"This is my Insult"
Canada: we have a problem. The problem has become obvious of late, though many dare not speak its name. The problem is how Canadian society, its laws and its judicial system, can be invoked to save the lives of vulnerable young women. Young women who have experienced horrible duress from within the loving bosoms of their families. Families so acculturated within an ancient and degraded system of inequality between the genders, that females are held to be inferior and completely subservient to men.
Whereby men exercise the power of life and death over women, when women dare to defy man-made edicts.
As a country peopled by immigration, the population represents people from all over the world. Gradually it has come to light that some religious fanatics are rigidly incapable of understanding that in Canada women's rights and equalities are enshrined in law. And that unlike life in societies which are strictly male-dominated and rigidly circumscribed with regard to women's place, it is viewed as a serious crime to threaten, harass, and oppress girls and women in a struggle for chauvinistic domination.
Murdering one's child, a daughter whose ferocious determination to be her own self, and to set aside customs that have for far too long diminished the individuality and humanity of women, is a horrendous crime. Despite the denials from the communities where this medieval form of "protecting the honour of the family males" that the incidences that occur from within rigidly-observant Muslim and Hindu-Sikh communities are not "honour killings", but merely symptoms of dysfunctional families, evidence assures us otherwise.
From the mother who obligingly assists her husband and her son to murder her three daughters along with their 'aunt - her husband's former first wife, to ensure they don't stray from tradition and the Muslim-outgrowth-culture that demands strict obedience to apparel dictates, and social cloistering, arranged marriages and complete subjection to male orders - to the sister of a murdered young woman who wails that her father and brother who extinguished her sister's life are not 'guilty' in imposing a death sentence on a sister who defied them.
Women become so demeaned and indoctrinated into the ego-vulnerable belief that they are inferior and completely consumed by the dictates of the traditions and customs imposed by a religion demanding that women surrender their identities to the whims of their male relatives that they allow themselves to become a part of the system that makes an ordeal of their lives. A family from Pakistan is now sundered because a mother attempted in a rage to knife her defiant daughter to death.
"Please sir, my wife is innocent", the husband claims, as his wife is taken to prison and a mental examination planned before her trial for attempted murder of her daughter. A daughter at the age of 19 who defied parental authority over her, deciding for herself that an arranged marriage, a life of obedience to a man on an unequal social-familial basis distorted her view of herself as an individual and she would not accept the constraints imposed upon her. She is yet alive, to go on with her life.
Not so the 16-year-old whose father and brother strangled her to death in her bedroom, after abducting her when she had finally, again, run away from home. School authorities were fully cognizant of the girl's family background and her fears for her life. Attempts were made to find safe haven for her. Interlocutors attempted to inject into the father's consciousness that in Canada women are individuals and free to live their lives as such. The father avowed that in Pakistan women knew enough not to speak.
The father and the son have been sentenced to life in prison for their ghastly crime. The girl's mother suffers the agonies of dreadful loss and the misery of emotional dislocation, hardly able to understand the trajectory her life has taken since the family emigrated from a patriarchal society to an open society of gender equality and freedoms guaranteed to all its citizens.
Whereby men exercise the power of life and death over women, when women dare to defy man-made edicts.
As a country peopled by immigration, the population represents people from all over the world. Gradually it has come to light that some religious fanatics are rigidly incapable of understanding that in Canada women's rights and equalities are enshrined in law. And that unlike life in societies which are strictly male-dominated and rigidly circumscribed with regard to women's place, it is viewed as a serious crime to threaten, harass, and oppress girls and women in a struggle for chauvinistic domination.
Murdering one's child, a daughter whose ferocious determination to be her own self, and to set aside customs that have for far too long diminished the individuality and humanity of women, is a horrendous crime. Despite the denials from the communities where this medieval form of "protecting the honour of the family males" that the incidences that occur from within rigidly-observant Muslim and Hindu-Sikh communities are not "honour killings", but merely symptoms of dysfunctional families, evidence assures us otherwise.
From the mother who obligingly assists her husband and her son to murder her three daughters along with their 'aunt - her husband's former first wife, to ensure they don't stray from tradition and the Muslim-outgrowth-culture that demands strict obedience to apparel dictates, and social cloistering, arranged marriages and complete subjection to male orders - to the sister of a murdered young woman who wails that her father and brother who extinguished her sister's life are not 'guilty' in imposing a death sentence on a sister who defied them.
Women become so demeaned and indoctrinated into the ego-vulnerable belief that they are inferior and completely consumed by the dictates of the traditions and customs imposed by a religion demanding that women surrender their identities to the whims of their male relatives that they allow themselves to become a part of the system that makes an ordeal of their lives. A family from Pakistan is now sundered because a mother attempted in a rage to knife her defiant daughter to death.
"Please sir, my wife is innocent", the husband claims, as his wife is taken to prison and a mental examination planned before her trial for attempted murder of her daughter. A daughter at the age of 19 who defied parental authority over her, deciding for herself that an arranged marriage, a life of obedience to a man on an unequal social-familial basis distorted her view of herself as an individual and she would not accept the constraints imposed upon her. She is yet alive, to go on with her life.
Not so the 16-year-old whose father and brother strangled her to death in her bedroom, after abducting her when she had finally, again, run away from home. School authorities were fully cognizant of the girl's family background and her fears for her life. Attempts were made to find safe haven for her. Interlocutors attempted to inject into the father's consciousness that in Canada women are individuals and free to live their lives as such. The father avowed that in Pakistan women knew enough not to speak.
The father and the son have been sentenced to life in prison for their ghastly crime. The girl's mother suffers the agonies of dreadful loss and the misery of emotional dislocation, hardly able to understand the trajectory her life has taken since the family emigrated from a patriarchal society to an open society of gender equality and freedoms guaranteed to all its citizens.
"My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked." Muhammad Manzour Parvez
"You made my life into hell. Oh my Aqsa, you should have listened. Everyone tried to make you understand. Everyone begged you, but you did not listen.... I should die. Oh brothers, finish this. You have closed the door. Myheart is sinking. Oh God. Oh God. Oh god. You've made me sit here." Anwar Jan
Labels: Canada, Human Fallibility, Human Relations, Religion
posted by Pieface | 6:50 PM
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