Thoughts on the struggle against "honor killing"

Fadime Sahindal was a young Kurdish-Swedish woman studying in a Swedish university. On 21 January 2002, Fadime's father shot her dead while she was visiting her sister in Uppsala. He confessed to the killing, telling police that his daughter had shamed the family. Fadime had "shamed" her father and brother by rejecting an arranged marriage, by choosing her partner. She had earlier "shamed" her family in 1998 for bringing a highly publicized court case against her father and brother after they threatened to kill her. The court gave her father a suspended sentence, and her 17-year-old brother a year's probation.

Fadime had to hide from the male members of her family. But she did not remain silent. She campaigned against this form of patriarchal violence known as "honor killing." Killing for reasons of "honor" is of ancient origin, but has occurred more frequently in recent years in the Middle East and in parts of Kurdistan devastated by war: Iraq and Turkey. Violence against women related to "honor" has occurred among refugee and immigrant communities in Western countries as well. But it is not a uniquely Kurdish phenomenon; it has been practiced in both the West and the East.

The short and tragic life of Fadime has become a symbol of the struggle over patriarchal violence. In Sweden and elsewhere, there have been extensive protests against honor killing in general and Fadime's murder in particular. The problem and the debate surrounding it are far from resolved. Public policy in Sweden, often lenient on such "culturally" motivated crimes, has come under a new round of criticism. The media and academia have also been involved, although the former more vocal than the latter. Racists and white supremacists have sought to appropriate the issue, but their efforts have been overshadowed by mass protests of both Kurds and non-Kurds. Among the Kurds there has been widespread condemnation, although nationalist Kurdish organizations have tended to downplay such crimes. They worry that the publicity casts shame on the nation.

We wish to contribute to the debate as academics engaged in the study of Kurdish society and gender relations, and as activists opposed to all forms of violence against women. We strongly condemn the killing of Fadime, and urge that serious efforts be made to prevent patriarchal violence against women. We contend that institutions of state, religion, family, education, and the Kurdish nationalist movement as well, are all implicated in the perpetuation of the crime of honor killing.

HONOR KILLING AS CULTURE: POLITICS AND THEORY

Is honor killing a part of Kurdish culture? Is it Islamic? These and other questions have been raised in the debates over the killing of Fadime and in other such cases, both in Europe and in Kurdistan. The questions often have political as well as theoretical underpinnings. We contend that violence against women should not be reduced to an issue of culture. This notwithstanding, we are persuaded that honor killing is definitely part and parcel of Kurdish culture.

Like Western and non-Western cultures, Kurdish culture is neither homogeneous nor monolithic. Like its Western counterparts, within the culture of the Kurds, gender is perceived and therefore treated within the context of at least two conflicting components. One is that of patriarchy and misogyny, present in folklore, language, literature, jokes and manners--in the "lived experience" of individuals. The most virulent forms culminate in bloodshed, as in the cases of Fadime and the countless unnamed women who have lost their lives. The second component within Kurdish culture is more obscure and therefore neither affirmed nor praised nor promoted. And that is the culture of struggle for gender equality. It emerged in the Kurdish press of the early 20th century (Klein 2001), inspired by late 19th and early 20th century liberal feminist and women's movements in Europe.

The first Kurdish women's organization was established in 1919. By the mid-20th century, the greatest Kurdish poet of the modern period, Abdullah Goran (1904-1962), strongly condemned honor killing in his poem, Berde-nusek "A Tomb-Stone" (Kurdish text and translation in Mojab, forthcoming). In 1982, Kurdish filmmaker Yilmaz Guney strongly condemned patriarchal brutality in his movie Yol (Road). Since the 1990s, there has been a rising struggle against honor killing in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the 1988 genocide known as Anfal and the two Gulf Wars had destroyed the social fabric of society, and unleashed waves of patriarchal violence.

To deny or ignore the existence of a culture of struggle for gender equality in Kurdistan or in other non-Western societies is a political decision emanating from patriarchal politics, in the sense that to do so denies the universality of the oppression of women and the struggle against it. It is racist in so far as it denies to non-Western, non-White women the means to understand the conditions surrounding their subordination and ignores their determination to resist.

