Sunday, July 20, 2008
News, In this Issue...

Saving Face

Chaudhry Rashid is accused of killing his daughter for dishonoring his family. Now the entire Pakistani community is stuck with the disgrace

Mark Renders/Getty Images
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf helped pass a law in 2004 treating so-called “honor killings” the same as any other murder. Still, such killings are not easily prosecuted in Pakistan.
By Chuck Stanley

Chaudhry Rashid was arrested in the early morning hours of July 6 at his Jonesboro residence and charged with the murder of his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal. Rashid allegedly strangled his daughter to death because he felt that her choice to divorce her estranged husband would disgrace him and the rest of his family.

News of Sandeela Kanwal’s tragic death has reverberated throughout Atlanta’s Pakistani community, affecting those who knew her personally, as well as those who fear their neighbors will see Chaudhry Rashid’s act as representative of the greater Pakistani or Islamic culture. So-called “honor killings” continue to occur in some areas of Rashid’s home country of Pakistan: Last month, a man named Faisal Bashir shot and killed his Danish sister-in-law, Tahira Bibi, because he had received numerous complaints that she had a “bad character.”

However, most Pakistanis deplore the practice as fiercely as Americans. When Pakistani immigrants are confronted with these acts in America, they are offended not only by the garish nature of the crimes, but by the harmful perceptions they generate toward the rest of the community. 

DEATH BY DISHONOR

According to a July 6 incident report, Clayton County Police arrived at the Jonesboro residence shortly before 2 a.m. in response to a domestic disturbance call made by Chaudhry Rashid’s wife. Gina O. Rashid told police that she had placed the call from another location after awaking to screams inside the house.
   
Rashid, elaborating on her account, told officers that she had awoken in the night and asked her husband to turn down the thermostat before falling back asleep. She was then shaken from her rest once again by screaming from within the house. While most of the shouting was indecipherable, Gina Rashid said she heard one word repeated over and over again, “Abu,” which means “father” in Urdu. It was then that she fled the scene to call police from a safe location.

Chaudhry Rashid and his daughter, while dwelling in the same home, had not spoken for two months due to a disagreement over Kanwal’s decision to divorce her husband, whom she had wed in Pakistan through an arranged marriage. The husband is currently believed to be living somewhere in Chicago and had not been incontact with Kanwal for three months. 
   
As Gina Rashid recounted the incident, two men approached, one identifying himself as Kanwal’s brother, and informed the officer that Kanwal’s body lay dead in an upstairs bedroom. He knew, he said, because his father had told him. A medical unit was requested, and responding units were advised of a “rush call” at the address.
   
Meanwhile, Chaudhry Rashid sat behind a car in the driveway, chain smoking and hanging his head in despair. Rashid, who speaks little English, told police simply, “My daughter is dead.” When asked how she had died, he bowed his head and said nothing.

Inside, police found the cold gray body of Sandeela Kanwal lying in the upstairs bedroom as her brother had described. The house was evacuated due to fears of a possible dangerous carbon monoxide leak. Upon returning to the scene, though, marks were discovered on Kanwal’s neck that implied possible strangulation. The family members at the scene were taken to Clayton County Police Headquarters for statements. With the exception of Gina Rashid, everyone who had been in the house claimed to have slept through the event. 

According to an arrest warrant signed later that day, Chaudhry Rashid confessed to the murder of his daughter while in police custody. He said that he had argued with Kanwal over her divorce as the two drove home from her job at a nearby Wal-Mart. “Enraged” by their argument, Rashid apparently took a bungee cord from his car and gave his daughter one last chance to change her mind after the two had entered their home. When Sandeela Kanwal again told her father that she did not love her husband and would not stay married to him, Rashid took the bungee cord from his pocket and strangled her to death.

In describing the gruesome succession of events, Rashid told police that his daughter had disgraced his family by choosing to divorce her husband in violation of his Muslim beliefs. This has fueled a rash of news stories describing the “Jonesboro honor killing,” and rekindled local interest in a horrific practice that takes its roots from South Asian tribal customs dating back long before the establishment of the nation of Pakistan.    

Farooq Soomro is the president of the Pakistani American Community of Atlanta, a nonprofit organization that promotes the culture, language and heritage of Pakistani Americans. He is saddened, he says, by the death of Sandeela Kanwal, and angered at the negative perceptions this event is likely to engender toward the Pakistani community. “[Honor] is an inappropriate term and shouldn’t be applied [to killing],” he says. He also notes that divorce is allowed by Islam and provided for in the Quran.

