We cannot logically refuse to accept practices merely because they’re not accepted in our society, or accept practices merely because they’re accepted.
To resolve this question, we need to find standards beyond the merely cultural or subcultural by which we can evaluate the cultures and subcultures in question.
So…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Evil Captor *
Well, I guess my issue is that I wouldn’t make such a fine distinction between "pure and “non-pure honor killings”. As Abe’s cite to Human Rights Watch notes, most don’t seem to make that distinction. Until 1991 it was perfectly legal to use an “honor defense” in Brazil in cases of spousal murder - that such cases generally centered more on infidelity, rather than family pride seems an excessive nit to pick. To me, anyway.
No, not really. I haven’t made an intense study of patterns of global spousal abuse. My argument is just that such are far from unique to the Muslim world.
Pretty common in more tribal societies actually, a cultural paradigm still widespread in much of the world ( and not unknown in recent historical times in the U.S. - the Hatfield-McCoy feud was probably regarded by its participants as a largely internal matter as well ).
Not overlooked so much as less germane to my ( not very extreme ) point that such things are not a) not necessarily condoned by most Muslims worldwide, nor b) exclusive to Muslim countries.
Except I never claimed they were rare and not at all tolerated ;). I said ( well, implied at any rate ) that distribution was uneven and tolerance varied.
Ah, well, I disagree a bit, obviously. Perhaps more by degree than absolutely, but still disagreement.
As usual Tamerlane is doing an excellent job in this department but I’d like to emphasize a number of things.
Why not? Murder is murder. Claims about honour are simply about justifying murder. In some cultures honour killings are an “accepted” (loosely speaking) justification of murder. What we are trying to explain here is that the justification comes from a cultural as opposed to a religious basis. Strongly patriarchal tendencies, cultures in which men are the undisputed rulers, pervasive elements of machismo, these are posited as the real reasons behind honour killings.
Honour killings happen in Christian countries too, and not just as “freak shootings” either. Additionally, murder of a spouse/family member/intimate partner is murder nonetheless, whether in Jordan, Brazil, or the USA. Abuse happens everywhere – it is by no means particular to Islamic cultures.
You are trying to say that frequency of spousal/domestic abuse in a given population is indirectly proportional to the general economic conditions prevalent among that population? I think we will need to see some good support for that before we can take it seriously. I am not familiar with the claim and I don’t see anything other than speculative assertion to support it.
That is quite garbled! You want evidence showing an absence of evidence, which is never a very smart place to start. And you refer to “we” as Christians and claim that the Christian problem is not as severe as the Islamic one, and that the Christian problem has been largely addressed. Not really. Brazil is a Christian country, but read the Human Rights Watch excerpt I posted earlier and tell me if that doesn’t bother you – not just the fact that these murders happen, but that the justice system appears downright reluctant to go near the problem!
The calculation by Tamerlane shows that women murdered by an intimate partner in the US are more or less similar to the rates of honour killings in Jordan. The main difference is that in the US referring to honour killings is not much of a cultural item, whereas in Jordan or Brazil it is. So murders won’t (for obvious reasons) be called honour killings in the US, but what’s the difference in the actual murder? What’s the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?
The underlying reason is almost certainly the same: puritanical beliefs, attitudes of male superiority, perceived lack of respect on the part of the murdered women, perceived dishonour (which is simply a blanket term for all sorts of things including perceived promiscuity, the abandoning of certain values, perceived infidelity, “inappropriate” dress or social behaviour, etc.).
The main difference is that in some countries (not Islamic countries exclusively) honour killings are used with varying degrees of success as excuse and justification for murder. In other countries this is completely unacceptable, but either way the victims still end up dead for the same old macho reasons. Rather than complain that the underlying root of the problem is Islam – which it isn’t – it would be wiser to address the culture of male dominance that makes the abuse of women a marginally or completely accepted item in all sorts of countries and cultures, including populations that are Christians, Moslem, Sikh, or what have you.
Thank you Abe and Tamerlane for some excellent and very insightful answers. As usual, you’ve said what I wanted to, only far more eloquently and cogently. We seem to have wandered some way from the OP, but I agree that “honour Killing” is not an Islamic phenomenon. However, I fear that regardless of the evidence given so far, some posters will continue to assert that this problem is predominantly a Muslim one, and that by extension, Islam itself is a violently misogynistic religion…
I don’t think it’s nitpicking at all. When Billy Bob goes out looking for Lurleen and finds her with Bobby Joe and says, “I knowed you was cattin’ 'round town with this slimeball … BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!” it’s just pathetic, but it’s a passion thing – rage, jealousy, shame, all worked in together.
But there’s something just creepy about this whole Muslim honor killing business: “Akim, your sister Nadjla has been seen at the ice cream parlor sharing a soda with a Sunni man her own age. We have been dishonored as a family by her behavior. Now, go take this axe and bludgeon her to death with it.”
