—Islamic tribal leader
It is a consummate and compelling love story that takes place in the conservative societal arena of modern-day Amman, Jordan. A couple’s forbidden love (she is Muslim, he is Christian, there is hand holding and two kisses, during secret, albeit chaperoned meetings) is discovered by the girl’s family. The young woman’s actions brings dishonor to her entire family. The only way to remove the stain is to kill her. Her father and brother stab her repeatedly, allowing her to bleed out before an ambulance is called.
Published in 2003, Norma Khouri’s Honor Lost was released at the right time for such a tale. The war in Iraq was on and all eyes were suddenly turned to the Middle East—especially Western eyes—hungry for such an inner glimpse into the “realities” of the region. However, an 18-month investigation revealed that what originally sold as a memoir recounting her childhood friend’s murder at the hands of the girl’s father actually was fiction. Born in Jordan, Khouri moved to Chicago with her family at age three, later married and birthed two children, and in 1999 fled for Australia with the FBI reportedly at her heels regarding a series of possible criminal property transactions.
Contrasting with Khouri’s fiction is the large body of investigative work on the issues surrounding honor killings done by Jordan Times journalist and human rights activist Rana Husseini over the past 15 years. Ironically, a parting note in Khour’s book heralded Husseini as an important force who helped to shed light on Jordan’s honor killings and reprinted—without her permission—her e-mail address. Receiving e-mails from concerned people worldwide, Husseini read Khouri’s book and immediately flagged numerous inaccuracies and falsehoods. Taking her findings to the Jordanian National Committee for Women (JNCW), Husseini was asked to spearhead a page-by-page investigation which eventually uncovered dozens of serious errors with Khouri’s book. These revelations came after Honor Lost sold over 200,000 copies in Australia alone and had been translated into 17 languages.
The JNCW sent the results of the investigation to Khouri’s publishers in the US and Australia. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Random House Australia replied: “Following our discussions with Norma we are satisfied that, while some names and places have been changed to protect individuals’ identities, [Khouri’s book] is a true and honest account of her experiences.” Husseini’s own fact-based book (Murder in the Name of Honor, to be released in the US later this year), submitted to the same publishers before Khouri completed her fictional memoir, was flatly rejected.
In Murder, Husseini tells of returning to Jordan from the US in 1993 where she had received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees, landing a job at the English-language daily the Jordan Times, going on to break taboo and report on the instances and circumstances of honor killings, and eventually becoming an inspiring force behind both the Jordanian and innternational movements to bring attention to, and eliminate such killings.
Her very first article about an honor killing appeared on October 6, 1994, in which Husseini told the story of a young 16 year-old murdered by her older brother. She had been raped and impregnated by a younger brother, then forced to marry a man who divorced her six months later. When she was sent home, her brother tied her to a chair in the family kitchen and stabbed her repeatedly, according to a cultural tradition that says blood must be shed in order to cleanse the family name.
Investigating the murder, Husseini interviewed the girl’s uncles—the actual plotters of the murder—who claimed that the girl had seduced her brother. When questioned as to why the girl would have done such a thing, the uncles attacked Husseini’s Western attire, her college education in America, and accused her of clouding the issue with her Western beliefs. That didn’t stop Husseini. Disturbed by the honor killings, their exceptionally violent nature, and their underlying stories, and incensed to learn that the killers were consistently given lenient sentences, if any at all, and the fact that women who survived honor-related attacks were put in Jordan’s Women’s Correctional and Rehabilitation Center—a prison—for their protection, she turned her focus to Jordan’s judicial system.
In Jordan, a country of approximately six million people with a relatively low murder rate, one-third of all homicides are perpetrated on females in order to cleanse a family’s honor. According to the United Nations, every year 5,000 women—13 per day—are killed for this reason around the world.
Over the last 15 years, with the support of her editors at the Jordan Times, Husseini has continued to break the self-imposed censorship of Jordan’s media regarding honor crimes, reporting on each one she uncovered and later writing follow-up articles alerting readers to the leniency of the courts toward the killers. Husseini was the only reporter in Jordan to cover honor crimes before the issue reached the international stage, and she since has won several national and international awards, including the 1995 MEDNEWS prize award for best article “Murder in the Name of Honor,” the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998, the Human Right’s Watch Award in 2000 for being part of the National Jordanian Committee to Eliminate So-called Crimes of Honor, The Ida B. Wells award in 2003 for Bravery in Journalism (WomensENews), Marie Claire’s Top Ten Woman of the World Award in 2004, and the Spanish Ciutat de L’Hospitalet Award for the Defense of Human Rights and Peaceful Coexistence in 2005.
