HVK Archives: Death by honour
Death by honour - Mid-day
Farrukh Dhondy
()
10 October 1996
Title : Death by honour
Author : Farrukh Dhondy
Publication : Mid-day
Date : October 10, 1996
Once upon a time, or to be more precise, in the late 50s
in Trinidad, a Mr Kilgour was tried for the murder of a
lady, Joyce, whom he was alleged to have stabbed to
death. The trial, like that of O J Simpson in recent
times, became a cause celebre.
Kilgour was no Dreyfuss. He eventually admitted that lie
had stabbed poor Joyce, his love, to bleeding death. He
had done it in a fit of jealous rage after discovering
that Joyce had been two-timing him with Edwin Kayan. The
hapless Kilgour was convicted, sentenced to hang and
asked if he wanted to say anything. "I killed her, for
the love of Kayan," he said.
In Bradford Crown Court this week a jury convicted Shabir
Hussein, of the brutal murder of his sister-in-law Tas-
leem. Sentencing him to life imprisonment, the British
judge said: "You deliberately took the life of this young
woman without any justification, add you did so in a
wicked and callous manner which caused her considerable
suffering and pain."
Shabir had waited for 20-year-old Tasleem in an alley
where she had was supposed to meet her married lover. He
observed the encounter. Tasleem waited in the lane while
her love drove up. Shabir made himself known and as the
lover drove away, Shabir charged his car at Tasleem.
There were witnesses. After running her over once, he
put his car in to reverse gear and ran over her crushed
body again. He said he did it for the family's honour,
for his brother's izzat, and for the morality of the
community.
Tasleem's history while not being at all unusual may
strike some as tragic. Her dilemma of living between two
cultures was much more real than that of the cry-baby
writers who make a profession of bemoaning their dis-
placements and alienations. Her multi-culturalism was a
matter of belonging and not belonging, loving and not
loving, of life and death.
She was 20 when she was murdered, but at 16 she had been
sent by the family to Pakistan to marry a man who would
then travel to England with her to live.
In court it was said that she had refused to sign visa
papers for her husband to enter England. This caused her
to quarrel with her family and-in-laws in Bradford, and
for a few months she lived as a 'refuge', before a recon-
ciliation and a return to live with her brother-in-law.
She worked as a shop assistant, she started an affair
with a married colleague, she was killed by her brother-
in-law.
Nasreem, the wife of the murderer, sat in the public
gallery and read the Koran throughout the nine-day trial.
The judge said Shabir had killed 'without any justifica-
tion'. Unfolding in front of him was the awful and ironic
story of a tradition that compels a young girl of 16 to
marry against her will in a foreign country; the seedy
and humiliating story of passports obtained at untenable
prices in human misery; and the weight of shame and
social opprobrium m the mind of Shabir.
Judge George Coles could see no justification. Of
course, not. There is no justification in the culture
within which his judgment is formulated. The man is as
guilty as sin. Tasleem was a free agent. So was Desdemo-
na.
Their killers brought different assumptions to their
tragedy. For Othello, it was sexual jealousy, pure,
consuming and altogether imaginary. For Shabir Hussain,
it was his sister-in-law's transgression of his brother's
rights. He was jealous on behalf of his brother Ashiq in
Pakistan.
For the British judge, none of this mattered. He may as
well have declared that he had killed for the love of
Kayan!
Evident to me is a gulf of culture that exists within
many cities in Britain. There is no chance that 'multi
-cultural' values necessitate any bending of the rules or
an iota of 'understanding' from the law. The killer did
his work cruelly and in a determined fashion. He mur-
dered a young vivacious girl who had broken no law, only
crossed the bindings of tradition.
The law took no account of the fact that Shabir is a
Muslim who lives in a community in which there is a code
of ethical conduct and womanly subservience.
It is worth noting, because in several cases in recent
years in which a woman is accused of murdering a man, the
defendant has pleaded extreme provocation.
The provocation in each case was cruelty from the man to
his partner. The partner snaps and kills. The case is
brought to trial. The woman is sometimes convicted. On
appeal this conviction is overturned.
Throughout these trials and appeals, the press debates
the right to kill a man for the sake of self preserva-
tion.
Some right to plead provocation has been recognised. It
is a dangerous exception, though the bench awards it and
the law condones it.
In the early 1960s, Mumbai, there was the trial of Com-
mander Nanavati who discovered that his English wife
Sylvia was having - an affair with one Ahuja, a fellow
bridge player. He went to the naval gunroom and got
himself a pistol and shot dead Ahuja.
The jury, however cloistered, could be in no doubt that
the nation considered the provocation adequate to kill,
although the law did not allow it. The jury let Nanavati
off. The judge pounced on the verdict and declared it
perverse. Nanavati would stand trial again.
The poor man, folk hero though he was for defending his
honour, was convicted and sentenced. I have no doubt that
if a poll was taken among certain Asian communities in
Britain they would have exonerated Shabir.
However, no number of polls will convince any jury in
Britain that the outrage of Muslims, the sensitivity of
Asians to an exposure of their shame, is worth the life
of a girl who manifests her Britishness in an assumption
that she is a free citizen, doesn't need a burkha, can
hold a job, will not follow the dictates of father or
brothers and will meet whom she pleases and when she
pleases without fear of being run over in a hired car.
To declare my hand, I feel no sympathy for Shabir Hussein
either.
At worst he is a feudal bigot, little better than some
courageous, ignorant Taliban. A best he is deluded - not
about his sister-in-law whom he crushed to death, but
about the innocence and tameez of the society, whose
values he thought he was Upholding. No such people
exist, except in his imagination.
Villagers or city slickers, Pak or Brit, a better ac-
quaintance with reality rather than myth would have shown
him that they are all badtameez!
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