Discuss the relationship between (Religious) education, and Islamic fundamentalism, with specific reference to Honour killings
Since a Muslim father murdered his sixteen year old daughter in 2003 because she had a Christian boyfriend there has been increased concern over the number of ‘honour killings’ that are taking place in Britain. Some writers appear to suggest that there is a link between the rise in the number of these killings and the British state education system. The Guardian Newspaper (14/10/03) published the following:
The London School of Islamics claimed last week that the 16-year-old Muslim girl murdered by her father in an "honour killing" was really the victim of British state education. "The tragedy could have been avoided if the poor girl was educated in a Muslim school by Muslim teachers," it says. Muslims should not have to "send their children to state schools where they are exposed to teachers who have no respect for Islamic faith and Muslim community" (Guardian 14/10/03).
This paper will begin with an explanation of fundamentalism and the meaning and origins of honour killings. It will then describe the historic context of state education, the emergence of voluntary aided schools, and the conflict over Muslim schools. Finally the paper will go on to discuss the relationship between education, Islamic fundamentalism, attitudes to women, and honour killings.
Honour Killings
The nature of fundamentalism is a complex issue and cannot be separated from the social and economic context in which it arises. Bruce (2000) has argued that although fundamentalism originally referred to resurgent religion and a return to traditional teaching, in recent times it is more likely to be expressed as a form of struggle against western attitudes. Certainly the fundamentalism that has appeared over the last ten years or so has been anti-western and very oppressive of women. There has been large-scale concentration on medieval sharia law rather than Qur’anic teaching. It is estimated that across the world in the year 2000 thirteen women a day became the victims of ‘honour’ killings, and that this number continues to rise. Although this happens across religious traditions by far the highest number of victims are Islamic. Islam does not condone the killing of one person by another. The holy Qur’an states that Killing one innocent human being is akin to killing the entire human race (Qur’an, 5:32, 6:151, 17:33).
In Islam women are viewed as the carriers of family honour. If a woman is seen to be acting in a sexually permissive way or if she commits adultery, or in some quarters, if she is raped, then this is seen as a blot on the family honour. The Muslim Council of Great Britain, in a paper on honour killings says that they are not, however, about morality, or about the virtue of women. Rather these killings are about power and domination where women are seen as nothing more than chattels and may therefore be disposed of if they step out of line. Many of these women are killed simply because a family member suspects they have done something. Such suspicion, if it becomes common knowledge is a blot on the family honour. Men who commit honour killings, particularly in the Middle East, either receive vastly reduced sentences or go unpunished. It is simply women who bear the brunt of punishment for suspected immoral behaviour. Men, even rapists, usually get away with it. Although there are verses in the Qur’an that celebrate the equality of women with men, there are others that not only portray women as second class citizens but actually encourage violence against themas the following sura demonstrates.
An-Nisa 4: 34 "As to those women On whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill -conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share beds, (and Last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): For God is Most High, Great (above you all)"
Honour killing has nothing to do with Islam as a religion, while the Qur’an does advocate strict punishment for infringing the strict moral code, and death for adultery, it requires four witnesses to the act itself before a person can be punished. Many Islamic leaders denounce the practice that actually stems from pre-Islamic tribal times when such punishments were used to control and maintain power over the tribe. The practice has received widespread condemnation within the British press with both Islamic leaders and the police calling for greater education on these matters. In some cases the British education system has been blamed for the rising number of honour killings in this country.
The Emergence of British State Education and the Voluntary Aided and Controlled Schools
Education and religion have a long history in Britain where since the middle ages education was undertaken along denominational lines. Education was seen as an important element in social reform and was generally provided by different faith groups. The Forster Act of 1870 changed all that. Board schools were established with the proviso that:
In schools established by means of local rates, no catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught(1870 Act, paraphrased in F.S. Hurt, 1979 [quoted in Parker-Jenkins et al, 2004:13]).
>From 1902 onwards voluntary aided schools (that is those schools that were funded partly from government sources and partly from parish sources) were set up alongside the board schools, the present day community schools. The Act did not specify denominations for the schools thus there arose alongside the Church of England schools, Roman Catholic schools and Jewish schools. Some of these schools were voluntary aided and some voluntary controlled. In a voluntary aided school the government provides money for staff costs and towards the maintenance of the building but the staff are employed by the school who are responsible for all other costs. In a voluntary controlled school staff are employed by the local educational authority and all RE teaching is non-confessional and multi-faith while worship is that of the school’s inclination (Parker-Jenkins et al, 2004). The Education Act of 1944 cemented these provisions and allowed for compulsory schooling between the ages of five and fifteen. Every state school was to provide religious education and begin the day with an act of communal worship (the Cowper Temple clause of 1902 allowed for withdrawal from these on religious or conscientious grounds).
