Restoration of Honour

Strange values to cling to, engrained over hundreds of years, instructing the faithful that their first oath of fealty is to family-clan-societal 'honour'. Honour being invested in the male control of a female's genetic inheritance whereby nature - the Almighty, to believers - invested in the female of the species the honour of bringing forth new life.

In some societies she who rocks the cradle has the power; in rabidly patriarchal ultra-religious societies, he who controls the womb is the power.

And so it is that another form of honour killing has been revealed. Leaving the original impression given the West intact, that full control of female sexuality and gestation is so integral to male cultural imperialism that girls and women who have the effrontery to defy their male relatives' dictates with respect to modesty flirt with death. But adding another proviso, giving it greater depth.

The primitive notion that women may be kept as chattel, valued not as human beings in their own right, but for their ability to conceive and bring forth a new generation represents a controlling social instrument that maintains women as gender slaves, facing the penalty of death for disobedience. Disobedience can come in the form of having been raped, for this too is a fault of women, not men.

But in a story unfolding in England where Britain's Court of Appeal ruled that a baby at risk of being slaughtered by its grandfather should he become aware of its out-of-wedlock-birth, must be left for adoption, to spare its life we learn of additional honour remediations. The baby's Muslim mother had a love affair with an already-married man. To his credit, he would have taken the baby. But the chance of the mother's father discovering the truth would have been too great.

"In the particular circumstances of this case, the judge rightly regarded the risk of physical harm to [the baby] and [its mother] as being of major importance. Here the evidence was, in our judgement, compelling," was the opinion of the appeal court in its final decision.

"[The baby] was conceived in a relationship which was unacceptable to [the mother's] traditional Muslim family and conducted in secrecy.
"When she realized she might be pregnant she ran away from home for fear of the reaction of her family and, in particular, her father.
"Shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, [the mother] took steps to have her baby adopted at birth."

The mother did return to her parents' home, concealing her pregnancy as it advanced by the wearing of loose clothing.

"As soon as [the baby] was born, she was relinquished for adoption because [the mother] genuinely feared for [the baby's] safety should [the grandfather] become aware of or be forced to acknowledge her existence.
"[The mother's] evidence supported as it was by her actions and the evidence of [the father] and an experienced police officer, drove the judge to conclude that refusal of the order would carry with it a significant risk of physical harm. In our judgement this conclusion cannot be criticized."

In their great wisdom, the judges imposed a wide reporting ban on the publication of names and locations linked to this case because of the obvious above-related danger. To the father of the pregnant daughter, it would have represented a deep and abiding personal shame, an outrage to the values of a Muslim family, blotting that family with an indelible shame.

The death of the baby would have helped to lift the dishonour to the family name. But, even more shocking to Western sensibilities - the values and sensibilities of any intelligent being in fact - was the pregnant woman's mother's testimony. She had informed police that should her husband discover the truth of the matter "he would consider himself honour-bound to kill the child, the mother, the grandmother herself and the grandmother's other children".

In other words, to wipe the slate clean in its entirety, and to restore honour to the paterfamilias of this Muslim family, his entire family would have to be sacrificed to his sense of outrage over one of his female possessions' intolerable acts of disobedience. Having committed an outrageous sin, and bringing shame to Islamic values, his daughter, her child, his wife, her children must be destroyed.

To put a moral balance on the story, the child has been adopted by a Muslim couple originating from a different community, albeit the same country as that of the mother.