Wednesday, December 12, 2007

This is why I am no fun at parties…part xxxx

As startling as it might be to believe, I was once a rebellious 16 year old daughter. In fact, looking back, I was the daughter from hell. I would lay a bet that killing me crossed a few family minds at the time. My mother’s favourite curse line use to be “I hope you grow up and have a daughter just like you.” Everyone is much relieved that I didn’t grow-up to have a daughter who was just like me. So why didn’t they kill me? I certainly shamed them but at heart I come from a culture which placed supreme value in two distinct values. No person can be owned and wives and daughters are not property to be disposed as one sees fit or even wishes.

What brings this up? A sixteen year old girl has been murdered and her father has been charged with her murder. According to her school chums in this article from the Toronto Star she was killed by her refusal to wear the Hajib.
Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
(…)
School chums say Aqsa had been arguing with her family for months over whether she should wear the hijab. Pal Ebonie Mitchell, 16, and other friends said Aqsa still wore the hijab to school last year, but rebelled against dressing in it this fall. They said she would leave home wearing the traditional garment and loose clothing, but would often change into tighter garments at school. She would change back for the bus trip home. "Sometimes she even changed her whole outfit in the washroom at school," Mitchell said.

The teen was known to her classmates and Facebook friends as Axa. She posted several pictures of herself on the website in colourful clothes and accessories. At Aqsa's high school, friends gathered in groups yesterday, struggling to come to grips with what happened and lamenting how she had quarrelled with her father to the point that she recently moved out to live with a friend.

"She said she was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother ... and she's not scared of nobody," said classmate Ashley Garbutt, 16. "She didn't want to go home ... to the point where she actually wanted to go to shelters."

Friends said the root of her problems was a desire to blend in with friends at school, to wear the fashionable clothes she liked to buy on trips to Toronto's garment district, where she went with friends just last month.

I suspect there is more to this murder than just a daughter’s refusal to wear the hajib and dress modestly. A rebellious daughter tries the patience of all who love her.

In a world fraught with honour killings it is easy to lay the blame on Islam but it is not Islam which is at fault in Mississauga but a cultural ethos which perceives wives and daughters as mere property and holds the individual female subject to the whims of their rightful male owner. Every year in this country women are killed by their husbands and lovers because another believes they are their property to do with as they will. Every year in this country, there are literally thousands of women and daughters who are beaten by another who believes they are property - chattel. And the vast majority - are not even Muslim.

I may personally believe Islam is a false religion but I have yet to meet anyone who is a false “individual”. I believe individuals have the right to whatever they want to believe as long as it does not subjugate the personal rights of another. I don’t even have a problem with Muslim women who wear the hajib or dress modestly. Frankly, as a conservative living in Canada, I can see great value in all of us dressing more modestly. And what woman hasn’t had a bad hair day? Barring a wig or a hat, the Hajib is the cure-all for bad hair days.

I remember a time in the not so distant past when Christian men and women believed that fathers and husbands had a god-given right to beat their rebellious wives or daughters in this country. The neighbors would no more call the police or interfere with a man’s right to “discipline” his “rebellious” wife or daughter. And sometimes those same Christian men went to jail for murdering those rebellious wives and daughters. They would even quote Christian scripture in their defense.

In these times, it is easy to lash out and blame Islam or Muslims for the death of a rebellious daughter but we live in perilous times. We are in a cultural battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims every where against the religious extremists who seek the submission of our culture or our death. Every time we lash out and blame “Islam” for the sins of culture we drive moderate Muslims away from our common cause. We need to look to our own roots for solutions.

A neighbor of mine runs a pizza parlour down the street. He is a religious Muslim man. I have known him for almost 13 years. I know his wife, son and all four daughters too. Actually, he was once a refugee from Iran. After the Mullah’s came to power and he saw what was being done in the name of religion, he feared for the lives of his wife and daughter so he fled Iran with his family, and was eventually granted refuge in Canada. He loves his family and he loves living in Canada. He has even had a rebellious daughter to try his heart. He took great comfort in the fact I was once a rebellious daughter so he has hope in this country for her future - even if her long green hair makes him cringe every time he watches her going out the door.

He believes Canada is the greatest country in the world and his world includes America. And just why is he such a great Canadian patriot? Because, he found a country which allowed him to make a home, gave him the freedom to be and practice his religious beliefs according to the dictates of his own conscience. He did not flee persecution from religious tyranny by Muslim theocrats to come to another country to be persecuted for his religious beliefs. We could all do with remembering, in this country, his case is not the exception.

7 comments:

Michael said...

A very thoughtful post. I like it.

Anonymous said...

I see your point, but I'm not ready to relieve Islam of its responsibility for encouraging a "cultural ethos which perceives wives and daughters as mere property and holds the individual female subject to the whims of their rightful male owner.

Did "Islam" demand the father murder his daughter over a scarf? No, but it is Islam that teaches women are second rate Human Beings, not equal to men.

K. Shoshana said...

So did Christianity, until about 25-30 or so years. My paternal grandmother was badly beaten for associating with my grandfather in public – she was caught associating with him - in a group of neighborhood teenagers. He wasn’t one of “our” people.

In fact, she was so badly beaten that she literally crawled out of the house and was attempting to crawl under the porch to die when he by chance walked by her home. Her parents took turns beating her with a baseball bat and a frying pan.

She was all of 15 and he was 19th. He had no experience of this kind of thing and was absolutely horrified that she was treated this way. He told me she didn’t even look human and at first it was hard for him to believe this creature was his beautiful Shoshanna – his rose - whose laugh was like music. He made up his mind to marry her right then - as she bleed in his arms, and he did it to save her life from the ‘good Christians’ who believed it was their Christian duty to beat rebellious children or wives. His family sat shiva on him but he loved her until his last breath 65 years later. He ended up having to the doctor’s bills, and then he had to pay her parents $50 for the right to marry her, oh, I shouldn’t forget the extra $5 he had to give her father for drinks. Did I mention this was Toronto, Canada in 1938?

But I don’t have to go back as far as 1938 to personally have heard or witnessed men justify the beating of their wives or daughters because the bible told them so. I grew up witnessing my own share of women and daughters being pulverized for alleged acts of rebellion dealing with clothing, make-up or burnt dinners and I am only 45. If no one uses Christianity to justify the abuse of one’s wife or daughter any more it was because the feminist movement took on the Christian establishment head-on in the late 60’s and 70’s. One of reasons I parted ways with the feminist movement was my own personal disillusionment with modern feminists - who I felt had completely abdicated equality rights for non-Christian women and left these women to flounder and drown in the misogyny of their own ‘culture’ alone.

You know what speaks volumes to me today? I have heard moderate muslims in Canada speak out against the murder of a rebellious daughter but not one prominent public feminist has chirped up about the misogynic culture which is breeding under our nose under the guise of religion.

Anonymous said...

Kateland,

Your perspective on this incident is the best I have read anywhere. It is always too easy for some to put a grander conspiracy to a terrible event. You remind us that humanity and its associations are flawed but that how one choses to deal with a difficult situation is more revealing than the religious, cultural or racial label that may be applied after the fact.

James Bow said...

Bravo, Kateland. Bravo!

K. Shoshana said...

Gee TH, now the VRCW will be demanding I give back the decoder ring.

Thanks, James, you know, I just got a mite fed up with all the stupidness I have read over this poor girl's murder.

Candace said...

Excellent post, Kateland. I was a rebellious daughter, too, and have been blessed with one 1/10th as bad as I was and remind myself regularly that if I made it to 14, she can, too (although there are days where I wonder).