In our Pakistani milieu, when we (the male children) open our eyes, we find ourselves superior to our sisters, nieces and all the other female members of our home including our mother. We see our mother being repressed and (sometimes even) tortured by our father. And when we are assured that we, the boys are the real asset of the family, we also start asserting ourselves upon all the female members of the family. We torture our sisters at will, whether younger or elder. Outside in the streets, us boys swear at one another by invoking the names of of our sisters and mothers. We never shout expletives directed at the father, it’s the mother who’s selected for this ‘honour’. This sense of superiority and possession is so entrenched in our subconscious that it almost becomes our instinct. Ironically enough, for almost twenty years or more, while we’re not ready to listen to the name of our sister or mother uttered in vain by an outsider; there comes a time where all of us, brothers, the father and other male family members are sitting outside a room where our most protected girl is being ‘defiled’ by someone who was once an outsider, and this sudden process is called marriage. We’ve got garlands and sweets for the man inside in the morning in lieu of guns and daggers. But instead of reforming, our psyche is further contorted. Our sense of honour remains intact, rather it’s reinforced with the inclusion of a new, more assertive master. We feel so indignant merely by naming our sisters, mother and other female family members that we don’t even write their names on their gravestones. The truth, though horrible, is that we are all trained and nurtured to become future honour-killers.

Honour killing is generally associated with sex and adultery, but as I understand it, it has little to do with either. In reality, honour killing is not about any of it. Rather, it is an issue of choice. A woman who is brave enough to make her own choice in matters proscribed to her by family, tradition, religion or whatever else, makes the mistake of exercising her choice by merely replying out of turn, is tantamount to insubordination. It is this insubordination that is defined as dishonour. Insubordination from women, in deeply patriarchal and conservative Muslim families, infused with local traditions immediately becomes a matter of dishonour that apparently makes it possible for some men with little spinning hamsters in their hearts and heads to tolerate hideous crimes against women, confounding the little spinning hamsters in the heart with honour. So an angry little man can feel self-righteously justified in murdering a woman, a family member, most often trying to escape a forced marriage, sexual abuse or domestic violence. And for some women, the only remaining choice she can impose on this gruesome reality is to kill herself.

How can a woman living in a deeply traditional society, surrounded by people seeped in such thinking, manage to report anything at all (to either traditional authorities or formal ones) if a man’s word is equal to the report of two women? (In the case of rape, the absurdities multiply. The rape victim becomes twice a victim and faces stoning as due punishment).

Another horrible fact is that, female-on-female violence has been minimised because male-on-female violence is far more visible, dramatic and an epidemic. However, women sometimes kill infants, spouses and other women. Indeed, women play a very active role in honour-based femicide, both by spreading the gossip underlying such murders and by acting as conspirator/accomplice and/or hands-on-killers in the honour killing of female relatives.

Honour killings have existed since ancient Roman times, when the senior male within a household retained the right to kill an unmarried but sexually-active daughter or an adulterous wife. Honour-based crimes existed in medieval Europe where early Jewish law mandated death by stoning for an adulterous wife and her partner. Today, the practice is most commonly associated with regions in North Africa and the Middle East. Historically, in some Arab countries under Ottoman rule, a killer would sprinkle his victim’s blood on his clothes and parade through the streets displaying the weapon to increase his ‘honour’, thereby attracting community respect rather than condemnation for taking a life.

There must be a change now and it will most certainly be a gradual change. Society will have to be opened up for women. There should be a wave of writings and performing activities to create awareness. There should be open discussions on gender equality and sex. There should be a well-established subject on human rights and sex education. Media can play a huge role, especially electronic media. Sadly, these measures are almost non-existent as yet, but we’ll have to start somewhere. In the future, when a boy opens his eyes, he should find himself in a home where all the siblings are treated alike. Where the father respects the mother, and where everyone can speak her/his heart regardless of any gender difference.