Women are killed from the moment of conception through selective abortions, they are killed through genital mutilation, they are killed to preserve the honor of the family, and they are killed because they cannot be controlled in the family and society.
Men, families and states terrorize, marginalize and kill women. Some women suffer because they do not obey the imposed norms of cultural and religious norms of head and body covering or codes of honor, and others because they are too exposed or covered, or think too much for themselves and demand to be equal. When women rebel and demand their rights, they are beaten or killed. Often in the name of the state, God, tradition, honor and morality, but also in the name of secular laws and values, they are deprived of their freedom and the right to decide for themselves and the fundamental human right to life.
Violence against women occurs in all societies, cultures, classes, races and religious traditions and manifests itself in various forms, from psychological, economic, physical to the most severe forms of sexual violence and murder. Violence also includes threats, stalking, coercive control, deprivation of freedom and movement. All these forms are defined as gender-based violence . UN Women data shows that one in three women and one in ten men are exposed to some form of gender-based violence.
In a series of articles, I talk about different forms of violence, both domestic and structural, carried out by systems of power. I start with murder because it is the result of enduring various forms of coercion and violence and because there is no way to fix anything after that. Every day we witness information about the murders of women around the world, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region, crimes that can be classified as femicide (hate crimes against women) are still not adequately sanctioned in many societies, including Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Why were Mahsa and Edina killed?
Although hundreds of women are killed every day around the world by their husbands, ex-husbands or partners or close family members, the murders of two women, Mahsa Amini in Iran and Edina Odobašić in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have attracted particular public attention in the last few weeks.
At first glance, these two murders do not have much in common, however, in both cases they are about control of the female body, sexuality and lifestyle.
Edina Odobašić is a young woman from Bihać who was strangled by her husband on October 11, 2022. She was 32 years old and left behind a young son. There is no official information in the media about the details of the murder, and unofficially it is about domestic violence and jealousy of the husband who strangled Edina with a kitchen appliance cord, because she did not submit to his control. She did not suffer the violence that women normally suffer and remain silent because unfortunately the victim is still stigmatized, not the perpetrator, and the perpetrators of gender-based violence are 97 percent men.
Another young woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested on September 13, 2022 in Iran and died three days later. She was 22 years old and traveling with her brother to visit relatives in Tehran. She was not covered enough, as the morality police assessed, so she was arrested and subjected to “re-education,” whatever that means, and it can’t mean anything good. Whenever the government re-educates someone, it means forcing them to adopt a national, religious, or other ideology. It is therefore about force and violence that forces a person to reconsider their behavior and speech and to admit under duress that they made a mistake and continue to live according to the government’s orders.
According to media reports, Mahsa Amini was supposed to be re-educated to learn how a Muslim woman should properly cover her head and body in public. Although the authorities promised to conduct an investigation, as the circumstances of this murder have not been fully clarified, the fact is that the girl died during re-education. Her parents, however, said that she was completely healthy. She was brought to the hospital in a comatose state, which means that she was probably tortured to admit her mistake and accept the orders of the morality police about the correct way of dressing that the Iranian authorities impose on women.
It is obvious that a woman has no freedom to decide for herself whether to wear a headscarf if she wants to or not to wear one if she doesn’t want to. The state takes it upon itself to impose a way of practicing Islam, to monitor its citizens and to sanction them through the moral police. This is one of the forms of structural violence carried out by the state and its systems of power in the name of God.
I already pointed out at the beginning that violence and murders happen in all societies and cultures, so it is not specific to Muslim societies and communities. Mahsa Amini and Edina Odobasic were Muslim, and it is important for me, as a believer and a citizen involved in the promotion of human rights, to show that religion per se does not justify violence, but that violence is often justified by the interpreters of religion, and they were and are mostly men.
The questions that arise after such horrific cases of murder, which are the result of the control of women’s lives and bodies, are:
– Does anyone have the right to force people to be believers or prevent them from expressing their religious beliefs?
– Is religious, state or social norm and custom more important than human life?
– Is it more important to blindly follow one interpretation of God’s law (interpreted and mediated by male authorities) or is justice and freedom more important?
– Can one truly believe if there is no freedom for a person to decide what and how to practice?
-Why do men think they should decide on the lives and bodies of women, is that what God has authorized them to rule over their lives?
-Why are women’s bodies and sexuality interpreted as a source of disorder and sin even today?
– Why do women think it is enough to follow the authorities and cover the body and head without developing their own critical reflection about their faith and other social issues?
– Why do women remain silent and do not confront violence until it is too late, until it happens to their daughters?
Each of these questions requires a broader analysis, and in this text I will briefly refer to the question of the compulsion to be a believer according to the request and interpretation of the state and the question of a woman’s obedience to a man.
Coercion and prohibition: two types of control
If we start from the perspective of international norms and standards of human rights, freedom of religion and conscience as well as other rights and freedoms on which the dignity of every person rests are guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and other documents. Although no one has the right to force anyone to believe or not to believe or to deny him/her the right to live his/her faith, in practice we see that believers are often under pressure not to publicly express their faith. This is best manifested in the examples of banning the wearing of the hijab in certain European countries, which allegedly threatens the secular state. We have such an example in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the decision of the High and Prosecutorial Council in 2016 to ban religious symbols in judicial institutions, because supposedly justice should be neutral, and that decision mostly affected women who wear the hijab.
