“Honor” Killings and Lovely Progressives

26 Responses to ““Honor” Killings and Lovely Progressives”

1. Howie on July 10th, 2008 7:36 pm

   Drima-

   Irshad beat me to the punch…culture is just man-made stuff that people get mixed up with religion.

   You know…one of my favorites is the way people look at indigenous peoples…like American Indians or something…Tribal people did and do all kinds of bad shit. The Mayan’s were nice guys? They were beasts…

   Wake up and judge people based on their morals, values and behavior. Not…”geez, my daughter offended my culture…therefore you just have to understand me killing her”. Are people NUTS?

   My own kids kind of fall into that trap…I realize I did for a time. If it is “indigenous” then its got to be good, right, natural, closer to truth. Like when my brother-in-law was an MD in Mexico and went and visited some Indians in the hills that believed seizures were deamons so they had guys chained to trees that had epliepsy. Or Indian artists that do a bunch of peyote and then draw pictures to sell while in a “mystical state”. Shit..crackhead is a crackhead as far as I am concerned.

   Geez

2. homer on July 10th, 2008 11:21 pm

   drima- I have heard that honor killing occurs in many different groups- however, from what i notice as i scour the net for this kind of thing is that it occurs much more often in Islamic groups, politically incorrect as that is. Like the last fellow said, culture and religion are intertwined,and arab culture and religion are intertwined. A place such as pakistan seems to have recently imported some of wahhabi arab culture and they have a tremendous # of honor killings. Places such as indonesia and western china dont seem tohave the honor killings as much.

3. Sheema on July 11th, 2008 2:10 am

   “Places such as indonesia…dont seem tohave the honor killings as much.”

   Homer, you and Howie pretty much hit the nail on the head, although you can safely omit the “as much” from that sentence. As a Southeast Asian Muslim I can tell you for a fact that there is no such thing as ‘honour killings’ here - it doesn’t exist in our culture. In fact, the very concept of it is utterly reprehensible to the Southeast Asian psyche.

4. Don Cox on July 11th, 2008 10:15 am

   Honor killing was not unknown in medieval and Rennaissance Europe.

   It is certainly not specific to Islam. However, being centuries out of date _is_ specific to Islam, especially in the Middle East.

5. Howie on July 11th, 2008 10:45 pm

   Sheema-

   Did we speak to soon?

   “On the outskirts of Atlanta, a South Asian man has been charged with killing his daughter. She reportedly wanted to leave her arranged marriage. But under the code of “honor” —”

   This is from the Manji website…

6. Sheema on July 12th, 2008 1:46 am

   Hi Howie,

   Methinks you got confused by the terminology used - the report says “South Asian”, which generally refers to the Indian subcontinent - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.

   SouthEAST Asia, on the other hand, refers to the region that comprises Indochina and what was historically known as the Malay Archipelago.

7. Howie on July 12th, 2008 2:12 am

   Sheema…

   You are absolutely correct…

   You have nice people and great surfing…

   And when I see y’all in California…I always start speaking to them in Tagalog because so many look like Filipinos
   

8. Drima on July 12th, 2008 10:38 am

   Howie, “culture is just man-made stuff that people get mixed up with religion.”

   homer, “arab culture and religion are intertwined.”

   Both of you guys are spot on. Most Muslims would tell you that “honor” killings are not part of Islam. They’re not. The problem is that Arabo-centric Islam has infused so much of the bullshit aspects of Arabic culture into Islam that many Muslims today can’t even differentiate between what is originally Islamic or cultural anymore.

   Don Cox, I won’t word it that way, but let’s just say Islam is younger and its practice unfortunately got corrupted and infused with lots of cultural bullshit. The reform is already happening and is already under way but it’s gonna take quite a while.

   Sheema, you should be worried though. Just look at how much the Islam in Malaysia has been Arabized and changed over the last 3 decades. It’s a scary trend!

9. Howie on July 12th, 2008 2:47 pm

   Drima-

   Well said…

   Every religion has this issue. Some of the cultural stuff is cool…some insane…some just dumb…

   But it also gets crazy when culture is worshipped like a religion…and then throw in a good dose of nationalizim (sp?) and you really have a screwy mess.

