(No) honor killings

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/iraq.humanrights?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

"For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death. "

i just don't understand how a culture that considers this sort of activity normal can even wonder why the rest of the world wants them wiped off the planet. His daughter had merely TALKED to, never touched, kissed or anything a britishprivate, her father & brothers killed her for this!
I'm sorry but if the rest of the muslum community doesn't stand up to condemn these situations immediately than IMPO i feel that any civilized country would be perfectly right to declare their religion a dangerous cult which needs to be exterminated at all cost.

 

Martaug - You are very justified for feeling the sense of outrage and horror that you do at this barbaric murder, at the hands of ignorant and superstitious fanatics. Yet, I would comment that every religion has its irrational fanatics; even Christianity has fanatics who are every bit as dangerous as these idiots are. But what really troubles me is that in the ME, religion has taken over government; there is little separation between Church and State. IMO, it is solid proof that our Founders knew that they were doing when they attempted to keep religion out of our government.

 

yep, it was even written into their laws that honor killings were allowed up until recently & now that they are technically illegal they just ignore them or don't investigate the crimes. geez, pisses you off so bad you just want to glass the whole region.



Aarrgghhh!! gotta head to the gym & kill the heavy bag for a couple hours to cool down.

 

Yup, this is what unbridled conservatism leads to. Fight them wherever you meet them before we end up as that girl.

 

Martaug - this is not representative of 'normal' Muslims.

 

That's good coming from an American...

Next to the Middle East, the US government is the one most affected by religion. Can you imagine if a presidential candidate in your country came out and said he/she was athiest? They'd not get another vote! Politicians in the US have to pretend that they're strongly religious, even when they're not... That's very much different to Europe where the religious beliefs of leaders are rarely even talked about, and certainly don't matter much.

Slightly off-topic, but I thought that was rich .

 

As far as I am concerned this has nothing to do with the Islamic faith.

Unfortunately there are a number of people in this world, of various faiths and ethnicities that will use 'religion' or 'culture' to justify their own bigotry and violence.

These people just give a bad name to any and all faiths - I have a friend who is totally opposed to all organised religion because of the atrocities that have been conducted in its name.

 

Isn't it though? As Martaug pointed out the "normal" Muslims don't seem to have any problem with it. For all the evils of US Christiandom, I'm fairly certain we are still a nation of laws. If one of my neighbors killed one of his children, I'm almost positive he would be arrested, at the very least he would never be invited to a neighborhood barbecue ever again.

 

That's quite odd, I didn't think Saddam Hussein would support this since he actually managed to keep state and religion seperated up to some point. Better than say SA or Iran. The Shariah (Islamic Law) does not support this. She would have been executed (by Law!!) if she was married, but since she wasn't she only would have received a whipping of 40 lashes.

It is not possible for an Islamic country to keep state and religion seperate. Unlike Christianity where Jesus never held any political position, Mohammed was a prophet, statesman - and general - rolled up into one. Since Mohammed is the ideal standard in ME countries, that would mean that any separation can be seen as an insult to Mohammed, the Quran and eventually Allah.

What is normal? Do you mean the average type of muslim who lives in the ME. Those actually condone it, since honor killings are something that happen quite regularly there. If you mean the 'westernized' muslim, that's actually a contradiction, you're either westernized or muslim, you can't be both.

Bollocks. I would take fundamental Christianity over fundamental Islam anyday, because the former is based on common sense and the latter on desert barbarism. I could go on, but that belongs in another thread.

Nice religion BTW. They really got themselves in a trap by taking the Quran as the perfect materialisation of the holy word of Allah that any sidestep into something democracic would basically be an insult of Allah. This is unlike the Bible, most Christians believe that the bible may contain mistakes but still holds the word of God as it was written down by mortals who were divinely inspired. I'm probably making generalizations about Christians and perhaps Muslims, please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Unfortunately, this is representative of a large portion of the religion. Yes, this is the far-conservative, radical section of the religion, but that's a pretty large section. I don't know exactly what the statistics are, but I know both sides say the other is unrepresentative of the religion as a whole.

Yes, every religion, theology, and belief set concerning God (including atheism ) has committed horrible attrocities to enforce/support their beliefs, but it does seem rather more common here. Whether that is a matter of the religion or the culture I don't know and won't say.

