Author: Ophelia Benson

Blind fingers-in-ears lalalala denial is interesting to see. It is not so because it cannot be so because it would be bad if it were so therefore it is not so; do you understand.

Violence against women is sadly a global human rights issue and occurs within all communities, regardless of race, class, culture and faith. It is troubling when this occurs in some communities because the media are quick to focus the story on “issues in the community” that have led to Aqsa’s slaying. The story becomes about how some communities have a greater tolerance for violence against women.

Funny old media, focusing on what appears to be the grim reality of what led to Aqsa’s murder; they should have ignored all that and pretended it was inexplicable and random. And how terrible that the story should become about the fact that some ‘communities’ have a greater tolerance for violence against women, even if it is in fact the case that some ‘communities’ have a greater tolerance for violence against women. Why? Well, because…because they’re communities, so they must be nice, right? (No one ever talks about the fascist community or the racist community or the Neo-Nazi community – so all communities are nice – surely.)

The discussion of this homicide as stemming from issues of a “clash of cultures, faith, the hijab” misrepresents the issue of violence against women. Violence is about the power and control of women by men.

Uh…yeah, violence is indeed about the power and control of women by men, and religion very often provides the pretext for exactly that. If the hijab were not about the power and control of women by men, then why would women get beaten up in so many places for refusing to wear it?

The assertion that this violence reflects the community and Islam is rooted in both racism and Islamophobia. Violence is not a value in any culture or faith community.

Really. Any evidence for that claim? None that’s offered, at any rate – it’s pure assertion. ‘Violence is not a value in any culture’ – well where does it come from then? Godalmighty – does Cindy Cowan think all violence is a product of epilepsy or something? The assertion that violence is not a value in any culture is rooted in a near-deranged level of denial.

Media preoccupation with this young woman’s background supports the myth that the incidence of violence and murder of women is somehow greater in these “other” communities, but this is false.

False, is it? Any evidence for that claim? No again. Which is depressing, because this Interim Place that Cindy Cowan is the executive director of is a women’s shelter. She kind of needs to know something about this subject, and she appears to know less than nothing; she appears to know minus-facts, anti-facts. She seems to think that the incidence of violence against and murder of women is exactly the same in all ‘communities’ as opposed to being ‘somehow’ (that ‘somehow’ is interesting – as if she can’t even figure out how such a thing could possibly be, even in principle) greater in some than in others. She seems to live in an alternate universe.

Okay now let’s not get excited here. These things happen. Teenagers rebel, parents get cross, the fur flies, doors slam, windows shatter. It happens in the best of families – Christian, atheist, Buddhist, Scientologist, Free Silverist, you name it. It’s a terrible shame, but it doesn’t mean anything – it’s just like a spot of bad weather.

It’s a bitterly sad story, and if, indeed, her father killed her, nothing can excuse that. Aqsa might well have defied family values and parental rules, but nothing she did warranted death. Harsh words, perhaps, and even grounding, but there can be no tolerance for such violence.

Oh good – glad to know that killing a daughter for defying family values is not okay. Glad we got that straight.

Murdering daughters is no more an Islamic value than murdering estranged wives is a Western one. Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart. Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something – boyfriends, lipstick, short skirts, staying out late, dyed hair, body piercings, tattoos and any number of other age-inappropriate enormities.

How very true – and few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who don’t then go on to murder those adolescent daughters. Yes indeed, fathers murder their adolescent daughters by the thousands every day in every city on earth; it’s commonplace; it’s like jaywalking. There can be no tolerance for it of course, but all the same it’s terribly common. So nothing to see here folks, move on.

I don’t see eye to eye with Ali Eteraz here.

[T]he fact that Muslims around the world insist “Islam means peace” is evidence that a vast number of Muslims do not think that Islam means violence.

No…the fact that (many) Muslims insist that Islam means peace is evidence that many Muslims want to think that Islam means peace, and therefore they 1) simply insist that it does and 2) explain away anything that would cast doubt on that thought, either by saying that violence is extremist and aberrant or by saying that what looks to the uncomprehending like violence is actually peace. In short, they rationalize, as people often do about their chosen religion. It’s a mistake to take people’s defensive, often desperate rationalizations as evidence that they actually think what we want them to think. Really: big mistake. If a Christian tells you that Christianity means love, it would be a mistake to assume that that Christian means what you mean by ‘love.’ Christians will insist that Jesus was all about love then when you cite chapter and verse of Jesus getting quite hostile, they will say ‘Oh that was because he was angry with the Pharisees’ and go right on believing that Jesus was all about love.

Further, when a Muslim does commit something nasty against fellow human beings, and other Muslims decry this person as an “extremist”, this is evidence that a vast number of Muslims find brutish behaviour worth distancing themselves from. This too is a good thing. At the least, it shows that most Muslims share in the universal definitions of good and bad.

How does Eteraz know that ‘other Muslims’ are ‘a vast number of Muslims’ and how do the ‘a vast number of Muslims’ suddenly become ‘most Muslims’? How did we get from other to vast number of to most? Since the numbers are all left vague, we have no clue.

[W]hat is honesty to a secular humanist is psychological devastation to a believer. If a woman-respecting, non-violent, cool-headed Muslim says that he is a good person despite Islam, he would essentially be saying that Islam is irrelevant to his existence. A believer would never say that. He will chalk up his successes to his faith. He will insist that his faith galvanised every good thing in his life.

Some Muslims, in fact half of them, are women themselves as opposed to ‘woman-respecting’ men, but leave that aside for the moment. We know all that (we ‘secular humanists,’ though I’d rather be called an atheist, please), but that’s the problem. Defending the religion comes first, and truth or reality or unpleasant facts come second; the latter have to be made to fit the former, not the other way around. ‘A believer’ has to be able to credit his ‘faith’ for every good thing, therefore the believer will simply insist that the religion is the source of goodness no matter what evidence there might be that it’s not; the result is that whatever belongs to the religion is by definition good, necessarily; thus the believer is unable to judge what is good and what isn’t, and thus bad things are labeled good while remaining bad. That’s the danger of that way of thinking; that’s the danger of having sacrosanct protected ideas or beliefs that can’t be thought about without psychological devastation.

At the end of the piece Eteraz tells us of the contortions believers resort to in order to explain away a Koranic verse on flogging. But the verse remains – and people who like flogging remain, and people who want divine sanction for flogging remain, so what good is it twisting oneself into a pretzel to pretend that flogging is really a kind of massage? Not much.