Akim gets a robo-killer look in his eye and says, “Yes, mother.”
Later: “Nadjla, you have dishonored your family. Prepare to meet Allah the Merciful.” Whack! Whack! Whack!
I’m sorry, but this is on a whole different scale of weirdness than a sexual jealousy/honor killing. It has an innate ugliness to it, with the family sending out the kids to do the killing in a calculating sort of way, that Western sexual revenge/honor murders do not. If a guy finds his wife in bed with another woman, he does NOT send out his kids or his brothers or his cousins to kill her.
Pretty common in more tribal societies actually, a cultural paradigm still widespread in much of the world ( and not unknown in recent historical times in the U.S. - the Hatfield-McCoy feud was probably regarded by its participants as a largely internal matter as well ).
Yeah, but I’d argue that in Muslim societies there is much more pressure on women to conform to a very narrow vision of what is good and proper sexually, and much more draconian penalties for them if they stray, and a much more relaxed atmosphere overall for honor killers. Now, I know that it varies from country to country within the Muslim world, and from subculture to subculture within Muslim nations, but I bet if you did bell curves for these phenomena, the Muslim countries would come off significantly different from the rest of the world and especially from the Western world.
Or to put it more simply, Brazil is ass-backward among Western countries WRT honor killings. Jordan’s probably more advanced than most Arab countries.
Except I never claimed they were rare and not at all tolerated ;). I said ( well, implied at any rate ) that distribution was uneven and tolerance varied.
On this point we clearly agree.
What will we do if some sect of Islam begins preaching that “honor killings” are mandated by God?
Ignore them as the wackos they are. Any idiot can try to justify anything he pleases by saying that it’s God’s will. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, and it doesn’t make honour killings any less wrong, either.
Okay, so how do we determine what behaviors are actually mandated by God?
Can’t you see the massive contradictions involved with that strategy? How can we prevent our government from imposing on freedom of religion by making judgments about which religions are valid while denying a religious claim because it’s not valid enough?
TVAA, what are you talking about? The whole point behind a secular society that practices religious tolerance is that it’s not a theocracy. We don’t need to know what behaviors “God” “mandates” in order to know what’s legal; we don’t need to know what behaviors Buddha abhors in order to know what’s illegal.
The will of the gods is irrelevant to the rule of our law. What contradictions do you see in this?
Daniel
That comment was in response to Bibliovore’s statement in the post preceding my last one.
The fact of the matter is that if we have any illegal behaviors or practices, we will necessarily impose ourselves on some potential religion that mandates them. That is not a problem, philosophically or legally.
TVAA, once more, with feeling: we would have to do NOTHING. Freedom of Religion, or of Speech, indeed any of the “freedoms” in our society, is not 100% absolute. We’d have no more obligation to accommodate believers in “honor killing” dwelling among us if they showed us what they claim is video of the Angel Gabriel himself handing it to them on stone tablets than if they admit they pulled it out of their asses or than if they showed us verified results of a fair election in the home country where their people voted by 85% in favor of honor killing.
Now, whether our government should then have legal authority take action to get those believers elsewhere to abandon the practice, through trade boycotts, covert ops, or outright war, then we’d have a question as to whether a State has to act according to some “externally fixed” moral/ethical rule.
I have trouble whenever Muslims says that the subjugation of women in Muslim nations is not in accordance with Islam. I think what they mean is that it is not in accordance with THEIR vision of what Islam is (which is the correct vision, of course). But I think there are an awful lot of Muslims in Muslim nations who would say their treatment of women is completely in accord with Islam and Islamic tradition.
To put it another way, I am a Caucasian born in the American South. Racism is not in accordance with my vision of what the South is (or should be) all about. But it’s bullshit to say that virulent racism hasn’t been a powerful part of Southern culture for a long time, or to say that it still isn’t a problem here. It is. Denying it is just, well, stupid. The smart thing to do is to accept that racism is and has been a problem, and do your best to wipe it out.
I would say, however, that much of the Muslim world is still in the position of the South in the 40s and 50s when Jim Crow laws that forbade blacks to eat in white-only restaurants, stay in white-only hotels and go to bathroom in white-only restrooms. Wiser southern leaders were calling for an end to Jim Crow, there was a lot of pressure from outside to change, but a lot of people didn’t want to change. It took intervention from the North (again) to make it happen.
I consider southern racism a shameful legacy, and I’m happy to work to get rid of it. I think the Muslim world will remain a cultural backwater until it recognizes its own deep and pervasive sexism and strives to get rid of it. And the people who keep denying that sexism is part of Islamic culture are part of the problem. It’s so damn obvious that it is … no one believes you when you say things like that. Trust me.
