Shahrzad Mojab Honor Killing Summary

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Shahrzad Mojab’s article, “The Politics of Culture, Racism, and Nationalism in Honour Killing”, explores how honour killing is intertwined with gender, class, religion, culture, and race. The question that Mojab asks,” If violence against women is universal, why name it in a way that evokes a particular religion, culture, race, community, or nation?” is the foundation for her research. As indicated by the number of times Mojab, alone, sat in a courtroom for cases linked to honour killings, it is evident that the visibility that honour killing has around the word is linked more specifically to culture, religion and race than it is to violence against women. At the root of this is the patriarchal system that exists in many cultures, where honour …show more content…

Mojab shared her experience on how she was targeted based on her own background. She states, “my Iranian origin – my shared language and culture with the perpetrators – became more prominent than my knowledge of the topic” (pg.119). It is interesting how she (and her testimony) became the focus after she provided the information about honour killing, instead of the focus being on the man who was the perpetrator. In the article, she provides a good definition of patriarchy that helps creating an understanding and a context for honour killings. She states, “Patriarchy, a hierarchical male-dominated system of gender relations, is ubiquitous, forming sameness or universality manifested in, for instance, the subordinate position of women everywhere, from the sexual division of labour, to family, to personal relations, to language and to politics” (Pg.125). Everywhere in society we can see women encounter patriarchy; it is just more visible when Western culture focuses on women from another race or culture. It makes it an open issue to be discussed and judged, and causes generalizations to be made about honour killings and resultantly the cultures, races and people that perform them. Her testimony took on another of those generalizations when it came into

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