The Shafia Case: Honour Killing or Extreme Domestic Violence?

Last Monday, CTV news published a thought provoking piece in the aftermath of the Shafia murders verdict.  The article explains how using the term "honour killing" may have racist or Islamaphobic undertones. Others argue that the term is appropriate to describe the horrors of cases like this.

What really defines an honour killing? What makes a case like this any different from any other case where a husband kills his wife or children? Alia Hogben, of the Canadian Council of Muslim women, argues that calling these types of murders 'honour killings' only encourages stereotypical views of Muslim women, and even dehumanizes them.  Hogben is against the use of this terminology: "because that makes it kind of exotic and different and therefore does not include them with all of us as Canadian women."

In the past few months, as the media has followed this case obsessively, we have been shown pictures of these women (and young girls) as just that: women and girls. Although much of the coverage does play right into this idea of exoticizing "the Other", when you look at the pictures of these girls, they look like happy, everyday Canadians. Like anyone else that you might see them shopping, on the bus, sitting in a classroom etc. 

Zainab Shafia - killed in April 2009 - Age 19

I advocate the importance of condemning violence against women, especially in this particularly brutal triple homicide. But the Islamic community is still recovering from intensely racist damage suffered by the media's portrayal of Muslims in the so-called "War on Terror".   The media has to be EXTREMELY careful not to continue to villainize the entire Muslim population.

I recently watched a great documentary called "Reel Bad Arabs"  about how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in the media. From Aladdin to today's coverage of the Shafia murder trial, it seems our media continues to paint Muslims as heartless, fanatical suicide bombers and killers. In my opinion, when it comes to the "honour killing" Shafia case, it's important to emphasize that just like in the general population of Christians, Jews, etc,  this is the exception. Not the rule.