July 21, 2006--Friday Fanaticism XLIII--Honor Thy Sister
This one requires little comment from me. It just needs to be stopped.
No one, no cultural relativist, no post-modern who sees all social behavior as “constructed” and therefore neutral will be able to engage in “discourse” about this except to say it is a human, sorry, universal abomination. Honor killings.
The NY Times recently reported on them, Turkish style (see article linked below.) Since Turkey is under consideration for membership in the European Union; and a number of EU members, most notably France, are reluctant to admit an Islamic country (there has even debate about including language in the ill-fated EU constitution that affirms EU members are Christian states) observers of the process have been keeping a close eye on just how secular Islamic-Turkey in fact is. The continued widespread practice of honor killings, which the government has been dragging its feet about, is not helping Turkey’s candidacy.
However, considerably more important and urgent than the EU situation is the need to not only decry this practice but to eradicate it.
Typically, these so-called honor killings occur when a young woman is thought to have done something that is considered anathema to “orthodox” Islamic law. Something like wanting, just wanting to go to the movies, stealing a glance at a boy, wearing a short skirt, and even having been raped, not having had sex, but having been raped by a stranger or even a relative.
In any of these circumstances, because her family has been “disgraced,” the girl needs to be dead. I didn’t say “killed,” because there are two ways to deal with this “problem.” Most traditionally, a brother would be called upon to kill her. But there is this need for a second option because there is the possibility, just the possibility that he might be prosecuted for the murder. So the second option is for the girl simply to kill herself. It’s a brilliant solution since this both gets the job done and the beloved son gets out of jail free.
This solution is brilliant in another way—let’s say the girl doesn’t agree to kill herself, saying, “Dad, I just wanted to see a movie.” So what’s the loving father to do—if he has one of his older sons kill his sister, if he’s over 18, he could go to jail for life. But, if the fratricidal brother is younger than 18, because he is “under age,” he’ll just get a legal slap on the wrist.
But the Turkish government figured out this scheme and officially claims brothers, regardless of their age, can also get life sentences. This means, then, if the father doesn’t want to lose both a daughter to death and a son to life imprisonment, it’s back to forcing these wayward daughters to either kill themselves or murder them in a way that to investigators, assuming there are any, it looks like good-old suicide.
No one, no cultural relativist, no post-modern who sees all social behavior as “constructed” and therefore neutral will be able to engage in “discourse” about this except to say it is a human, sorry, universal abomination. Honor killings.
The NY Times recently reported on them, Turkish style (see article linked below.) Since Turkey is under consideration for membership in the European Union; and a number of EU members, most notably France, are reluctant to admit an Islamic country (there has even debate about including language in the ill-fated EU constitution that affirms EU members are Christian states) observers of the process have been keeping a close eye on just how secular Islamic-Turkey in fact is. The continued widespread practice of honor killings, which the government has been dragging its feet about, is not helping Turkey’s candidacy.
However, considerably more important and urgent than the EU situation is the need to not only decry this practice but to eradicate it.
Typically, these so-called honor killings occur when a young woman is thought to have done something that is considered anathema to “orthodox” Islamic law. Something like wanting, just wanting to go to the movies, stealing a glance at a boy, wearing a short skirt, and even having been raped, not having had sex, but having been raped by a stranger or even a relative.
In any of these circumstances, because her family has been “disgraced,” the girl needs to be dead. I didn’t say “killed,” because there are two ways to deal with this “problem.” Most traditionally, a brother would be called upon to kill her. But there is this need for a second option because there is the possibility, just the possibility that he might be prosecuted for the murder. So the second option is for the girl simply to kill herself. It’s a brilliant solution since this both gets the job done and the beloved son gets out of jail free.
This solution is brilliant in another way—let’s say the girl doesn’t agree to kill herself, saying, “Dad, I just wanted to see a movie.” So what’s the loving father to do—if he has one of his older sons kill his sister, if he’s over 18, he could go to jail for life. But, if the fratricidal brother is younger than 18, because he is “under age,” he’ll just get a legal slap on the wrist.
But the Turkish government figured out this scheme and officially claims brothers, regardless of their age, can also get life sentences. This means, then, if the father doesn’t want to lose both a daughter to death and a son to life imprisonment, it’s back to forcing these wayward daughters to either kill themselves or murder them in a way that to investigators, assuming there are any, it looks like good-old suicide.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:15 PM
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