What You Don't Know About Religion (but Should) by Ryan T. Cragun

Author:Ryan T. Cragun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing
Published: 2013-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

22

I KILL. YOU KILL. WE ALL KILL.

RELIGION AND VIOLENCE

Aqsa Parvez just wanted to be like her friends. And in Mississauga, Ontario, in 2007, that meant getting a part-time job so she could have some spending money, going out, having a little privacy, talking on the phone, and wearing fashionable clothing. Her father, Muhammad Parvez, a fifty-seven-year-old immigrant from Pakistan, didn’t approve (nor did the rest of her family). As Aqsa pushed for greater freedom, her father responded by decreasing her autonomy. By the summer of 2007, Aqsa no longer had a door on her bedroom, was restricted in talking on the phone, was required to come directly home from school, and was not allowed to go out on weekends. Additionally, Aqsa’s parents and family wanted her to wear the hijab and dress in a more traditional style, which Aqsa openly opposed.

Aqsa knew trouble was brewing. She told counselors at school that she was afraid of her father and what he might do to her. In late November 2007, Aqsa moved out of her parents’ home and moved in with a friend where she had greater freedom to embrace modern Canadian cultural mores.

Aqsa’s brother, Waqas, who was ten years her senior, stopped by Aqsa’s bus stop on the morning of December 10, 2007, and picked Aqsa up, returning her to her parents’ house, likely under the guise of collecting some of her belongings. As soon as Aqsa entered the house, her father and brother put their plan into action. Aqsa’s brother, Waqas, strangled his sister until she lost consciousness, probably aided by their father. Just thirty-six minutes after Waqas picked her up from the bus stop, Muhammad, the father, covering for his son, called the police to report that he had killed his daughter.

When paramedics arrived, Aqsa was not dead, but the damage her brother had inflicted by strangling her was too great and she died later that evening. Religion killed Aqsa.

—§—

Some of those reading this will likely say that what killed Aqsa was culture, not religion. Those people would be wrong for three reasons. First, as any good sociologist will tell you, religion is part of culture. In order to assert that it was culture that killed Aqsa but not religion, those making this claim would have to clearly and definitively illustrate that the Parvez’s were not at all inspired by their religion to kill Aqsa. They would have to delineate an aspect of Pakistani culture that is separate and distinct from religion and illustrate without question that it was that aspect of Pakistani culture that motivated the killing of Aqsa. The best anthropologists in the world would find such an undertaking daunting, if not impossible. Religion is part of culture, a large, very influential part of culture. Separating the two is virtually impossible. Anyone who claims that people kill in the name of culture but deny the connection with religion does not understand the relationship between religion and culture.

The second reason why I can say it was religion (and

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