Shafia guilty verdict sends right message

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By EMC News

EMC Editorial - The guilty verdicts in the Shafia murder trial is not about us and them.

It's simply about right and wrong.

It's not about Muslims from Third World countries coming to this country with archaic ideas, or some clash of civilizations.

It's about violence against women, power and control, and taking something beautiful, like Islam, and mis-using its teachings for evil purposes. There is no honour killing allowed in Islam, only a bastardized mis-interpretation and mis-reading of it, mixed in with 13th century thinking about the role of women in society and the family.

By now, everyone across the country, and around the world, is aware of the verdict of a quartet of evil murders that took place in Kingston Mills back in 2009, virtually in our own back yard.

Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya and Hamed Shafia were all convicted of first degree murder this past Sunday at the Frontenac County Courthouse in Kingston, following a trial that has lasted since October.

What is most important to remember first and foremost in this crime is not the perpetrators, but the victims - the Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Mohammad's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 52.

While we are glad that the verdict was clear and unambiguous, the trial opened up some important questions.

Firstly, why when the Shafia daughters sought out help from social service agencies and women's shelters, were the children not removed from the Shafia household in Montreal? This was ordered after the murders, but the damage had already been done.

Secondly, it underscores the fact that domestic violence is an all too real reality in the lives of Canadian families.

Thirdly, this just goes to show that the Harper government was right in updating the immigrant study guides for the citizenship tests to call honour killings "barbaric." Now, we not only have it in writing, but we also have it enshrined in a precedent-setting case, that immigrants who wish to come to Canada, and take part in our rights and responsibilities, have a duty to leave any such practices back in the old country. We Canadians are a tolerant people, but our patience is not infinite, and we cannot tolerate murder.

But we do not agree that there should be a special criminal category in the Criminal Code dealing specifically with honour killings. Murder and conspiracy charges are strong enough in this country to deal with the issue.

We're glad to see the backs of the three convicts. They showed no remorse in the courtroom on the weekend, stating that "we are not murderers," and "this is unjust." Oh, yeah, they're the victims here.

Just as galling was that they expected us believe their paper-thin, cock-and-bull version of events and that the words of the father, Mohammad when, in police wiretap evidence, he called his dead daughters "whores" and called on the Devil to defecate on their graves, was merely an Afghani way of dealing with stress and mourning. That is both condescending to Canadians, and belittling to most Afghan people.

Justice has been done - now we need to make sure that it never happens like this again. Hopefully this case has nipped such future crimes in the bud.