Violence and the Middle East

Quiz

 

1. True or False: Honor killings were introduced to Kurdish society after the first gulf war

 

2. name atleast two reasons a woman can be killed by family members.

 

3. What was the Anfal Genocide?

 

4. Do Kurds have a State? Why or why not?

 

5. How are Kurdish women traditionally depicted to outside audiences?

Palestinian Teenagers Nino and Dudu

  • both are teenage sex workers, primarily working with men.
  • Filming during the second Intifada
  • both come have violent histories

Kleinman: "Social suffering is the result of "the devastating injuries that social force inflicts on human experience. Suffering in this anthropological perspective is the effect of social violence that social orders-local, national, global- bring to bear on people.

Creating the nation

 

​The process of constructing a nation state is an imaginative process. Collectives of individuals decide

  • The profile of citizens (i.e. what constitutes an an ideal citizen)

 

  • what defines the social body (what are the collective's shared histories? what issues do they collectively face? What is the defining culture and traditions?) ​

 

  • What rules define political engagement? (who gets to participate, what are the rules of communication?)

The body and the Nation

Gender and Sexuality inform and are informed by Nationalist projects.

 

  • Women often construed as reproducers of a nation. Men, often as protectors
  • these roles strictly heterosexual

Race

Nationality

gender

Class

Intersectionality can help us understand how individuals are impacted by  social, legal and political structures 

Nationalist movements have often sought to diminish difference to invest in 'authentic' notions of gender and sexuality and race

Unsurprisingly, during moments of national tumult, 

Kurdish Permerga fighters

Violence against LGBTQ communities in the middle East

http://ilga.org/downloads/04_ILGA_WorldMap_ENGLISH_Crime_May2016.pdf

Iran,Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania : death penalty

Israel: After 1988 no longer a crime

algeria, egypt, bahrain, kuwait, lebanon, morocco : imprisonment

Turkey: Legal since 1923

Jordan: Legal since 1951 

Policing of Homosexuality may be the result of direct campaigns or may be the result of raids targeting popular spots.

Sex and Islam

Islamic tradition quite liberal about sex but sex is strictly between men and women.

  • sexual relations an act of complementarity
  • linked with the act of procreation
  • Lesbianism attracts little attention
  • A wide variety of sex acts allowed except anal sex

"Your wives are a place of sowing of seed for you, so come to your place of cultivation however you wish"--Sura al Baqarah (Quran 2:223)

Legal, but...

Hande Kadir

Transgender sex worker in Turkey who was burned to death.

Eishai Schlissel wielding a knife at 2015 Israel pride parade

Thinking Intersectionally

  • Increasingly, activists are tying overt political issues together with LGBTQ concerns
  • The term 'Pinkwashing' has been coined to criticize Israel for attempting to attract LGBTQ tourists in spite of the occupation

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29628281

To be a refugee and gay

Violence toward women in the Middle East

  • sexual harrasment
  • honor killing
  • Female Genital Mutilation
  • Rape
  • exclusion from independent social and economic activity*

"The Girl in the Blue Bra"

Sexual Harassment in Egypt

A widespread practice which targets the young and the old, veiled and unveiled.

  • In 2013 the United Nations found that 99.3% of women in Egypt experienced sexual harassment

 

  • Presidential decree No. 50 of 2014: Modified existing law with harsher penalties
    • 6 months in jail for anyone who harasses and a EGY 3000 fine.
    • If harasser seeks sexual favors. penalty is one year in Jail and up to EGY 10,000 fine.
    • If harassment was used to obtain sexual favors, 2-5 years in jail and EGY 20,000-50,000

Problems with the law

  • defines harassment narrowly
  •  
  • ignores the harassment of men
  •  
  • law tied to the idea of the accused sexual desire
  •  
  • focus on the morality of society not the rights of women
  •  
  • brings women who do report the crime into contact with the police

Honor Killing

HONOR KILLING IS NOT IN THE QURAN 

Quran has verses that direct address the issue of child murders and forbids them.

(verses 81:8, 6:140, 17:31)

Culture v. Religion?

Child Killing common in pre-Islamic Arabia as well as  practices that devalued the lives of women within society.

 

Why the persistence of the problem

  • sexual and social independence a threat to norms of masculinity
  • ​a threat to nationalist ideas
  • Power
  • miscellaneous family disputes
  • accepted within law 

 

5000 honor killing per year internationally

Iraq has laws that allow lighter sentencing for honor killings

Syria has a penalty of two years for honor killings

In addition to honor killing, other 'honor' crimes include: Honor suicides, forced marriages, imprisonment and hymen repair

What is distinctive about honor killings is that these act can include many members of the family including mothers and sisters and that actual guilt need not be proven. Suspicion is enough.

Fighting the Patriarchy in the Middle East?

Patriarchy is defined by men holding central positions of control over the various institutions of a society. Women are largely excluded from decision making and the promulgation of laws. However, within such societies, women are called upon to or may actively volunteer to uphold this system.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

Effects 200 million women in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Surgery is done between birth and puberty.

 

Also called female circumsicion, removes the clitoris from women in order to control sexual behavior.

 

No health benefits. can result in infection, difficulties with menstration and death. 

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