According to Soomro, honor killings in Pakistan generally occur in tribal areas where literacy rates are lowest and poverty rates are highest. The practice, he says, predates the nation of Pakistan and runs contrary to Muslim beliefs. He is disdainful of the notion that Islam would permit the killing of a family member to retain one’s honor.

“It’s all rubbish, it’s not allowed under Islam,” he says. To kill one’s child under any circumstances “is a shameful act.”

Concessions by the Pakistani government to tribal autonomy, he explains, allowed honor killings to continue in his country for a long time. “What makes me very angry is that criminals use [honor] as an excuse,” he says, explaining that because of the way the laws of Pakistan have traditionally been enforced, honor killing has been treated as a crime to be solved within local communities rather than by the government.

Even with a law put forth by Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, in 2004, which treats honor killings the same as any other murder, such killings are not easily prosecuted in Pakistan. This, according to Soomro, is because Pakistani law allows parties involved in a crime to negotiate restitution among themselves or their families, often with the aid of a local mediator. A complaint must be lodged by victims or their families before the government gets involved. When the perpetrator of a crime is a member of the victim’s family, though, a complaint is rarely made.  

“AN ABOMINATION”

Anita Weiss, a professor of international studies at the University of Oregon, says that while honor killings still occur in Pakistan, the majority of Pakistanis reject the practice. “Today, in 2008, it is something that is not accepted. It is something seen as an abomination” to the majority of Pakistanis.

Weiss agrees with Soomro’s assessment that today honor killings generally occur in rural areas, where education is lacking and poverty abounds. She credits urbanization and improvements in education, especially for women, to the popular outcry against honor killings that led to stronger legislation against the practice, beginning in the early part of this decade. For the past quarter century, explains Weiss, urban areas have been less likely to play host to these crimes. “People can’t get away with it in urban areas,” she says.

However, in the relative isolation of the countryside, such as the rugged Northwestern regions of Pakistan dominated by tribal law, there is little recourse against mysterious disappearances within families who feel they have been shamed by the actions of one of their own. The victims of these crimes are usually females, because, as Weiss says, in Pakistani culture, “Honor lies in the action of the females in a family. If a woman does something, it dishonors the woman as well as her entire family.”  

In Pakistan, this reality is an atrocious anomaly. When it manifests in places like Atlanta, where the Pakistani community is closely knit and the influx of immigrants is a hot-button issue, it is both a tragic event and a gruesome caricature of the culture. In this way, the actions of one man can affect not only his family and associates, but everyone who shares his language or country of origin.

“It affects me, it affects my friends. Here we do our best to raise our children in a positive environment,” Farooq Soomro says. “My son may ask me, ‘Will you do this to me if I dishonor you?'”

Although stories about honor killings by Pakistani immigrants are likely to exacerbate negative perceptions of his culture, Soomro believes the media attention is important, both to expose the grisly truth of these crimes and to make clear that they are abhorrent to the majority of the Pakistani community.

“I think it is important for the education of people to address issues like this,” he says. “Everybody should condemn these crimes. Everybody should raise their voice against these crimes. … He’s dishonored not only himself but his family and his community, and he should know that there is no leniency in the United States of America for this kind of crime.” SP

Posted by ERS ERS on Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 2:24 PM:

When I conducted a nationwide attitude and opinion survey on these crimes in Jordan, the people who most believe in dishonor killings tended to be less educated, older, and more likely to be unemployed or retired. The belief wasn't correlated with urban/rural, nomadic/sedentary tribalism, or other factors that are part of the conventional wisdom.

And it should be pointed out that, while the majority of the U.N.-estimated 5,000 dishonor killings per annum globally take place within Arab/Muslim countries and Arab/Muslim communities elsewhere, they also occur in other populations (e.g., Druze, Hindu, Sikh, Yazidi). These crimes pre-date Islam by centuries and are, in fact, un-Islamic.

Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
http://www.redroom.com/author/ellen-r-sheeley

Posted by Sunday Paper on Monday, July 21, 2008 at 9:46 AM:

The following comment was originally posted by Michael Wall on Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 7:29 AM, but has been removed and reposted due to a lengthy Web address that, in certain popular browsers, affected the display of the article:

You say "So-called “honor killings” continue to occur in some areas of Rashid’s home country of Pakistan".

However in reality, honor killings continue to go on all over the world! It's not just Paklistan. It is happening in Europe far more often than anyone would ever think! Read the book, While Europe Slept (search title on Amazon).

It is amazing how European governments ignore the problem and call it an ethnic matter!

It can go on ANYWHERE hard line fundamentalist thinking Islamic people live. It isn't just Pakistanis however they are a prime example.

Hopefully this guy will be dealt with to the full extent of the law. If he isnt these practices will spread like a cancer here as they have in Europe.