   Folks just don’t think. They are ready to kill and be killed for their culture. Are you kidding me? “That’s my culture and nobody can insult our honor”.

   Yeah, right. I am of Ukranian and American descent and Polish. I will kill for my right to abuse vodka and Coors Light and watch the Super Bowl.

   I need medication

10. Sheema on July 12th, 2008 3:42 pm

    Howie -

    Heh, tell me about it, when I was living in the UK I used to get random Filipinos coming up to me and speaking to me in Tagalog.

    Drima -
    Yeah, agreed, the increasing Arabisation of Malays is truly a frightful, frightful thing, and getting worse as we speak/type. It just serves to highlight though how so much of it is actually incompatible with traditional Southeast Asian mores. I still doubt that honour killings will ever become acceptable in our culture here. It’s just far too alien to comprehend!

11. Howie on July 12th, 2008 4:41 pm

    Sheema-

    I will respond to your last comment to Drima, but will stay in an area I am more familiar with…Jews and Christians.

    An extremist tendency is ALWAYS lurking in the background. Cultural tendencies can moderate it…but there is a tendency in religion that kind of goes; believe, follow me, believe THIS, now take it to the next level, you are not enough of a believer so take it to the next level…you see how your parents and teachers practiced a washed down “untrue” version of our religion…now take it up another level” and onward.

    I have seen this phenomena up close with Jews and Christians and since it seems that a Arabic/Wahabist way of thinking is still leading “change” in the Muslim world…obviously there is a huge problem lurking. Look what happened to a very moderate Iran. After 3,000 years of good relationships, for example, then suddenly are anti-Jew and anti-Israel…and that literally came about overnight…in a flash of rage and frustration.

    They tendency to go back to the roots, to the “true” religion is very powerful and if you get the wrong guys calling the shots..oh boy…

    TROUBLE

    Maganda Omaga? Comu sta? Mabuti?

    Just kidding.

12. charlie 316 on July 12th, 2008 8:36 pm

    I just find the concept that someone would want to harm or even kill their own children for any reason utterly repugnant, although I notice its only girl children who ever seem to bring “dishonour” on their families. You can argue whether or not the propensity to this attrocity is religous or cultural, but most of the perpetrators are from societies that treat women as property and in the UK just about every so called honour crime has been perpetrated by moslem fathers, uncles and brothers. Fortunately, UK law (at the moment at least) does not allow the cultural defence and these scum get long prison sentences. A double punishment - many years hard time and in the company of “common” criminals who for all their faults view child abusers (and that’s what we are talking about) as the worst form of scum.

    I agree with some of the other comments - there is no need for new laws, because murder, assault and rape are already against the law.

13. Howie on July 13th, 2008 12:48 am

    Charlie;

    Amen…

    I worked in a prison…If dudes like this are found out in population…well there is no need for capital punishment because they are either dead or worse…at least in the USA that is how it goes down.

    Killing your own kid…and for embarrassing you…think about that a LONG minute…

    I don’t condone it, but I understand how family violence can and does happen and it happens a LOT and in every society I know and with every religious group I know of. But killing your own kid because they embarrassed you? Think a LONG minute about that.

14. Sheema on July 13th, 2008 2:06 pm

    Hey Howie,

    I agree very much with what you’re saying, but as has been discussed earlier in this thread, the problem you’re describing only arises when culture is mistaken for religion. In the case of honour killings, I don’t think there’s much confusion there as far as Southeast Asians are concerned - everyone is pretty much aware that it’s very much a Middle Eastern/South Asian cultural hang-up which has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. I think people are pretty clear about that here, which is why I don’t think it could ever become ‘en vogue’ in our culture.

