The Devil Went Down to Georgia
July 7th, 2008 - 8:27 am
Will Collier emailed this AJC story and asked, “Now, why do I suspect that there’s a word missing from this article? One that starts with “M”?”
See if you can guess:
A Clayton County man faces murder charges in the strangulation death of his 25-year-old daughter early Sunday over what police said was her desire to end an arranged marriage.
Chaudhry Rashad, 54, apparently became angry during an argument in which the victim, Sandela Kanwal, told him she wanted out of the marriage, Clayton police spokesman Timothy Owens said.
Unlike Britain, sharia isn’t yet considered a legitimate method of settling private disputes. Let’s keep it that way.
Dang Methodists!
Mormons!
I guess those evil Christian fundies aren’t the only ones who don’t support a “woman’s right to chose”, huh?
Stephen,
I am not sure if you are right in this one. Honor killing is really a feature of, how to say, less enlightened societies. Maybe religion plays part, but the underlying reasons are deeper.
Honor killings happened in other religions, too. For example, the Yazidis stoned a girl to death about a year ago for loving a muslim boy, and somebody actually recorded it on his phone camera. You can see those videos, they are pretty awful.
Also, a couple of years ago, there was a news at LGF where an Iranian Christian guy killed her daughter for honor reasons. AFAIR, Charles correctly noted, that honor killing is more about culture than religion.
Also, if you think about it, Alexander Hamilton’s death was also, after all, about honour, even if Burr was “not supposed” to kill Hamilton.
I think the reason people associate honor killings with Islam (not that I would defend it) is because we hear a lot of honor killings from that area, and it happens to be, that the most popular religion over there is Islam. But it is important to be clear on this.
Vilmos
Working in a prison, everyday I see a lot of men who got there because they went after the guy who was with their woman, beat or killed their woman for being with some other guy, beat or killed their woman for possibly being with some other guy, killed some guy for making fun of their woman, beat some guy for having a better-looking woman, killed someone who had a woman while he didn’t, and so on and so forth, ad damn near infinitum. Even gay guys do it, so it’s not even exclusive to heterosexuals. It’s about “honor” in the broadest sense, and it’s rarely cultural unless you want to say, as some certainly do and have facts to back them up, that ours is a culture where men go apeshit when they think their woman is trying to get out from under their thumbs. Most killed women get that way because of men who are fathers, husbands, or “lovers” in some sense.
But at least in this country, we don’t let the killers get no more than a slap on the wrist. Except sometimes.
Jon,
> Working in a prison, everyday I see a lot
> of men who got there because they went
> after the guy who was with their woman
> …
This looks more like jealousy. That has to do with inner feelings.
What I was talking about (and is relevant in this case) is being ostracized, feeling being ostracized, or feeling humiliated, if the family’s honor is hurt. This is cultural, and such, obviously external. In such cases, the best (only?) way to “remove the stain” is to kill the one responsible for it. Richard Landes at Augean Stables writes a lot about this honor-shame culture.
Vilmos
Motorcycle gangs, street gangs of various races, “Travelers”, drug dealing networks and others work from this sense of “honor” as well. Some of it is familial as well.
I’m not ignoring the point that these Islamic families are pretty much fucked in the head. I’m just pointing out that they aren’t all that different from many other groups that act from a place where the group controls or tries to control wayward individuals, or else. Nor am I ignoring the way in which many governments condone this crap by giving light sentences to those who do the families’ wet work, if any investigation takes place in the first place.
There are more extremists than Muslim extremists is what I’m saying. Cultural relativism? Of a sort, but note that I’m not saying they’re less bad in comparison so much as saying we’re less good than we’d like to think. And if that’s America-bashing, then I can live with being the one to point out that stupidity is wrong even if it comes from an insider rather than The Other.
The difference is, currently only one culture is trying to impose honor killings as a legal norm — if not here (yet), then in other friendly countries.
Collier may be a bigot. Would you expect the paper to tell you if the guy were Christian, or Jewish, if he kills his daughter? It’s not _relevant_. And there’s plenty of Muslim communities and societies where this is plain unacceptable.
Actually, looking down at Collier’s weird post on Brit judges accepting Sharia in private contracts — scratch “may be.” I meant, “is.” Mr. Green — that’s goofy, too. I’ve been to a lot of Muslim cultures. In many of them this kind of honor killing in anathema. When you say that “one culture is trying to impose honor killings as a legal norm” — that sentence is _wrong_. Many elements of Muslim culture are fighting hard against them. I’ve also been to parts of Africa where honor killings are accepted in Christian or animist settings. Poor, backward societies treat women pretty badly, and Islam, worldwide, correlates pretty well with poverty right now. Your idea that Muslims are somehow trying to impose this kind of brutality everywhere mistakes correlation for causation and does so with suspect motives.
Capt K,
I think maybe you’re new here – the name doesn’t ring a bell. So I’ll spell out a thing or two, because as I’m sure you know, blogs usually use shorthand.
What Will and I both mean is “Islamist” culture — a small subset of Islam as a whole. Obviously, most Muslims don’t agree with honor killings. However, I might argue the point that the majority is fighting the minority. In many places, the Muslim majority has been cowed into silence by the Islamist minority’s violence and brutality. And, yes, they’re sure as hell trying to impose an ancient form of sharia, complete with honor killings.
Such is the case not just in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, but in Denmark (remember the cartoons?), the Netherlands, and Great Britain, too. That’s a legitimate concern for someone of any liberal value system.
As for my — or Will’s — motives, you might want to ask a question or two, and maybe wait for a response, before throwing around accusations of bigotry.
What is really galling to me is a follow-up article which gives the impression that this is a case of “arranged marriage for you but not for me” as the father is married to an African-American lady, but the daughter had a different surname. Perhaps that could a result of him being widowed and then remarried, but its a little rich the guy is marrying whomever he wants, but that isnt allowed for his daughter.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/clayton/stories/2008/07/06/claymurder_0707_web1.html?cxntlid=inform_artr
Judging by the names, the people may well be Hindu, who indulge in arranged marriages at least as much as M*slims