It is late here in Baghdad but I’m waiting for the hot water tank to fill back up as my sister took a long shower and then decided to wash her white clothes in a long wash. How annoying! But how lucky I am that this is the thing that is bothering me right now: waiting for my shower. As a young woman, I could have much worse problems on my mind.



What are honor killings?

Here in Iraq, we have a major problem with acts called honor killings, or homicides of family members because that person has brought “dishonor” upon the family. Honor killings are almost always perpetrated against women but have also been carried out against gay (or suspected to be gay) men. Honor killings are a manifestation of patriarchy and a type of male violence.

Family members always blame the victim for the murder. Their reasons might include a woman:

refusing to submit to male authority figures, usually within that family

dressing inappropriately

having sex before marriage, or even the accusation by a husband that she has had sex before the wedding

committing adultery

being a victim of rape, especially if that rape results in pregnancy

refusing arranged marriage (though this reason is more common in South Asia than my home country of Iraq)



seeking divorce

contacting a man outside the family

Or even just rumors of the things above.

In addition to blatant homicide, families might punish a woman by coercing her to commit suicide or forcing her to flagellate herself to death, starving her, forcing an abortion or removing her children, female genital mutilation, or altering the hymen as if to show she has not had sex.

Men can be victims of honor killings if they are gay or assumed to be gay. Certain actions, such as acting “womanly” or effeminate, are thought to indicate homosexuality. I will offer some more critical thoughts on this point later in this post.

Are honor killings legal in Iraq?

Well… sort of. Article 409 of the Iraqi Penal Code states:

Any person who surprises his wife in the act of adultery or finds his girlfriend close female relative in bed with her lover and kills them immediately or one of them or assaults one of them so that he or she dies or is left permanently disabled is punishable by a period of detention not exceeding 3 years. It is not permissible to exercise the right of legal defense against any person who uses this excuse nor do the rules of aggravating circumstance apply against him.

[Short Arabic lesson: though this translation says “girlfriend,” the more accurate translation is “close female relative” as the Arabic word in the written law محارم (ma-HAR-im) is the plural form of محرم (maH-ram) which literally means “unmarriageable” or “forbidden to marry due to blood relationship.” This is from the root حرم (harima) which means “to be forbidden,” which is also where the Arabic word حرام (har-AM), or “forbidden/prohibited” comes from. So girlfriend is rather inaccurate since a close blood female relative would certainly not be someone’s girlfriend.]

Note the patriarchal language: “ Any person who finds his wife in the act of adultery or finds his close female relative in bed with her lover.” This says:

Men are considered people and women are possessions. The “his” pronoun indicates the man as the person and the woman as his possession. (This is just as clear in Arabic.)

A man can kill a woman and receive a reduced sentence, but the reverse is not true. A female murderer will not be taken into consideration under this statute.

A man has property-type jurisdiction over “his close relative” which is then indicated as female by “her lover.” A man can murder the women in his family if he catches them having sex.

There is no stipulation in the law for men killing men. The victim is assumed to be a woman.

So honor killings aren’t exactly legal, but there is a specific law that limits the sentence for a man who murders a woman in his family if she is caught having sex outside of marriage.

Two large regions within Iraq have exceptions:

Since 2008, the law in Kurdistan has demanded treating honor killings like any other homicide.

I can’t find specific data, but making a reasonable guess from reports available, the “law” in the Islamic State in Iraq leaves honor crimes unpunished.



In practice, family who commit these murders are unlikely to face any legal consequences. Most experts believe honor killings are unreported or reported as other types of death like suicide. Because of the overarching sexist culture, people are unlikely to report their relatives and neighbors for such crimes. And if the authorities do find out, that same culture means they might not even care. Other times, family members will force a younger son to perform the murder (or blame him for it) so that he will be released from prison sooner. If men ever see prison time, they are often seen as heroes once they are released.

During Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party’s regime, Iraq was at first very secular. For instance, homosexuality was not illegal (but also not very accepted). However, when Saddam felt his power slipping, he began using Islam more in the government. He legalized honor killings in 1995 against women and gay men and used his own personal army called Fedayeen Saddam to carry out public executions. In 2001, he changed the law to demand the death penalty for adultery, prostitution, sodomy, and rape. This law was supposed to be undone after the Americans overthrew Saddam, but many people just ignore the new laws if they don’t like them.

How many people in Iraq are victims of honor killings?

It’s kind of hard to say, as honor crimes are under-reported and recent and specific statistics are not readily available, especially from the Islamic State in Iraq.

Honor killings are most prevalent in Iraqi Kurdistan, but they also occur in other parts of Iraq, most specifically in rural areas (though city numbers are growing as people from Northern Iraq flee to the cities for safety, and then apparently murder their family members).

According to the Free Women’s Organization of Kurdistan, in 2014, more than 6,000 women were murdered or forced to commit suicide, and many of those were honor killings. That is almost equal to the total number of Peshmerga killed fighting ISIS in 2014.

Furthermore:

As many as 133 women were killed in the Iraqi city of Basra alone in 2006. 79 were killed for violation of “Islamic teachings” and 47 for honor, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Amnesty International says that armed groups, not the government, also kill politically active women and those who did not follow a strict dress code, as well as women who are perceived as human rights defenders.17-year-old Du'a Khalil Aswad, an Iraqi girl of the Yazidi faith, was stoned to death in front of a mob of about 2000 men in 2007, possibly because she was allegedly planning to convert to Islam.

Are honor killings in Iraq specific to one group?

No, nor are honor killings specific to Iraq.