    Also, I may be wrong here but I get the impression that honour killings go hand in hand with arranged marriages and preserving the purity of bloodlines which again, speaking from a Southeast Asian point of view, seem to be more Middle Eastern/South Asian cultural issues. Southeast Asians have historically been very open to mixed race marriages and have never been terribly particular about what ethnicity they welcome into the family. Arranged marriages may have been somewhat common here up till the early 20th century but certainly by my great-grandparents’ time people were allowed to choose their own partners, so forced marriage isn’t exactly de rigeur in these parts. Of course these days religion is more of a sticking point, but if you happen to marry against your family’s wishes the worst you can expect is disownment, but certainly not death.

    Basically what I’m trying to say is that even taking into account the current Arabisation process, when it comes to honour killings I still think that the cultural issues involved are quite dissimilar, and over here most people recognise that they are just that - cultural, and not religious.

    That’s my two cents anyway.

15. Howie on July 13th, 2008 2:23 pm

    Sheema…I basically agree…like 99%.

    I think honor killings are a whole lot about power, ego, control and I really think there is some whacky Fruedian sexual thing mixed up in it.

    In terms of arranged marriages. In the Orthodox Jewish world it is still kind of a thing…though in most cases the kids do have the right to tell Mom’s and Pop’s to take a hike. But we Jews don’t need honor killings, pressure and guilt are far more painful.

    And yup…the culture vs. religion thing is something I have been SCREAMING about for years. And I can even throw nationalism and patriotism in there with it to some extent. These are man-made concepts. There are good things in culture and patriotism etc. and there is also bad and evil…but it is just stuff MAN has come up with, then mixes it in with religion and the common unthinking human just marches forward without thinking about it.

    Like I suggested to Drima, I suggest to you, read the book “Listen Little Man”. It is a VERY odd book written by a really kind of weird dude and its background is very strange. Yet, there is a powerful message. Kind of a “cult” book. Very short…very unusual. I read it 35 years ago and still remember it clearly.

    You sound like a brilliant, thinking, sensitive young woman. Good for you.

    

16. Sheema on July 13th, 2008 3:17 pm

    Howie…tell me about it!

    I have gotten so sick of nationalism and patriotism being shoved down my throat. And you can add ‘ethnic loyalty’ to that, too. People seem to think that just because you were born into a certain ethnicity and culture you have to bind yourself to it for the rest of your life. Humans seem incapable of taking only the good things from culture and leaving the bad!

    Hey thanks very much for telling me about the book! I looked it up…it sounds incredible - exactly the sort of thing I’d like to get my hands on! Would make an excellent gift for friends too…appreciate the tip very much!

    And glad there are people out there who think the way you do!

17. homer on July 13th, 2008 5:24 pm

    Let me say that I feel that it is possible that something like honor killings could possibly be one of those things derived from a book such as the koran, really or theoretically. Just because southeast asian muslims dont do honor killings , doesnt rule it out to me. It seems as if the koran and the hadiths were very specific, and based upon the culture of the time. Therefore, honor killings may have a basisin the koran just as we see the thoughts re apostates, infidels etc. However, in a place such as southeast asia the culture is so different, so much softer, that the harsher ideas of the koran would not be followed thru on. They would be ignored- that is, until people are scared into follwing this ‘book’ to the letter, as they often can be.Becasue it is not considerd the product of a conglomeration of thinkers, but the product of a prophet.

18. Howie on July 13th, 2008 7:22 pm

    Sheema…

    Oh…you touched another issue.

    People ask me if I am proud to be Jewish. I tell them “no”. And they seemed shocked. So I say:

    “Look…I am not proud and I am not ashamed. Just kind of the way I feel about being right-handed. I had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!!!! I didn’t work out to be Jewish or study real hard blah blah…I was born…8 days later some homo snipped the end of my winkie and that was it!!! I had no choice in the matter.

    Am I proud to be of Ukranian decent? WTF!!! Are you serious???? Yes…I am..I worked very hard at that…took vodka drinking lessons for years…blah blah blah…

    I take pride in the things I have worked hard at. Maybe I am proud of the type of Jew I have become. My ancestors…yes I guess Moses did some cool stuff and Jesus too…but I had NOTHING to do with that. Am I supposed to take credit for the Torah or the Sermon on the Mount or something???