The killing of Fadime had its genesis within the dictates of Kurdish patriarhal culture. But it is similar to, if not identical with, Western, Christian patriarchal culture, which has allowed men and women to blow up abortion clinics and assassinate doctors who conduct abortion in the United States and Canada. One can argue that the culture of honor killing is traditional, tribal, feudal, or rural. But what is the significance of this traditionalism if we consider the fact that in the United States men kill 10 women every day? While these murders may not be motivated by "honor," motivations are hardly more humane, i.e., a woman's decision to end a relationship can prompt her male partner to kill her. Seventy-four percent of these killings "occur after the woman has left the relationship, filed for divorce, or sought a restraining order against her partner" (Seager 1997: 26). In Sweden, according to 1989 data, 39 women were battered daily and one woman was killed every 10 days by a man known to her (Elman and Eduards 1991: 411).

The culture of patriarchal violence is thus universal. To divide cultures into violent and violence-free is itself a patriarchal myth. And we have what amounts to an ethnocentric or racist myth when this divide is drawn along the lines of West and East. Moreover, while the existence of patriarchy as a culture cannot be denied, a culturally reductionist approach alone does not take us a long way in the struggle against male violence.

HONOR KILLING AS THE EXERCISE OF GENDER POWER

Two centuries of feminist intellectual and political struggles in the West have imposed on the nation-states a regime of legal equality between genders. However, legal equality has failed to eliminate violence against women. Patriarchy is present in Kurdish and Western societies on an hourly and daily basis. It is present in the family, the educational system, state, religion, media, music, arts, language, folklore, and pervades social and cultural institutions. Thus, male violence against women cannot be reduced to a cultural trait, a cultural norm, or a dormant cultural value that accidentally erupts with the wrath of a violent man. Nor can it be reduced to the psychology of the individual murderer, although this may play a role.

Honor killing is a tragedy in which fathers and brothers kill their loved ones, their daughters and sisters. More tragic, if that be possible, at times mothers and sisters not only consent but participate in the crime. Killing occurs in a family structure where members are closely tied in bonds of affection, compassion, and love. Here affection and brutality coexist in conflict and in unity.

What does this contradiction tell us? And how can this contradiction be resolved? Given the universality and ubiquity of male violence--ranging from killing to battering to rape--it would be more appropriate to look at honor killing and other forms of violence as an exercise in gender power, male power. The issue cannot be separated from that of class and political power. A learned Kurdish mullah in the mid-19th century viewed honor killing in this vein. In an 1859-60 essay on Kurdish Manners and Customs, Mela Mehmud Bayezidi argued that tribal and rural Kurdish women were as free as the women of Europe; they could freely associate with men. He noted, however, that women could never engage in premarital or extramarital relationships with a stranger. If they did they would be killed with impunity. And no one would question the killers. Shame on the family could be cleansed only through murder; shame extended to the community, the village, the tribe, the neighbors, and the neighborhood. The community participated in the killing by expecting it, by endorsing it, and by casting out a family that failed to kill the woman. Mela Mehmud maintained that the purpose of the killing was to instill fear in women so that they would guard their modesty and chastity (see Mojab, forthcoming). Unfamiliar with feminist theory or any theory, Mela Mehmud's understanding of the exercise of gender power was more advanced than contemporary "feminist" reductions of honor killing to "practice" (see below). Clearly, the learned mullah had no qualms about discussing honor killing with all its brutality as a Kurdish "custom and manner."

What can be done to eliminate honor killing under existing regimes of gender-based political power? What are the dynamics that produce and reproduce this brutality in our times in Kurdistan and in Europe?

PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION OF HONOR KILLING

The killing of Fadime is neither an isolated case nor an abnormality. To see the murder as an anomaly is a convenient excuse for acquiescence. It relieves us of the responsibility to act. In terms of understanding, it leaves us only at the surface. We realize that it is no simple matter to dislodge let alone eliminate honor killings and other forms of violence in the short run or in the absence of a radical transformation of the male-centered social and economic order. However, we argue that we are all involved in one way or another in allowing male brutality against females to reproduce, and that much can be done to put an end to honor killing. We look first at contributing factors.

