At a dinner session, the director of Nour, an Iraqi girl who works in Baghdad, far from her home in a governorate in eastern Iraq, asked that she go home with him.
The girl in her twenties refused the request, which she considered “very strange”, especially since the manager, who is of middle age, “had maintained his professionalism throughout the work period, and the dinner was a working dinner,” according to Nour, who spoke to Al-Hurra website on the condition that no details were given that might reveal her identity “due to the sensitivity of the issue.” “.
“He became nervous, and he lifted a knife from the table and said he was going to kill me.”
Nour talks regarding a difficult period in her life, and says that “she was blamed by her friends, because she went to dinner with her manager, even though the dinner was a work dinner.” The real culprit.
The Iraqi girl says regarding the brutal murder of the Egyptian girl, Naira Ashraf, by her university classmate, as well as the Jordanian, Iman Irsheed, in a similar way: “Look at people’s comments on the two incidents. Everyone blames the victims, whether because of their clothes or because of the way they speak, and they leave the perpetrators “.
And on Sunday, the killer of Jordanian student, Iman Irsheed, committed suicide by shooting himself following being surrounded by police forces, according to what was announced by the country’s Public Security Agency. The Jordanian security published a picture of the young man, holding a pistol pointed to his head, believed to have been taken while he was surrounded.
The killing of Irsheed with six gunshots while she was at the Applied Sciences Private University in northern Amman shook Jordanian public opinion.
And she published messages sent to her by her colleague threatening her before committing his crime with a fate similar to that of Naira.
On Sunday, the Mansoura Criminal Court in the Nile Delta decided to postpone consideration of the trial of the student, Mohamed Adel, accused of killing his colleague Naira in front of the gates of Mansoura University until Tuesday, June 28.
The killing of the Egyptian girl sparked widespread controversy, following comments appeared indicating that “the dead woman’s clothes” and her non-veiledness may be the reason for her death.
The justifications are disgusting! In every case in which a woman is killed, we must meet a group of retarded people who blame the victim, her dress, her behavior.
Raise your children! And if you are not able to grow, you will not be left behind!
And if your children are not able to control their sexual instincts, stay at home because people’s daughters’ lives are not cheap.
#Naira_Ashraf— Rawan Bin Hussein | Rawan Bin Hussain (@rbinhussain) June 21, 2022
Tail #Naira_Ashraf And all the victims of injustice, oppression and the criminal mentality on our necks all. To the neck of those who hold parties for a convicted rapist and sing with him, to the neck of those who blame victims for dress or sexual orientation, to the neck of those who are silent over blood #israa_ghareeb And #sarah_hegazy I tattooed their death.
He does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves! pic.twitter.com/071ONnU1lK
– Rami Emad (@AstroRamiEmad) June 20, 2022
#Naira_Ashraf #haq_naira_ashraf #Mansoura University
Every day the souls of women go away just because they reject something. When do we say no and we are not afraid of the consequences of the word!!!
‘Women are still killed in cold blood’ pic.twitter.com/ux7FntPOAs— Carolina | No (@_1ul5) June 20, 2022
blaming the victim
Mai Saleh, director of the Women’s Economic and Social Rights Program at the New Woman Foundation in Egypt, says that women have been suffering for years from the issue of “blaming the victims and justifying the perpetrators,” adding in statements to Al-Hurra that “the main reason for this is the erosion of women’s bodies and their freedoms.” their personal space, and the general sense in society of their ownership of women.”
She says this blame for female victims may “come from men, and sometimes from women as well”.
In a video clip that shocked many, one of the neighbors of Naira’s killer appeared, praising the “morals” of the killer, saying: “He was calm and we did not hear him except when he was beating his mother or his daughters’ sisters.”
According to the Egyptian activist Mai Saleh, the main reason for the increase in violence once morest women is “normalization with violence once morest women and coexistence and acceptance of violence once morest women as a normal thing”, and this is linked to “a clear inflammatory discourse, whether from the media or the religious system.”
“There were waves of religious incitement related to women’s clothing, women’s work, and everything related to women,” she adds.
She asserts that “coexistence with violence once morest women was also at one time part of the doctrine of the judicial system,” which Saleh says has begun to use legal articles to “reduce penalties” once morest abusers of women.
According to Saleh, “regarding 40 percent of cases of violence once morest women originate from the former partner or partner.”
And she warns that “in light of these factors mentioned, we expect more similar incidents” of the killing of Naira and Iman.
The student at the Faculty of Arts at Mansoura University, Mohamed Adel, confessed during the first trial session, to killing his colleague on June 20, and said that he regretted what he had done, but indicated that he wanted to take revenge on her “because she hurt me”, but not in this way.
The accused claimed that he was in a relationship with the victim, and that she banned him from the accounts of social networking sites following they agreed on the engagement, accusing her mother of being “the reason for everything that happened to him.” According to the newspapers, “Al-Masry Al-Youm” and “Al-Youm Al-Sabea”.
“Culture of Violence” in Arab Societies
The activist in the Iraqi Women’s Freedom Organization, Jannat Al-Ghazi, says that her organization records “tens of cases annually” of violence once morest women, and shelters up to 15 abused women annually, among “much larger numbers” that the organization with limited capabilities is unable to shelter.
Al-Ghazi added that “the victim’s blaming of women is an entrenched patriarchal culture, where society was raised to blame the victim. There are even popular proverbs that reinforce these concepts.”
Al-Ghazi cites a common example in the Iraqi dialect, which says: “A woman who does not open her basket does not open her basket, no one will fill her basket,” indicating that it was the woman who gave the reasons for the harasser.
Activist and journalist, Omaima Majid, says that “the history of violence once morest women is even older than the history of class discrimination or religious violence.”
Majid added to Al-Hurra that “the culture of blaming the victim, whether a woman or a man, is an extension of the culture of blaming the “weak party”, common in Arab societies in general,” noting that “there is a perception of the need to stay away from everything that may be harmful, and blame the offender instead of blaming the offender.”
She points out that this culture “which glorifies the strong party, and always seeks justifications for it, spreads in oppressed societies” and exposes “the weak parties in it to harm, whether women, children or the poor.”
Nour, the Iraqi girl who was threatened by her boss, agrees with this view, and points out that “the way to get rid of the blame of the victims is to strengthen them, so that society does not view them as weak parties,” but acknowledges that “in a society where the girl fears blame more than killing.” As it happened with her, “it seems very difficult to achieve.”