If we start from the perspective of faith, in the Islamic worldview there is no compulsion in faith (Qur’an, 2:256), because faith is a blessing that God gives and is not imposed by laws. For Muslims for whom the Qur’an is the moral and ethical compass of life, it is important to remember that God the Most High says in the Qur’an to the Prophet and to all people: “If your Lord willed, there would indeed be all believers on Earth. So why do you urge people to be believers? ” (10:99)
How arrogant must the government, scholars ( ulama ) and those who think they speak in the name of God be to impose religion by force and endanger people’s lives just because they do not accept the imposed belief and practice? Faith cannot be imposed, because the heart and mind can only act out of freedom, and everything else is pretense, resistance and even hatred towards what is imposed by force. Any kind of coercion is contrary to the ethics of justice and mercy, which are the key principles of Islam that should be the starting point of all theological and legal arguments.
In practice, unfortunately, very little is guided by the ethics of justice and mercy, but by the ethics of force, threat, and sanctions. Innocent women and men are suffering, because their lives are obviously not worth as much as the norms that the government imposes in the name of God and commits violence in the name of God – God who is Mercy, Justice, Beauty and Love. The life of Mahsa Amini and numerous other women is clearly not worth as much as the law passed by the state in the name of God, which instead of justice and mercy takes the lives of all those who dare to oppose such a law.
Although direct examples of invocations of violence and murder of women are rarely found in interpretations of Islam, the ways in which the messages of Islam were conveyed in the pre-modern period and are still present today imply: obedience to men, control of women and their sexuality, their movements, the jobs they can do, the education they can or cannot obtain, as well as control of their participation in the creation of social and state norms and policies.
Unfortunately, murders and stonings of women still occur today due to accusations of adultery, honor killings (murders due to dishonoring the family and violating the code of honor) which are present in many communities in Africa and Asia. There are also murders of girls through genital mutilation (FGM) or popularly known as female circumcision. Finally, there are murders of girls during pregnancy because, using modern technologies for early sex detection, selective abortions are performed so that the family has a male child. Therefore, there are different forms of violence against women from the moment of conception to old age for those who reach old age. The problem is when these forms of violence and murders are justified by religion and when violence is carried out in the name of God, who is Mercy and Justice. It all starts with control and demands for obedience to a man, family and/or state.
Obedience to a man or to God?
Many men think that a woman is their property and that they can manage her body, sexuality and life as they wish. There are many reasons, and among the arguments that challenge the demands for equality between women and men in most Muslim countries, they want to show that women and men are not the same and that they cannot have equal rights.
It is true that women and men are biologically different, but they should have equal opportunities and equal rights to manifest all their intellectual, physical and other capacities and potentials. No one denies biological differences, but they cannot and must not be an excuse for limiting rights and freedoms and subordinating women to men. That is blasphemous, because for believers there is only one Lord. Women and men should be partners, protectors and friends of each other, as described in the message of the Qur’an (9:71).
Instead of a partnership relationship, there is a hierarchical order in which the woman is dependent on the man, his will, nature and customary practices that often contradict the message of Islam, but people still adhere to them. Thus, for the sake of the honor, morality and authority of men and the state, the freedom and life of a woman who wants to manage her own life, to think for herself and be a full-fledged subject, and not an object of someone’s desires and baseless authority, is taken away.
Instead of equality and partnership, a woman is generally seen as a reproductive apparatus that gives birth to new heirs of the lineage and/or gives birth to soldiers of the nation and state, or is perceived as a territory to be humiliated, conquered and raped in order to give birth to soldiers of another nation. For centuries, women have been forced to submit to the authority of men and not to the authority of God, because men have positioned themselves as the head and authority through which women express their devotion to God. It has been constantly interpreted, and even today there are such interpretations of the faith, that a woman owes obedience to a man, because he is her gate to enter heaven (paradise).
However, nowhere in the Qur’an did God say that obedience to a man is a characteristic of better women, but obedience to God (66:5), but throughout history it has been constantly interpreted and today it often seems that a woman is obliged to obey a man and only indirectly to God. In this way, the foundations of control over a woman’s body and life are strengthened, and in this way men are indirectly told that they have the right to control a woman and if she refuses to obey, they can sanction her. When they end it with murder, then we are surprised.
Confronting brutal murders like the murder of Edina Odobašić, the moral re-education that led to the death of Mahsa Amini and numerous other women who suffer every day at the hands of a man and male authority, makes us wonder, how is it possible for such murders to occur?
It is possible, because even today we hear uncritically repeated messages about hierarchical relationships in marriage and family, instead of partnership and joint action.
It is possible, because there are still scholars who situate women as weaker, less rational than men and in need of protection and control.
It is possible, because most men are comfortable being in a position of power and authority and not dealing with these uncomfortable issues.
It is possible, because most men have not experienced what it means to be subordinate, limited, exclusive and what it means to be secondary and in an infantile position despite all the talents and gifts of reason and freedom that are not gender conditioned.
It is possible, because most men think that it is happening somewhere far away and that it is not their problem.
Women, on the other hand, have been taught for centuries to find their way in the labyrinth of patriarchy, to most often remain silent, to manipulate, to find detours to achieve their desires and goals, and to say the least openly about it. Why? Because they are afraid of condemnation, stigma, marginalization and labeling that they are hateful feminists who want to destroy the family and tradition and rule over men, or the most common reason is that women do not want to leave their comfort zone, because it is easier for them.
It’s easier while they’re killing other people’s daughters, and when evil comes to our door, it’s too late.