(1) Kurdish Nationalism: Kurdish nationalists have promoted the myth of the uniqueness of Kurdish women. Like some Western observers of Kurdish society, they claim that Kurdish women enjoy more freedom than their Arab, Persian, and Turkish sisters. Whatever the status of women in Kurdish society, Kurdish nationalism, like other nationalist movements, has been patriarchal, at the same time paying lip service to the idea of gender equality. Nation-building requires the unity of genders, classes, regions, dialects, and alphabets. But Kurdish nationalists consistently relegate the emancipation of women to the future, i.e., after the emancipation of the nation. Despite the fact that Kurdish parties were given administrative power in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, their record in matters of gender equality has been bleak. Let's briefly look at this experience.

The Kurdish people have lived since the late 1870s in what Mark Levene (1998) characterized as a "zone of genocide." In this zone (Eastern Anatolia comprising Kurdistan), the Ottoman state conducted a genocide of the Armenian people in 1915 and, together with its successor, the Republic of Turkey, subjected the Assyrian and Kurdish peoples to numerous campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The Ba'th regime of Iraq ensured that this zone would continue to operate in spite of its division between Iraq and Turkey in 1918. No less than 10,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed in Iraqi Kurdistan between 1975 and 1991 and in Turkey between 1984 and 2000.

The zone of genocide continues to be an active war zone. These wars have destroyed the social, economic, and cultural fabric of Kurdish society. They have unleashed waves of male violence against women. This explains, at least in part, why there are more incidents of honor killing among the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey than among the Kurds of Iran, whose experience of war has been less devastating.

In the aftermath of the U.S.-led Gulf War, when the Iraqi army attacked Kurdistan, millions of Iraqi Kurds escaped into the mountains in March-April 1991. The U.S., U.K., and France created a no-fly zone, a "safe haven" in order to return the refugees. Two major parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which had been fighting the Iraqi government for decades, created the Regional Government of Kurdistan in 1992. This was a de facto Kurdish state with a parliament and administrative structure. However, the two parties engaged in an internal war in 1994, which continued intermittently until 1996. Failing to resolve their conflict, by 1999 they formed their own separate administrations. In dealing with the increasing incidence of honor killing, they adopted Iraqi law, which did not criminalize honor killing, and was lenient on the punishment of the murderers. Faced with opposition from women, the two parties, and the KDP in particular, have tried to justify honor killing as a Kurdish and Islamic tradition. In 2000, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan issued two resolutions aimed at revoking Iraqi law and criminalizing honor killing. The resolutions, which have the status of law in the absence of a legislative organ, have remained on paper only thus far, since the government has neither the will nor the power to enforce them.

If the KDP government has persistently ignored the demand for gender equality and for the criminalization of honor killing, and the PUK government has paid only lip service to these issues, both have bowed to the demands of a handful of mullahs and their Iranian overlords. Kurdish mullahs, who never aspired to theocratic governance, now demand the Islamization of gender relations, and the subordination of Kurdish women according to the dictates of Islam. Financed and organized by the Iranian theocracy, some Kurdish Islamic groups aim at establishing a theocracy. Not surprisingly, Kurdish leaders who were secular before 1979, entertain Islam and Islamists. The two Kurdish governments have opened more mosques than women's shelters. In fact, they have not initiated a single shelter for women. The PUK government launched an armed attack on a women's shelter established and operated by an opposition political party. The shelter was operated by the Independent Women's Organization in Suleimani.

Kurdish nationalism, in or out of power, has generally entertained patriarchy and legitimated its violence; it has little respect for the Kurdish tradition of struggle for gender equality. After ten years of self-rule in the no-fly zone of Iraqi Kurdistan, the women's press, consisting of only a few publications, is still dwarfed by the bulk of nationalist periodicals produced in the two major cities of Suleimani and Hewler. Not a single work on feminist theory has been translated into Kurdish. The text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1979 has not yet appeared in Kurdish. The priority of Kurdish intellectuals, male and female, has not been to oppose gender inequality.

