Dr. Gudrun Eussner, an economic and social expert in international development programmes with long-term experience in the Middle East;

Dr. Nancy Kobrin, affiliated professor to the University of Haifa, Arabist, psychoanalyst and author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh's New Clothes:  Islamic Suicide Terror and What It's Really All About;

and

Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz, a scholar of Islamic Studies and author of two books on the subject of women in Islam, Allahs Schleier - die Frau im Kampf der Kulturen (Allah's Veil - Women in the Clash of Civilization) and Allahs Frauen - Djihad zwischen Demokratie und Scharia (Allah's Women - Jihad Between Democracy and Sharia);

FP: Dr. Gudrun Eussner, Dr. Nancy Kobrin, Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz and Seyran Ates, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Hatin Surucu is Berlin's latest victim of “honor” killing. We would like to dedicate this symposium to her memory. Let’s take a moment of silence to think about Hatin and all the persecuted women that she represents under the tyrannical structures of gender apartheid.

(moment of silence)

Dr. Raddatz, let me begin with you.

Let’s start with a little quick overview of this tragic and frightening phenomenon. Why are the occurrence of honor killings rising in Europe and in the rest of the West and from what dark sources does this terrible misogynist crime stem?

Raddatz: In the first two volumes of the new UN-sponsored 'Encyclopaedia of Women in Islamic Cultures' (EWIC) mostly female authors contribute to the subject of power and violence executed by men over and against women. Some of them arrive at very interesting results. They show that over the centuries the jurists and theologians of Islam have widened the rules of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition into an unlimited licence, some sort of blank cheque, for men to handle women as they deem appropriate. Legally, women appear as beings between personal subjects and material objects. Therefore, they are at the disposal of their husbands who are entitled to the unlimited usage of their bodies. Marriage is a contract - as literally expressed in some countries - "to use the sexual organ" for reproduction and personal pleasure. The human rights of sexual self-determination and choice of husband are widely unknown and rare exceptions in practical life.

So the uniting band of all Islamic cultures is simultaneously the top human right in Islam. It is male and comprises the authority of husbands as well as fathers and brothers who guard what they call the "chastity" of their daughters and sisters. Veiling and domestic arrest secure the so-called "honor" which then equals the human right to female obedience, unlimited readiness for sexual intercourse and punishment in case of disobedience. For the Western mind this is seen as violent abuse, but in Muslim law it forms one of the central regulations securing not only the "honor" but the Islamic state as such. This leads to the first question of why violence and "honor killings" are currently increasing to an alarming extent, not only in the West but also and particularly in the Islamic region.

EWIC bases its findings on quite recent UN statistics which show an exorbitant increase of violence in the Arab world. Meanwhile beating, rape and killing of women occur in every third family and, most disquietingly, out of this third almost one third again are rapes in the family, i.e. incestuous actions against women and children. These figures are similarly confirmed for Turkey, an allegedly secular country. 

In some Islamic countries like Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan you normally walk free if you rape a woman who appears in the public unaccompanied by males. We see a massive abuse of collective politico-religious rules widened into the blank cheque of individual male power over female objects. This is what I call the "counter-ethics" of modern Islam, mainly propagated by Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. Western politics, however, soften this phenomenon into verbal patterns like "the Islam is not the problem", the "great respect for the Muslim mother" and so on. Using this "method", German officials, e.g. in the Department of the Interior, even try to talk away the existence of forced marriages, pretending normal circumstances in the local ghetto situation and advocating the veil, of course. Doing so, they cancel the application of constitutional rights, sponsor the rise of Shariatic rules and degrade the victims of the recent "honor killing" wave in Europe.

FP:  Dr. Eussner?                               

Eussner: Thank you, Jamie. I would like to stress that to my opinion the so-called honor-killings have nothing to do with the honor of women, man or families. The term is misleading into the wrong direction of moral and ethics.

As Mr. Raddatz has mentioned, this "honor" is securing the Islamic state as such, and, may I add, the Islamic Ummah worldwide. The Islamic state has to be strengthened and the Ummah in non-Islamic countries expanded by all Muslims, not only by Islamists, either through conversion or war.

Questions will arise in Muslim men such as

·      Who are the ones telling me, that Allah is the highest and only legislator?

·      Who is deciding, that the Sharia and the political system I am living in are the correct way of Islamic life?

·      Who is legitimated by whom to speak in the name of Allah?

