In a sense, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a political and cultural version of an honor killing. Bhutto was the first woman Prime Minister of a Muslim nation and she symbolized an unacceptably Western form of female ambition and achievement. She had attended Harvard/Radcliffe and Oxford. She spoke English–perhaps more fluently than she spoke her native Sindi or Urdu. She once dressed as Western women do. Indeed, many Muslim women from wealthy families, including educators and feminists, have done so for a long time. They cannot do so now.
I am suggesting that, as a member of the Ummah (or larger Muslim collectivity), Islamist fanatics decided that Bhutto was unacceptably and publicly too-Western, and they sentenced her to death for this sin.
Pakistan is known for its many bloody honor murders and other atrocities.
In 1999, in Lahore, Pakistan, Samia Imran was shot dead in her feminist lawyer’s office by a man whom her parents had hired to kill her. Her crime? Daring to seek a divorce.
In 2001, in Gujar Khan, Pakistan, Zahida Perveen’s husband attacked her, gouged out both her eyes, her nose, and her ears. He wrongly suspected her of adultery. His male relatives honored him for doing so. (A team of American doctors subsequently fitted Zahida with glass eyes and prostheses for her ears and nose).
In 2002, a tribal council in the Punjab, in Pakistan, sentenced eighteen year-old Mukhtaran Bibi to be gang-raped as a punishment for something her twelve year-old brother had allegedly done: Walking with a girl from a higher-status tribe. (Actually, he had been sexually abused by Mastoi men who sought to cover up their crime in this way). Mukhtaran Bibi’s father was forced to witness her gang-rape, after which she was driven naked through the streets. Amazingly, the gang-rapists were eventually arrested and convicted. Mukhtaran Bibi was given round-the-clock government protection. The rapists have vowed to kill her anyway.
Did Benazir Bhutto think that her membership in a historic dynasty would protect her from the war against women that jihadists are currently waging? Did she think that the government could actually protect her from such woman-haters who would vote al-Qaeda into power if they had the chance? (The fact that she was a political threat both to Musharraf and to the Taliban and that she might have functioned as a bridge to America and potentially to Israel did not endear her to those who killed her. The fact that she had planned to recognize Israel and had already asked for Mossad protection, could indeed have been the final nail in her coffin. SEE HERE.)
Bhutto was one of the “moderate” Muslims for whom the West yearns. Muslim fanatics murdered her in cold blood and they did so in an exquisitely planned and choreographed way. Their willingness to die in order to kill, terrorize, and impose their ideology upon others is precisely what keeps other “moderate” Muslims silent.
How far are the representatives of freedom, modernity, and human rights willing to go to end such terrorism? If we are not ready to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to free humanity from the plague of fundamentalist Islam, then we must be prepared to convert, veil, submit–or die.
ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE:
Quicksand and Quagmires
Rosanne Klass, an old Asia hand, so to speak, reminds me how much central Asia resembles a far-out Eastern version of our own long-ago Wild West. The feuds never quit, the violence never stops, only more violence and larger bribes can ever dominate smaller violence and smaller bribes–and then only for awhile.
Thus, I am linking here to a sophisticated article written by Sol Sanders about Pakistan. I agree: Men here routinely assassinate male leaders. I still think that Bhutto’s assassination spells trouble for other women who may wish to divorce abusive husbands or to attend college.
To read Sol’s piece, click here…
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19 Comments
George Jochnowitz:Honor? The murderers have dishonored their country. They have dishonored their culture. They have dishonored their religion.
Dec 28, 2007 - 12:14 pm Bruce:Dr. Chesler hits the nail on the head again. Cultural revulsion at a westernized female politician is now higher than ever in Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. And it’s only getting worse.
She also raises the excellent question, will the modernists go far enough, long enough, to defeat the militants. The answer may determine who comes to hold the 100 nuclear weapons in that unstable country.
Dec 28, 2007 - 3:00 pm Karen Tintori:No surprise that Al Qaeda has taken credit for murdering Benazir Bhutto. How long will it take for the West to awaken from the stupor of moral and/or cultural relativism, shake off its politically correct slumber and finally heed the cries of the other brave moderate Muslims publicly working for change?
May her memory be for a blessing.
Dec 28, 2007 - 5:14 pm Greg Halvorson:A whole lot longer Karen Tintori, a whole lot longer. Westerners are not bright people as a group.