(2) The Nation-States in the Middle East: The states that rule over the Kurds (Iran, Iraq, and Syria) do not criminalize honor killing or are lenient on punishing killers (Turkey). Iranian law provides for the execution of lesbians and gays, and stoning to death of married adulterers. These states deny citizens the right to life in so far as they practice capital punishment as a normal, indispensable tool of governance. Turkey, which aspires to become a full member of the European Union, has refused to abolish capital punishment for all crimes despite the fact that it is an EU requirement for membership. Not only does Turkey engage in extrajudicial killing, it reserves the right to kill citizens on charges of secessionism. This legal framework engenders more genocide and more ethnic cleansing. Turkey wants to become an EU member while reserving what Leo Kuper (1981: 161-85) called the sovereign state's "right to genocide."

The coming to power of the Islamic regime in Iran unleashed waves of state-sponsored male terrorism against women. All Muslim states, from Algeria and Morocco in the West to Pakistan in the East, have Islamicized gender relations by introducing more shari'a law into their legal system. Thus a century of struggle for the separation of state and religion came under attack. The idea was branded by Iranian theocrats as a Western conspiracy against Islam. Women were the first targets of theocratic terrorism in Iran and later in Afghanistan. Many Kurdish nationalist leaders, like the states in the region, embraced Islam. If theocrats have promoted stoning to death and honor killing as Islamic institutions, some Kurdish leaders have endorsed male violence as a national tradition.

(3) European States: There are now sizable Kurdish communities in Europe, especially in Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, and a number of other countries. While these states readily declared the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, a terrorist or criminal organization, they have not criminalized male terrorism against women. The policy of respect for cultural differences is often paved with good intentions. However, we have learned from two centuries of democratic development that group identity and culture should not be the basis for the exercise of state power. How can one respect a culture that endorses violence against women? Racism and ethnocentrism reduce Kurdish culture to its patriarchal expression. Policies that excuse violence against Kurdish women are not anti-racist; they are de facto racist. The policy of respect for male brutality has no respect for the anti-patriarchal culture of the Kurds. It is no accident that there are ready financial resources for the army and for war but little investment in promoting feminist knowledge, the culture and politics of gender equality, the provision of shelters, and other resources for terrorized women, Kurdish and non-Kurdish. Devoting the costs of a single Chieftain tank or a single Mirage aircraft to women's shelters, support for battered women, and promotion of knowledge for women will produce tangible results. Is it an accident that governments began the new century with $798 billion for military spending? Why is the machinery of man-made violence so well funded?

Public policy in Europe and in North America has responded to some extent to academic debates on culture, identity, and difference. We are referring to academic research on the merits of diversity, difference, and cultural relativism. While Western governments have taken some steps forward, e.g., acknowledging gender violence as a criterion for refugee status, it is not difficult to see the steps backward.

(4) The Academic Environment: Especially in the West, knowledge and visibility regarding violence against women has improved significantly in the last two decades. The monthly academic journal Violence Against Women has made an important contribution to understanding the problem. In dealing with honor killing, however, recent Western social theory has played a somewhat negative role. We refer to theories of cultural relativism, politics of identity, post-structuralism, postmodernism, and other such positions.

Since the late 1980s, thinking dominant in academe, and fashionable in media and popular culture, treats difference as the main constituent of the social world. Human beings in this construction of the world are all different, with diverse and particular "identities." There are few, if any, common bonds between human beings. Politics and everyday life are shaped by identities, which separate human beings one from another. In this conception of a world of particularized individuals, cultures, peoples, and nations, patriarchy is not viewed as universal; gender oppression is too particular to be the basis for struggle between women and men even within a single country. In essence the concept of difference replaces the concept of domination. The world in this view is not divided into powerless and powerful blocs. Every individual, every woman, wields power. Power is not hierarchically organized. While there may be a "center" and a "margin" of power, there are no relationships of domination and subordination.

