Western Resistance

Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud had given her teenage daughter a razor, so she could slash her wrists voluntarily. But that did not persuade the girl, Rofayda, to commit suicide.

Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother, no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick.

Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor."
The guilty brothers are in jail.

The report states that the mother spent four months in jail, and while her case undergoes review, she is now at home. The sons aged 20 and 22, are serving a minimum 10 years' jail for the crime. Rofayda gave birth to a boy at a hospital in Bethlehem, and the child has since been adopted.

So how can it be right for one man who is approaching death to be expected to be kept alive on religious grounds, yet it is more "honorable" to expect a raped teenager to commit suicide, and to be murdered when she refuses? Both are Muslim, both are supposed to follow the teachings laid down in the Holy Book, the Koran, and its interpreted meanings, as laid down in the Hadith.

Suicide is a sin in Islamic ideology. When two suicide bombers were arrested in London recently, they were on a high balcony of an apartment block. To avoid being interrogated, they could have jumped, and killed themselves. After all, they had planned to do away with their own lives (and those of others). They did not wish to die through suicide, because then the gates of Paradise would not have been opened for them.

In the case of the Pakistani man from Scotland, his family insisted it was a religious right for his life to be kept going. I do not begrudge them that desire at all. I understand the desire to prolong the life of a loved one. I hope they find peace within their sad situation.

But the poor girl's feelings were never even considered. Her soul was expendable. By committing suicide, she would have denied her soul the right to Heavenly reward. By being murdered, she was denied the most basic of human rights, the right to life.

The JWR report states that in Israel there have been 18 such killings over the past three years, and in 2002 alone there were 31 recorded cases of honour killings in areas under Palestinian jurisdiction. In the case of the Qaoud family, one of her three children who remain at home stated:

"My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people," Fatima explains with a shy smile. Leaning into Qaoud's arms, the little girl adds: "I love my mother much more now than before."

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It is a contradictory state of affairs, where the lives of girls are seen to be lower than the lives of boys. I doubt if the Qaoud family's supporters will wish to see the two adult sons, who committed the crime that initiated this tragedy, murdered in the same way as Rofayda. The victim of abuse is made to suffer the ultimate penalty, but those whose actions led to her death are male. In Iran, a girl can be legally executed (and be married) at age 9, but boys do not get the legal punishment of execution until they are 15.

Until such situations are challenged or reversed, I will never truly believe that people in Islamic societies who follow their traditions really have much respect for life at all.