Dec 29, 2007 - 6:42 pm Fern Sidman:Seems like the Bush administration has egg on their collective faces. After carefully crafting a rapprochement between Bhutto and Musharraf, they have yet to utter a word of criticism at Musharraf for the lax and ineffective security assigned to Ms. Bhutto. Most is most surprising, is that this silence comes only several months after an attempt on her life took place on the day that she arrived back in Pakistan, after eight years of exile.
Obviously, Bhutto represented a formidable challenge to Musharraf in the upcoming elections and he had every reason to sit back and do nothing, despite Bhutto’s pleas for increased security in the wake of the proliferation of death threats that she had received.
While, Musharraf may or may not have been directly involved in this heinous murder, it is clear that the blood of Ms. Bhutto is on his hands. Always cognizant of diplomatic sensitivities, the US is reticent to condemn Musharraf, while hailing him as stauch US ally and leader of the only stable western style democracy in the Muslim world. They were able to persuade him to exchange his military fatigues for a suit and tie, lest he be associated with the kind of military dictatorship that was responsible for the hanging of Ms. Bhutto’s father, another prime minister of Pakistan.
The people of Pakistan are outraged at Musharraf, and rightfully so for his ineptness. I think the US should join that chorus and demand a thorough, independent investigation of this cold blooded murder.
Dec 29, 2007 - 6:56 pm ERS:The headline is titillating, but not very accurate. Benazir Bhutto was part of a political dynasty. She is the fourth member of her family to be assassinated, and the other three were men. This bears very few of the marks of an “honor” killing.
Not that that lessens the tragedy of any of these murders.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
Dec 29, 2007 - 8:08 pm Curly Smith:“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
Isn’t Islam more of a “shame” culture than an “honor” culture?
If a girl is raped then her father feels compelled to kill her… not for his “honor” but to remove all lasting signs of his shame - the shame that he failed to protect her from the rampaging thugs that permeate his culture. There’s no effort to restore “honor”, it’s all an effort to expunge shame. I don’t see any honorable behavior but I see much that’s shameful.
Dec 30, 2007 - 9:26 am Letalis Maximus, Esq.:“We” are making the same basic mistake with Pakistan (and other parts of the world) that we made with our very own American Indians. The western tribes had lived, largely, as nomadic hunter/gatherers for 1000’s of years. Yet, for reasons that the United States thought good and proper at the time, it basically put them on reservations, allotted them each their 160 acres or so of land, gave them a plow, and said “now, be good little farmers and we’ll see you in church on Sunday, OK?” Over 100 years later, we are still dealing with the social, cultural, and political fall-out from those decisions.
Overcoming 1000’s of years of, let us be honest here, frankly obsolete tribal culture, be that tribal culture Native American or Pashtun, simply does not happen overnight. There are millions of Paks who still live in dirt floor mud huts, and corrupt tribal cultures, illiteracy, and one of the most oppressive versions of Islam are absolutely all they know.
About the people in this part of the world (Afghans in this case, but the example holds true), a British general once said something like: “You can never buy an Afghan. At best you can only rent him, and then for a very dear price.” The big mistake however, the letting the genie out of the bottle so to speak, was letting these non-modern humans ever get nuclear weapons. Putting that genie back in the bottle or at least keeping it from doing any damage? Well, that’s the real question, ain’t it? If it were not for that genie, nobody in the Western World would care, would they?
And maybe, just maybe, that is the problem. But what do I know? I’m just another guy sitting in his underwear typing more drivel onto the internet.
Dec 30, 2007 - 9:43 am David Thomson:“…they have yet to utter a word of criticism at Musharraf for the lax and ineffective security assigned to Ms. Bhutto.”
Musharraf deserves blame for a lot of things—but Ms. Bhutto pushed the envelope to absurd lengths. It became next to impossible to protect her. Our own secret service may have been incapable of accomplishing this difficult task.
Bhutto may have had the best intentions. Her actions, however, were reckless and foolhardy. She should have remained outside the country and called for greater efforts against the terrorists. Musharraf needed to be embarrassed for not doing enough. This would have indirectly accomplished far more on behalf of democracy.
Dec 30, 2007 - 9:58 am RodgerS:Phyllis, I think you asked the wrong question. The question is not how far are the representatives of freedom, modernity, and human rights willing to go?, BUT how far are the so-called moderate muslims willing to go? When will the moderate muslims, as a group…not just a few individuals, decide to fight?