This theory emphasizes respect for cultural differences. Although its advocates oppose violence, they prefer to remain silent about it, especially when it is perpetrated by "others" whom they cannot judge due to cultural differences. Therefore there is an attempt to isolate honor killing from the patriarchal culture of the society that generates it. This is accomplished by reducing honor killing to a "practice." In anthropology, "practice theory" claims that individual behavior (e.g., the father's decision to kill his daughter) does not derive from rules, norms, culture, rule-bound traditions, systems or structures. Even when the existence of structures is not denied, they are not seen as constraining the mind or behavior of the individual (Barnard 2000: 142-43). While practice theory has not made a major breakthrough in the debate on structure and agency, its application to the case of honor killing undermines feminist struggles against this crime. Thus, to label what is a crime as a "practice" relieves the academic specialist of the burden of criticizing the culture, its religion, and its values. Applied to the Kurdish case, this position leaves no room for critiquing or indicting Islam or Kurdish patriarchal culture; the problem resides with the individual who commits the crime.

Some of these academics are feminists teaching gender relations in the Middle East. They make every effort to avoid the neocolonialist or Orientalist trap of treating Middle Eastern women as backward, ignorant, illiterate, oppressed, and passive. This is surely a noble commitment, an honorable undertaking. On the other hand, by distancing themselves from "neocolonialist representations of Middle Eastern women," these female academics keep silent on the atrocities committed against women by "their own" men, "their own" religion, and "their own" culture. For example, in a workshop on "Teaching about Honor Killings and Other Sensitive Topics in Middle East Studies: 'Honor Killing,' 'Female Genital Mutilation or Circumcision,' 'Veiling,' and 'Women and Shari'ah'," held at the University of California at Santa Barbara in March 2000, a number of academic feminists discussed their dilemma: how to speak about such "sensitive topics" without falling into the neocolonialist trap. One participant said that she had pursued a policy of silence on female circumcision. According to a workshop reviewer:

     She explained that her strategy for responding to questions about
     [female] circumcision had changed over time. First, her policy was
     silence. She would say, "I don't have anything to say about this
     issue," or "I would rather talk about other issues, like poverty,
     neocolonialism, and so on ... and their impact on women, rather
     than becoming part of the problem." But she said she realized that
     while she was choosing silence, others, who might not be well
     informed on the issue of circumcision, were taking over the
     discourse. She realized then that she had to respond. She added
     that often she encourages students not to write about circumcision
     until they know more about it, or until they talk at least to one
     woman who has been circumcised. But she expressed concern that this
     strategy might involve silencing her students. (Naber 2000: 20)

Having reviewed two documentaries on honor killing, feminist anthropologist Mary Elaine Hegland (Crimes of Honour and Our Honour and His Glory) observed:

     The topic of honor killing, like clitoridectomy, spousal abuse,
     infanticide, elder neglect, rape, war, capital punishment, and
     premarital sex among other practices condoned by some groups but
     condemned by others, presents dilemmas to anthropologists, feminist
     scholars and others. Should anthropologists be apologists or
     advocates for their research group or social analysts? Should one's
     role be researcher or activist? (Hegland 2000:15; italics added)

One approach to the dilemma: to talk about "sensitive topics" but to contextualize them by informing students that these problems are not a Middle Eastern phenomenon; they are also found in the West, today as in the past. This pedagogical "strategy," according to some, distances the instructor from neocolonialist "representations" or "discourses." Workshop participants decided to address "sensitive topics" as a "strategy" to cope with the dilemma (apologists/advocates or social analysts). In essence they engaged in a pedagogical device to protect the instructor from a perceived threat or a real--ideological and political--fear.

We believe that it is crucial to relate Middle Eastern male violence to its Western counterparts, not to protect an instructor from accusations of racism, Orientalism, and the like, but because violence against women in the West is an expression of universal patriarchy and male violence. But even this "strategy" is inadequate. It does not allow a serious departure from neocolonialism. A radical departure requires abandoning epistemological and theoretical dictates of agnosticism and cultural relativism. It requires the cultural relativist to surmount the fear of recognizing the universality of patriarchal violence. To do so demands an appreciation of the dialectics of universals and particulars. Each regime of patriarchy is particular. Kurdish patriarchy is different from Italian patriarchy. Nonetheless, patriarchies form a universal regime insofar as they perpetrate, without exception, physical and symbolic violence against women (Mojab 1998).

