Honour killings are legally framed as cultural violence rather than generic violence against women

Evidence

A contextualized approach to the problem of forced marriages and honour killings has been singularly lacking in law, where the idea of culture clash has held sway. In their construction as ‘honour killings,’ such murders are not understood as illustrations of a generic violence against women, a violence that dominant and minority cultures often fail to condemn. Culture, but minority culture only, assumes a pre-eminence that is discernable in the efforts made in legal documents and reports to distinguish honour killings from other instances of violence against women. For example, in her report to the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men of the Council of Europe, Mrs Cryer of the United Kingdom began by explaining what the concept ‘crimes of honour’ is meant to capture. A crime of honour is one committed ‘as a consequence of the need to defend or protect the honour of the family.’ The origins of the crime in community/culture is what distinguishes it from other similar crimes in the West: ‘Crimes of honour’ should not be confused with the concept of ‘crimes of passion.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 296 (#expands, via linked claim)

The kinds of behaviour for which a woman may be killed include ‘marital infidelity, refusing to submit to an arranged marriage, demanding a divorce, flirting with or receiving telephone calls from men, failing to serve a meal on time or “allowing herself” to be raped.’ Apart from cases of arranged marriages, this list would be familiar to anyone studying the patterns of domestic violence in the West. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 299 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Once the violence becomes a property of immigrant culture, it cannot easily be uncoupled from debates about how to control foreigners. Most of all, when a practice is condemned so unequivocally as originating in culture, there is little space left to explore how arranged and forced marriages may be understood both as an internal community practice and as a practice profoundly affected by a community’s sense of peril. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 302 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Law singles out minority culture to distinguish honour killings from domestic violence — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 296; Honour-killing triggers resemble Western domestic-violence triggers — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 299; Honor crimes are racialized as uniquely Muslim rather than as general gender violence — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us…, 564 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Law singles out minority culture to distinguish honour killings from domestic violence #expands (0.93) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 296
• Honour-killing triggers resemble Western domestic-violence triggers #complicates (0.85) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 299
• Framing violence as cultural property forecloses understanding of how group peril shapes it. #complicates (0.82) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 302