Sarah and Amina Said…

by Drima on October 27, 2008

… too little, too late.

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Howie 10.27.08 at 5:49 pm: Reminds me a whole lot of the work of Irshad Manji who implores “understanding” Westerner’s to stop being so politcally correct and worrying about upsetting the minorities…

Look…my guess is that honor killing is enormously rare in the Muslim world…this is a tragedy…but Muslims have no monopoly on abusing kids or women…

So there are micor and macro issues here…a million directions to take this subject; responsibility for others, PC, abuse of women, abuse of children…culture, Muslim culture etc.

It goes back to an earlier conversation…one more reason why I don’t give a flying hoot about “cultures” other than they can be interesting…even wonderful…

And religion is a problem too. Jewish religion certainly allows for floggings and stoning…the Torah even notes that misbehaving kids should be taken in front of the city and stoned to death. Judaism allows for slavery etc. Thank God we don’t do that shit and have found a way around it, along with animal sacrifice, but you could still make an arguement for religiously sanctioned cruelty and torture…and the Muslims currently lead the world in abusing religion to be cruel and controlling of others. They have bypassed the Christians and even the atheistic political movements that came out of Europe.

So good for the writer…ultimately this is not about religions and cultures…it is about individual shitty behavior…
2 Hamidoush 10.27.08 at 6:15 pm: Honor killings is more widespread in the Arab and Muslim world than normally thought. Such murders are not reported as “honor killings” as they should be. There is a problem of under-reporting. All we hear is one case at a time, which make the average individual in the West and the arab world to be less worry about it as a social problem.

I have read somewhere that Gaza has one of the highest number of honor killings, followed by Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/6f6d5166f24330a0e8edcb79796ca5cc.htm

http://www.eruditiononline.com/01.04/honor_killings.htm

Very troubling indeed.
3 Roman Kalik 10.27.08 at 8:25 pm: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3613709,00.html

Happens in Israel, too. Mainly among the Muslim Arab population, though to a lesser extent among the Christian Arab population as well.

This isn’t a matter of religion, frankly. It’s a cultural relic of the worst of tribal society, with the Hamoula, the greater family, the micro-tribe, treating the individuals in it as little more than an expression of How Things Should Be. Female members of the Hamoula are treated as lessers, simply because the males can do whatever they want. Strength, means to act, and above all the vague image of Family Honor…

They defeat all other moral codes. It doesn’t matter that this sort of thing is murder in Islam, really it doesn’t. Not to the people who commit it. The more base moral code seems to override all others here, be it based on religion, culture, state… The only thing that matters is how the little micro-tribe sees itself, and to hell with the consequences. Thus all other moral frameworks become subjugated by this notion of Family Honor, of appearances, of cleansing by blood. Justifications from these now-secondary moral codes will be found, if enough twisting is applied.

The story I linked to here is a fine example of two Muslim Arab men going against even the authority of their own parents, the leaders of the so-called micro-tribe, pushing even that last wall away.

And yes, it is a sadly active component of Muslim Arab society, like it or not. That it exists in other, similar societies, be it in Africa or the Mongolian steppes, means *nothing* for handling *this* issue, in *this* society. And here and now, it is carefully brushed away, so that it won’t bother Decent Folk, so that it won’t harm their sentiments, won’t make them feel *guilty* for not changing anything, and they’ll even justify it to themselves in the oldest adage of all…

She probably deserved it. In fact, all of them did. After all, there’s only smoke where there’s a fire, right? She/they must have done *something* horribly wrong to deserve this, right?

Right? It has to be that way, people tell themselves, otherwise they’d have to face the fact that there is something horribly wrong in their society.

And that they could have changed it. And didn’t. Not thinking about it is *so* much easier. It always is.

At least Israeli courts treat this sort of thing as actual murder, without the “emotional issues central to defendant’s being” sort of thing brought up in such trials just around the corner, so to speak, Middle-East wise… In those cases where there’s an actual *trial*, that is.
4 Tamar 10.28.08 at 5:18 pm: happens here much too often (for me even twice a year is too often)and never gets the attantion it should. I don’t understand why.

The story of Sarah and Amina makes me sick and I don’t care for being PC or understanding different cultures.

This is not Islam. Not to me.
5 Suzanne 10.29.08 at 8:05 pm: I just started an own blog - together with a friend of mine. Purpose of this blog is too post just random stuff about anything and everything. Things we think to be intriguing and inspiring. I also added a blog roll and added yours in it, Drima.

Anyhow, this post about Sarah and Amina Said made me sad and those two beautiful girls did not deserve to die. Honor killings are so pathetic; especially because the reasons why the “honor” is damaged. What honor can be gained for the family by having a family member killing his children? Isn’t that a shame to the family? It should be!
6 kinzi 10.31.08 at 4:37 pm: Thanks for validating Sarah and Amina’s lives with this post, Drima. We are working on a special blog in Jordan to “End Daughter Slaughter” and give the victims names and photos as you have here.

(since Suzanne above mentioned, I was excited this week that my blog was added to itoot, which is one I usually read from YOUR blog!)