    Sheema…you are way too cool…What a mind you have…

    Yes…do read Listen Little Man…like I said..the background of why he wrote the book (I am not kidding…he was trying to build an “orgasmatron” because he thought orgasm was some holy like deal or whatever and got busted for transporting a woman across state lines for lewd acts…I mean…weird story and yes…in the USA…not Saudia). But then he just starts talking about authority, blind obedience, lemming mentality…it is just a very very unusual little book.

    Be well…you are very cool indeed.

    

19. Roman Kalik on July 13th, 2008 9:32 pm

    I’ve read the book in question, Howie, though it’s more of a long essay. Wilhelm Reich has a lot of interesting things to say, and many of them I find to the point - unfortunately, like so many of Freud’s works, Reich’s is so utterly riddled with personal context and certainty that he has disavowed himself of it… I find it amusing, really, as both have formulated theories on psychological projection that they have never, ever, taken to the next step, of seeing in some of their own theories not an issue central to mankind but, rather, an issue that they were certain of… and thus, projected to the rest of humanity.

    Both obsessed so utterly with human sexuality that they have left their peers and equals in the realm of psychoanalysis completely and utterly baffled, and to some extent even unable to defend their more formulated views and theorems against those of a more rigid way of thought.

    In Reich, I see some of what I dislike the most - the utter deconstruction of society that supposedly makes him, the Great Man, capable of helping it. Just as he accuses contemporary Communist Russia of authoritarian rule, he himself embarks on the most Utopian and dangerous of its ideals, which so many within the Soviet Union shared and applied actively. He’d have never understood it, of course, how his own act of deconstructing society to certain “basics”, to the common denominator of mollusks and the supposed unity that grants us, and the attempt to rebuild society anew according to the principles of Science.

    Been there, Reich, done that. Didn’t like it much. Reich, sadly, never did realize just how much he was like those he criticized. And his obsessive mention of his field of research, and his rather pathetic storing of “orgasmic energy” which turned him down the path of pure pseudo-science… and his criticisms, time and time again through the text, against those who disagree with his personal field of research and do not “see the truth of their own faults”.

    Ah, how so very amusing. Sadly, Reich turned himself so often into a victim in this work that he has detracted from its purpose time and time again.

    I understand his context, that of Nazi Germany… and yet, I also understand his context of the late scientists of the Enlightenment Era, of those who either deconstructed to the point of destruction or instead attributed to their own beliefs that which they were taught to venerate (as Reich himself does with Jesus, Lincoln, Marx and Lenin, in a pseudo-manipulation of his own readers to convince them of his own Truth). I understand his context of arrogance and certainty and criticism after criticism after criticism on a society which he reviles merely on the basis of projecting to it endless faults so that he can disagree with it all so much the easier.

    For Reich, the entire world was Nazi Germany, or the (in his view) failed continuity of the Communist Revolution. He does not even take the extra step of addressing the fact that his differentiation between Great Men and Little Men, and how the “victim” that is the former ends up “lowering” itself towards the latter, as such tarnishing its greatness to fit the views of the Unwashed Masses… That this differentiation is that of avoiding questions, and of blaming others, and of doing that which he himself spoke so often against - of avoiding personal responsibility for one’s actions.

    His contradictions between the “simple and humble” Natural Scientist and the Great Changers that such people supposedly are… He mocks the populists and militarists yet himself seeks, to some extent, merely to shift the mantle of respect to himself. So much anger… at what? At not being recognized as a boon to mankind? At being called a quack? There’s some of that there as well, among the anger at being judged merely for his race and class, and at how such trite matters were used to discard his ideas without ever bothering with them…

    I know his context of a majority in a country that preferred to let others think for it. I know the fears of Freedom and the concrete certainty of picking up the shackles again if it just means to let another do the hard stuff… of deciding and facing the consequences… And I also recognize Reich’s painful inability of disconnecting himself from that context and to review his situation both from the outside *and* from the inside. Yet his solution to the context is to ridicule it rather than change it, to dehumanize it (as he does so very often) and then proffer his hand as The One Who Knows Better. How much of that was knowledge, and how much of that was the very ego service that he criticized others for? And why oversimplify society and its members so much and turn them into little gremlins?

