What To Do About Honour Killing

Gregory Mills: As anyone even moderately in touch with recent news is aware, the Shafia killings, trial, and subsequent guilty verdict have been making headlines all around the world. They’ve also touched off significant national debate – over whether or not more needs to be done to prevent such violence, what measures might be taken, and if this symbolizes a broader cultural clash in our proudly multicultural society.

Join Canada’s Least Watched Political Panel for a more in-depth discussion of some of these issues.

William Murray: I really do go back and forth on this issue and what can be done to realistically prevent situations like this.

Many of the “solutions” surround further integrating ethnic communities into the Canadian mainstream.  Frankly, I think the best way this can be done is through the education system and to ensure, as much as possible, all children are going to the same school.  I doubt there’d be any appetite for this amongst provincial governments, but it seems to me to potentially be the best way forward.

When it comes to specific cases like the Shafia trial, tragic as it is, it’s tough to see how one could have prevented it, at least in a manner that’s consistent with appropriate state action.  If I recall correctly, while there were complaints to friends and teachers, all formal investigations led to complaints being withdrawn.  It’s incredibly tragic what happened, but are we going to have the state just walk in on any family it wants without a formal complaint?  I’ll also add that suggestions such as burka/niqab bans are empty gestures that are unlikely to solve any of the problems.  In the end, I do think that ensuring a consistent education system is probably the most practical and achievable way to help improve the situation.

Additionally, it’s an absolute necessity that everyone, regardless of their religious or cultural background are subject to the same laws as everyone else.

GM: Agreed. I think what probably strikes me most about the case is not just there is no obvious singular solution to this kind of violence. There really isn’t any obvious new crime or act we can ban or make illegal– these girls were murdered, and murder’s been illegal for quite some time.

Yet I feel this crime was probably preventable, not through new legislation, but through better enforcement of the existing laws. We know that police and children protective services were contacted multiple times (by both the girls’ teachers and the victims) but that little to no action was ever taken by authorities. Admittedly not being an expert, I hesitate to speak concretely on the subject, but I suspect we need a much more comprehensive analysis of why the system (dys)functioned as it did in this case, before we build a whole new social program or pass sweeping criminal legislation on the matter.

And while you’re probably right – a universal and consistent education system is a major key to promoting cross-cultural understanding and ultimately reinforcing what pundits might be tempted to call ‘Canadian Values’ to reduce these kinds of conflicts in future generations, but the big issue here was not the children but the adults who have never had to attend a Canadian public school. How do we deal with first-generation newcomers who have children quickly and easily assimilating into a different culture than their parents, who then react with fear and violence?

John van Weringh: Not only are we talking about a crime that is in effect already a crime - murder is murder, regardless of motivations - we're talking about something that is not unknown in the Western world. Spouses kill each other over infidelity, gang members kill each other over slights: these are, in a word, "honour" killings, but we don't think of them that way. We call them domestic violence and gang violence. I think we're looking at a problem that is particularly rooted in the parent/child dynamic, at least in terms of our society's abject moral horror with respect to this case. In this respect, further drawing children into Canadian culture through schooling may exacerbate the problem if we don't address parents' lack of integration, and provide appropriate supports (whatever that happens to be, assuming there's really anything at all).

From the perspective of "multiculturalism" - either the failure of, or it running amok - we're at a disadvantage because of the two primary ways that Canadians come at the idea. To many, multiculturalism is about a lack of hierarchy between cultural beliefs and values. This is inherently wrongheaded, as is the phrase "Canadian values". We're not talking about values, we're talking about firmly held moral beliefs. We need to be willing to say that honour killings aren't just wrong when you're in our society with our particular values; we need to be willing to say that we believe honour killings to be abhorrent everywhere, always. To others, multiculturalism is about tolerance of other societies. This also misses the point: we're not discussing letting other societies or cultures exist within our own; we're talking about building upon a tradition of ambivalence to culture, to race, and to religion within a society that can encompass any and all, as long as they respect this fundamental ambivalence, and the individual rights of others.

That said, ironically, I think the best chance at an answer to integration among adults comes from within the Muslim-Canadian community: the leaders of this community need to - as they seem to be starting to - formally and strongly denounce this practice, in public, because when white, Christian Canadians do, it's far too easy to dismiss as a competition between values.

WM: What we do about first generation immigrants is certainly a more complex question, but also speaks to the reality that solving this with one policy today is impossible.  Going out and banning burkas doesn't solve the problem at all, and regardless, it's a fairly obvious infringement on Charter rights.  I'll also add that honour killings are no more an epidemic in Canada than any other form of inter-family violence.  That doesn't mean the root causes of it should be ignored, but asking what we can do about people like Mohammad Shafia, is asking what we can do about all violence from a preventative point of view.  While it's easy to say we should look for more rigorous children’s aid investigations and a more involved government policy on what is and isn't acceptable in the family home, it's pretty hard to envision a way where the line between acceptable and unacceptable is drawn.