Honor killings within Iraqi occur most frequently per capita in Kurdistan, as does female genital mutilation, but honor killings do happen elsewere. Some important things about Kurdistan and the Kurds:

Kurdistan is a region that is the historic home of the Kurdish people with parts in modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds have their own language and customs. In Iraq, Kurdistan is an autonomous region.



The Kurds are an ethnic group and not a religious group. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslim but there are Shia, Christian, and Zoroastrian Kurds, as well as Yazidis who practice a more ancient religion mixed with Abrahamic faiths.



Not all Kurds are conservative by any means. Many of them are socialists and fight with militias like Peshmerga against ISIS. This includes women.



However, the city of Basra which is referenced above has a Shia Arab majority by far. Also, ISIS is a Sunni fundamentalist group with a core group of Arab leaders, and they kill anyone who will not obey them and exercise extreme patriarchy. I cannot find data on other groups such as Iraqi Christians, but I would reasonably guess that in rural, conservative areas, honor killings would be present.

The evidence supports that honor killings are a regional problem across religious and ethnic groups. The two elements these different groups have in common are geography and patriarchal systems that promote male violence.

International data supports this idea. Honor killings are present in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, admittedly in Muslim-majority countries. They have spread from those countries to Europe and the Americas mostly with immigrants who bring their cultures with them.

Also, just because other regions and cultures do not use the “honor killing” label doesn’t mean similar murders do not occur. In the United States, the most likely cause of death for pregnant women is homicide.

These aren’t exactly the same, and I’m not going to pretend they are to make a point. (That’s actually what I like about gender-critical feminism. It analyzes specific physical facts and real situations rather than imaginary concepts.) Honor killings more specifically demonstrate the man’s desire to purify his public image by killing a woman who acts out. In other parts of the world, these killings are usually personal acts of revenge. (So are honor killings, but most other murders do not have that public aspect, with maybe the exception of murder-suicide.)

However, they are instances of severe domestic violence, which is a specific type of male violence. (Yes, I know women can be violent too, but the problem we are addressing here is male violence against family members, so please don’t derail.)

In any country, women are more likely to be killed by a male partner or family member than anyone else. If we set aside the label “honor killing” and examine these crimes for their motivations, we see a pattern. Patriarchy, male violence, jealousy, control, manipulation, male hegemony, hypermasculinity.

Are gay men killed in honor killings?

Yes. Gay men and men suspected of being gay are killed in similar ways.

From Wikipedia:

Since 2005 there have been reports that the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq’s Badr Organization has been involved in death squad campaigns against LGBT Iraqi citizens, and that they are supported in these policies by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. New barbaric attacks, with 90 victims, are reported in the first months of 2012. These reports seem to stem from a fatwa issued by Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani stating that homosexuality and lesbianism are both “forbidden” and that they should be “Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing”.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is the spiritual leader of Shia Muslims in Iraq, but again, this trend does not happen only with Shia Muslim groups. ISIS, a Sunni group who also murder or enslave Shia Muslims for being “infidels,” has the death penalty for homosexuality.

Homophobia is almost universal in Iraq. Usually gay men are targets and the entire concept of lesbianism is ignored. Iraqis know what lesbians are, but perhaps because women do not have the same agency as men to perform homosexual acts in the first place (for example because women are more likely to be married off to a man much younger) people can ignore that lesbians exist and they probably know some.

Technically, homosexuality in Iraq is not illegal (but same-sex marriage is not permitted at all) but when religious leaders are calling for the immediate execution of gay men, this doesn’t matter. Penal code 409 which is stated above does not mention killing men but people do it anyway and they know they will not face legal consequences.

The penal code is also silent on cross-dressing, but this does not mean that men who dress in traditionally women’s clothing or do other feminine things are safe. Iraqis treat this as a sign of homosexuality and use that to justify honor killings. For example, military groups targeted men with the Western “emo” style which they thought was feminine and murdered them for being gay.

It is no secret to gender-critical feminists that the hatred of gay men is connected to the hatred of women. A man who has sex with another man is “like a woman” (especially if he is the one penetrated) and in patriarchy, a woman is the worst thing to be. Therefore men who “behave” like women by having sex with men or dressing like women or basically doing anything misogynists find womanly are deserving of death.

Homosexuality also threatens the patriarchy because it changes the atmosphere of the family. Men have power over the women in their lives, especially their wives within the domestic area. They affirm themselves through this control and use things like honor killings as a way to display their masculinity to other people. Since homosexuality changes the domestic relationship, it shows other men a situation where they do not have the same power, and that frightens them.

Honors killings against women and gay men are perpetrated by men. Sometimes, older women in a family, especially in-laws, will condone and assist in the killing. However, I cannot find any reported incidents of only women performing an honor killing.

Why don’t we discuss honor killings more?

People do discuss honor killings, but often in the wrong way. They are used to criticize Islam and Muslims (which is fair, given that many Muslim men use their religion to justify the killings) but this leaves out victims who are not Muslims and more importantly ignores the problem of patriarchy.

Western men want to believe they would not do something so “barbaric” but the statistics say otherwise. The hatred of women is global so we need to talk about honor killings with this in mind. Of course we should be extremely critical of this problem in Iraq but without looking patriarchy in the face, we cannot have that proper criticism.

We need to look at the problem realistically, using physical facts:

Women, from birth, are placed lower in society than men.



Women who defy men through almost any action must be “punished.”



This manifests in male violence against women, including murders/honor killings.



This violence is permitted by culture. In Iraq, it is even protected by law.



Men who are thought to be like women are also subject to this violence.

Without seriously talking about these problems, the violence is not going to end. We cannot treat the manifestations of patriarchy without taking apart patriarchy as an entire system.