Honor Killings

While honor killings find no sanction whatsoever in Qur’an, prophetic traditions, or law, these sources cannot be absolved of all responsibility for placing a greater share of the burden of maintaining societal chastity on women. Though the Qur’an commands both men (24.30) and women (24.31) to “cast down their gazes” and to “protect their chastity,” it specifically regulates only women’s dress (Q. 24.31; 33.59). Yet it is a long stretch from these commands, which have the declared intention of protecting women from harassment (Q. 33.59), to the legal rules that allow men, especially husbands, to impose seclusion on women, forbid them from leaving the home, and limit their access even to other relatives. These rules for seclusion were never strictly observed by more than an elite minority, and are not generally enforced today. But the basic perspective they embody—that the separation of men and women is to be enforced by keeping women apart from men, and that women who violate these boundaries are suspect —remains influential.