Perhaps more importantly, stories that had been previously reported simply as “murders” are now appropriately defined and reported on as “honor killings.”
Due to your reporting, you have become one of the most reliable sources of information on honor crimes in Jordan, and have helped to bring international attention to the debate on honor killings and how Jordanian law supports the killers. What made you decide to write the book?
I am working to produce something accurate, objective, and comprehensive. In the book I talk about the problem in Jordan, about the problem worldwide, about the roots of these crimes, the social factors behind them, about the issue from all its aspects—religious, social, legal. I am hoping it will be the most comprehensive reference book on the topic, putting the problem into perspective with recommendations as to what can be done both locally and internationally to minimize the cause of the problem.
Can you define honor killing?
A so-called honor crime occurs when the family of a female decides to kill the female relative because, in their point of view, she has tarnished her family’s reputation or honor. The tarnishing can be represented by many actions. One is that the female becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she is a victim of rumor, incest, rape, or she wants to marry a man of her own choice. Sometimes she is killed for financial reasons. The woman has assets and the family member or members want her to give it up or get it as inheritance. Sometimes she is killed just for talking to a strange man, or being caught in a brothel, or engaging in a relationship. Many times she is found to be a virgin.
One of the first stories you covered was that of an honor killing. This event seems to have directed your life ever since.
Exactly. That story was very horrifying to me because the girl was only 16 years old. At that time I had no idea about these crimes or thought that I would be covering these crimes. I wanted to work for women, but I never thought I’d be working on honor crimes. The story was really shocking. A 16-year-old school girl was killed by one of her brothers after another brother had raped her. A victim maybe six times, she was raped, her [rapist] brother tried to kill her, she survived, then they married her off to a man 35 years her senior, she had a secret abortion, and then her family killed her. Look how many times she was a victim, and she was only 16. An intellectual Jordanian woman who worked in a high position and had studied abroad called the newspaper screaming that they should stop me from reporting on these crimes because I was tarnishing the image of Jordan. I became even more enraged. I went to talk to the girl’s uncles and they blamed the girl for the rape. I felt that society blames the woman for everything. I wanted to be “her” voice because at that time nobody was reporting about these crimes. When there were reports, they were so very small you could barely find them in the newspapers.
It was taboo to write about these killings in the 1990s. How did you get permission to write about them?
The Jordan Times was different. Published in English, their readership is not as large [as other newspapers] but at the same time we are much more liberal in terms of what we write. We have more liberty. All the editors-in-chief at the paper have always been pro human rights and want to promote anything that could be considered a violation of human rights in Jordan. I have had five editors-in-chief since I began working at the Jordan Times more than 15 years ago in 1993, and they have all been supportive. None of them have ever tried to stop me from reporting or tried to change my interests. On the contrary.
Have there been threats made to you?
I have received many emails sent to me from people living abroad, Arab men living specifically in the US. There are a lot of people in Jordan who are very supportive and there are people who are against me. They want to keep the issue under the covers, they want to keep women under control, they think what I am doing tarnishes the image and reputation of Jordan. We have our culture and traditions and these people live in the past.
You began writing about honor killings in 1994 and almost immediately brought attention to the issue, not just in Jordan but internationally—long before Norma Khouri’s book came out. A movement began to come together in Jordan to address honor crimes.
Yes, it was called The Jordanian National Committee to Eliminate the So-called Crimes of Honor. Changing the laws in Jordan was one of many issues we addressed. We understood that changing the law alone was not going to help. We had to work on changing people’s attitudes, improving services for abused women, finding solutions for women whose lives are under threat—not just to put them in prison. The law is very important but it is not the only solution. Religious figures should openly speak against these crimes, the education system needs to be worked on, and the media needs to work to portray the women in Jordan in a much more balanced manner. We were working to bring awareness, traveling from one governorate to the other talking about the issue, holding lectures, distributing flyers, and going to talk to people in person. It was a very important and interesting experience, for us and the movement. We also broke another taboo. People in the past were scared to sign any petitions. We managed to get 15,400 signatures on a petition that demanded that Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code, which reduces penalties and exempts those who kill or injure in the name of honour, be immediately cancelled.