 

Don't talk such wet. There's tonnes of people in my country, and yours at a guess, who are both 'westernized' and Muslim. A number personal friends of mine. I've got a few mates who are of Pakistan descendance who'd boil over about things like this. One is like 28 and still a virgin as he don't believe in sex before marriage and is still single. He's a right nice fella, has a laugh with the boys and gets on with everyone great. He takes the piss out of extremeists in his religion relentlessly, it's hilarious. He goes on about going down to London 'with a nice big ticking rucksack', but he's just taking the micky out of extremeism and hates it in any form. A few times a day he'll kneel on this rug thing with a tea-cosey type thing on his head and pray. He's a proper full-on Muslim, but about as 'westernized' as you can get. HE'S representative of Islam, not nutters like this. You'll find murdering swines everywhere, and they'll try and use excuses to cover their violence and hatred - alá this guy. He in no way represents true Muslims.

It's not bollocks at all. Religion holds a big part in US politics. No athiest will ever lead the US, because the country is largely Christian and will never vote for an athiest, even if he's the best politician ever. Besides, if you read properly what I said, you'd know I wasn't 'comparing' Islam to Christianity at all. I'm confused as to why you'd think I was.

 

Speaking out about such things is far easier said than done. We're talking about speaking out against community-condoned murder in a region dominated by religious fanatics and morality thugs. Think about it a minute. Speaking out means being outcast from your community, death threats to your children and yourself, destruction of your property, etc. Could you really be so brave?

It's foolish to assume "normal" muslims are hunky-dory with honor killings. In a region where anything less than fundamentalist zealotry is considered weak and decadent, it's the peaceful and the pragmatic who are the outcasts. You don't stop a man from beating his wife with a bicycle chain in public unless you want the man and 10 of his imam buddies to come after you for violating their 'divine right' to maintain their home as they see fit.

For those who ask the question "why don't the 'normal' members of this faith speak out," as I once did - here is the real question. Why do catholic doicese who DON'T molest alterboys remain silent when others do and cover it up? I guess Catholics are ok with it. Why doesn't the LDS Church come out in force to denounce the FLDS church as a lunatic fringe and state unequivocally that actual Mormons DO NOT condone polygamy and statutory rape? They must be ok with it. Why do 'normal' American baptists sit quietly and allow the Westburrow Baptist Church to make all baptists look like bigoted sideshow freaks? I guess all baptists MUST be bigots. Etc. etc. forever.

Or is it perhaps wrong to tar an entire faith for the actions of the fanatical minority of a minority?

 

"Honor" related violence and other things in that general area has very little to do with religion and more to do with culture. That is why I made my first post in this topic. It is a tribal thing to protect the family "honor". You can find similar things in most backwards societies whether it is in Iraq, India, parts of Europe or rural America. The acid splashings in India is a shining example of reasonings like this. Honor violence is an expression of conservatism, not of religion. This comes from me who generally blame everything and then some on religion, there may be people who justify their deeds through religion but for once it isn't the primary culprit.

 

Bad example. They have denounced it. But the point was well made.

Violence as a solution is common place. The right a man had to beat his wife and children was upheld in America until the 70's. The turning point was when police stood by during a domestic disturbance while a man beat his wife to death in front of them (I believe it was in NJ). It takes public outrage and a unified front to prevent this kind of thing. Even in the non-'backwards societies' abuse, even fatal abuse, happens every day.

The only role religion plays in such events is giving the violent individual an excuse for their uncontrollable rage -- and, at times, a shield.

 

This is kinda hard to swallow!

I just read the article and kinda feel out of it!

 

Denounced officially and occasionally yes, but not forcefully. Not unlike how the Pope is only now coming out against the clergy abuse scandals, and many consider it far too little too late. And as it applies to this topic, there are indeed moderate Muslims who stand up to this kind of barbarism, but few are very forceful about it for a variety of reasons.

In all the coverage of the polygamist compound raided in Texas recently, I haven't seen a single peep from the President of the LDS church, or any other church spokesman, denouncing these people. Reporter after reporter on both cable and local news refers to them as "fundamentalist Mormons," and you can guess which of those two words are going to stand out in peoples' minds, reinforcing the very prejudices Mormons claim to lament so much. You'd think Mitt Romney of all people would be on the case if he still thinks 2012 is in the cards for him. Seriously - if I were a church spokesman I would jump in front of every microphone I could to say "Wait a minute, folks - these people are NOT Mormons, and we want to see them prosecuted as much as you do." Public Relations 101. But they aren't doing that. They didn't do it two years ago either, when Warren Jeffs was the polygamist wacko du jour. It's not as if the Mormon church lacks a PR department (who should all be cast from their profession in shame). So I think my point stands.

