“Shades of Foreign Evil”

Abstract

This article compares murder cases labeled "honor killings" with cases labeled "family/spousal murders" in the Canadian news media, exploring the construction of boundaries between these two practices. We conducted a systematic qualitative content analysis, examining a sample of 486 articles from three major Canadian newspapers between 2000 and 2012. Our analysis shows that "honor killings" are framed in terms of culture and ethnic background, presenting a dichotomy between South Asian/Muslim and Western values. Conversely, articles presenting cases as "family/spousal murders" tend to focus on the perpetrators' personalities or psychological characteristics, often ignoring factors such as culture, patriarchy, honor, and shame.

“A woman’s honor tumbles down on all of us in the family, but a man’s honor is only his”: young women’s experiences of patriarchal chastity norms

“…Eldén (2003) claims that to portray honour cultures as a specific to Muslim or Arab culture is problematic; the issue of honour violence should be placed in a global framework of violence against women, implying that all violence against women is the same in all patriarchal cultures globally. The Canadian media coverage of honour killings may present a skewed view, making honour a problem for only immigrants, where the "real" problem, that is the patriarchal idea that men can and even have the right to control their girlfriends, wives, or sisters occur in most cultures (Shier & Shor, 2016).…”

Are Honor Killings Unique? A Comparison of Honor Killings, Domestic Violence Homicides, and Hate Homicides by Far-Right Extremists

“…It is possible that an offender's motivation and/or justification for an honor killing may resemble justifications for other types of homicide. Honor killings may be a subset of domestic violence homicides and may be labeled as honor killings because of the victim and offender's identity (Baker et al, 1999;Shier & Shor, 2016). Honor killings, however, may also resemble hate homicides committed by extremists if the offenders are partially motivated by furthering political or cultural belief systems, as opposed to only being motivated by personal considerations.…”

“…This change in the locus of control limits the level of community engagement in restraining the shame abusive men feel when control is lost. The focus on honor killings in the media, it is argued, may draw attention away from the broader social issue of patriarchy and frame the issue within the victim and offender's immigrant or religious backgrounds (Shier & Shor, 2016).…”

“…Little is known about if, and how honor killings are distinct from domestic violence homicides and hate homicides. Prior research, in fact, has stated that the definition of an honor killing is contextual and often unclear (Shier & Shor, 2016). Our goal in identifying the similarities and differences across these homicide types is to extend and refine theorizing on these topics.…”

Framing Muslims in the “War on Terror”: Representations of Ideological Violence by Muslim versus Non-Muslim Perpetrators in Canadian National News Media

“…Regarding Canadian incidents, American media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting received six times less coverage in American media than the 2014 Parliament Hill attack by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam, even though the mosque shooting involved six times more deaths (Naureckas 2017). The disparities in volume of coverage also pertain to other types of violence racialised as Muslim phenomena: Yasmin Jiwani's survey of the Canadian national newspaper the Globe and Mail identified 66 articles on the Shafia femicide case alone (which was widely represented as an "honour killing" rooted in the perpetrators' Afghan and Muslim culture), but only 59 on the "murder of women and domestic violence" in general from 2005 to 2012 (Jiwani 2014;Shier and Shor 2016).…”