Two women unite to take 'honor' out of killing in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD -- Naeema Kishwar shrouds herself in a burqa, showing only her eyes. She belongs to a Pakistani political party that has been linked to the Taliban. And she comes from deeply conservative tribal lands where girls have been killed for going to school.

Sughra Imam sometimes wears a scarf draped lightly on her hair, but often her head is bare. She belongs to a liberal party whose leader, Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister of this predominantly Muslim nation, was assassinated by extremists. She comes from a prominent Pakistani family and was educated at Harvard.

Much divides the two politicians, but at least one thing unites them: They have spent their careers fighting for women. They became unlikely allies in the battle to pass a historic law to protect women from murder by members of their own families.

In Pakistan, legislation passed decades ago has allowed many of those who kill in the name of family "honor" to go free. A family's honor can be "tarnished" by something as innocent as sitting next to an unknown man or helping a friend elope with the man of her choice.

The law decrees relatives of a murder victim can forgive the killer. Human-rights groups argued in the case of "honor" killing, this granted immunity to killers, because both victim and perpetrator are usually family members. Hard-line Islamic groups, however, defended forgiveness as a religious edict from the Quran.

Naeema Kishwar

But the mood in the country began to shift in the last year with the rise of social media and a proliferation of television channels that started covering "honor" killings.

Pakistanis grew outraged over a series of grotesque murders: a daughter burned alive by her mother, a social-media star drugged and strangled by her brother, a teenage girl ordered by a tribal council to be bound and burned like Joan of Arc for helping a friend elope.

After Imam became a member of parliament's upper house seven years ago, the poor who tilled the land in her constituency in Punjab province began coming to her with stories of a man who had killed his wife after seeing her talking to another man or of a brother who killed his sister for having "illicit" relations.

She saw the men who killed showed no worry of even going to jail.

"No one was ever afraid. They never felt they would be punished. They knew they would be forgiven," Imam said.

Sughra Imam

When Imam began to craft her bill three years ago, she wanted the killings removed from the Islamic law allowing the family to forgive a murderer.

Imam wore her fellow lawmakers down until they finally agreed to her wording. Even senators from Kishwar's hard-line Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam Party were among the Senate's 104 members who passed Imam's bill unanimously last year.

But the legislation never came to a vote in the more powerful National Assembly, dominated by the Conservative Pakistan Muslim League, a traditional ally of the religious parties. Imam's bill was dead.

It would take an extraordinary moment in Pakistan's history and help from Kishwar to bring it back.

Kishwar's hometown of Mardan is in a deeply conservative region of Pakistan's northwest where women rarely are seen on the streets without the all-enveloping burqa.

When she was a child, Kishwar said, parents discouraged their girls from attending school.

As a teenager, she swore to fight for change, and when she first was elected to public office in the provincial Parliament in Pakistan's northwest in 2002, she advocated for girls' schools and colleges.

"I have been raising my voice in the Parliament for the rights of women, and I will keep doing it," said Kishwar, now a member of the National Assembly.

But Kishwar's activism is shaped by her strict interpretation of her religion. She said Islam demands women cover from head to toe, and she adheres firmly to segregation of the sexes.

Like Imam, she wanted "honor" killing punished, but she defends at least some forgiveness, saying Islam gives families the right to reconcile.

"Because I wear this veil and love my religion doesn't mean I accept this," she said of "honor" killings. "No. But it's complicated."

The legislation proposed by Imam could be revived only if the government called a joint session of the Senate and National Assembly. That seemed unlikely until a heart-wrenching documentary about the murderous practice won an Academy Award this year. "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" trained an international spotlight on the killings, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finally vowed he would work to change the law.

In search of a consensus, the government sent the bill to a committee, whose members held a potentially disastrous mix of views ranging from secular to hard-line religious.

Imam was no longer a senator at this point, but she wasn't sidelined: Her party and the government's law minister consulted her often as the bill was shepherded through the committee.

Kishwar, a member of the committee, knew Imam's language was a nonstarter for her hard-line party and its leader, who told her the party would never take "honor" killing out of the Islamic law that allows forgiveness of a crime.

"It was very difficult for me. I was the go-between between the government and my party," she said.

After many hours of negotiations, the committee unanimously agreed on a compromise bill: a mandatory 25-year sentence for a convicted "honor" killer. But the final wording allowed forgiveness of the death sentence.

Finally, in a move that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago, lawmakers this month passed the law by a majority voice vote. The nays were a barely audible whisper.