·      Why am I not entitled to having my own ideas about my religion and the political system in my country?

Being allowed to answer such ordinary questions would lead the Muslim rulers, teachers, institutions, the whole system into big troubles. A strong Sharia will avoid this kind of questions and problems arising from that.

Explaining to a man, that he will never be the one having any chance to participate in the political process of his country or community, one has to give surrogates to him. One of these is the necessity for women to obey to their husbands, fathers and brethren.

As information of all kind is inundating the world via the internet it is becoming more and more difficult for the rulers to maintain their absolutistic system without increasing the repression. This is leading to an increase of repression of Islamic societies all together but specially of the female part of them.

FP: Ok, so radical Islam is feeling threatened by the growth of freedom and liberty all around the world and it now feels that it is being encircled by it, especially with the reality of the internet, etc. Therefore, to retain its vicious and sadistic power structure, it ferociously inflicts violence, not only on the symbols of freedom outside of it, but also on the symbol of freedom inside of it (i.e. the notion of women’s equality and all the threat that it poses to tyrannical structures.)

One of the best methods by which radical Islam can contain its despotic hold on its own culture, therefore, is to enslave the female gender and to simultaneously try to make its powerless males feel powerful by allowing them vicious tyranny over women. And, therefore, we have honor killings.

In this paradigm, it becomes clear why militant Islam despises moderate Muslims so much, and detests their support of a tolerant and pluralistic Islam, since this poses such a vital danger to the hold that Islamists want on their society. I think it is crucial to point out, therefore, that there are Muslim groups such as The Free Muslims Against Terrorism and The Center for Islamic Pluralism that have dedicated themselves to working for an Islam that rejects extremism and gender apartheid, and therefore threatens the foundation on which Islamism stands. If organizations  such as these influence the international Muslim community to such an extent that honor killings become completely delegitimized, then the Islamists will lose their footing and, not only lose control over their own societies, but will, obviously, also lose this terror war. In this context, I think it is vital for us to work with Muslims who are making an effort to fight for an Islam where honor killings and the philosophy that spawn them are delegitimized.

In any case, let’s return to the psychology that engenders the pathology of honor killings. But let’s also keep in mind that this is obviously not only an Islamic phenomenon. Of course it is a mass crime being perpetrated in the Arab-Islamic world and we must highlight its sources in Islam and in tribal structures -- just as we must work to focus on the Islamic sources and traditions that hopefully have the potential to discredit it and to defeat it. So while we honestly analyze the roots of this horrible crime within the Arab-Islamic world, can we also touch on its presence in non-Islamic structures, which reveals that this is also, obviously, a man-created misogynist crime that exists outside of any one particular religion or creed.

Dr. Kobrin go ahead.

Kobrin: Thank you for including me.  Honor killing is lethal domestic violence. It is displaced murderous rage projected on to a female who represents in fantasy the murderer’s mother. The male feels shamed and terrified of being completely dependent.

In a dysfunctional family, it is a strategy to control by force. The family purges itself of its rage by killing the female scapegoat. I agree with Dr. Eussner that honor killing has nothing to do with honor, rather it masks this shame and humiliation.  While there is great love for the Muslim mother, the male harbors unconscious murderous rage towards her as can be seen by the way he treats other women expressed by the sayings:

“A man’s honor lies between the legs of a woman.” “ Woman is shame.”  “Shame is worse than hell.” “ It is better to die with honor than live with humiliation.” 
 
The little girl is pathologically controlled. Her chastity is obsessively guarded. It is naïve to think that growing up under a death threat, she gains a healthy sense of self.
 
Lacking power, she experiences a sense of it when she gives birth to her first male baby and receives her kunya, her honorific name which fuses the word umm, mother with the baby’s: Ex. Umm Usama.  For a devalued female turned mother, she has power over her baby who is completely dependent upon her for everything. The mother lives through her son. Often a little sister thinks that her eldest brother is married to their mother because he is the favorite and charged with carrying out the honor killing.
 
Ummah also comes from the same root as umm. The image of the mother looms large. The bond between mother-baby is unseverable. (cf. S. Temimi, Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood, p. 22) Think of a soccer mom who lives vicariously through her son as she vents her aggression and rage at a game.
 