GM: That’s a fair point, but I do think in the context of our increasingly multicultural society we need to see if there are flaws or blind spots in the way we investigate these allegations. While I think the idea that ‘honor’ violence and other forms of domestic violence are not substantially different is a valid argument, it could be argued (although perhaps not terribly well by me) that more ‘mainstream’ (read: Expected in a ‘typical white Canadian household’) signs and flags of abuse do not necessary present the same way in all subsets.

Consider how many times social workers concluded that there ‘may’ have been some trouble at the Shafia household, but the denials of the other (read: Male) children, or the recantations from the girls themselves, combined with the lack of signs of physical abuse and the relative appearance of the girls (well dressed, well fed, wearing jewelry) ended the investigations. I don’t want to get overly critical on the child welfare service: With no understanding of the potential for such violence to erupt over things like ‘dating boys’ or ‘wearing revealing clothing’ (let alone that such violence would be undertaken by the rest of the family, in a conspiracy), they’d have had no idea what kind of danger the girls were in… it’s easy to rationalize it as teenagers whose father was just a grouch who didn’t want his children dating at a time when teenagers and their parents never get along. No flags, no follow ups, and no legal power to act.

This has been a bit of a ramble: My point is that yes, deciding whether or not to move the line on when government or the courts intervene in a family situation is a messy can of worms, but continuing to run the system like everyone in the country is a white, middle-class catholic and abuse means having a black eye and tattered clothing is going to leave huge gaps that prevent victims from seeking and receiving protection. For that reason, I think it’s worth looking into at least some level of cultural-specific training (a change which has helped in places like the UK and Sweden, where ‘honor’ violence has been more prominent).

JVW: I'm certainly in favour of the idea of getting better at identifying emerging types of family crisis or violence, but two things worry me: I'm concerned that this could just collapse into effectively racist targeting of Muslim families for enhanced scrutiny, and I'm not sure how useful proactivity will be in this sort of case. It seems to me that we need to assure Canadians that if their family is not a safe place, then we can help you, and we can protect you. If your family is being dominated by a madman, you do have a recourse. This may be a distinction without a difference, but rather than moving in the direction of investigating malfeasance, we may need to move in the direction of providing opportunity.

GM: It’s unfortunate that the recent high profile case draws attention to on specific type of relatively-new-to-the-Canadian-system family, I sympathize with your concern that it would simply become a bigoted targeting, especially as focusing exclusively on ‘recently immigrated Muslims’ would damage the capacity to handle and better understand yet further types of previously under-estimated forms of violence (domestic violence against men, in the LGBT community, or in other ethnic enclaves for example).

I worry, however, that focusing merely on ‘providing opportunities’ to accessing resources is still a limited response: Almost certainly the Shafia girls had access to emergency shelters, social workers, and the police. Whether they didn’t use them due to a lack of awareness (a solvable obstacle), because they felt they couldn’t trust or rely on those authorities (which is also solvable through dedicated community action) or because those services were unavailable to them for use (unlikely, but not impossible), they almost certainly had at least some opportunity.

Granted, I’m not sure what pre-emptive or proactive action would really look like, but I’m not entirely sold on the ‘we just need to make it easier to call a 1-800 hotline’ solution.

WM: It’s depressing to say, but bad things happen.  And while we should do all we can to limit the chances of it happening, finding an all-encompassing solution to this problem is impossible. I’ll go back to my point about a need to ensure we’re targeting this problem at the earliest possible time, namely through the educational system.  More than just telling children about the importance of gender equality and respect for human rights, the important thing is for them to be interacting with one another.  Culture and identity are critical to all peoples, but we need to find a balance between protecting this culture and identity and ensuring we don’t have situations like the Shafias which amounted to not just domestic violence, but what looks to have amounted to a mini-ethnic enclave, both physically and emotionally.   I’ll also add that while the Shafia situation seems to be the jumping off point and context to us having this discussion today, the same applies for people living in houses where there’s targeted intolerance to any other ethnic community.

JVW: I think that a key point here is that we cannot be deferential to the fear of causing offense. As Stephen Fry once put it very bluntly: when people say they have been offended by something, it is "actually nothing more than a whine". I don't mean that we should go out of our way to offend people or groups - we should avoid condescension or pejorative language: nobody needs to be called barbaric. But we do need to make it plainly clear that in Canadian society, individual rights trump any traditional cultural bounds or hierarchies. We do not agree that any human should have innate power over any other, and any cultural or religious practices that contravene this have no place in our society.