Jordan: A 17-year-old girl died after being strangled to death by her brother in a Palestinian refugee camp near the Jordanian town of Jerash .
He was apparently angered by her absence from home.
The woman, who had been married for eight months, was accused of shaming her family and killed in a so-called "honour" crime.
This is the second murder of its kind in a month.
A Jordanian prosecutor has charged the victim’s brother, a 20-year-old man, with premeditated murder.
Local newspapers reported that he had stuffed a scarf in his sister's mouth, choked her with an electric cable and smoked a pack of cigarettes before turning himself in.
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At least the perpetrator is being tried for premeditated murder, though it remains to be seen whether this will stick.
In Jordan, there are still three penal code articles on the books that offer leniency to the perpetrators. These crimes are treated as misdemeanors; the average sentence is six months, though too many perpetrators serve no time at all.
The punishments for being critical of the king or the royal family are greater than this.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author "Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
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30/01/2008 UN envoy: Women in Gaza feel coerced to cover their heads By Barak Ravid
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief says women in the Gaza Strip have recently felt coerced into covering their heads, while Christians there have faced rising intolerance.
The UN envoy, Asma Jahangir, visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority last week and published a report on her eight-day trip. Advertisement "Women seem to be in a particularly vulnerable situation and bear the brunt of religious zeal. I was informed about cases of honor killings carried out with impunity in the name of religion," she added.
Jahangir met with Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Minister of Religious Affairs Yitzhak Cohen, as well as many others involved in religious affairs.
The UN representative expressed surprise to Amar that women were not allowed to serve as religious court judges. Amar answered that the study of religious law is a burden that women are exempt from, but this did not satisfy Jahangir, who said human rights were advancing and religions were remaining behind.
She also criticized the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel.
"There are concerns that the state gives preferential treatment to the Orthodox Jewish majority in Israel to the detriment not only of other religious or belief communities but also of other strands of Judaism," she said. "For example, conversion to Judaism within Israel is only recognised if performed by the Orthodox Rabbinate."
Jahangir added: "I find it difficult to understand that under domestic law persons can be deemed to be 'unmarriageable'," referring to the 200,000 Israeli citizens and residents who have problems marrying since they have no official religion. She and Minister Cohen disagreed on the matter.
She said that "freedom of religion or belief also includes the right not to believe."
Foreign Ministry officials who accompanied Jahangir were surprised when she said Israeli roadblocks not only impede Christians and Muslims from accessing their holy places. They also prevent Jewish Israelis from praying at their holy places such as the Temple Mount.
She faintly praised Israel, saying: "During my talks with members of religious minorities in Israel, my interlocutors have by and large acknowledged that there is no religious persecution by the State. Within the Israeli democracy, I would like to emphasize the important role that the Supreme Court has played in the past and can play for safeguarding freedom of religion or belief."
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‘Men on Board’ project educates men on women’s rights in Islam By Linda Hindi
AMMAN - Empowering women and stopping violence against them in a patriarchal society is no easy feat, but a social centre has found convincing allies: local male leaders.
The centre’s pilot project, “Men on Board”, has been working over the past two months to directly educate men on women’s rights.
Workers at the Community Development Centre (CDC) in Sweileh label the new approach “a huge success”.
The centre came up with the idea of targeting men after female members, who had completed a one-year awareness project on violence against women, suggested that the centre do something specifically for their husbands.
A programme development officer at the centre, Ruweida Shakhshir, explained that the programme is unique because incorporating men into gender-based violence projects is not uncommon, but to have an optional programme only for men poses the biggest challenge, “to actually get the men to attend”.
That’s where the community’s male leader, or mukhtar, came in, inviting the neighbourhood men for sessions at his home.
“I knew that this would work because when the mukhtar invites you to his home you do not say ‘no’,” the social worker added.
A mukhtar, "the chosen" in Arabic, refers to a figure in a village or urban neighbourhood who serves as a local community leader with some administrative authorities and reports to the governor’s office.
The mukhtar’s wife initially offered her home for the meetings, saying that she would have her husband invite the men, Shakhshir said.
The meetings are held in a relaxed atmosphere and refreshments are served. The goal is to make men listen and, in particular, learn about women’s rights in Islam. Giving the lessons is Sheikh Bassam Qawasmi, a cleric who has earned the trust of the women in the community after volunteering at the centre for several years, offering women a one-hour lecture four times a month on their rights in society and Islam.
“He has women who are devoted to his lectures and his information has changed some women’s lives. One very poor woman found out that she was entitled to her inheritance in Islam and contested her brothers in court.” As a result, she won half a dunum of land, which she sold and used to start an income-generating project that earns her JD500 a month, Shakhshir said.
Sheikh Qawasmi, who has a BA in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), told The Jordan Times that he is able to influence the men because he sits with them on their terms and cites the Holy Koran and hadith (Prophet’s tradition) to support his arguments.
“I am happy that I am dealing directly with the very group that have tough personalities and zero value for women. One man once told me that women are no different than animals and should be treated this way,” the cleric said. This is changing, he continued.
The programme facilitator explained that he stays calm and attacks their theories about respect, polygamy, equality and violence with clear Koranic verses and in-depth stories about the Prophet Mohammad and how he treated women in the highest regard.
He targets core issues like polygamy and teaches them the circumstances under which the Prophet married more than one woman. “They cannot use this as an excuse to marry women at their will or for selfish pleasures… there are specific reasons to remarry”.
“Most of the men are subdued and cannot retort when they hear that respecting their wives is a religious obligation. It affects them because they are not listening to something that I have made up; it is commandments from Allah, their God,” he said.
Her Majesty Queen Rania visited the CDC on Sunday during a trip to this north Amman town, highlighting issues that affect its 35,000 residents, most of whom are poor.
At the community centre, officials described their social programmes including the “Men on Board” project. Queen Rania took interest in the angle and said that more projects like these should be duplicated throughout the Kingdom.
“Violence against women is a sensitive subject that we must concentrate on and diminish from our society. It is very unfortunate that sometimes Islam is distorted or confused and used as an excuse to do wrong,” Queen Rania said.
The CDC is one of the six centres in the region run under the McGill University in Montreal, Canada. McGill’s programmes are primarily funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. The “Men on Board” project has been funded by the Washington-based Freedom House, a pro-democracy nonprofit organisation with international reach.
The centre is closely affiliated with the University of Jordan and works in partnership with the Jordan Red Crescent Society and the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development.
It currently runs 12 community development programmes, which directly affect between 15,000 to 20,000 underprivileged residents of the area annually.
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An excellent summation of the phenomenon of honor killings: "Honor killings: When the ancient and the modern collide"
While fathers are commonly responsible for honor killings, they often act in concert with their daughters' brothers, uncles, and even female relatives. For infringements upon a Muslim daughter's "honor" constitute the greatest humiliation possible to the religious and tribal tradition from which many such immigrant families emerged.
Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, claimed that "The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to color or creed," while Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, came to the following conclusion: "The bottom line is, it's a domestic violence issue." -from the article
Domestic violence may cut across color or creed but what other creed sanctions it? And what society other than one ruled by Sharia actually encodes it in their laws?
Domestic violence may not be unique to Muslims but what IS unique is their reaction to it.
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