The large number of immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of multi-culturalism in Britain and the competing demands of different religious groups to be able to undertake their own schooling with Government financial help. Some Muslims particularly wanted Muslim schools for a number of reasons, not least because they objected to the co-educational nature of British schools and the lack of specific Muslim teaching. The last twenty years has seen the emergence (against a background of continuing controversy) of faith based schools of differing faith traditions. Muslim schools particularly have had a difficult struggle in obtaining similar rights to Jews and Christians, finally obtaining funding in 1998. There are some Muslim parents who object to the state system because although the system claims to be non-confessional they regard it as having a Christian bias that serves to undermine their children’s religious background (Parker-Jenkins et al, 2004). This was particularly the case after the 1988 education act where schools were to have an act of worship that was of a broadly Christian nature and where all children were to receive education in religion (i.e. all religions). Some Muslim parents actually withdrew their children from school because they objected to the teaching of other religions, it had to be explained that the teaching of different religions was religious education whereas the teaching of one religion would be religious nurture (Hull, 1998).
Education, Islamic Fundamentalism, and Honour Killings
The Qur’an advocates education for all My Lord increase me in knowledge…No gift among all gifts of a father to his child is better than education (Qur’an 20:14). Until 1998 requests for funding for Muslim schools were consistently refused among fears of fundamentalism and increasing Islamophobia (Runnymede Trust, 1997) Recent historical events such as the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the first Gulf war, (and the present conflict in Iraq) have provoked varied reactions within the Islamic world either in response to the West, or against it. These events and the way in which the Taliban oppressed women generated some anti-Islamic feelings in the West. (Giddens, 2001).
Opponents of Muslim schools claimed that they would end up as breeding grounds for terrorism. It has also been said that such schools reinforce what Gilroy (1993) has termed ethnic absolutism. Ethnic absolutism views ethnic divisions as fixed and based on unchanging traditions. Since 1998 however, there are a handful of Muslim schools that are state funded under the voluntary aided category (Parker-Jenkins et al 2004). When the first state funded Muslim secondary school was opened in Birmingham in 2001 critics argued that it would lead to educational apartheid (Guardian, 10/2/01). While it seems reasonable to assume that the number of such schools will grow, large numbers of Muslim children’s parents are quite satisfied with the state school system. Others object to sex education and to the mixing of the sexes in secondary schools, because the law in this country states that all children between the ages of five and sixteen must attend school some parents have been known to send daughters back to Pakistan to keep them out of the education system. This is part of a move by fundamentalists to keep Muslim women in subjection, movements such as the Taliban have abused Muslim women’s basic human rights.
In Afghanistan between 1992 and 1995 Muslim women were abused, raped, murdered and sold into prostitution. This offended the honour of whole communities and people were unable to resist the takeover. One fifteen year old girl said she was raped and her father murdered because he had allowed her to go to school. Since 1995 there have been strict rules on how women should dress and severe restrictions on their education (Amnesty International). Even in countries such as Egypt where women generally have more freedom in 1987 it was decreed that men had the right to decide whether a woman should be educated and that a husband had the right to punish his wife.
"In 1987 an Egyptian court, following an interpretation of the Koran proposed by the Syndicate of Arab Lawyers, ruled that a husband had the duty to educate his wife and therefore the right to punish her as he wished"(Guardian Weekly, 23/12/90).
Conclusion
This paper has looked at the relationship between education, Islamic fundamentalism and honour killings. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that there are elements within Islam and within all patriarchal religious traditions, who would use religious teachings to oppress women and to keep them in subjection. It has shown that there are areas where the Hadith and the Sharia have taken precedence over the Qur’an when it comes to the treatment of women. This is something that Islamic feminist scholar Fatima Mernissi evidences in her work on women in Islam (Mernissi, 1991). These teachings obscure what Mernissi believes is the emancipatory message at the heart of Islam and serve the interests of men, Muslim women want to be educated but fundamentalist leaders would prevent this if they could. Muslim women’s campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali has said in an interview:
But tell me why any Muslim man would want Islamic women to be educated and emancipated? What would be in it for him? Would a Roman voluntarily have given up his slaves? Not likely," she says spiritedly, pausing only to take a long sip of bottled water through a straw. "It is the women we must educate" (Telegraph Arts, 3/04/05).
Muslim women are entitled to education and it is clearly the case that the Qur’an encourages the education of all, and that includes women. It is also evident that while the Qur’an, like all other sacred religious texts, stems from a patriarchal context and is generally interpreted by males, it does not justify the killing of one individual by another. Honour killings have nothing honourable about them. They are the murder of one (often innocent) human being by another as one incident in Yorkshire demonstrates. A Muslim girl was murdered by her parents simply because a boy dedicated a song to her on the local radio (Guardian, 18/09/01).The people who commit these murders bring shame on their religious tradition whether it is Islam, Sikhism, or Christianity and they should be sent to prison in the same way as other murderers.
Bibliography
- Ayann Hirsi Ali Telegraph Arts April 3rd 2005 Lifting the Veil on Islam
- Giddens, A. 2001. 4th Edition Sociology. Cambridge, Polity
- Gilroy, P. 1993 Small Acts London, Serpents Tail.
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3150142.stm
- http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA110111999
- http://www.mcb.org.uk/honour_killings.pdf “Honour Killings: A Crime Against Islam”
- Hull, J. 1998. “Religious Education and Islam in English Religious Education: Developments and Principles” Muslim Education Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1998, pp. 10-23
- Parker-Jenkins, M. Hartas, D. and Irving, B. 2004. In Good Faith: Schools, Religion and Public Funding. Hampshire, Ashgate Publishing.
- Runnymede Trust 1997. Islamophobia. A Challenge for us all. London, Runnymede Trust.
- The Qur’an
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