However, it was not enough. But we were able to raise awareness, the media covered us extensively both in Jordan and abroad, people started to understand more what is a honor crime, that innocent women were in prison, and what the laws are. So it has become a very known topic now among people who did not know it existed before. Attitudes are changing. I did a public lecture last year. Several men stood up at the end of the lecture and told me, “We know that killing our sister is wrong, but sometimes we are forced. How can we avoid doing this?” In the past, when I would give a lecture, men would raise their hands and say, “I would kill my sister, so what.” But now the average person is becoming more aware about this issue. Things are moving. Of course, they will not change overnight.
Especially since honor killing is so embedded in tradition.
Exactly.
In the parliamentary debate regarding changing the laws, critics say, “We don’t want any Western interference. These are Western ideals interfering in Jordanian law and our traditions.” But isn’t the tradition of this law itself Western?
Yes. It was a Western law that was imposed. Legislators took it from the Ottoman and Napoleonic Code. This Article 340 exists in almost all the penal codes all over the world. One part of the law addresses adultery. When a man walks in and finds his wife with another man and kills her—a wife in the rest of the world but not in Jordan, where any female relative is subject to being killed—it is called temporary insanity. My argument with the Jordanian women’s movement is that female lawyers are still insisting Article 340 be abolished even though it is rarely used. But another law, Article 98 is very elastic and could be attached to all the cases I mentioned earlier allowing killers to walk free. A man can say, “I had an argument with my sister because she dated a man, so I killed her.” He can claim he killed her in a “fit of fury” as allowed under Article 98. Article 340 is very specific—if a man walks in and finds his wife with another man and kills her—which is almost impossible to actually happen.
Ferris Nesheiwat has written that, “Jordanian society has demonstrated wilful ignorance of the true principles that govern crime and punishment under Islamic law. If true principles of Islamic law were followed, not a single woman would lose her life because of fornication and no woman would be extra judicially killed.”
That’s my point! Article 340 is very specific and is never used. Article 98 is what needs to be addressed. Also, these crimes happen in Christian societies in this part of the world as well. So it is not exclusively an Islamic crime.
There is also the issue of the time frame. If the husband walks in and sees his wife with another man and kills her, this can be claimed to be a moment of insanity. But in the cases in Jordan, the family actually comes together and plots to kill the female family member. It is a premeditated murder.
Exactly.
You have written about how the fabric of family life is being destroyed.
I believe killing is not the solution. Many families will suffer the consequences even if they don’t think they will or are. One mother told me her son is so depressed, he won’t talk to anyone after killing his sister. He is always alone. The killers are victims as well. I don’t think anyone really wants to kill their sister or beloved or mother. I think many of the killers are victims of wrongful cultures and belief. There is nothing in our culture that says to kill. The problem is, people are hypnotized. When you try to discuss this issue, people say, “This is my culture, my tradition.” But when you look into culture and tradition, it doesn’t say you have to kill.
In the places where the law has been changed to keep the stricter punishments in place, for example, the northern Iraq Kurdistan governorates, honor killings are not as prevalent anymore, but “suicides” among females have risen. In Kurdistan, many women are suspiciously dying due to their bathroom heaters igniting and burning them to death. This adds to your argument that you can’t just address the laws.
Listen, I want to tell you something. All over the world, there are laws. People break these laws. You have executions. You have death penalties. But people still commit crimes. Here in Jordan, if you change the laws, if you make them harsh, it will minimize the problem. But it is not going to end it. People will always find other ways. For me, as an activist and as a journalist who has devoted all my professional life to this topic, the reason I want to change the laws is because I want to reserve the dignity of the lives of women in Jordan. A woman’s life should not be worth three or six months in jail. You can write a bad check and get a much longer sentence than if you kill a woman.
What is the average sentence a killer—a male member of a family who kills a female member of his family—gets for this so-called honor killing?
Honor killers still get three- or six-month prison sentences, but judges are tending to give them longer sentences averaging between three months and 10 years, but 10 years for an honor crime is not usual. The court may decide that the man has lied and give him the death sentence, but in 99.9999 percent of the cases the family drops the charges, so the court immediately drops the sentence to 10 years.
