Customer Reviews

Murder in the Name of Honor

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a book that is certainly worth reading, because it's one of the few available on a topic that is relevant to readers in North American and European readers as it is to those in the author's home country of Jordan. As pressures grow among Muslim immigrant communities in Europe (and to a much lesser degree, in North America) for local laws to include 'sharia' (Islam's legal code, based on the Koran and Muslim teachings), issues such as honor killings emerge as hot points. As Husseini points out, male members of a woman's family believe and argue that they have the right under these traditions to avenge a family's honor should the woman violate (or be believed to have violated) their interpretation of religious rules and local mores. Just as this book was being distributed to bookstores across North America, the family of one young woman attacked and drove over her and a female companion, killing them both, in the name of their family honor.

What Rana Husseini attempts to do in this book -- to draw attention to these murders -- is laudable and valuable. The subtitle says it all: "when a life is worth less than honor." Indeed, so important is the issue that I would have loved to have been able to give this book a five-star rating and urge it on everyone I know who would be even remotely interested in the topic. But I can't do that.

The problem lies in the way Husseini approaches the book. This isn't about honor killings; it's about Rana Husseini and her heroic, courageous crusade against them. Now, call me a curmudgeon, but I'd rather decide for myself whether someone's actions are courageous and heroic than have this asserted -- repeatedly -- by the author about herself. She's leading a movement to fight honor killings, which has certainly landed her in some hot water at home in Jordan (although she certainly has a number of very significant allies in the shape of members of the Jordanian royal family.) But comparing the tone of this book to that of Somaly Mam in her memoir of sexual slavery The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine is jarring. Mam -- who was herself a victim and has moved on to campaign for basic human rights for women in a different but equally important area -- never comes across as self-congratulatory. In contrast, by the time I was 25 pages into this book, I was already weary of Husseini patting herself on the back.

The structure of the book doesn't help. It jumps from one anecdote to another, with bits of Husseini's campaign scattered in between. It isn't until nearly 100 pages into the book that a rudimentary background to the issue of honor killings emerges, and even so, it remained unclear to me the extent to which this was religious or cultural in origin, and how it had been practiced over time and how it was rationalized (specifically) by reference to the Koran. It's like reading a book about the Holocaust in which the personal stories of the victims -- horrific and chilling -- are recounted over and over again, without any of the context that led to their persecution, any political history of prewar Germany or recounting of Nazi ideology. There were also many questions that remained unanswered by the end of the book -- are honor killings, for instance, on the rise as contact between the Western world and Jordan has increased? Is familiarity with the more freewheeling mores of the West making Middle Eastern men angrier, more defensive or more anxious that their own women need to be stopped from behaving as they were in an episode of Gossip Girl?

A better editor would have helped make this book a standout, reshaping its choppy, anecdotal style into something more effectively polemical. Husseini could also have done more for her cause by allowing the facts to speak for themselves, particularly early in the book when the reader is still forming their first impressions.

As it stands, this is a two-star book about a subject that -- while it may only affect a tiny minority of women -- is vitally important, since it speaks to the whole idea of how societies define, perceive and protect the rights of an individual. I've rated it 3.5 stars, for that reason, and would recommend it cautiously to those who are able to ignore the flaws and focus on the (somewhat repetitive) core argument and supporting evidence.

Murder in the Name of Honour was a thought-provoking and informative story about how some traditons and mind-sets have not yet changed in the Middle East.
Rana Husseini is a courageous woman to write of honor killings happening in this day and age. In many areas of the Middle East, that is a death sentence for her.

Simply said, it is a must read book. It made me aware of many things on this issue that I never knew.
Moutaz

Rana Husseini is a courageous woman. I had the wonderful good fortune to spend some time with her, along with a group of 20 teachers, at the Jordan Times office in Amman about 5 years ago. This book offers a chance for Rana to tell her remarkable story to the world. She is a skilled and brave investigative journalist. Her clear, honest prose, and immediate style puts us, the readers right there with her.

Journalist Rana Husseini has risked her life to bring the debate on so-called honor killings and honor crimes into the international arena.

In Murder in the Name of Honor she describes how honor killings are happening across the world (including Europe and the USA) and how the killers are escaping justice, very often with the support of the law. She has spoken to everyone involved, from lawmakers to the murderers themselves, from the survivors and their family members to the human rights campaigners - their stories are truly unforgettable.

Rana also details how she started a campaign to end honor killings in Jordan, a campaign that lead to an extraordinary national debate and public protest, the first of its kind, supported by the Jordanian royal family.

The problem in Jordan lies with local tribal leaders who maintain these so-called 'traditions' of female honor, alongside the politicians who are scared to anger them by changing the law and thereby lose their seats at the next election.

Honor, in this context, is another word for control - it is used an excuse to repress women. It is utterly infuriating to see how prevalent this is across the world today.

Rana has been labeled 'heroic' by her publishers and quite rightly so, she has risked her life and made many enemies in her extraordinary effort to bring the debate on honor killings into the international arena. It is only recently that the world has finally started to take notice.

Murder in the Name of Honor details Husseini's fight to end so-called honor killings in Jordan and around the world. She began investigating honor crimes in 1994 as a journalist for an English-language newspaper in Jordan and has since become an activist for the cause, lobbying the Jordanian government for the abolition of Article 340 (which granted leniency to men who murdered their wives or female relatives for committing adultery) and advocating not only for a change in legislation but in how societies view "honor."

The details of Husseini's campaign and her efforts to spread the word about so-called honor killings are intriguing, but her vast compilation of case studies make up the majority of the book. This story isn't about her; it's about the thousands of women and girls who have been beaten and murdered by their relatives for violations of so-called honor. These women are stabbed, shot, strangled, drowned, hacked with axes, burned, and stoned by fathers, brothers, and even mothers--often in broad daylight while bystanders watch or cheer. Many of these women have "shamed" their families by being raped, divorcing their husbands, being seen with unknown men, giving birth out of wedlock, or marrying without the family's approval. Some women have been murdered simply on the suspicion of adultery or "impropriety." The most disturbing part about so-called honor killings is that for these women their own families are their worst enemies.

Although I was disappointed by the amount of typographical errors, I'd highly recommend this book as a starting point for those interested in so-called honor killings. Unlike Norma Khouri's counterproductive Honor Lost (which Husseini dedicates an entire chapter to debunk), Murder in the Name of Honor is an informative read by a leading activist in the field.

[...]

This is a great book that will definitely keep your interest. As a criminal Justice major at a major University in the US, all I've ever learned are the basics about honor killing. Never have I been exposed to such great detail and real cases. Definitely recommended.

possibly to soon to be the truth about women in the USA if the looney teabaggers have their way with the stupak amendment. that was a cruelly sly move by special interests to put a woman's decision about her own body into a man's hands.

Regrettably this book offers nothing new to the genre. Worse the writer labels herself heroic on the cover of her own book, which sets an overall tone of self hype that is not matched by any particular wins for the victims of these crimes. It sets a tone that is off putting.

Further she allows herself to be blurbed by a senior member of the ruling family of Jordan which, for anyone familiar with Middle Eastern dictatorships, immediately raises issues of journalistic independence and possible cooptation. It is these very same regimes that keep in place practices and laws that hold women down and allow and even participate in gross violations of human rights.