Canada looking at Multi-cult immigration a little differently as Canada looks to Chicago to reduce ‘honour’ crimes.

A cellphone photograph of Zainab Shafia several days before she died

Canada “honor killings” on trial

TORONTO, Canada — The alleged “honor killing” of three teenaged daughters by their Afghan-born parents has shocked a country that prizes multiculturalism and sparked debate about the integration of immigrants.

 In the widely-followed trial, polygamist Mohammad Shafia is accused of murdering his three daughters and his first wife. Also accused of four counts of premeditated murder is Shafia’s 20-year-old son, Hamed, and Shafia’s second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the mother of the three dead girls. The family lived in Montreal but the trial is in the eastern Ontario city of Kingston, where Lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence River. 

One widely publicized case in 2010 saw Muhammad Parvez plead guilty to strangling his 16-year-old daughter, Aqsa, because she refused to wear a hijab, would not dress in traditional Pakistani clothes, and hung out with non-Pakistani girls. Parvez’s 29-year-old son also pleaded guilty to murder.

Asked by his grief-stricken wife why he killed their daughter, Parvez said: “My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.”

Like the Parvez case, the Shafia trial has raised questions about Canada’s 40-year-old policy of multiculturalism. Some argue integration in Canadian values is taking a back seat to tolerance of cultural differences. They point to the social workers who visited Shafia’s home and accuse them of letting multicultural sensitivities blind them to abuse.

Recently, the ruling Conservative government revised Canada’s citizenship guide to say that the country’s “openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, ‘honour killings,’ female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.”

Canada looks to Chicago to reduce ‘honour’ crimes

At first glance, gang crime in a U.S. city would seem to have little in common with the family conflicts that led to the killing of several women in Canada in recent years.

But one Canadian group is taking ideas gleaned from the streets of Chicago to tackle the troubling phenomenon of so-called honour crimes.

The Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration in London, Ont. will announce Tuesday that it has a partnership with the renowned Chicago anti-violence group CeaseFire to develop the Family Honour Project, which its creators hope will soon spread to other communities.

The initiative, the first of its kind in Canada, is based on the work of epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, whose public-health approach to violence reduction has been credited with contributing to a significant reduction in gang shootings in Chicago.

Although gang shootings and family honour crimes seem quite different, at their core they share one important cause: Both are driven primarily by the fear that a person’s reputation or image will be harmed if he or she doesn’t respond violently to being treated with a perceived lack of respect.

The CeaseFire approach suggests that if conflict can be identified and calmed before it spirals out of control, casualties can be avoided. Ultimately, it aims to teach those prone to react violently to change the way they think.

The difficult part is identifying where violence might break out, understanding why that’s the case, and developing a line of communication so that counsellors can defuse the situation.

thank you Kristian for the Chicago article