In the neocolonialist worldview, the women of the Middle East constitute an anomaly, an exception, an abnormality. Unlike Western women, they are devoted to Islamic patriarchy. They are women without history; they do not make their own history by struggling for equality or liberation. Feminist academics grounded in cultural relativism fail to appreciate a century of women's struggle against patriarchy. And when they talk about this struggle, they have more concerns. They view women's struggle against patriarchy as a "sensitive topic." It is sensitive not because Middle Eastern women have a century of women's press; a century of advocacy of women's rights, a century of writing, a century of poetry, and a century of organizing. Talking about this history is sensitive because cultural relativists, like Islamic fundamentalists, believe that Middle Eastern women's movements are inspired by Western women's struggles.

To appreciate this history is difficult for these academic feminists because, in their opposition to neocolonialist "discourses," they often side with nationalists, Islamists, and nativists. They privilege the nativist position, which rejects feminism, as a "derivative discourse." They treat feminism as a "Western discourse" incompatible with Islam and native culture. They do not want to contaminate Middle Eastern women's movements with the struggles of the women of the West, with modernity, with Enlightenment. Some secular academic "feminists" have indeed contributed to the creation of what they call "Muslim woman's identity."

It is understandable that culturally relativistic academics prefer silence on "sensitive topics." When they must talk about honor killing, they reduce what is an institutionalized crime to a "practice" having little to do with culture, Islam, or the exercise of male power. This position tends to ignore the reality of male brutality against women. It focuses instead on an appreciation of the violent gender politics of a tiny minority of the population, the self-appointed clergy. It imposes the politics of this tiny group on the entire nation; it authenticates this violent gender politics while delegitimizing a century of secular feminist movements in the Middle East. As a result, cultural relativists fail to condemn without reservation murder in the name of "honor" or the stoning to death of adulterers. They fear being labeled "racist," "Orientalist," or "neocolonialist;" and behind that fear is self-interest.

WHAT TO DO?

We have attempted to examine some of the systemic elements that produce and reproduce male violence, in particular honor killing among the Kurds. We have argued that honor killing cannot be reduced to the psychological problems of individual killers. Honor-based violence is a social, patriarchal institution that expresses the supremacy of the male gender. In our times, a host of factors, ranging from religion, public policy, and media to academic theories, play a role in its perpetuation.

We emphasize that education and conscious organized intervention in these oppressive gender relations will in the long run render this crime anachronistic. We are talking about feminist intervention. But feminist consciousness, feminist knowledge, and feminist culture are under attack. In part because feminist knowledge has effectively challenged all previous knowledge systems as androcentric, it has been vilified in Western media, popular culture, and even within academe. (Hammer 2002). If non-Western nativists, Islamists, and nationalists reject feminism as a "derivative discourse," conservatives in the West also refuse to include feminism in their canon of Western civilization and culture. This is where the Western colonialist, new and old, and the non-Western nationalist, nativist, Islamist, and cultural relativist inadvertently join forces. That also explains why the Holy See, Saudi Arabia, and Iran joined forces in the Beijing Conference of 1995. Indeed, anti-feminism is probably stronger in the West than in the East. There is a hunger for feminist consciousness in non-Western societies. This is so in spite of the fact that a host of theories ranging from post-modernism to identity politics and cultural relativism encourage the women of the world to work under the banner of their tribes, ethnic groups, nations, religions, and communities.

Kurdish women are a potentially powerful force in international women's movements. They constitute the hub of all contradictions in an era of globalization. Subjected to the brutal violence of nation-states in the Middle East, genocide and ethnic cleansing, suffering from the violence of their own national patriarchy, and dispersed throughout the world, Kurdish women are in a unique position to distance themselves from male-centered ethnic, nationalist, and religious politics, and to join forces with feminist movements that do not compromise. Feminist movements are international in character; they are present all over the world and resist a worldwide regime of patriarchal oppression. However, still they are not fully organized as an international movement. Kurdish women and Kurdish women's studies are at the margins of this international movement (Mojab 2001; Mojab and Hassanpour, forthcoming). Although there is considerable solidarity, they are still organizationally fragmented.