When an adult is not healthily separated, it leads to identity confusion and lack of self-agency. In order for a society to be free, it needs fully functioning citizens who have agency in order to build social institutions. A word of caution though, no one ever completely separates psychologically from one’s mother. The more shame-based, the more difficult it is to learn to contain one’s rage. Take an Arab Muslim street demonstration – a fused regressed mob venting against its hated object – America and Israel, crowd attempts to gain power a la Masse Und Macht [Crowds and Power, E. Cannetti].
 
The key problem is splitting – creating a love-hate relationship which is unrealistic. Splitting the world into black and white without realizing that life is more about the “greys.”
 
Terrorists are clueless about what they tell us about themselves. Parents teach children violent behavior by age 3. Violence does not care what it is called -- political (Islamic suicide terrorism), criminal (serial killing) or domestic (conjoint murder-suicide or honor killing). Islamic Suicide Bombing is a blend.
 
But why this increase now? Honor killing goes hand in hand with Islamic suicide bombing which I call political honor killing. A few parallels:     

1. Use of scapegoats
2. No word in Arabic for either
3. Murder of the innocent BUT denied
4. The murderer is proclaimed a hero
5. Suicide bombing = murder(s) + suicide
6. Death by immolation
 
Violence spreads like wildfire. With mass media, the communicative circuit between perpetrator and victim runs through the viewer. Terrorism has its own Eros which taps into a time when we were held in the arms of our mothers where pain and pleasure are first learned. That is why the terror is so great and appeasement so prevalent. No one wants to “go there” – that a large part of what we are dealing with concerns the mother and early childhood development.
 
If I haven't convinced you yet, consider a standard practice used in Pakistan to interrogate terrorists as revealed by Rohan Gunaratna, the al Qaeda expert, who recently wrote:  "In the Middle East," says one man familiar with interrogations, "they will bring a suspect's mother to the police station and undress her in front of him.” (cf. R. Gunaratna, "Khalid Sheikh Muhammed the Brain," Playboy Magazine, June 2005, p. 169)

FP: Thank you Dr. Kobrin, this is fascinating stuff. But could you kindly briefly break this down into simple language for me?

Kobrin: They feel trapped by the suffocating exclusive bond with their mothers and therefore hate them and are rageful. They are terrified of abandonment. They wish to murder their mothers but at some level they know that that is wrong so they act out their murderous rage in real time against the innocent.

There is more evidence that points to the mother. Bouyeri who murdered Theo Van Gogh. His sister said that he did it because his mother had recently died. Yassin, the Egyptian suicide bomber in Cairo who jumped off a bridge and detonated. His sister said it was because he too had lost his mother recently.

Often the first encounter with the police for a terrorist is a complaint about domestic violence. Ellen Harris in her book Guarding The Secrets linked Palestinian terrorism to an honor killing by a father of his daughter, here in America. The father was a member of Abu Nidal.

FP: Seyran Ates, your comment please? And tell us a bit about the frightening developments in Germany.

Ates: I don´t really know if honor killing has anything to do with the idea that those people actually want to kill their mother – as Dr. Kobrin seems to suggest. My experience is that honor killing has to do with a very patriarchal structure, which doesn’t accept a right of sexual self-determination -- especially for its female members. For my clients, who are forced married and who live in fear to be killed in the name of honor, it is no matter if "the Islam" allowed or provided for honor killings. As a lawyer I have to deal with "the Islam" in our life and this means that my clients and I have to deal with men who interpret the Qur’an in their own way. That means that they always find a reason why their religion allows them to oppress their wives.

The Turkish community in Berlin is very conservative and traditional, much more than most people in Turkey. So we have a very fast development backwards to a middle-age Islam. The reason is not only the influence from other countries, for example from Arabic countries. The reason is also, because we have very tragic integration politics. Better yet, a so-called integration politics. And we had for a very long time an irresponsible way of thinking about multicultural society. Integration was understood as something which is to live next door to other cultures without criticizing each other.

When we talk about forced marriage and honor killings we have to realize that this is not a new phenomenon. When we talk about Turks and Kurds we can say that we have all these things since we have immigration from Turkey to Germany. But we do not have any statistics. So we can not say that there is an increasing situation. What we have is just that the majority society opens its eyes for those problems. And for something like three years we have a debate about this issue in the public.

There is one very important difference between Turkish and Kurdish community and German society. Turks and Kurds live in a very close social system, there is a big social control of each other. Collective-consciousness of Muslims makes them reject   individualism in Western countries. A lot of Turks and Kurds say "I don´t want my daughter to live like a German" and that means sexual self-determination.

