The issue of honour killings has become a prominent topic of discussion in the Western discourse of violence against immigrant women. In Canada, particularly, the recent high-profile cases of honour killings have drawn increased attention from the media, academics and the public. The prevalent discussion links these murders to the broader issues of immigration, multiculturalism, and violence against immigrant women. In this thesis, I examine the nature of honour killings, their components, and the discourse of honour killings in its Canadian context. In doing so, I conduct a textual analysis of the representation of three recent honour killings in two major Canadian newspapers; The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. Results suggest that honour killings touched a nerve in Canadian media leading to the use of culturalist approaches to understand and represent these killings. This culturalist approach to the debate created serious obstacles for clarifying or explaining this form of violence against women. It further hindered any constructive public debate about ending these killings. The consequences of the culturalist approach to honour killings as well as recommendations for future research and theoretical developments in this area of violence against women are suggested. / UOIT

Honour killings are considered by the perpetrators the only path to maintain theirs and their family honour, preventing other's to follow behaviours that move away from traditional patriarchal values. With the aim of exploring how honour killings are characterised, a qualitative study within three European newspapers, in three different languages, was conducted. The findings showed that often the victims are characterised as young women and girls that want to live independently from their birth cultures or that acted in a way considered to be a dishonour to their family culture. Perpetrators are often described as family members, mostly males to whom honour is worth more than life. However, some of the news articles launch the debate of the thin line that divides honour crimes and domestic violence making this not a cultural problem but a widespread cross-cultural reality.

<p>This paper discusses honour related crimes and the judicial process within the legal system in a Swedish context. The empirical base of the study is four cases, with an honour background, and we have used discourse analysis as our method. We have developed four tools for analysing the sentences with which we observed aspects such as; language, the roles of victim and perpetrator that the involved can undertake, the different identities that the sentence might create and finally how the stories change when they enter the legal context. We connect our results to our theoretic backgrounds such as Kolfjord who discusses the legalization of conflicts, the holistic and individual perspective, the legal system as a theoretic background and finally the UN:s definition of honour crimes. These four theoretic perspectives have helped analyse the empiric base. The study reveals that the courts handle cases of honour without discussing that fact. It emerges aspects from the stories that are specific for honour crimes. The courts show a difficulty when handling cases with an honour background, there is a conflict between the group norms and the individualistic perspective. The courts describe honour in the empirical material despite the fact that honour has no legal grounds in the Swedish laws.</p>

This paper discusses honour related crimes and the judicial process within the legal system in a Swedish context. The empirical base of the study is four cases, with an honour background, and we have used discourse analysis as our method. We have developed four tools for analysing the sentences with which we observed aspects such as; language, the roles of victim and perpetrator that the involved can undertake, the different identities that the sentence might create and finally how the stories change when they enter the legal context. We connect our results to our theoretic backgrounds such as Kolfjord who discusses the legalization of conflicts, the holistic and individual perspective, the legal system as a theoretic background and finally the UN:s definition of honour crimes. These four theoretic perspectives have helped analyse the empiric base. The study reveals that the courts handle cases of honour without discussing that fact. It emerges aspects from the stories that are specific for honour crimes. The courts show a difficulty when handling cases with an honour background, there is a conflict between the group norms and the individualistic perspective. The courts describe honour in the empirical material despite the fact that honour has no legal grounds in the Swedish laws.

This literature study investigates the link between gender, religion, and honour related violence with a focus on the intersection of rumours. Rumours as an intersection of honour will help to find out the answers to the research questions. The literature study concentrates on two honour killings cases, Fadime ’s and Sorya M. The research questions, therefore, will focus on three themes, religion and honour, gender, and honour and rumours and the side effects onMuslim women. At the end of the 20th century lots of families moved to Sweden; from different regions from the Middle East such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt; due to conflict. Those families like many other migrants brought their traditions and beliefs. Some of them successfully integrated into Swedish society while others; refused to integrate, holding their beliefs hard and ignoring some Swedish law and policy. The concept of honour killings was brought from theMiddle East, a term which will be explained further in the paper. Three Arabic migrant women interviewed in this study in order to discover the meaning of rumours and how it relates to honour killings. The results show that gender differences existed in Fadime and Soraya ’s case. Rumoursas honour intersection could cause to honour killings and violence. However, the term rumours were not discussed in previous literature was not mentioned in other papers.Honour killings exist in the Swedish society and the Middle Eastern society, but it is not related to the Islamic religion, rather than a tradition, therefore, the old Middle Eastern societies were based on power rather than gender equality and justice. Keywords: Honour killings, Religion, Gender, Rumours, Middle East, Islam.

The current study has been analysing and discussing the rise of alternative masculinities among the younger generation of Iranian men, with the focus on the protest action of part of Iranian social media users to Romina’s honour killing as a case study. This interpretative research was conducted using thematic analysis within a perspective of intersectionality, and the case study in this research is built upon analysing material of the against honour related campaign following the hashtags #NoBelieveInHonour, # IOwnNoNamus and #ManWithoutNamus on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The study argues how young Iranian men are taking initiative to combat violence against women and achieve gender equality. The result demonstrated that among the generation of young, educated and secular men who are against the Islamic Republic in Iran and are more familiar with the values of modernity and gender equality under the influence of globalization and digital media, alternative masculinities have emerged in a small section of society. Reacting against the concepts of namus is one of the most difficult and controversial areas for men in traditional societies, as they feel that their masculine authority is being further questioned by criticizing and tarnishing the culture of honour and sexual restrictions. Therefore, the fact that men are willing to radically critique the concept of namus in this way can be a hope that feminist values have developed among these men.

This research sets out to examine the main excuses, often mentioned in connection to the so-called “honour killings” in Pakistan. In this way, the aim is to discuss the idea of “honour killings” by looking at trends and patterns in this kind of homicides in Pakistan. This study also explores what legal and judicial obstacles stand in the way of putting an end to the abuse of killing women in the name of honour.The first part is mainly theoretical and analytical. In this part a set of concepts is theorized as the notion of patriarchy, public/private division and cultural globalization. These theories test the empirical data of “honour killing” in the last decade and try to find their role in the society of Pakistan. This study also analyzes the “honour killing” cases in a different way by telling stories. Second part contributes to the research regarding Islam the official religion of Pakistan. This section mainly concerns the status of women in Islam and their rights of life and free will to choose their spouses. This study also tries to remove the misconception in the minds of the West regarding Islamic teachings towards women.This study proceeds mainly under the qualitative method with the supplementary help of quantitative method. At the end, the thesis bears some finding under the abductive technique. The results show that the tested theories have a significant role in upholding the ancient practice of “honour killings” in Pakistan, and Qur’aanic and Prophetic Islam has no link with the abuse of “honour killing” in general. It is ancient tribal phenomena that have entered in some cultural norms of the society.