Recently, another tragedy happened in Hamburg’s Afghan community. A 16 year old girl Morsal was murdered in public by her brother who stabbed her with a knife more than 20 times. Rescue attempts came unfortunately too late. But the police caught the brother who is now in jail.
The media reported about this “honor killing” in newspapers and on TV. First of all, I am totally against the use of the word “honor killing” because murder should not be associated with honor in any form or shape. Strangely enough, this wrongly used expression is only applied when dealing with violence among people with a migrant background, preferably a Muslim background. While similar tragedies among Western people are termed “violent family dramas”.
So-called “honor killings” have nothing to do with Islam. As a matter of fact, none of these crimes can be based on Islamic teachings. Even though those committing such atrocities often wrongly claim Islamic values, and their Afghan, Turkish, Iranian, Kurdish or Arab culture as an excuse to slaughter their daughters.
Evidently, they have no clue about their true religion and should also not be allowed to use the word “culture” in the context of their sickly and perverted obsessions with honor. Those types of people are oozing with ignorance and are indeed a disgrace to Islam and their respective cultures (because these cultures do exist, and not all Afghans, Turks, Iranians, Kurds and Arabs would do such things). But what makes me angry is the silence of the majority of these communities, including their Imams or Mullahs, when such a crime took place.
In this recent horror story, I saw a weeping father being interviewed by a TV reporter. He was weeping for his son in jail and acting as a victim of what he considers an Afghan code of behavior. But how much did he contribute to his son’s murdering his daughter? Even more shocking than this father was another Afghan neighbor, a woman, dressed totally modern without the trace of a burka or any headscarf. One would expect her to take sides with the murdered girl. But no, she said: “This is part of Afghan culture.” And she did not consider the brother a criminal! How repulsive!
A friend of mine, a Lesbian Muslima in Hamburg researched various internet chat rooms of the migrant community where young people who were probably born and raised in Germany expressed their opinions about this tragedy. Even though the majority was saddened by the murder of Morsal, they also couldn’t help but expressing a certain understanding for the brother. After all, he had to watch over his sister, and evidently she did not conform to the restrictive, fossilized sicko-norm: Morsal used make-up, wore fashionable clothes and was seen going out with other teenagers, among them boys. What is wrong with these migrant chatters? Were they recently imported from Taliban controlled zones in Afghanistan or what?
My Lesbian Muslima friend in Hamburg had co-organized a protest event. Not that many Muslims showed up, and those who did only rapped about that they did not have any violence in their families, instead of firmly condemning these types of crimes. It makes my stomach turn. We need the loudest voices to be raised against such zombie mentalities. And evidently a lot of educative work needs to be done.
Rahal X. is a queer Muslim. He is the author of Khalil & Majnun: A Memoir due out this July by Salaam Press. He lives in Europe, and can be reached via info@huriyahmag.com
*******************
HOME
|
|