 

It's more complicated than that, DR -- the LDS church does not consider the FLDS folks to be related to the main church AT ALL. The church's position on this matter is a matter of well documented public record. Anything the LDS church says merely reinforces the erroneous belief that there is a connection between the two groups. No such connection exists at the present time or has existed for several decades. The LDS church leadership has no influence on that compound, as anyone there who ever was a member would have been excommunicated long ago, which in the West is as far as a religion is allowed to go in disciplining its members because of the separation of church and state.

To look at it a different way, the Pope had to say something about the priests OF HIS FAITH who engaged in disgusting crimes. Despite public perception to the contrary, the dirtbags on that commune are not clergy of the LDS church. I do not think it is fair to insinuate that because the LDS public relations people don't make more noise they agree with what happened on that compound. Ask any Mormon and he'll (or she'll) tell you that they totally abhor the FLDS practices.

I find myself agreeing with Joaqin to a certain degree here (which is stunning in and of itself) in that the "Honor killings" are a product of tribal culture in the middle east and Africa, not necessarily Islam. That said . . .

I teach Muslims on a daily basis. I brought up a similar case wherein a girl who got raped while out with a male friend (it was other guys who raped her) and SHE got a more severe punishment than the 3 bastards who gang raped her (IIRC, this was in Saudi Arabia.) Most of the women in my class basically said that it was the girl's fault and she should have known better. These women are in Canada, not surrounded by the zealots mentioned earlier. The problem is a lot deeper and more complex than we'd like to admit, but when you boil it all down, extremism, intolerance, and vicious violence needs to be fought wherever it is found.

 

Maybe, as hard as it is for me to believe, this guy really did uphold the teachings of his faith as he understands them, and so will earn his heavenly reward when his time comes.

If so, I hope that every one of those 72 virgins he earns has his poor daughter's face.

 

@LKD,

I'm not disputing any of this. I know the church's official position, and I know they have no control over the fundies, so I can see how my comparison to the catholic situation was not a perfect parallel. What I'm saying is, if the LDS church wants the impression that polygamy is common practice among ALL mormons to be shed, it is absolutely imperative that they have a representative, on TV, denouncing these groups loud and clear whenever it happens, and they should in fact be leading the charge in prosecuting them.

Whether the church likes it or not, whenever something like this happens the message filtered through the media noise to the world boils down to "fundemental + mormon = polygamy + child abuse." It doesn't matter if the LDS church leadership has no ties or influence with them, it's a matter of perception, and the shared terms of "Morman" and "(F)LDS" connect them in the public consciousness. It's unfair, but that's public perception for you. The public at large think Mormons are a wacky polygamist cult who aren't really Christians. These groups are the reason that impression still lingers today, because they do consider themselves "true" mormons. The church shoots itself in the foot when they're not doing all they can to dominate the message here. I am NOT saying that the church agrees if they aren't noisy enough (read my post again, that was rhetorical sarcasm). But I AM saying they have a duty to their church's good standing to be as noisy as possible to correct this negative perception. I know it's BS every bit as much as you do, and that's why it's so important that the REAL church fight back.

The rest of your post was very well said, I think.

 

@Rallymama
According to the traditional Quran, everyone who enters heaven gets 72 women of paradise to marry. There's no mention on what women get, but I'm sure that it is not much.

@Barmy Army

When I think of someone as "Westernized" I except him to agree on the following things, amongst others:
- For the state and the law, there is no difference between men and women.
- For the state and the law, there is no difference between the believers of any religion.
- Treat others as you would like to be treated.

I am most willing to believe that your friend agrees with these basic rules. However, the Quran does not. You might claim that, even though he is a muslim, he does not need to follow the Quran to the letter. According to the Quran, that is simply not possible. The Quran is the complete and perfect word of Allah, omitting nothing. If he's a muslim and decides not to completely apply the rules mentioned in it, he deserves the death penalty.
I am, however, not capable in determining whether someone is a true muslim, only Allah can do that at the day of reckoning. There's something nasty waiting for him if his good deeds are not numerous enough to cover up his bad deeds.