BY OMER SUBHANI
AUGUST 14, 2009
While Muslims
in the West are slowly coming to realize that honor killings are not just a
geographical issue for our brothers and sisters in South Asia and the Middle
East, anti-Islam pundits, bloggers and intellectuals are using this recent rash
of honor killings to link the religion of Islam to the murders.
There has
been a recent upsurge in honor killings throughout the world – the practice of
killing family members who have allegedly tarnished the family’s honor by
engaging in shameful conduct.
Just last
week in Montreal, a father and son murdered their four female relatives to
preserve their family’s honor because their female relatives were accustomed to
wearing Western-style clothing. Last Friday in Gaza, a father tortured and then
killed his daughter, a divorced mother of five, for having a cell phone
conversation with someone he believed to be another man. Fearing that his
daughter was involved in an illicit relationship, he killed her.
The Montreal
Gazette reports “The Canadian Muslim Forum fears the deaths will lead to
‘Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments.’” Less important it seems is
whether the Canadian Muslim Forum will do anything to prevent future honor
killings within Canada, or will worry only about how such a crime will increase
anger against Muslim Canadians.
While Muslims
in the West are slowly coming to realize that honor killings are not just a
geographical issue for our brothers and sisters in South Asia and the Middle
East, anti-Islam pundits, bloggers and intellectuals are using this recent rash
of honor killings to link the religion of Islam to the murders.
Despite the
fact that honor killings occur in Hindu and Sikh communities throughout Asia,
anti-Islam pundits continue to attempt to link Islamic texts to the practice of
honor killings.
Leading the
way in this effort is Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer. Spencer cites to two
Islamic texts to argue that Islam sanctions honor killings. He references the
12th century Shafi’i legal manual Umdat al-Salik, more commonly known as The
Reliance of the Traveler, where it says, "retaliation is obligatory
against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without
right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father
or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or
offspring's offspring." (Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).
Spencer also
references a hadith from Sahih Muslim, one of the two great Sunni hadith
collections, where it says the following:
"The Messenger of Allah (may peace be
upon him) used not to kill the children, so thou shouldst not kill them unless
you could know what Khadir had known about the child he killed, or you could
distinguish between a child who would grow up to be a believer (and a child who
would grow up to be a non-believer), so that you killed the (prospective)
non-believer and left the (prospective) believer aside."
- Sahih Muslim Book 019, Number 4457.
Spencer
advises, “Until the Islamic roots of the practice are discussed openly and
human rights groups begin calling for reform, honor killings will continue in
the Islamic world - and in Muslim communities in the West.”
Spencer’s
assumption about honor killings is based on the idea that honor killings have
Islamic roots and that he has shown us some of these roots via the references
he cites above from The Reliance and Sahih Muslim. Spencer has long been able
to cite jihadists who quote the Qur’an and hadith of the Prophet Muhammad to
justify their violence, but in the case of honor killings the situation does
not provide him with honor killers quoting the Qur’an or sunnah of the Prophet
to validate their actions.
Spencer’s two
references, after careful examination, fail to prove his point.
The first,
the text of The Reliance, simply delineates the point that a father or mother
is not to be retaliated against for murdering one of their children. This seems
to be the dominant Shafi’i position according to the author of The Reliance,
Shaikh Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri.
But why is a
mother or father not to be retaliated against for the killing of their
children? Ibn Naqib does not say, and neither does Spencer. The Reliance
unsurprisingly makes no mention of preserving family honor. Spencer, however,
seems to want his readers to assume this is the reason.
Exploring
another Islamic text may provide an answer. Looking to another Islamic legal
school provides some helpful insights to the unanswered questions stemming from
the citation Spencer quotes from The Reliance. Matn Al-Risala of Shaikh Ibn Abi
Zayd al-Qayrawani, a Maliki jurist, says the following about a father who
murders his son: “The blood money is made more exacting in the case [of] a
father who kills his son…”
This itself
demonstrates that there is a punishment for a parent that kills its child.
However, why is the father not executed for the homicide?
The
commentary of the text notes why: A father “is not executed because of the
respect for fatherhood.” The commentary adds a caveat, however: “If
circumstances indicate the [father] actually intended to kill [the son], then
[the father] is killed for him in the well-known position.”
The dominant
Maliki position, according to the Risala, is to provide for an actual penalty
for a parent who murders his or her offspring. Either the parent would pay the
blood money, which amounts to a large payment for the death of the child, or if
it is found that the parent murdered the child intentionally, the parent is
executed.
Islamic legal
texts aside, there are no specific primary texts within Islam, from either the
Qur’an or the hadith, that either promote or tolerate the killing of relatives
for allegedly shaming the family.
Yet, this
does not prevent Spencer from citing Sahih Muslim to prove that the Prophet did
tolerate the killing of young children under certain circumstances.
As noted
above, Spencer quotes a hadith from Sahih Muslim where it seems, based on the
text, that if parents can determine that their child will become an unbeliever,
then they can kill the child. This is a lot to swallow. But this hadith in
Sahih Muslim is one of four hadiths on the same topic. Spencer quotes only one
of these hadiths.
One of the
other hadiths reads as follows:
“And you have written asking me about the
killing of the enemy children in war. (You should understand that) the
Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) did not kill them and thou shouldst
not kill them unless thou knew what the companion of Moses (i.e. Khadir) knew
about the boy he had killed.”
- Sahih Muslim Book 019, Number 4458.
The other two
hadiths are similar to this one by noting that the children being discussed are
the children of the enemy, or whoever the Muslims were engaged in conflict
with. Not the children of the Muslims. So if enemy children are not to be
harmed during a battle, what treatment could the children of Muslims receive?
It seems hardly plausible the Prophet would sanction their death or tolerate it
under any circumstances.
The companion
of Moses, known as Khidr or Khadir in Muslim lore, is a being whose job it is
to carry out the commands of God in the unseen. His actions, as noted in Qur’an
commentaries, would get any normal Muslim into serious trouble if carried out.
He operates with his own set of rules because he has knowledge of things normal
humans do not, such as how children will turn out in the future.
The reference
to Khidr then in the above hadiths is purely symbolic. No Muslim could ever
know how their child would turn out, whether sinner or believer. Therefore, to
use such a hadith to justify killing one’s child for family honor has no basis
in Islam and Spencer would certainly have a difficult time finding a single
Muslim using this hadith to justify killing their child.
While there
are no links between the religion of Islam and honor killings, this certainly
does not eliminate the reality that honor killings are real and Muslims are
committing many of them.
Many Muslims
seem to have apathy towards this terrible crime, more concerned with the image
of Islam than with stopping and preventing such acts from occurring in the
future. By turning their back on the actual roots of honor killings, such as
the societal pressure stemming from an extreme conservatism of tight knit
communities, many will blame the wrong factors. Islam has nothing to do with
such a disgusting crime, but ignorance of Islamic values and teachings does.
It is time
for Muslims, especially in the West, to begin or ramp up educational efforts
and outreach to overcome these sorts of societal customs. Domestic violence is
a disease in all cultures, but honor killings are especially troublesome
because of how they permanently damage the family and can horrify an entire
community. Islam makes the family of central importance and the taking of life
a grave issue. Such a horrific practice could find no sanction in God’s final
revelation to humanity.
Omer Subhani attends the University of
Miami School of Law. He writes frequently on his blog at omersubhani.blogspot.com.
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