Of man’s murderous ‘honour’

August 5, 2024

ISLAMABAD – HORRIFIED by TV images of a young woman in a hospital in upper Sindh, and whose own father had attacked her with an axe because she wanted to divorce an abusive husband, I googled ‘woman+axe+attack’, and what did I find?

Where a man has been ‘dishonoured’, axes are among the weapons of choice. Others include knives, shotguns, pistols, rocks, machetes and even fuel — mostly kerosene and petrol — to redeem the lost ‘honour’. Kudos to a society where the conviction rate for ‘honour killing’ ranks near zero and often the perpetrator is a member of the victim’s own family.

Most of us assume our family’s support no matter what we do. Imagine the despondency and loneliness that must fill that woman’s life and soul when her own father attacked her so savagely that he almost severed her legs below the knee. All for the crime of wanting to escape from an abusive relationship.

Similarly, a man attacked his granddaughter with an axe in the Karachi suburb of Korangi and killed her a fortnight ago. She had married of her own will, angering her family, and had moved to Jamshoro with her husband. Her grandfather had brought her back on the pretext of a patch-up and then axed her to death.

Before you criticise me for acting all shocked at something that routinely happens in our society and has been happening for decades, let me tell you that each time such a crime takes place, it fills me with infinite rage and also despair because I know the following day it will be forgotten.

The man’s honour redeemed, one can be sure that the loss of the murdered woman would also only be mourned by another woman, perhaps the mother or the sister. It seems like an endless cycle. Somewhere religion is invoked, in other