    Is it only because it makes handling it easier?

    Oh, Wilhelm Reich… He saw a society bent on authoritarian self-destruction, and yet at the same time somehow linked it to pervasive individualism… In this, I fear, Reich sought to connect views of Marxist-Leninism to his context of Nazi Germany… And I fear that he failed miserably, that his analysis merely leads to one of two extremisms - one the extremism of the Intellectually Superior, the other the extremism of the Anarchist who listens to no one, respects no one, and sees Society and its ruling apparatus as a constricting enemy in itself… Reich, it seems, would have probably thought the hippie commune as the ultimate societal construct.

    Frankly, nearly a third of the article is a rant against people Reich would never listen to until he “elevates” them. They are people to be cured, and that alone. Or feared. Reich generalizes so completely and utterly that I fear that he has placed just about anyone who doesn’t think like him on one side of the fence, and himself at the other.

    Another near-third is a rant about how Reich’s work wasn’t as respected as he believed it should have. In truth, he has written much that has merit, and much that is a total crock of crap. Reich, of course, would have never accepted it… but then again, towards the end he became like the Magnetic Suit makers of the Victorian Era… Beautiful pseudo-science, really it is… the perfect theme for books and video games, of recreation and stage-art… and it still remains pseudo-science. I cannot help but laugh at Reich’s anguish-anger at people who attended his studies and meetings and groups without his fervor for Changing Society, but rather with their own assumptions and expectations which, I’m quite sorry to say about it, really did fit the bill of what he was trying to achieve.

    Reich was one of those people who didn’t really understand society. He sought to break down a part of it instead, and rebuild it in his image and understanding of what it *should have been*. Reich was arrogant in that aspect of his life, never saw it as that, and never understood why people ridiculed him, thought his studies to be detached and weird… To some extent, he’s the unpopular kid who builds a kingdom in his mind. And makes himself its Maker. Just a little bit, not all the way… Just a little bit…

    Just a little bit of that Omnipotence, please… Just a little bit… Because I want to change the world to what it *should* be… And then it’s bound to be better! Bound to be! I’m sure of it, so very sure! So completely and utterly and enthusiastically sure!

    My parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived through a reality of people who not only had such a mindset, but also the power to make such changes. It wasn’t *them* Reich was criticizing in his mention of Red Fascists, of course… it was Stalin an his purges, it was the secret police, the death of ideas in the heads of artists, scientists, writers… And yet, Reich forgot that it was the social scientists who made the Soviet Union, not the authoritarians. It was the social scientists who defined who needed to live and who was merely a stepping stone to Progress… It was they who made sacrifices to their idols of Utopia, and others who bore the brunt of it.

    I suspect Reich never did realize that merely wanting to help some kind of unformed blob which he called Society or Collective does not make one great. Sometimes, quite often in fact, it just makes one ill with delusions of grandeur… and I, for one, do not mark all of society as insane merely to support my budding Messiah Complex.

    It’s quite amazing how many valid criticisms Reich brought about this and that, and how many of them end up applying so correctly to himself, all in the same rant… How his allegories and comparative criticisms are so… so bloody full of it, his pride and self-certainty and his belief that somehow, all the answers that came before are those that he and those like him try to give, and that the answers they give today are so utterly perfect that they are either twisted or rejected by the Great Unwashed Hordes.

    *sigh* Be yourself, think correctly (and correctly only, at that…)… Such vaunted ideas, so easily corrupted by social norms and social trends and individualism that supposedly doesn’t exist and the correct thinking then becomes merely the appearance of correct thinking, as the hated intellectuals of yesterday become the trend-setters of today…

    Reich was correct in saying that the ends don’t justify the means… but there is so much pride surrounding it… So much self-justification and deconstruction that Reich merely ends up crying against those he dislikes and FOR himself and his practices, his view of being a Citizen of the World and a Genius of Science who should not be limited by the pettiness of Little Men…

    *sigh* There is much to be learned from that text. Much of it is that, by and large, no one is perfect.

