fear and insecurity.

What then is the role of the Pakistani secular legal system in all this? On paper, Pakistan is committed to treating honor killings and rape as crimes. Pakistan is even a signatory to the 1993 UN Declaration of the Elimination of Violence against Women, which recognizes honor killings as violations of international human rights.

The problem is that the Pakistani government, its judiciary and police are not fully committed to enforcing their own secular criminal law. The ancient forces of religion and custom are entrenched and the state cannot or will not dislodge them for fear of social unrest or galvanizing the Islamists.

Regardless of the efforts of the brave journalists, lawyers and Pakistani women's groups who daily confront honor killings, the West also has a moral responsibility. Western writers, particularly liberals, are loathe to morally and critically evaluate the cultural and religious forces that incite violence against women for fear of charges of racism, cultural insensitivity and political incorrectness.

Meaningful western pressure cannot be achieved by deference to political correctness. The silence over the ideological roots of the violence only maintains it. For once, fear of hurting the cultural and religious sentiments of others, is disingenuous and cowardly.

Honor killings must be confronted by unyielding universal human rights that transcend cultures and faiths and that need no justification for their acceptance. This is not western cultural imperialism but rather values that belong to all peoples based on shared notions of innate human justice. This fight belongs above all to the left for it goes to the very roots of liberal humane ideals. Self-censorship and political correctness must not stand in the way.