The institution of the state in countries that rule over the Kurds in the Middle East is neither civil nor civilized. One cannot expect an end to honor killing in a state with no respect for human and civil rights. We believe that the struggle against honor killing is inseparable from the struggle for democratic rule. It is also a struggle for separation of state and religion; a struggle to deny the two Kurdish governments the right to impose a theocratic regime on the people in Kurdistan. It is a struggle to push the two Kurdish governments to adopt and implement the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women without reservations. CEDAW is an important document that can be used by Kurdish feminists to promote a democratic gender culture. Are CEDAW demands for the elimination of all forms of discrimination rooted in European Enlightenment? Yes, they are. Are they Western in origin? Definitely so. But they are universal as well. Peoples in the East have struggled to attain these demands for no less than a century. We emphasize again that in the West, too, there has been significant and sustained opposition to these demands. Today, too, Christian fundamentalists, like Islamic fundamentalists, continue to oppose feminism and the separation of state and religion. The lines are drawn not on ethnic but on political principles.

Western feminism has been critiqued for its ethnocentrism and racism. However, contrary to the claims of nationalists and nativists, there is a rich tradition of anti-racism in the West, especially in its feminist movements. Indeed, nowhere in the non-Western world can one find a tradition of anti-racism that is as rich as that of the West. Kurdish women in the West are in an ideal position to draw upon and to contribute to these internationalist traditions. In Kurdistan, women are subjected to the harshest forms of national and gender oppression. In brutality, national oppression overshadows gender violence. Kurdish women have already made their own history by resisting their national patriarchy.

Tragically, Fadime will not be the last of the long list of victims of male violence. More lives will be lost in obscurity in Kurdistan and elsewhere. However, her life and death will not have been in vain if we turn our anger and frustration into a struggle to challenge this brutality in all its forms.

REFERENCES

Barnard, Alan, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Bayezidi, Mela Mehmud, 'Adat u Risumatnameyi Ekradiye/Nravy I Obychani Kurdov (Kurdish Customs and Manners), Kurdish text and Russian translation by M. B. Rudenko (1963), Moscow, Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Izdatel'stvo Vostochnoi Literatury.

Elman, R. Amy and Eduards, Maud L., "Unprotected by the Swedish welfare state: A survey of battered women and the assistance they received," Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 14, No. 5, 1991, 413-21.

Hammer, Rhonda, Antifeminism and Family Terrorism: A Critical Feminist Perspective (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002).

Hegland, Mary Elaine, Review of "Crimes of Honour and Our Honour and His Glory," Middle East Women's Study Review, Vol. XV, No. 1-2 Spring/Summer 2001, 15-19.

Klein, Janet, "En-gendering nationalism: The 'woman question' in the Kurdish nationalist discourse of the late Ottoman period," in Mojab, Shahrzad (ed.), Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2001), 25-51.

Kuper, Leo, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

Levene, Mark, "Creating a modern 'zone of genocide': The impact of nation- and state-formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1998, 393-433.

Mojab, Shahrzad, "No 'safe haven' for women: Violence against women in Iraqi Kurdistan," in Giles, Wenona and Hyndman, Jennifer (eds.), Sites of Violence Gender and Identity in Conflict Zones (Berkeley: University of California Press [forthcoming].

______ "The solitude of the stateless: Kurdish women at the margins of feminist knowledge," in Mojab, Shahrzad (ed.), Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2001), 1-21.

______ "Muslim women and Western feminists: The debate on particulars and universals," Monthly Review, Vol. 50, No. 7, 1998, 19-30.

Mojab, Shahrzad and Hassanpour, Amir, In Search of Kurdish Women: A Multilingual Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood [tentative title, forthcoming])

Naber, Nadine, "Teaching about Honor Killings and other Sensitive Topics in Middle East Studies," Middle East Women's Study Review, Vol. XV, No. 1-2 Spring/Summer 2001, 20-21.

Seager, Joni, The State of Women in the World Atlas. New Edition. (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1997).

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