Qandeel Baloch and ‘honour’ killings

Saadia Toor: Let’s get a couple of things clear here folks.

1. Qandeel Baloch was not killed over family ‘honour’. We need to ask ourselves why it is that this narrative and framing is so readily available and so easily reached for by everyone from the media to ‘civil society activists’ to label every instance of a (Muslim) woman being killed by a family member in Pakistan. This is too convenient a label, and the more uncritically and reflexively it is trotted out, the easier it is for murderers to use it as an excuse or cover for their crime. This label obscures more than it explains about any given case of a woman’s murder at the hands of her family members. And this is so even when the family itself claims it as the reason. it is being claimed as the reason for the violent act by the family itself. But it is even more inexcusable when this is NOT in fact the framework or label deployed by her parents either in the FIR her father filed against his son (Qandeel’s brother) or in their public statements in which they accuse the latter of killing his sister for money. There is a possibility that she was killed by him because she refused to support his drug addiction. So please, let’s stop reinforcing the problematic idea that the only or even primary motivation for killing a woman in Pakistan is some atavistic outrage felt by her family members at having their ‘honour’ violated. There are often far more crassly ‘rational’ (in the sense of calculated, and materialistic) reasons for such acts of misogynist violence. Of course, that sounds far less satisfyingly exotic than the idea of an ‘honour killing’.

2. This doesn’t mean that we cannot see misogyny – a deep-seated hatred for women, especially those who choose not to live by society’s rules – at work in Qandeel’s case. There is misogyny at play at every level of her story – in the hypocrisy and double standards of a society that engages in the self righteous moral policing of every aspect of women’s being, down to blaming them for their own rapes and murders; in the sickening glee with which many (mostly men) expressed their reactions to her death on social media; in the shameless complicity of the commercial media which incites violence against women (as it does against minorities) for ratings and profit.

And so perhaps Qandeel’s murder IS an honour-killing after a fashion – insofar as she is the victim of the collective vengeance of a self-righteous and hypocritical societal mainstream whose ‘honour’ she apparently violated so intensely that even her death could not slake its bloodlust. I’m not a fan of feminist psychoanalysis but it is hard to ignore the deep-seated and intense fear of women’s (sexual) agency that is palpable in the reactions to her murder on social media by men. Fuck you all.