Some Jordanian women are starting an online initiative for a public campaign to stop the so called honor crimes. Deema put it down on Roba’s blog as following:
“To answer your question, a few of us have been trying to do something about so-called honour crimes. The initiative is still in it’s early phases, but we are brainstorming the different ways and approaches to tackle the issue. I added the link to the googledoc we have been working on as my url (although we are changing the name of the initiative from la sharaf fil qatil to la sharaf fil jareemah). As it is meant to be a public initiative, anyone with ideas and suggestions is welcome to join in on our brainstorming session (although i think you will have to email one of us first to gain access).
We can’t just wait around for someone with a magic wand to wisk it all away. we will have to do something about this ourselves, out of our personal time and effort. because ‘wearing makeup’ should not be an excuse for murder. Not in Jordan
Check out the google document linked in the comment above.
Thank you Kinzi for giving me the idea of sharing this.
Fadi Zaghmout فادي زغموت 
You should be focusing your energy and newsletters on the Royal Court. The Jordanian parliament does not represent Jordanians and as a result Jordanians cannot influence it. King Abdallah II, with the tacit approval of the USA, banned international monitors and banned local NGOs from supervising elections. By all accounts, the elections were a major fraud. Opposition and international monitors who stood outside voting stations counted 100 going in but the government reported 500 votes from same voting station, as an example. Of course the 400 fabricated votes were in favor of pro King Abdallah II MPs.If you know anything about the Jordanian constitution, you will know that even in the remote case of an honest election, Parliament is designed in a manner that gives tribal regions 10 times the voting power of Urban Jordanians such as the Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa areas. So the majority of Jordanians are disenfranchised by design even in the case of an honest election.I find it utterly despicable for King Abdallah and Queen Rania to remain silent in the face of these attacks on the Jordanian people, when the royals know all too well that they bear complete responsibility for the defamation Jordan is enduring because of their honor killing laws and because of some disgustingly pragmatic political equation whereby the King wins the loyalty of powerful tribe, and in return he allows Jordanian women to get butchered and the killers get away with murder.
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Great movement and I support it, lets hope it has a positive impact on the Jordanian society.Many people will deny that these crimes have anything to do with Sharia, Islamic traditions or culture.However, by time, we will see many people that will stand against this movement due to the fact that it is started and supported by ”westernized” women that want to put an end to the sharia laws in the name of modern civilized societies.
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here are the facts that seem to be often ignored in the honor killing debate:1- Honor killing is a problem not because of the crimes, which happen everywhere in the world under different names. Honor killing is a problem because of the laws that let the male murderer free with a lenient sentence. So the mission is to change the laws. 2- Honor killing in Jordan is not a cultural phenomenon. Less than 20 women were killed, tragically, and their male killers were given short sentences and freed, last year in Jordan. Less than 20 retarded men in a country of 6 million people are not a cultural or national phenomena. But it’s a useful political tool for some to keep calling it phenomena and to keep condemning a whole nation. So if we agree it’s a legal problem and not a cultural phenomenon, we should be making calls to the Royal Court and the White House that seems disinterested in linking aid to the King with the abolition of honor killing laws. 3- But if some wish to mobilize and educate, they need to do it in the tribal areas. These are the voting blocs that have over 70% of the parliamentary seats with less than 30% of Jordan’s population. Thanks to Jordan’s retarded constitution. These tribal voting blocs are responsible for keeping the laws on the book with the King’s help.4- Some say buy the jordanian parliament is elected by Jordanians. So honor killing laws exist because Jordanians want them. Not true. Ultimately, King Abdallah II is the man who shapes the parliamentary elections and decides the final make up of the Jordanian parliament through unorthodox means that fall short of international standards of transparency and fairness. The King’s main political allies are the tribes. They make up most of his security and military establishment. To win their loyalty, the King has refused to cancel honor killing laws which were enacted under his father King Hussain’s rein. The tribes’ want these laws to stay. 5- With all of the above as a backdrop, most Jordanians do not like to be accused of being sympathetic to honor killing since no one asked their opinion when the laws were enacted and they dare not confront the King and his powerful tribal allies, not just over honor killing laws, but over dozens of problems that keep retarding Jordan’s progress into the 21st century. 6- Since the USA approved the rigged Jordanian elections and did not lift a finger to object to the King’s ban on international election monitors, to prevent the Islamists and the Arab nationalists and the Progressives from controlling the Parliament, so the Americans stood silent and allowed a great miscarriage of justice to take place in Jordan, honor killing. It was a rape of Jordanian democracy, or whatever little of it we had, all for the sake of protecting the Israel peace treaty and US military and intelligence presence on Jordanian soil. So women are killed in Jordan because the US does not see the need for a fair and free election at the moment in Jordan. 7- we don’t doubt the good intentions of some of the Americans involved in the honor killing campaigns, but American males have killed and brutalized far more Arab women in few years in Iraq than half a century of honor killing in all Arab countries combined. Americans should fix their miss in Iraq and Afghanistan before they give lectures about a phenomena that kills about 15 women in Jordan annually. Compare that with over 300,000 Arab women butchered in Iraq at the hands of American males and other white men.
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الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاء بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَى بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنفَقُواْ مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِّلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللّهُ وَاللاَّتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلاَ تَبْغُواْ عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلاً إِنَّ اللّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and <>beat them<>; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.Sura 4: Ayah 34<>How badly can Men beat Women?<>
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Anon, thanks for not disparaging the foreign women who are involved in this campaign. (I am beginning to think I have seen you under another name or two).But your comment and Nizar’s underline the absolute necessity of having Jordanian MEN spear-heading any initiative. I urge you to be a part of it. You have some very important input in your comment. I hope you will add it to Deena’s wiki-doc. Blessings on you.
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i agree with the commenters who say that it is ultimately the royal court that needs to change its stance. no outside force would be able to influence anything here if there were true leadership.
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Nizar you say that this campaign it is started and supported by ”westernized” women that want to put an end to the sharia laws Shame on you for misrepresenting the facts. You may dislike Sharia laws but you cannot fabricate information. Islamic Shiria laws are rigid but apply equal punishment to both sexes. In cases of adultery, the man and the woman get the same harsh punishment. In Sharia laws, there is no such thing as honor killing laws or honor killing. Only the State can determine guilt or innocent and administer punishment. But in Jordan’s tribal culture, backward and retarded traditions pollute the state’s secular laws and mutilate Islam’s sharia laws. And since the King rigged the parliament in favor of those tribal regions we end up in Jordan with no modernity and no pure Islamic fundamentalism. Just a horrendous corruption of the legal codes and a great miscarriage of justice and religion.
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Just to put things in perspective:From the 2008 UN Report on Violence Against Women“Several global surveys suggest that half of all women who die from homicide are killed by their current or former husbands or partners. In Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the United States, 40%-70% of female murder victims were killed by their partners.”http://www.un.org/women/endviolence/docs/VAW.pdf
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