Her father, mother and brother cut her throat

Jun 18th, 2016 | By Ophelia Benson
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Relatives slit the throat of a young mother who was pregnant with her second child after she married against their will near Lahore, officials said Friday, the latest in a spate of so-called “honour killings”.

Muqaddas Bibi, 22, married Taufiq Ahmed three years ago in defiance of her family, who considered a marriage for love — rather than an arranged marriage — shameful, police investigator Mohammad Arshad told AFP.

Bibi’s ties with her family were severed after the marriage, Arshad said, but her mother and brother allegedly approached her at a clinic where she was having a check-up on Thursday and convinced her to come home, saying they accepted her decision.

Local police station chief Gohar Abbas said that when Bibi reached her parents’ house, her father, brother and mother cut her throat with a knife and she died on the spot.

Her mother, and her father, and her brother – three people who should love her.

What’s the point of marrying and having children if you’re not going to love your children enough to recoil in horror at the very idea of killing them? What’s the point of families at all if there’s no love involved? What’s the point of making it a rule that marriage should not involve love? A rule that in fact making marriage depend on love is a reason for killing your own daughter? The whole thing is so sick and anti-human it makes one despair.

Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in conservative Muslim Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending what is seen as family honour.

Last week sixteen year-old Zeenat Bibi was killed in Lahore by her mother for marrying a man of her own choice in a case that sparked condemnation throughout the country.

It was swiftly followed by another killing, of a couple in Lahore who married without their family’s consent.

On Sunday a young girl was killed by her brother for insisting on marrying the man of her choice in the city of Sialkot, also in Punjab.

Parents shouldn’t think of their children as like toasters or printers, that are things which are expected to do a job on command, and that get thrown out if they fail at that one duty. That shouldn’t be what having children is about. If you’re not going to love them don’t have them; skip that whole thing.

3 Responses to “Her father, mother and brother cut her throat”

#1
iknklast
June 18, 2016 at 8:30 pm

I was very unhappy with my son’s choice of wife. They got married anyway, and it did nothing to hurt our relationship. He is still living. I can’t begin to imagine killing him at all, let alone for marrying someone I don’t think is a good match for him. He’s an adult. It’s his choice.
#2
Holms
June 19, 2016 at 3:37 am

This is the sort of thing that I cannot comprehend, but I bet it has its roots in living in a culture where women are not only traditionally, but also legally, not considered ‘people.’
#3
Silentbob
June 19, 2016 at 4:40 am

@ 2 Holms

I think you make a safe bet.

Honor killings are often a result of strongly patriarchal views on women, and the position of women in society. In these traditional male-dominated societies women are dependent first on their father and then on their husband, whom they are expected to obey. Women are viewed as property and not as individuals with their own agency. As such, they must submit to male authority figures in the family — failure to do so can result in extreme violence as punishment. Violence is seen as a way of ensuring compliance and preventing rebellion. According to Shahid Khan, a professor at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan: “Women are considered the property of the males in their family irrespective of their class, ethnic, or religious group. The owner of the property has the right to decide its fate. The concept of ownership has turned women into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold”. In such cultures, women are not allowed to take control over their bodies and sexuality: these are the property of the males of the family, the father (and other male relatives) who must ensure virginity until marriage; and then the husband to whom his wife’s sexuality is subordinated – a woman must not undermine the ownership rights of her guardian by engaging in premarital sex or adultery.

(source)