OK, that’ll teach me to preview twice even after I think I’ve corrected everything. But then, TVAA, what’s the point? That people should not have even bothered arguing anything beyond “look, it’s the law, we gotta draw the line somewhere”?
Honor killings in Scandinavia means killing ununmarried female family member for perceived sexual misconduct. Spousal killing wouldn’t normally be filed under the same category, and I’d say, without reservation, killing your daughter for sexual misconduct is much worse than killing your wife for infidelity. Awful words by the way – honor killing. If there ever were an expression I’d run through the PC-machine it was this – where the heck is the honor in killing your own daughter or sister or cousin?! What about calling it koricide, or just plain murder. On average I’d say there are some 2-3 killings in Scandinavia (not counting the much larger number of threats), which makes me think, without further evidence, the 25-30 in Jordan is very low put. Such killings are solely to be found in immigrant communities from the middle-east and to a lesser degree Islamic Africa. To claim otherwise would be not only wrongheaded, but also to sacrifice the victims and possible victims on a block of cultural relativism run mad. It’s a middle-eastern thing, all cultures have despicable elements, middle-eastern have this.
It makes no difference whether the practice is based in culture or religion, and I view anyone claiming to be categorically able to separate the two with suspicion and the fact that it’s not Alderban making the claims this time makes it no less dogmatic, the practice is despicable and should be punished with the maximum penalty possible within the law – and is, at least the last case in Denmark was (2 weeks ago. Father killed his 14 year old daughter. Sentence 10 years and expulsion.).
Bubba has a case, whoops! He gets jealous of his wife’s behavior at the bowling alley, openly flirting with the pin boy, and shoots her with his 12 gauge.
Defense: It was an honor killing, ah, your honor.
Anyway, multiculturalism in this regard has a long way to go. Which is good, obviously.
Not ONE person has jumped in to say, “Yes, we should be sensitive to the needs of jealous husbands who want to pour acid on their wives or shoot them with shotguns.”
Hip – Hip –
Evil captor,
I know you do. You’ve made that abundantly clear. No one is saying that sexism doesn’t happen in Muslim countries. No-one’s saying that women aren’t oppressed, but you seem to have this notion that Islam itself is calling for this oppression, that it is mandated in the Koran.
My position is that these abuses happen in spite of Islam, not because of it. And no, I’m not talking about MY version of Islam, I’m talking about what’s actually written in the Koran, the Sunnah, and the accepted Hadith.
And furthermore, what is “Islamic Culture”? Do you mean “Middle Eastern Culture?”, because there is no more an “Islamic” culture than there is a “Christian” one.
I think I see what you mean here. I think this may very well be the crux of your argument. If casual, pre-marital sex, multiple partners and the like are frowned upon in Muslim countries, then this is somehow oppressive to women? How so? Seems to me that Islam treats the issue of sex exactly the same as Christianity does. It’s an issue of morality that is (or should be) applied equally to both sexes.
Period, I disagree – comma at best. I think it’s problematic to say Islam frown on anything, even tongue-in-cheek. Practicing Moslems may or not frown, Islam itself is an inactive, lifeless collection of words. To categorically deny any link between Islam and “honor killing” demands a dogmatic approach to religious interpretation, wherein one interpretation is objectively correct and another wrong. If there is a substantive number of Moslems, which there apparently are, that believe their religion demands or at least condones killing their children, it’s unreasonable for any to say they version of Islam is incorrect or not really following Islam because someone has another interpretation of the religion.
Also I find it quite unreasonable to claim to be able to say precisely where culture stops and religion begins, since a person’s culture will have a big impact on how he perceive his religion and visa versa.
But you see - this is wrong. It’s probably what I also thought before coming to this region, but it’s not right.
The dominant culture in this part of the world - despite Islam - is often a pre-Islamic (Arab) culture. Much of the patriarchal system here derives from tribalism, not Islam. Ditto the segregation, the veil wearing, and so on. Some of that may have been incorporated into Islam by later hadiths, but eg the Taliban-esque perversion of Islam cannot be substantiated by the Quran.
With the issue of “honour” murders - as has been pointed out, this extends to other regional religions too, not just Islam.
No.
People should actually look at why laws are needed. Do any of you actually know why you believe that we must “draw the line somewhere”?
The only way that we could avoid trampling on someone’s cultural beliefs is to have no principles whatsoever. While I doubt many people in this discussion can offer a genuine argument in favor of principles, I suspect most of you are in favor of them. If we accept this, the argument that a practice cannot be considered illegal merely because it is culturally sanctioned is invalid.
You know, I’ve kind of lost track about the point of this thread, but returning to the OP, I believe that honour killings should not be protected under “freedom of religion”, nor should they be treated with any leniency. If a law is applied neutrally and equally to all citizens, it cannot be said to singling out any one group or religion.