Dever’s and Sarah Bacon’s article Interpreting Honor Crimes: The Institutional Disregard Towards Female Victims of Family Violence in the Middle East they speak to how woman is not equally treated in the laws relating to honor killing in the Islam community. This article speaks to how woman are constantly under the threat of being harmed with honor related violence that is not rightfully judged by society due to the lenient punishments men receive, gender biased laws and the social acceptance of killings among the Islamic society. The authors of this text provide the viewer with their opinion of how Islamic societies are unfairly biased to males in honor killings. Men are able to receive mitigated punishments or no punishments at all when they commit an honor killing. This is due to the high power of men in government to make laws that make honor killings legal but not explicitly justified. The authors claim that the only way to create social change is to present factual evidence of the gender discrimination to the …show more content…
363) This quote deals with the fact that males are able to get out of honor killings by sating they were defending their honor. Muslim’s believe that when a female relative commits adultery she ruins the reputation of all relatives and therefore killing her would defend their reputation.
“women who violate these norms are considered a threat the community by fact that they are antisocial or deviant to social mores and norms. At the macro level, because there is a lack of punishment by the state, men receive lenient punishment because this type of crime is seen as traditional, cultural and familial, rather than an issue of law.” (pg. 369) Dever and Bacon state of why the state is allowing these cases of honor violence to continue due to the social norms created by the Islam community. Due to the fact honor killings are not initially dealt with through law, the state enables men to enact on a honor killing if they have a rightful cause. The laws are setup in order to protect the cultural rules of Islam rather than to defend a human’s