Dec 30, 2007 - 10:04 am Linda Frank:Disagree here. Honor killings are of course prevalent in the Middle East (and soon enough in Europe alas) but Benazir Bhutto was not no democrat. She is another proto-fascist like Musharaff playing the same power game. Today it is around that she “willed” the leadership of her “People’s” party to her husband (a corrupt zillionaire). This is the wrong horse to ride, Phyllis.
btw, Bhutto’s brothers have been accused of terrorism and she worked with AQ Khan to bring nukes to Pakistan.
Dec 30, 2007 - 11:54 am Beth:Dear Ms. Chesler,
Keep writing, please! I am not sure I agree this to be the prima facia case for “honour killing” but some one had better keep talking about the dehumization of women in the Muslim world because the western world have adandoned them to the abyss.
Dec 30, 2007 - 11:59 am Bob:It will be women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Noni Darwish and Irshad Manji who, if possible, save their people. It will be women in the West, like you, who shine a light on the horrors and not deny there existance by ignoring them at our own peril.
It is childish to blame one administration or another, it won’t matter whose fault it is in the end, if the extermists win, we all lose.
Sorry guys, you are not familiar with Pakistani politics. It wasn’t Al Queda, or an ‘honor killing’. it was just politics, as its always been in that part of the world.
Dec 30, 2007 - 1:28 pm Patrick:I enjoyed your essay but feel obliged to point out that your reference to “our own long-ago Wild West” misrepresents the reality of early American history. You write that, “The feuds never quit, the violence never stops… .”
In fact, crime rates in the frontier West were lower than they were in the urban East. I recommend the work of Terry Anderson and Peter Hill in this regard. A good summary of their conclusions based on decades of historical research can be found at the following link.
http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=572
Dec 30, 2007 - 2:49 pm Anthony (Los Angeles):Spot on, Dr. Chesler. When I heard the news of Bhutto’s assassination, the first thing that crossed my mind was that she was killed for being a woman who wouldn’t submit to Sharia. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out, one of the true pillars of Islam is the subjugation of women: without it, the whole political structure of Islamic rule collapses. The jihadists had to kill her for the threat she posed by her very existence.
Dec 30, 2007 - 3:00 pm L:Modern Westerners are fools. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MODERATE ISLAM.
Dec 30, 2007 - 3:04 pm J. K. Gayle:Islam, period, has been seeking to enslave the West since Heraclius was emperor. It was Islam that struck the first blow.
Unless the West openly admits that Islam is an evil cult, and unless the West fights Muslims TO THE DEATH, as they fight us, the West will indeed be enslaved. And sooner, rather than later.
Rosanne Klass’s analogy of the lawlessness of our wild west and Pakistan’s is dead on, as Dr. Chesler reminds us.
Some of us live with awful history, right here “where the West begins,” i.e., in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. Ours is a legacy of one particularly bad “Hell’s Half Acre” with notably infamous outlaws and “Jew whores” (i.e., the racist prostitution industry there). The whole state has “six flags” of violence, with lawlessness, sexism, slavery, and segregation having their day. Seems its a fad now in the South to dare to rewrite such history as myth. Fortunately, it’s not historiography but our societies that are reformed, through law, through feminism, through repentant religion, through muckraking journalism and honest remembrance.
Bhutto and her government did much to shine the light on the problems in Pakistan. Here are some that remain:
Dec 31, 2007 - 1:54 pm Francois Krodel:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan
Why aren’t muslim women in the West taking to the streets en masse to denounce this killing?
Why is the Western press not asking this question? Ms. Amanpour, your thoughts?
Jan 1, 2008 - 5:54 pm L Raj:Bhuttos are no “historical dynasty” - they fled India in the post partition mess of 1947.
Their great grandfather was a train mechanic.
Grand-father Bhutto was the priminister in a small Indian kingdom that spent more on the king’s dogs than they did on social welfare. He badly advised the king and misread the signs of the future. His king and court had to flee as a result of his bad advise and they made a new life in Pakistan out of the spoils they had looted from the old kingdom.
Father and daughter Bhutto were once priministers of Pakistan, but both had tenures that did little to improve the life of the pakistani on the street. Though the Bhutto family did become wealthy in the process and now has houses and bank accounts all over the world.
Historically corrupt - yes
Jan 3, 2008 - 9:04 amHistoric Dynasty - no !