    Paranoid, so often debunked that his crown achievements ended up being marked as failures… a laughing stock always striving to find a Great Work to Make Them Stop… Reich, like so many other psychoanalysts, never was good at looking in the mirror - merely at telling others to do so. The famous experiment that Reich gave Einstein to conduct, and which resulted in the complete debunking of Reich’s greatest brainchild of pseudo-science, ended up with Reich responding to Einstein with utter ridicule, mentioning the same “air germs” he so often mentioned in “Listen, Little Man!” to discuss scientists who were Little Men, and were thus unable to accept Greatness. Einstein thus became, in a matter of days, a Little Man - and just a mere moment ago he had been Great… Pretty much the Greatest, for Reich… until he pricked Reich’s pride.

    Reich… oh, Reich… so utterly against the Evil Authority that criticized his Great Work… So utterly buried in his context that he began seeing Stalinist agents everywhere… So utterly fanatical in his science that it simply could not be touched by anyone save Reich himself.

    So much… bitterness in a single written work. So much obsession, so much Utopianism… And yet, there are proper criticisms here… for all the wrong reasons. So much certainty in identifying *symptoms*… and so much pride in believing to understand the reasons for them.

    At least Reich concludes in a semi-coherent form, yet he still manages to damage it all with *his* take on what harmony means, and on what we should all be…

    I, for one, do not claim to understand mankind from A to Z. Me… I’m just a Little Man. I do listen, mind.

20. Howie on July 13th, 2008 11:59 pm

    RK…

    There is nothing you don’t know…that is for certain.

    Remember…I read that book around 1972…so I don’t remember the details. I DO remember Reich was VERY self-righteous..

    My point about the book is in the context of the conversation I was having with Sheema. If I recall, the dude was German and wrote the thing after Hitler did his thing. As I noted…it was a weird book by a weird dude…but the main point was about accepting authority and not questioning what people are told is Truth…

    He rips the little man for, if I recall, for not standing up to wrong, for accepting what is dished in his face, and for not not looking into his own soul. Just following without thinking.

    The is the main point I got out of the book as a very young man when I read it and as I know foggily recall it. Very self-righteous writer for certain…maybe one that seems himself as THE LEADER who should be followed…don’t know. But we were talking about blindly accepting social norms laid down and that is was I remember about it.

    As I noted…it was a weird little book by a weird little dude…but I thought it fit the context of the discussion.

    Your just pissed off because I don’t give shit about my Russian and Jews roots anyhow (in terms of “pride”)…I can see right through your Ruskie/Jew ass…yes I can.

21. Howie on July 14th, 2008 12:06 am

    RK–

    And I did go back to test my memory and yes…the dude really did try to invent an “orgasmatron”. Woody Allen had a ball with that idea in “Sleeper” I think it was.

    So you thought I had Alzheimer’s, eh?

    Damn Russians

22. Roman Kalik on July 14th, 2008 6:34 am

    There is nothing you don’t know…that is for certain.

    There’s quite a lot I do not know. But finding myself bored in the lowest level of the Uni library has had some results.

    but the main point was about accepting authority and not questioning what people are told is Truth…

    He rips the little man for, if I recall, for not standing up to wrong, for accepting what is dished in his face, and for not not looking into his own soul. Just following without thinking.

    The is the main point I got out of the book as a very young man when I read it and as I know foggily recall it. Very self-righteous writer for certain…maybe one that seems himself as THE LEADER who should be followed…don’t know. But we were talking about blindly accepting social norms laid down and that is was I remember about it.

    You may want to read it again… it took me a while to find it on the net, but here you go: http://wikilivres.info/wiki/index.php/Listen%2C_Little_Man!

    Such a large part of the book is Reich’s own self-righteous ranting about his research and personal encounters. So much of it is complete and utter bollocks. He doesn’t rant against cultural norms as much as he rants about the accepted societal construct, and his wish to build a new one with what he sees as flawed material…

    Your just pissed off because I don’t give shit about my Russian and Jews roots anyhow (in terms of “pride”)…I can see right through your Ruskie/Jew ass…yes I can.