Even the neighbour next door or the greengrocer at the corner, where the family used to go shopping, takes the right to talk about the way how a family behaves to their children (mostly about daughters) and put others under pressure to stay on the right “Islamic” way. Mostly they mean tradition but they themselves call it "this is what our religion tells us". A young man who cannot find acceptance in society and no chance to find any serious part in the majority society is a welcome victim for old-fashioned thinking about honor. His honor is the one and only thing that he has and what gives him the right to use pressure against his sister or wife and power for his own life.

Raddatz: At this stage we seem to agree generally on what I call the counter-ethics of Islam. We can see a vast abuse of women with fast rising violence the major reasons of which have been mentioned: political, legal, and psychological. As for the latter, I should tend a little towards Ms. Ates’ practical interpretation. As Ms. Kobrin has pointed out, there is no question about the difficult relationship between the Muslim son and mother. From a Freudian point of view its Oedipal implications may even explain the incestuous tendencies in the Muslim community. But there can be hardly a doubt about Ms. Eussner's points of the politico-legal dimension as the most important base of the phenomenon.          

Let me add the historical aspect. As Islam primarily is and has always been not a religion but a political ideology, male command over the family and violence against women are and have always been indispensable pillars of the Muslim society. For the modern mind it appears quite strange to follow rules which have not only stayed unchanged since 1400 years ago but have also been continuously confirmed over this long period of time.

When a Muslim male beats, rapes or even kills a woman, we are faced with a deeply rooted behaviour pattern which has picked up as a refreshed fashion now. It is called "honor" because it is supposed to secure male power and prevent the society from falling into "Fitna". This is an Arabic term and means something the Muslim ideology is extremely afraid of, namely disturbance or even upheaval in the community. In other words, keeping women under control saves the "peace of Islam".

Here we have also the practical ground Ms. Ates is talking about:  Every Muslim is entitled to remind his or her "brother or sister in belief" or even obliged to denunciate him or her with the local imam in case an alleged deviation has occurred. Wherever you look up Islamic legal literature in this respect or however you argue in discussions about the subject, you will always meet the pathological reflex of "obedience" the male Muslims are demanding from their women. The problem arising from this has not been understood yet in the West because it is a political combination of "religion" and "custom". Al-Ghazali, for instance, is a theologian who died back in 1111 but is still a very lively and actual authority today. He refined the respective statements of Qur’an and tradition and developed the ideological groundwork. Since then the woman is regarded as an instrument for the unlimited usage of man in order to secure his individual power and pleasure as well as the biological survival and expansion of Allah's collective community.             

If we look at this a little more closely we may find the answer to FP's question why "honor killings" are an Islamic specialty. We will certainly not find it if we continue telling ourselves that we could find violence against women in other cultures, too. The only acceptable form of relativism is to analyze Islamic violence first and then compare it to versions and motivations in other cultures if you then still want to do so. My position in this respect is what my critics are afraid of: the clear explanation of the common band of authentic rules and regulations that force all Muslim believers to build up pressure on their women. This pressure will rise continuously and the situation will deteriorate as long as liberal Muslims are prevented from finding ways to compromise with conflicting modernization aspects. The subject is too complex to be discussed here, though, but sooner or later one will have to go through an in-depth analysis if the so-called "dialogue with Islam" wants to be taken seriously. Until now this "dialogue" has fluctuated between superficial palaver and a myth-like pro-Islamic ideology which in itself resembles Islam because it seems to flee the consequences of modernization, too. One of these consequences is the inescapable necessity to argue on even and moderate terms which above all mean equal rights for women.          

Let me give you one example. From "dialogue merchants", i.e. people living off the business unfolding from the "intercultural industry" in politics, universities, churches and so on, you will hear "that not every Muslim beats women". They put Islamic violence under a well-proven relativistic shelter where it has hibernated unharmed so far. Recently, Ms. Beck, the German government representative responsible for immigration questions, demanded to stop criticizing the killings of women, "otherwise the Muslims will be prevented from integrating into democracy". As long as this kind of incompetent monstrosity is allowed to play an official part not only in German but also in European policy like in England, you may base on the assumption that Sharia law will be regarded as religion and, therefore, stay under the protection of constitutional freedom of religion. In practical terms again, this means that among other specialties sexual repression and physical violence will become an integral, i.e. "democratic" part of Muslim minority life in Germany and other European countries basing on similar interpretations.  

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