How do Pakistan’s current honour Killing Laws reflect both Colonial Legal Legacies and Islamic Legal Principles, and what does this reveal about the Possibilities for Epistemic Disobedience in Legal Reform?

Abstract

The discussions that follow will identify the extent to which the laws pertaining to honour killings in Pakistan reflect a colonial legacy intertwined with Islamic law, as well as suggesting ways for radical reform. Although honour killings are legally treated as murder, the act is murder in the guise of ‘restoring the family honour’. Despite the enactments of 2004 and 2016, loopholes pertaining to forgiveness, compromise, and judicial discretion continue to persist, and hence, the perpetrators continue to escape punishment. This will draw on qualitative methods to analyse the legal texts and critiques of feminists and authors like Walter Mignolo, Mahmood Mamdani, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui in the context of decolonial theory. My findings suggest that colonial laws such as Qisas and Diya, along with the law of provocation, continue to thrive, and the Islamic law of fasad fil arz is invoked selectively and in a patriarchal manner. The judges of informal justice structures like jirgas exacerbate honour killings by legitimising them. As such, real reform will necessitate more than a mere increase in law enforcement or penalties. Your recommendations serve the purpose of what Mignolo terms as epistemic disobedience the reconsideration of the conceptualisation of law, religion and justice. Paradigm shifts as proposed by the decolonial school justifies epistemic disobedience as one of the ways to engage critically with our understanding of law, religion, and society. I would use honour killings to show that the law cannot be reformed through technicist approaches but, rather, requires a reconsideration of the epistemic fundamentals of justice. It remains a useful strategy because it shifts the discourse on punishment to the consideration of legal systems that genuinely uphold dignity and the sanctity of life.