The Irony
In today’s news, the Jordan Times reported the following:
Criminal Prosecutor Tareq Shoqerat on Sunday charged a 70-year-old man with the manslaughter of his daughter during a family brawl in Karak at dawn, official sources said.
The 30-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, was shot twice in the face and head, allegedly by her father, while she was attempting to stop a fight between him and one of her siblings, one official source said. The victim died instantly, the source added.
It’s definitely a good thing that the man’s crime was treated seriously, seeing as the victim is not only female, but also his daughter. These two conditions usually render crimes committed by male relatives against female family members extremely insignificant and very often legally and socially condoned.
The man was angry at his son, and shot his daughter (who stood between the two men) supposedly by accident. The criminal part of the affair is obvious, but how is this situation any different from a man shooting his daughter because he suspects she is damaging the family’s honor? In both cases the man is angry, the daughter is not proven guilty, and oftentimes is not at all guilty (think autopsy that proves she, and her honor/hymen, are intact). So how come legal authorities and society itself look the other way and let murderers out of prison after serving a modest 6 months when the word “honor” is mentioned by virtue of the infamous article 340:
Any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his female relatives in the act of committing adultery or in an “unlawful bed” benefits from a reduction in penalty.
Is that not giving men a “license to kill” in the name of an imaginary term invented by men themselves? Any man can kill his sister in Jordan for reasons like taking over her finances or her share in inheritance, and he can simply cite honor as his motive, and it would not matter if this woman is not found “guilty” of adultery during her autopsy, and society would hail the murderer as an honorable man.
I am willing to bet that if that 70 year old man cited honor as his motive for killing his daughter, which might be his lawyer’s tactic in the near future — you never know, he would be allowed to walk free and celebrate his 71st birthday at home. The irony.
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May 6th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I don’t have a copy of the Jordanian Law, but as far as I know, the law doesn’t mention men only, honor killings can get reduced penalties, even if a woman kills her husband.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:05 am
You are right, of course. However, it is usually Article 98 that gets killers off the hook.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Women’s organizations worked hard to get the law to equally excuse women for crimes of honor, and the law was changed to reflect that. However, the reality of the situation says otherwise. I ask you, if a woman kills her husband to protect “honor,” would anyone believe her? Probably not, because “honor” in this society is pretty much exclusive to men and they are its traditional protectors. Honor has to do with the female body (more with the hymen/vagina than anything else), therefore a woman killing a man to protect her family’s honor will not be taken seriously.
Pat, you’re right. I missed that, thanks for the hint!
May 7th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
D.M., the language in the penal code articles was changed after the 2000 march and petition so that now, at least in theory, everyone can kill for supposed honor. This was Parliament’s way of sticking it to the activists, who wanted Article 340 repealed, not made applicable to twice as many people. Guess it backfired.
Tololy, good points. Also, across time and geography, females just haven’t been anywhere near as physically violent as men. So the laws still disproportionately favor men, even if they were applied evenly to both sexes.