When Honor Prevents Justice: The Proper Way Forward for Prosecuting Honor Killings in Jordan

After slashing her throat with a knife, Kifaya Husayn’s brother ran through the streets of his neighborhood, crying: “I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor.” [1] On May 31, 1994, the 16-year-old Jordanian girl was murdered by her 32-year-old brother for being raped by an older man. Husayn’s case embodies an alarming trend of honor killings in Jordan, homicides perpetrated for a range of offenses related to the perceived misuse of female sexuality, most notably marital infidelity and premarital sexual activity. Honor killings target women who are believed to have stepped out of the sexual norms society has assigned her. These crimes are often committed by close relatives of the victim to “restore” the family’s honor and “reinstitute” the moral status quo of patriarchal society, which they believe has been negatively altered by these sexually deviant women. While these killings are deeply rooted in private matters within society, mostly involving the family, only the legal system has the force and legitimacy required to carry out the prosecution of these crimes. In order to justly prosecute these murders, the Jordanian legal system must change its discriminatory legal codes and increase penalties for honor killings while raising public awareness of the violations of both Islamic law and natural rights these cases commit.

Jordan has among the highest rate of honor killings in the world [2]. Moreover, honor killings comprise about fifty-five percent of documented crimes against women and twenty-five percent of all homicides in Jordan [3]. The average sentence served in Jordan is seven-and-a-half months for an honor killing, as most perpetrators are not even sentenced. Often, families find ways to bypass long sentences: sometimes minors are delegated to kill their relatives, since they may receive lighter sentences; other times, they may make the murder seem like a suicide [4]. Moreover, there is no requirement that the defendant in fact have witnessed the woman's “illegal, and to some extent dangerous act” in order to benefit from a reduced penalty. Jordan's treatment of perpetrators of honor killings is more lenient than that of other Middle Eastern countries in that it offers a complete, rather than a partial defense to a man who kills a female relative after finding her in an act of adultery, based on “the Islamic principle that allows a Muslim to defend his honor, property, and blood” [5].

Kifaya Husayn’s brother was first sentenced to fifteen years, but the sentence was subsequently reduced to seven-and-a-half years, still considered an extremely severe penalty by Jordanian standards. The Criminal Court granted an Article 98-based reduction of penalty because they believed Kifaya engaged in “wrongdoing” by “going out with strangers and engaging in sexual activity, considered a risk in [Jordanian] conservative society” [6]. Previously, Article 98 of the Jordanian Penal Code stated that “[h]e who commits a crime in a fit of fury caused by an unlawful and dangerous act on the part of the victim benefits from a reduction in penalty.” [7] This allowed for perpetrators of honor killings to receive much lighter sentences for their crimes compared to other types of homicides. 

In 2017, Jordanian lawmakers took steps toward extending some protections for women, amending article 98 to bar these mitigated sentences. [8] Yet low punishment for honor killings is so systematically ingrained into the legal system that the amendment did not plug another loophole for perpetrators to evade punishment. Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code contains a specific “defense of honor” provision that pertains to adultery: “He who catches his wife, or one of his female mahrams (blood relative) committing adultery with another, and... kills, wounds, or injures one or both of them is exempt from penalty.” [9] In a different case, a man repeatedly stabbed his wife after she threatened him with a knife for the sake of self-defense, in the context of a long history of domestic violence. Similarly, when the defendant was prosecuted, the court invoked Article 98 and decided that he should benefit from a reduced penalty, holding that "the victim's actions violated the traditional and religious beliefs and marriage duties which stipulate that the wife should respect, obey and serve her husband, and thus constituted dangerous actions against her husband” and the greater Jordanian society [10]. 

In addition to the legal exemptions Article 98 provides these murders, there has been a recent shift in legal definition regarding honor killings, as courts have begun to label them as “crimes of passion,” lightening the connotation of the homicide on paper [11]. These laws use the element of “sudden provocation” to suggest that the defendant did not have the opportunity to deliberate about the crime he was about to commit. By citing the perpetrator’s state of mind as not mentally sound, even if only temporarily, it becomes easier to legally argue for a lighter sentence. 

However, sometimes women manage to escape their relatives’ homicidal intentions. Unfortunately, there is very limited government and NGO support for them to depend on. In one case reported by Human Rights Watch, a woman was charged with “illegal marriage” after marrying an Egyptian man without her family’s consent [12]. She was sent to prison as a way to protect her from her family, but the case was soon forgotten. By the time HRW interviewed her, she was in her fifth year of prison, without any financial support to hire an attorney to process her case [13]. Without any suitable resources for women to turn to when faced with such threats, committing the crime is even easier for perpetrators.

As can be understood through the aforementioned cases, honor killings are considered more legally and socially excusable than other cases of homicide in Jordan. Long-standing legal codes reappear culturally across several religious groups, making it difficult to pass legislation that threatens to disrupt current social circumstances. Traditional culture considers a woman’s wali, her male legal guardian, to be  responsible for guarding and punishing women’s sexual lapses. This relates to two types of honor prevailing in Middle Eadtern societies: sharaf, which applies to men and can be attained through family reputation, chivalry, socioeconomic status or political power; and ardh, which pertains specifically to women’s chastity and sexual virtue. These two factors play into and define the legal understandings of honor and justice in relation to female sexuality within Jordanian law.

In using cultural and moral arguments to support their claims, many codes in the Middle East are able to defend perpetrators of honor crimes and assign them lighter sentences. Often, criticisms of these systems are blamed as being culturally insensitive and submitting to Western hegemonic philosophy. The ethical dilemma of cultural defenses of honor killings is whether culture should be considered in any legal defense of criminal trials. This dilemma highlights the importance of enlisting religious and social leaders before any sociocultural change can be reflected in the legal and political systems of Jordan. The state must, on top of simply changing codes and social norms, give women opportunities to seek safe and inclusive environments where they are able to stay out of harm’s way. 

[1] Feldner, Yotam. "‘Honor Murders’–Why the Perps Get off Easy." Middle East Quarterly (2000), online at https://www.meforum.org/50/honor-murders-why-the-perps-get-off-easy, 1 (visited November 30, 2019).

[2] Hadidi, Mu’men, Anahid Kulwicki, and Hani Jahshan. "A review of 16 cases of honour killings in Jordan in 1995." International Journal of Legal Medicine 114.6 (2001): 357-359.

[3] Ibid. 

[4] Zuhur, Sherifa. "Criminal Law, Women and Sexuality in the Middle East 1." Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East. Routledge, 17-40, 2016. 

[5] Kulczycki, Andrzej, and Sarah Windle. "Honor Killings in the Middle East and North Africa: A systematic review of the literature." Violence against women 17.11, 1442-1464, (2011). 

[6] Warrick, Catherine. "The Vanishing Victim: Criminal Law and Gender in Jordan." Law & Society Review 39, no. 2 (2005), 336. www.jstor.org/stable/3557618.

[7] Id.,  338. 

[8] “Jordan: Parliament Passes Human Rights Reform,” Human Rights Watch, online at https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/04/jordan-parliament-passes-human-rights-reforms, (visited December 3, 2019). 

[9] Warrick, Catherine. "The Vanishing Victim: Criminal Law and Gender in Jordan." Law & Society Review 39, no. 2 (2005), 326. www.jstor.org/stable/3557618.

[10] Id. 

[11] Cohan, John Alan. "Honor killings and the cultural defense." Cal. W. Int'l LJ 40 (2009): 177.

[12] Peratis, Kathleen. Honoring the Killers: Justice Denied for "honor" Crimes in Jordan. Vol. 14. No. 1. Human Rights Watch, 2004.

[13] Id.