Canadians are debating how to correctly describe the Shafia murders — is it domestic violence or honour killing?

The debate represents a fundamental divide in the way the Shafia trial is being interpreted.

Some, like Saleha Khan, board member of the London-based Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration, believe that domestic violence is the issue in this case.

“The essence is that it's the man's sense of control,” said Khan. “It's unfortunately something that could be anywhere,” she said.

“In certain communities, it will be called a crime of passion,” she said, “but for others it will be an honour killing.”

Many agree with her.

MP Rona Ambrose tweeted, “Honour motivated violence is NOT culture, it is barbaric violence against women. Canada must never tolerate such misogyny as culture.”

Similarly, Laura Babcock, president of Powergroup, a communications firm, tweeted, “Killing women and girls because they are female is femicide NOT Honor Killing.”

Yet others say the Shafia murders are honour killings.

“This is a real issue,” said Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a non-profit advocacy group.

“Honour killing is the logical extreme of the belief that suggests men are the guardians,” he said.

Fatah says his concern is that Canadian political correctness is getting in the way of a frank discussion of the problem: that some Muslims consider women the possession of men.

“If these four women were white women, they would still be alive today,” he said.

“If a white student would go to the principal or the police and say they would be beaten up, no one would go to their parents and say ‘can you repeat what you said to us?' These girls went to the school, the cops, child services and everyone wanted to protect multiculturalism — not the lives of these young women,” Fatah said.

Semantics aside, most say the Superior Court's guilty verdict was the right one.

“This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy,” said lead prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis outside court on Sunday.

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“The government has realized that they should not entertain any defence with a strong honour crime theme,” said Amin Muhammad, a professor of psychiatry at Memorial University in St. John's and author of a Canadian study on honour killings, to the Montreal Gazette.

“They have treated this on par with any murder, and that's the beauty of this verdict.”