The Blame Game: Culture and Conflict in the Shafia Murders

by Elamin Abdelmahmoud


This article is not intended as an argumentative piece on the Shafia family trial. Rather, it is a brief reflection on the public opinion narratives which constructed this trial (and subsequently the guilty verdict received by the accused). Namely, I want to examine the validity of the frenzy over what became dubbed as ‘honour killings’, the going term for these types of crimes.

I presume your basic knowledge of the case, as most mainstream media outlets spent a considerable time with it. It was, after all, a horrific crime. The verdict was handed down Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba, and his son Hamed – all guilty, and all facing life in prison for the murders of Shafia’s three daughters, Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti as well as Rona Mohammed, a family relative.

Before going on, I would like to reiterate the heinousness of the crime here. I have no intention of arguing for the convicted members of the Shafia family, making excuses for them, or pardoning them of the crimes they have been accused, charged, and convicted of.

What I mainly wish to address was inspired exclusively by the reaction that the verdict has generated. The reaction, in sum, has been a frantic expression of outrage at ‘honour killings’ and the lament for Canadian multiculturalism and how it has gone too far. News outlets have spilled much ink about how this case symbolizes the extent of leniency given by the Canadian state to immigrants from other cultures. Much discussion has revolved around educating people from other cultures so they are better fit for Canadian values and a Canadian society.

I would like to suggest that, actually, by dubbing this an honour killing, and by focusing our attention on the cultural background of the perpetrators, we satisfy only an elementary understanding of the crime while sidestepping the larger, more useful point.

The point here, of course, is that this was a crime about control. Mohammad Shafia was obviously exercising a level of control over the victims, and asserting his male dominance by robbing them of their agency. The violent act was Shafia’s response based on his belief that he had agency over these women, and they ought to act according to his worldview, a worldview many attribute to his ethnic background.

I have no intention of condoning this particular worldview. But the discussion tended towards using words like “backwards”, “uncivilized”, which I think misunderstands the topic at hand. A more precise word might be “unacceptable”. But the next step isn’t to call these deaths an ‘honour killing’. When we do this, we take Shafia’s robbing of women’s agency (with its cultural justification) and we give it a specific name that isn’t necessary, and clouds the overall point.

I suggest that when discussing this case, we drop the specific-language act and instead, we call it what it is: an exercise of controlling women. Indeed the murder of these girls was a deplorable practice of abuse of women, one that depends on deeming women not worthy of making decisions about their own bodies.

The reason I suggest we abandon using exceptional language is this: the same underlying assumption - the assumption that women ought to not make decisions about their own bodies, that women are not deserving of agency over their own destinies – is used every single day in “our culture”, whatever you take that to mean (In this particular piece, I am taking that to mean some dominant culture, and not diving too deep into this).

Every time a woman is raped, a policy is passed about women’s bodies without taking agency into account, or a domestic abuse is committed, it is stemming from that exact belief. It is tiresome to make the parallel every time: Yes, a man who commits an “honour killing” is using his cultural baggage to justify his horrible act. But you know what? So is a man who rapes a woman because he thinks women’s bodies do not belong to them.

The fundamental mistake at work is assuming that cultural baggage only affects a certain segment of the population. Worse, there also seems to be a belief that rape is a bunch of singular incidents and not an action which is culturally learned. The same applies to domestic abuse. We barely connect these crimes to a cultural learning that is pervasive throughout our culture, and that learning is the same one Shafia, his son and his wife were guilty of: the learning that women’s bodies must be controlled, and that  women should possess less agency over their bodies.

So, to sum it up: Yes, the murder of these women was a heinous crime. Yes, it is a result of cultural understanding of how much agency women should have over their own bodies. But we need to ask ourselves, how many other crimes are we not attributing to the same cultural understanding? Stop calling it honour killing, and start calling it an exercise of stripping women of power. Then look for other examples of it, and you’ll find them all around you. Simply put, I’m asking you to consider the role of  culture in all violence against women.

As a final word, I guess, one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is to question where my gut response is coming from. I’m not assuming yours is invalid. I am, however asking you to consider the possibility that  it might be coming from a place of not spending time questioning where your own ideas may be coming  from.