There is the question of females who escape death at the hands of their families but remain under threat of death. Are there any shelters for these women?
There is only one shelter. It opened recently and is run by the government for women who have suffered domestic violence. It does not help women who are being hunted by their families who want to kill them. The shelter has helped some women under threat of death but mostly women who have been abused are sheltered. The shelter is a story on its own. It took them forever to open it. The government first planned to open it in 1997 and its name was finally changed from a shelter to the Family Reconciliation Center. It can house between 35 to 50 women and 36 children.
Women whose families want to kill them are put in prison by the government for their own safety and are not allowed to leave. They must be released into the custody of a male relative who must pay money as a guarantee he will not allow her to be killed. But this is only on paper. They can be legally bailed out, but in the majority of the cases it is because the family wants to kill them. In reality, even if they pay it doesn’t matter. A lot of times, the father will write a guarantee he is not going to harm his daughter and then somebody else kills her. I write about this because the women are kept in prison when it should be the other way around.
How long do these women stay in prison?
I have seen women who have been there for over 15 years. This is unfair. The majority of them have been in prison since they were teenagers. They have wasted their lives, their youth in prison. Some of them say they are already dead. Some think that if they leave they will start a new life, that their family has forgiven them. But of course, this is not the case. There have been between 20 and 40 women in the prison at one time. Half of them have been there long term.
There is no international organization working to help get these women out of the country?
One thing about this point. I think if this would be just a temporary solution it could be considered. There were cases of women who were helped by NGOs and were gotten abroad. But for me this is only a temporary solution. We need to solve this problem internally. If Jordan sends women abroad it means it is avoiding the problem. It’s not okay for a woman to travel safely outside but to die inside her own country.
I agree. But given the choice of spending 15 years in a prison cell—and I assume they are among real criminals—or getting an international organization to put together a system that gets these women out and into college abroad, get educated and eventually go back when it is safe for them to do so. And perhaps even be able to fight with others to change this system themselves. It is such a waste of life—that the victim should be imprisoned.
Exactly. That is something I have also been fighting for and advocating against. I try to highlight the lives of these women because for a long time, people did not know these women even existed.
There is a recent case in Israel where seven women from the same Arab family were killed because of so-called honor crimes. The girl’s mother and sister testified against the son/brother.
This is a precedent. It is very rare to have something like this happen.
Do you think your work had something to do with giving women such courage?
The media attention and the work I think it really paid off. I have been very consistent with how I report on these crimes, reporting on each case I hear about, each court verdict. I’ve written about the women who are put in prison for their own safety. I’ve been doing the same work for 15 years. As far as the women’s movement, the problem all over the world is that the work is seasonal. At one point there is excitement and they want to address honor crimes. Then other issues come up and they decide to talk about something else. The priorities here shifted, unfortunately, for many people since 2000, when the second Intifada started. Our group stopped working on honor crimes, got more involved in politics and what was going on in Palestine. Then there was 9/11, and after 9/11, the war on Iraq. But overall, I think the work has produced a lot of awareness.
Is there any movement today in Jordan—besides your work—to address honor killings?
There are three groups on Facebook. They called for a march but it did not happen. I might start an NGO after the book comes out because there are a lot of young Jordanian people who send me e-mails and are excited to do something, but they don’t know where to go or what to do. For a long time I did not want to open an NGO because I thought I was more effective with the way I was reporting, the activism and the lecturing. But I think I will have to open an NGO because there are so many people who want to do something and there is no one uniting them. I don’t know what to do either, but the only way to begin to deal with this is to open an NGO that specializes in dealing in this issue.
Beat reporters usually don’t get paid very much. What makes you keep doing this work?
Listen, in addition to all the rewards I have received from doing this work, I know I have saved people’s lives. I know that for sure. Knowing this helps me to sleep at night. All my work, my activism, my lecturing has saved someone’s life, and this means the world to me.
Rana Husseini will be in the US this month on a speaking and advocacy tour. On April 14, she will be part of a panel discussion in Washingston, DC on “Filling in Gaps in Understanding the Nature of Femicide: Strengthening Information and Advocacy.” For more infomation, contact Monique Widyono ([email protected]). Husseini will also be speaking at New York University in Manhattan later that week. For more information: Visit www.chronogram.com.
