Aqsa Parvez is the latest of about 12 young women in Canada to have fallen victim to an honour killing since 2002, according to a professor who says the crime is on the rise here in accordance with patterns of immigration.
“We cannot say there’s a huge number of cases, but now the cases are increasing, and very soon we’ll have a problem in Canada,” said Amin Muhammad, a professor of psychiatry at Memorial University of Newfoundland who specializes in transcultural psychiatry.
Dr. Muhammad has studied honour killings in Canada for the Department of Justice for a forthcoming position paper. Early evidence from recent crimes suggests other names may one day be remembered alongside 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga.
Aqsa died at the hands of her father and brother after rejecting the cultural traditions and religious strictures of their Pakistan homeland.
On Wednesday, the pair were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years.
Earlier this week in Quebec, an Afghan mother was charged with attempted murder and assault after her 19-year-old daughter was stabbed after returning to her family home from a night out. Prosecutors are treating it as an honour crime.
In Ontario, police in Kingston suspect honour killing as a motive in the drowning deaths of three teenage sisters and an adult relative found inside a car submerged in the Rideau Canal last year. The girls’ mother and father and brother are charged with murder.
“Honour killing is a premeditated murder based on a cultural mindset that people bring with them. It is a wrong notion of perceived notion of dishonour to the family,” Dr. Muhammad said.
“They restore the honour of the family by eliminating the wayward person. That has been going on through the ages in many countries and now in the United States and the United Kingdom. And in Canada.
“There are a number of organizations which don’t accept the idea of honour killing; they say it’s a Western-propagated myth by the media, but it’s not true,” he said. “Honour killing is there, and we should acknowledge it, and Canada should take it seriously.”
While many recent cases in Western society involve Muslims, Dr. Muhammad said honour killings have also been committed in the name of Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity.
Dr. Muhammad said more careful background checks on would-be immigrants to Canada, looking particularly at incidents of past familial violence, would help alleviate the problem here, adding: “often this type of crime runs in the family.”
The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women and girls are slain in honour killings each year, most at the hands of family.
“Honour is a magic word, which can be used to cloak the most heinous of crimes,” says a 2002 UN report.
“The concept of honour is especially powerful because it exists beyond reason and beyond analysis. But what masquerades as ‘honour’ is really men’s need to control women’s sexuality and their freedom. These murders are not based on religious beliefs but, rather, deeply rooted cultural ones.”
But just as most Canadians shudder in disbelief at these stories, so too do the majority of Muslims.
Imam Zijad Delic of the Canadian Islamic Congress said there is “nothing Islamic” in taking a human life.
He calls it a personal issue more than a cultural one and suggested perpetrators are not unlike the white, Canadianborn mother who suddenly kills her children in that both are ultimately unable to deal with the challenges of domestic life.
While new Muslim immigrants struggling to integrate into Canadian society are often reluctant to talk openly about the problems they may be experiencing at home with their children, he said, the issues are being addressed in mosques and community centres.
“Last Friday, my sermon in Toronto was about Canadian-Muslim family dynamics and I had about 600 people listening,” he said.
In diaspora populations, honour crimes often stem from clashes between Westernized children and traditional parents, according to Diana Nammi, founder of the London-based International Campaign Against Honour Killings.
“When people are moving to another country, they leave everything they have, all their possessions, behind. But what they can bring with them is what they believe, their culture, their traditions, their religion,” she said.
“Unfortunately, they are choosing to show the worst part of that, and the worst and criminal part of that is controlling women.”
And cultural sensitivity in Canada can interfere with responding appropriately.
“In Canada, we have been extremely culturally sensitive, and that’s a good thing,” said Aysan Sev’er, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and author of an upcoming book on the subject.
“But in this particular case, we may have pushed the pendulum a little to the other side, in the sense that there are cultural components in these types of crimes which we cannot ignore.”
Ujjal Dosanjh, a Liberal MP and Canada’s most high-profile Sikh politician, called for a stronger outcry over such crimes.
“Political correctness prevents us from demanding that the cultural norms that justify such heinous practices as honour killings have no place anywhere in the world. We must never be too sensitive to call a spade a spade,” he said.
“In countries such as Canada, Britain and the United States, the lack of courage to offend, if necessary and appropriate, prevents us from examining why and how this evil persists.”