    Well, you certainly caught me.

    Seriously though, I see no problem whatsoever with being proud of my roots, because I don’t have to build something entirely on my own to be proud of it. I see myself as continuing a chain, Howie. My Russian, Jewish, and Israeli backgrounds… they define me, they are part of my past, and I accept them wholeheartedly as part of what defines me today.

    It is not a physical matter, really, but much more than that.

23. Howie on July 14th, 2008 3:49 pm

    RK-

    “Seriously though, I see no problem whatsoever with being proud of my roots, because I don’t have to build something entirely on my own to be proud of it. I see myself as continuing a chain, Howie. My Russian, Jewish, and Israeli backgrounds… they define me, they are part of my past, and I accept them wholeheartedly as part of what defines me today.”

    You are talking about identity…fine and dandy…My point is folks taking PRIDE in something they had no hand in. Did you work hard to become a Russian?

    I can’t have much pride in something I had nothing to do with…I feel folks should be proud of things they had a personal hand in…not what their ancestors may have done 600 years ago. Just like I am not ashamed to be an American with our not to distant history of slavery or messing with the Indians. I didn’t do it!!!! Like Woody Allen once said…”back then my ancestors were busy being raped by Cossacks”. And I am not mad at Russians for what the Cossacks did.

    But anyhow…You obviously got something different from the book than I did those many many years ago. Sure…the guy hated Hitler and yet had a few of his traits…he was very self-righteous…but again…what I got from it is “don’t be a lemming”. Oh…and I the orgasmatron…I keep a few in the garage.

    :0

24. Ahmad al-Safawi on July 20th, 2008 1:26 pm

    The point where many muslims get mixed up on this issue if when the “honor” that is being violated by a daughter or a son is essential to islam, such as sexual chasity.

    It cannot be said that abstaining from sex outside a marriage is arab culture and not Islam, this law is essential to Islam and violating it is considered as one of the most serious transgressions.

    There is no doubt that in Islamic law - as it has been interpreted for generation after generation of muslim scholars - such behavior is punishable. However, it was never up to the family to punish such a behaviour, it is up to the court. Killing unjustly is also a serious violation of Islamic law, and taking the law in ones own hands without a proper decision from an Islamic court, is unjustly killing. As such, these honor-killings is in themselves a violation of the very same islamic law that prohibits sex outside a marriage.

    However, being born and raised in Egypt in a conservative environment, i _emotionally_ understand the emotions that lead to such killings. Many non-arabs will not get how i can say that i understand this, so try thinking of it this way: A wife is cheating on her husband with her husbands very best friend and they have been friends for years, and the husband gets so angry that he wents on to knock his former best friend down which results in his former friend being killed. By reason, you would not accept such a behaviour, but by your emotions, you will probably understand which feelings he went through… And thats quite the same way i feel.

    But this leads our arab community here in Denmark to another level: Most of us would never commit such a horrible act as killing one owns daughter or son, but because we understand the emotions who make people commit such an act, we often choose to remain silent. “We condemn the action, but we understand the father”… And somehow it stops there. That is not enough - we have to put a lot of bigger efforts in preventing such an action, because we KNOW that it is WRONG even through we understand it. Murder is MURDER, and cannot be justified as such. I just wish that in the future more of us will realize that it is a problem, and that we cannot close our eyes to a problem as severe as murder, even through we can understand the reason for these killings.

25. anna on July 20th, 2008 3:11 pm

    Honour killings are due to the fact that the man’s honour is linked to his daughter’s sexual purity. This belief has no basis in coptic belief, as women and men are seen as equals before God-although proximity of living over the centuries has meant it does rub off.

    Neither Sharia law nor modern law appropriately penalise this crime.

26. Ahmad al-Safawi on July 20th, 2008 8:09 pm

    It also occurs among sons, not only daughters, although the latter is indeed more common.

Leave a Reply