defence of severe provocation may reduce the sen-
tence to a third with further substantial reductions
if, as is reported to be frequently the case, an honor
killing is executed by a minor male (WWHR 2002).
Turkish cases where the minor is chosen for the
deed by a family council of male family members
illustrate vividly the place such violence may
occupy in parallel normative systems inadequately
challenged by the state’s criminal legal system
(Sev’er and Yurdakul 1999). Research shows an
apparent lack of attention and determination on
the part of officials of the criminal justice system in
investigating the murder or “suspicious deaths” of
women in different states (Shalhoub-Kevorkian
2002a, Sev’er and Yurdakul 1999, Amnesty Inter-
national 1999).
Increased domestic attention to crimes of honor
in various Muslim majority states has been
matched in recent years by increasing international
attention, for example at the United Nations,
where certain Muslim states have objected to a per-
ceived association of honor killings with Islam.
Domestically, the debate can be complicated by
perceptions or assertions of Western pressure being
behind attempts to amend the relevant legislation.
From a different perspective, many activists and
scholars situate manifestations of honor killings in
the wider framework of violence against women;
thus for example Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002b,
590) observes that “naming femicide as ‘crimes of
passion’ in the West and ‘crimes of honour’ in the
East is one reflection of the discriminatory con-
structions of frames of analyses, which build a sim-
plistic system that hides the intersectionality among
political, economic, cultural and gender factors.”
The perceived association with Islam is also
addressed explicitly. In her 2000 report, Asma
Jahangir, United Nations Special Rapporteur on
extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions,
noted that “the practice of ‘honour killings’ is more
prevalent although not limited to countries where
the majority of the population is Muslim. In this
regard it should be noted that a number of
renowned Islamic leaders and scholars have pub-
licly condemned this practice and clarified that it
has no religious basis.” In a number of countries,
those investigating and challenging crimes of honor
in their domestic contexts have invested effort in
demonstrating the fallacy of the idea that there is
support for such practices in the bodies of princi-
ples and rulings that make up Islamic law. In
responses to allegations of a relationship between
Islamic law and crimes of honor (whether in prac-
tice or as countenanced in certain legal provisions)
it is the “classical” law – or the dominant interpre-
overview 401tations of Islamic criminal law – that are set out to
establish that honor killings as commonly under-
stood are not sanctioned. Among the points
stressed are the stringent procedural requirements
for the establishment of the ™addoffence of zinà,
the non-approval of extra-judicial action by private
parties in punishing zinà, and the sin – as well as the
crime – involved in the murder of innocents under
the terms of Islamic criminal law.
The fact that existing legal provisions – and judi-
cial interpretation of the same – may combine to
provide seriously reduced penalties against those
who kill women on alleged grounds of “honor” is
exacerbated by a lack of attention on the part of
state policy and agencies to the broader (indeed
global) phenomenon of violence against women in
the private sphere of the home and the family.
Related areas of criminal law that appear to be
under-enforced in various Muslim majority states
and that have particular impact on women include
the prohibitions on underage and forced marriage.
Rendering criminal law more effective as deterrent
and/or remedy is only one focus of the many indi-
viduals and women’s groups campaigning around
such issues in Islamic cultures, as indeed elsewhere.
The particular manifestations of abuse intersect
inter aliathe enduring “maleness” of the legal
process, perhaps particularly in criminal law; para-
digmatic attitudes to women, sexuality, and prop-
erty; and deliberate or negligent choices made by
state authorities not to prioritize and systematize
their responses to violence against women.Bibliography
L. Abu Odeh, Crimes of honour and the construct of gen-
der in Arab societies, in M. Yamani (ed.), Feminism and
Islam. Legal and literary perspectives, Reading, U.K.
1996, 141–94.
Amnesty International, Pakistan. Violence against women
in the name of honour, AI Index ASA 33/17/99,
London 1999, <http://web.amnesty.org/ library/index/
ENGASA330171999>.
——, Nigeria. The death penalty and women under the
Nigerian penal system, AI Index AFR 44/001/2004,
London 2004, <http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/
ENGAFR440072004?open&of=ENG-NGA>.
D. L. Bowen, Abortion, Islam and the 1994 Cairo Pop-
ulation Conference, in International Journal of Middle
East Studies29 (1997), 161–84.
CIMEL and INTERIGHTS, Annotated bibliography on
“crimes of honour,” <www.soas.ac.uk/honourcrimes>.
S. K. Mohsen, Women and criminal justice in Egypt, in
D. H. Dwyer (ed.), Law and Islam in the Middle East,
New York 1990, 15–34.
A. Quraishi, Her honor. An Islamic critique of the rape
laws of Pakistan from a woman-sensitive perspective,
in Michigan Journal of International Law18 (1997),
287–320.
A. Sev’er and G. Yurdakul, Culture of honor, culture of
change. A feminist analysis of honor killings in rural
Turkey, in Violence against Women7:9 (1999), 964–99.