Where’s the honour?

I’m going to be completely honest, I had “tried and convicted” Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Yahya and Hamed Shafia the moment I heard the bodies of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, and Rona Mohammad Amir had been found in the Shafia family car, submerged in the Rideau Canal on June 30, 2009. Maybe some of you are nodding as you read this, because you did the same thing. You heard the story. Processed the “breaking news” information and mumbled, “Come on. We all know who did this.” The media fuelled the fire, for weeks, with innuendo and conjecture. Media does that, you know.

On Sunday, January 29, 2012, the “media” announced the Shafia trial jury found the defendants, Mohammad and Hamed Shafia and Tooba Yahya, guilty of first degree murder in the deaths of those four women. The Shafias and Yahya were sentenced to 25 years in prison without a chance of parole. While an appeal is possible, it isn’t likely to be granted, according to legal authorities and, of course, “the media.” I believe justice was served in this case. This isn’t a rant about our Canadian justice system. However, if I could make myself feel better about the gut feeling I had in 2009, brought on by “the media, ” I’d take a very generous cup or two of that medicine; but there isn’t a remedy. The evening news on July 1, 2009, painted a picture of a “suspicious incident.” I heard a media newsreader say the Shafia family were Muslims, fairly new to Canada, and the four women might be victims of honour killings. My mind went into overdrive. I was incensed by the notion of a so-called honour killing even though, at that point in time, it was just a media report. Indeed, the forensic investigation hadn’t even begun, or for that matter, been called for. The City of Kingston police were still scratching their heads wondering what could have happened.

After the news hit the fan, LOML and I talked about “honour killings” and, like a lot of people, we struggled to understand how a family member could kill another for the sake of family honour. Ya, ya, I still remember and understand as a parent, how angry I could become when one of my kidlets committed some kind of social faux pas or worse. One by one, my kids became teenagers and struggled (sometimes noisily) with curfews, school work, expectations, responsibilities, relationships and the curse of having the world’s most OTL parents. I felt their pain and, on more than one occasion, I dearly wanted to inflict a bit of pain upon the teenaged culprit of the moment. I may even have quietly wished I lived in my world as a person without children. If you’ve got kids, you know what I mean. Hallmark Moments were few and far between during the dreaded teenage years. I might have raised my voice once or twice, revoked privileges and withheld an allowance or two. A kid’s job is to test a parent’s patience. Right? I am right.

So, back to what’s bothering me. And there, definitely, is something nipping away. I closed my eyes after hearing the verdict on Sunday and wondered if I had tried and convicted Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Yahya and Hamed Shafia because of their ethnicity and “the media” stories we’ve all heard of “honour killings.” On many more occasions than I can recount, stories of “honour killings” were brought to light by the media and, with few exceptions, women were being murdered by family—usually a male—for bringing a supposed shame upon the “public worthiness” of the family. Again, in almost all cases, it was a Muslim male deemed to be guilty of the crime.

Maybe “the media” should just stop calling cold-blooded murders “honour killings.” There is no honour in an act of violence. I’ll work on my biases. The media might consider removing the phrase, “honour killings,” from their style guide.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca