In The Name of Honor? Rethinking The Honor Killing by Further Reflections on Honor

• Main Authors: Wu, Yi-Chen, 吳依臻
• Other Authors: Chiou, Der-Liang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/54127949328884812032

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 社會與文化研究所 === 98 === Abstract With the raising of feminine writing of Islam, medias are also disclosing the problems of honor killings increasingly which has been endangering the existence of Muslim women. According to the definition of Amnesty International, these killings are often undertaken when a family council decides on the time and form of execution due to an allegation, suspicion, or proof of sexual impropriety by the victim. By killing the girl who was deemed to have harmed the family’s reputation, they shed the relationship with shame and recalled the honor again. Considering the reason of this phenomenon, some people thought that it’s a religion problem and indicated that women were treated harshly, unequally in Islam. However, in the process of my research, I would like to argue this problem as a way of patriarchal culture which was constructed through the fundamental principle of the distinction of sex, the division between active male and passive female. Appearing as social relation of domination, the sexual relation has been reproduced in economics, moral discourse and conceptual interpretation. Through the relationship of complementary - independent man and dependent woman perpetuates the interests and power of agnation. It reinterprets the phenomenon that has long puzzled observers of Arab social relations: the dishonor brought on kin by a ‘woman’s’ conduct. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said that as an Iranian Muslim, what against human right and woman’s right not the problem of Islam but patriarchal culture is. Sita Lazenby who wrote the book “The Honour Killings” expressed her view in the preface “the problem of honour killings is not a problem of morality or of ensuring that women maintain their own personal virtue; rather, it is a problem of domination, power…. ”To response this statement, I start to think “Is this an Honor Killing? or just a Patriarchal Killing?” “Is it true that killing someone only based on ‘honor’?” In this thesis, taking honor killing as a beginning of thinking, we are going to consider the power, domination and the gender politics which were behind the events. Through the object of this text and rethinking of honor, violence, we would find out more power relations within gender which have been hidden in identity or moral ideology. Keywords: Gender Politics, honor, Muslim women