Murders of women in the Arab world: "If love permits murder, this indicates the existence of a pathological dimension"
The recent crimes against three young women during the past ten days, in different countries of the Arab world, have revived the debate about the place of women in these societies. Their killing caused shock and anger that erupted on social media, accompanied by the hashtag #Women_Condolences. For more details and a return to the background of these crimes in Arab societies, France 24 interviewed Dolly Sarraf, professor of sociology at the Lebanese University and conference coordinator at the Arab Sociological Association.
In the last ten days, the Arab world and in different countries witnessed three horrific murders of young women that shook public opinion.
The crimes are similar in several points, as all of them were premeditated and carried out in public and were committed according to the initial data out of “love,” and all the perpetrators of these killings were men who did not accept the word “ no ” from the victims, that is, they did not accept that these young women refuse to associate them or continue the relationship with them.
The first of these crimes occurred on June 20, when a young man killed student Naira Ashraf in front of her university in the Nile Delta, north of Cairo. What sparked the controversy and angry reactions more is that a few days later a similar crime occurred in Jordan against a nursing student named Eman Rashid, who was shot inside the university by a young man who refused to be associated with him.
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In the UAE, a similar crime also occurred, when a man stabbed his twenties to his wife of Palestinian-Jordanian origin, Lubna Mansour, in her car, and shot her dead, on the basis of a lawsuit she filed for divorce from him.
The crimes sparked shock and widespread sympathy on social media with women victims of violence and revived the debate about the status of women in Arab societies. Several hashtags accompanied the posts on these sites, most notably #Women's Condolences.
To shed light on these crimes and their social and psychological background, France 24 interviewed Professor of Sociology at the Lebanese University and Conference Coordinator at the Arab Sociological Association Dolly Sarraf.
Why do these crimes occur in the Arab world?
The cultural, social and economic conditions in Arab societies vary from one society to another, but they agree that each society has a system of crushing violence in multiple forms that made women a permanent victim, because they are patriarchal societies and have a cultural imagination that exists in the Arab value and cultural system.
What is happening is fundamentally related to the existing understanding of the issue of gender and the backgrounds of this understanding. There is a criminalization of women with evidence or without evidence.
The recent killings that took place in the Egyptian or Jordanian universities, or elsewhere, raise the question of the consequences and remnants of the existing perceptions in Arab societies regarding women. Perceptions of women turning into victims without any remorse reveal a moral, ethical, cultural, human and civil dilemma through which the entity of women is violated, while the Arab societies’ quest for advancement, achieving security, stability and development and raising their potential challenges requires a radical change of view towards women and considering them as a force for positive investment in advancement and advancement And no stock to sacrifice.
It is necessary to take into account the changes that affected the digital world and the changes that made all countries of the world suffer from many dilemmas and manifold phenomena, the most prominent of which is related to the topic being discussed now, which is the discussion of violence. There is a fundamental link with what is known as the changes and changes of human identity, as the individual in this digital world is living a kind of chaos of identities, and I call it the gel identity, meaning that his identity has become unclear and cannot be framed within a specific framework. This makes many people live a behavioral and normative duality, meaning that a person acts in his local community with his family and the groups to which he belongs in a certain way within a social identity required by the local community, but in the virtual world he lives another identity that may be completely contradictory and completely different from this actually social. This undoubtedly has psychological, reflexive, behavioral, value and ethical implications for individuals. Because, in practice, the individual's degree of belonging to the group and society has been reduced, so he is living more of a kind of identitarian loosening, and therefore he does not feel that he is subject to the society's moral, social, and ethical standards and values, not even religious. If this is one of the reasons that we must point out, in addition to that, there is a widespread culture of violence and representations of this culture appear in violent electronic games that children and youth are addicted to in the Arab world, according to recent studies and statistics at high rates that are the highest in the world. So there is a culture of violence spreading, in these games, of course, and there is complete permissibility of violent behavior. In addition to these reasons, the poor economic and social conditions and unemployment suffered by the population of the Arab world, which may push them to commit crimes in general.
And violence is always practiced by the strong over the weak, and since the Arab woman in the male cultural imagination is always the weakest, she is always seen as a victim, as a weak being, violence can be directed towards him, he can be killed, his position can be violated and his position as an entity and of course this explains the continuation and growth of violent crimes directed by men against Women.
What made the recent crimes so resonant?
The echo of the recent crimes is linked to the main root of the problem, which is the prevailing gender awareness in Arab societies, which often marginalizes women and in favor of males because society is patriarchal. But there are two important elements that gave the recent crimes that spread an echo of a special kind. The first element is the form of the crime, where the killings came in public, whether with knives or shootings, in full view of all people, this first important factor.
The second factor is that those who committed these crimes say that their motive for the crime is “love,” and this matter raises many and difficult questions. The cultural perception of women, which must be addressed and addressed.
The recent killings and the general context of the situation of women in Arab societies indicate a profoundly pathological situation, as there is an immoral situation in these societies that must be dealt with in a deep and comprehensive manner. Women are often seen as second-class human beings, which is why we witness many honor killings in these societies that marginalize women’s existence, marginalize their human security and make them undoubtedly live a form of kidnapped citizenship, I say hijacked from these intellectual systems that still prevail in our Arab societies .
What is the impact of these crimes on the rest of the women in the Arab world?
Certainly, such incidents shake the human feelings of any human being - whoever he is - whether he is a man or a woman, but for women their impact is profound and deeper, and there is no doubt that they raise the issue of social safety, psychological safety and peace of life, and this matter is of course For women and for others, but at the height of excitement about what is happening or following up on its repercussions and questions for women in particular and for all Arab societies, we must also ask, following what happened to these victims who were buzzed by the media in the past period, about those invisible victims, (who we did not hear about). with their stories), which no one has ever photographed or heard of. Rather, many societies and groups collude to obliterate the crimes related to them, of course, under the pretext of what is known as the culture of shame or family honor and other inherited values that make there are many victims of invisible crimes.
The status of women in Arab societies, their image and how to deal with them, undoubtedly, poses complex problems that impede any advancement of Arab societies, that is, the possibility of advancement. Awareness of gender integration between men and women in Arab societies.
I cannot say that the impact of this incident will be the same for all women in the Arab world. Some women are already subjected to forms of violence and to forms of superiority and marginalization practices, so perhaps they will be more weak, more submissive and more submissive to those who practice these behaviors. While, on the other hand, at the level of feminist movements in the Arab world, pioneering women and women fighters in the issues of women’s rights, these crimes must motivate them to move more to achieve the abducted rights of Arab women, which are not recognized by Arab laws as well, in the hope that they will be able to secure the limit Acceptable conditions for women's citizenship, and also in the hope that Arab societies will change towards a more belief in gender justice between the sexes.
There must be a complete and comprehensive cultural change process, and we know very well that it requires many years, but it is inevitable because we cannot continue in this largely uncontrolled situation, which leads to an increase in crimes. As I mentioned, these crimes are only visible crimes, but there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of invisible crimes that take place in the digital world or in the real world that turn Arab women into victims.
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