A curious issue has arisen in the media about the use of the phrase "honour killing".
The phrase describes the murder of a woman by her family members (almost always male) who believe the woman has dishonoured the family.
To my mind this clearly falls into the category of hate crimes or, at least, ideologically motivated crime. The crime is planned and committed to impose a world view.
Some suggest the use of the phrase is racist.
Rubbish.
Whether honour killings should be punished more heavily than other murders is an issue that I am unsure on -- murder is murder -- but to suggest calling an honour killing an honour killing is racist just wrong.
As a fact most honour killings in North America (and they are very very rare) take place among recent immigrant communities. Recent examples come from people of various nations but who are of Muslim faith. But the earliest examples of honour killings in Canada were not committed by Muslims. The Koran doesn't even hint that honour killing is proper -- Islam as a faith is not supportive of honour killing or murder.
In fact, to suggest calling a murder an honour killing is racist is, in itself, racist. The sub text is that honour killings are tied to a single community and so using the phrase speaks about that community. That isn't right -- it is disrespectful of Islam. There are Muslim murders but there are Christian, Jewish, Hindu murders too.
Let's call crimes what they are -- an honour killing should be called what it is.
4 comments:
Agreed.
There is nothing wrong with attaching adjectives to describe the motivations for a crime--hate crime, crime of passion, revenge killing. It is clear that--questions about dubious interpretations aside--it is the killers perception
of what their religion requires in terms of morality that drove them to their actions.
Where I disagree with you is regarding religious texts. I've never bought into objectivitist understanding of religion. I don't believe that fundamentalists of any religion are "distorting" or "twisting" their religion. They are no different than the moderates in that they arbitrarily pick and choose parts of their religious texts and ignoring others. I've never received a satsifactory explanation from religious moderates of some of the more bloody and ruthless portions of their respective scriptures.
Whatsmore the term "honour killing" does not even reference a particular religion. Frankly Im tired of devout folks denying that the belief structure under which they live influences people to do bad things because quite obviously it does.
Your absolutely right KC . . . look at the dismal record of say . . . . Athiesm, the religion of the Communists . . . it killed 100's of millions of people in the last century.
Using the "racist" label as a defense by some groups is a desperate attempt to defend actions that are irrational to most thinking people.
Murder is always wrong. The only real exception I can think of is self-defense (individually or collectively through war) and possibly euthanasia. Im not going to defend the communists for killing people over their religion.
No doubt the Communists killed some people over their religion, but I think they killed most for statist objectives. In other words it wasnt "atheism" over which they killed most of them--unlike in the case of holy wars such as the crusades.
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It wasn't so much that the Communists killed people "over their religion", but that they killed so many people because their was no thought that killing people so indiscriminately was wrong in the eyes of God.
Muslim clerics defend Honor Killings. In Pakistan, which is about 98% Islamic, there are about 3,000 such killings per year. Death by Stonings are Needed! Honor Killings of Young Women are Honorable...
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absurd thought -
God of the Universe wants
more public stonings...
of young girls who've been raped
but not by their husbands
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absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
bury girls up to their waist
then have the crowd throw stones
at her until she is DEAD
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absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don't call a murderer names
certainly not a monkey
but a piece of sh*t is fine
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