Discover Canada: "Honour Killings" Disallowed

Social scientists in Canada inform us that although still relatively unusual, 'honour killings' appear to be on the rise. The commission of these unforgivable assaults against women and girls are mind-shatteringly horrible, the stuff of nightmares. It is hard to imagine that it is considered a blight against clan or family honour when women and girls attempt to lead normal lives outside the cloistered, suffocating expectations of a male-dominated society that would keep them confined.

The recently-reported slaughter of six young girls by their father in Pakistan who had become enraged when his son informed him that his two older daughters, 16 and 14, were seen to be talking to boys, and had, according to the son, 'dated' older neighbourhood boys, shocked the world. He murdered his four younger daughters at the same time because they "sided" with their older sisters.

He killed the six girls, all of his daughters, for the perceived dishonour their blemished social behaviour brought to him personally. And he would do it again, he said, for he was proud of what he had done, restoring honour. His wife, the mother of those six girls, not so proud. She called police.

No doubt even in Faisalabad, where the murders took place, it is considered bad form to decide to dispatch six young girls in a deadly cold fury, after having spent many years raising them.

In Canada such abhorrent acts are inconceivable. There is enough family violence to go around, to wince at the presence of, in any society. The law forbids such violence. Basic human decency denies it. There are universal concepts of right and wrong, and harming another human being from a sense of having been dishonoured is clearly beyond the pale of societal acceptance.

Not in some cultures, however. Where the law will not even intervene, because it is an accepted tradition in a paternalistic society where women are considered second-class and subservient to men in every conceivable way.

A young Muslim woman, born in Canada, accedes to the wishes of her parents and returns to their homeland, Pakistan, to marry in the traditional way. She sponsors her husband under family reunification immigration rules. He is in Canada for 2 months before murdering his wife in her Toronto apartment for leaving an abusive situation, living with him.

A young woman of Indian extraction separates from her husband because of 'marital problems', in Vancouver. He tracks her to her place of employment and butchers her with a meat cleaver in front of witnesses who attempt to save her. In each instance cold-blooded, planned murder is executed and the executioner feels entirely justified.

"Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practises that tolerate spousal above, 'honour killings', female genital mutilation or other gender-based violence." Discover Canada