When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings'

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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Knicholas » Fri Nov 20, 2015 5:49 pm

Tesseracts wrote:I just meant I don't think it's correct to frame this as a negative stereotype about Islam. I also believe that trying to absolve Islam of responsibility isn't the most helpful thing for the victims.




Tesseracts, my concern which I voiced here and voiced at Cracked, is that however factual the article may be, it is not representative of practitioners of Islam. To draw the same hoary parallel, I refuse to apologize on behalf of my faith because of the Westboro Baptist Church. Asking all Muslims to apologize for the actions of a few is just not on.

Honour killings in Canada are not a Muslim only phenomena. The CBC article cited on the Wikipedia page included high profile non-Muslim killings as well. I note it extends the definition of honour killings to crimes of passion in South America.

CMSellers, it's not a matter of ignoring something based on, as Terry Pratchett would say, "quaint ethnic folkways". Of course this is an issue that cannot be ignored. I don't think domestic violence should ever be ignored, but I also think it cuts across religious lines.

My concern is that it is important to address these issues, and it is important to address these issues in a mature manner. We just went through an election where fear-mongering was common, to the point where the party formerly in power promised to enact a hotline for "barbaric cultural practices". I worry that we will become a meaner society based upon a reaction against the actions of a very small minority. I can also imagine articles like this can be picked up by people who then scream "See!! We have to keep them out!!" I've seen backlashes of this sort first hand--although in a small scale.

The Cracked article was scary as hell. The ending, in particular, was terrifying. It humanized something that I've mostly only seen from a distance.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Tesseracts » Fri Nov 20, 2015 5:57 pm

I don't recall ever saying all or most Muslims are responsible for honor killings.

However, people get away with honor killings because some Muslim societies like Pakistan don't consider it a real crime. This is a cultural problem. It doesn't mean I'm demanding an "apology" from Muslims, but I am demanding some cultures become less patriarchal and stop devaluing human life.

I'm not promoting religious discrimination or prejudice, only a realistic, fact based understanding of the issue. It's a false dichotomy to say this must either have nothing to do with Islam, or everything to do with Islam and every Muslim is somehow guilty. Isn't it possible for it to be between those extremes?
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby ShuaiGuy » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:02 pm

<Redacted>
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:52 pm

I have this bit of a philosophy concerning honor:
There is no honor in caring about honor. Caring about honor only leads one to do dishonorable things. It is simply by doing honorable acts that honor is achieved.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby sunglasses » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:52 pm

Just want to be that guy and point out that theyve changed the title.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Paradox » Fri Nov 20, 2015 7:51 pm

Good god.

That last paragraph made me tear up a bit.

I wonder if they got any news yet.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Kivutar » Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:57 pm

I've been thinking about this article all day. My family is highly conservative, insane by our standards, although I would peg it at about 1% of these monsters. Most of them are fundamentally good-hearted, and none of them would ever kill a family member. I don't know how universal my experience is, but I think I have some insights.

The younger men in the family (I specifically exclude my own father, who is a good and decent, if overly old-fashioned man) genuinely do not think of women as people - at least, not people in the way that they are. Their identity is not just based on being macho - it actually goes little further than simply "being manly," to the extent that their pursuit of "manliness" overrides any semblance of rationality. Typical example; actual, condensed casual conversation at family gathering:
Me: "De Beers has really sketchy mining practices in Africa - slave labour, child labour, unsafe conditions. We shouldn't buy diamonds from them."
Two of the abovementioned young men: "Mining SHOULD be dangerous, that's what makes it MANLY!" *Young men proceed to chew me out for saying something that goes against manliness.*

Manliness is, to them, the ONLY thing that is admirable and good. Women do not have the right to manliness, by definition. Femininty is both contemptible and very strictly enforced. Thus, women doing something that they disapprove of (either sexual or unfeminine), and men who are "wusses", are essentially committing a crime against nature and their own being.

The overly-conservative women, on the other hand, base their identity around how they are better than other women. (This is similar to the men, except it is "some women", not "all women".) There is some eye-rolling at excessive displays of machoism, but, similarly to the men's attitudes, anything other than strict gender conformation is not just a sin, it is a personal insult, as it attacks the foundation of their identity.

The funny thing is that these attitudes drive them to behaviour that directly contradicts their nominal religion. They will go so far as to support ludicrous arguments with a verse from the Bible that unambiguously contradicts whatever point they were trying to make. This is not even going into lack of charity, forgiveness, love, you name it. The cognitive dissonance is surreal. So yes, these people genuinely do use their religion to justify poor behaviour.

Interestingly, my Muslim in-laws are almost all reasonable, quite liberal people (There is a bad egg or so). For what it's worth.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby rowdyrodimus » Sat Nov 21, 2015 1:56 am

First let me say that I hope the young woman interviewed for the article is OK and will soon be able to live her life the way she wants to (as all people should be able to).

Now for the part that people will probably hate (I know people usually read that as "I'm about to be an asshole just to be an asshole" but it's something I've really started wondering about more and more.

Reading through all of the comments on the article I've constantly read "Not all Muslims" like it's a Tumblr hashtag activist convention. That is true, there are good and bad Muslims just as there are good and bad members of EVERY religion and good and bad people who see themselves as Atheist. However, let's take an article about the Westboro Church or a story about Catholic Priests and all you see is people running over each other to say stuff like "Christfags" and stuff like that to verbally assault members of the Christian faith. I admit that Christians aren't being targeted like Islam is, but then again it's not groups of altar boys going on terrorist attacks.

I had members of my family and family friends who were in the Vietnam War. Most of them (the only one not to say this was a member of the communications platoons like Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam" ) said that the hardest part of fighting in the war was the fact that you couldn't tell who was North or South Vietnamese. You couldn't tell if someone was coming to give you a cup of water or coming to shoot you. We're dealing with this now with telling which is the Extremist Muslim and who is the "Peaceful" Muslim. We really shouldn't be upset by people being anti people who are staging terrorist attacks around the world and maybe be upset by the "good" Muslims who don't take a stand against those who not only defile the teachings of their religion by deciding a global caliphate is what needs to be done and the more "crusader" blood the better. That's the scariest part of the refugee thing. Who is a "good guy" and who is a "bad guy"? It's not like if someone asks them if they are part of ISIS or whatever group will splinter off from it next, the terrorist will blush, slyly smile and say "Yeah, you got me." (I know I went a little off topic but this is just stream of conscious stuff, it's just the way I roll.)
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Tesseracts » Sat Nov 21, 2015 2:35 am

Jeez Rowdy... why did you have to put quotes around the words peaceful and good? Why did you have to say "peaceful" Muslim and "good" Muslim? Those terms absolutely don't need quotes in that context.

There are 1.7 billion Muslims on Earth, from many different nations of the world. I presume some of them are genuinely peaceful and good. No actually, I know they are, because many have spoken out against terrorism and many Muslim leaders actively oppose honor killings.

I find it upsetting when people blame Christianity, or religion in general, for violence. I don't think people deserve to be stereotyped for their beliefs.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Kivutar » Sat Nov 21, 2015 2:47 am

rowdyrodimus wrote: That's the scariest part of the refugee thing. Who is a "good guy" and who is a "bad guy"?


Not being able to tell good people from bad people is less a result of religion/war and more a basic fact of human existence.
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Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes."

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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby rowdyrodimus » Sat Nov 21, 2015 2:50 am

I put quotes around them whenever I am using the terms in ways that indicates something that is based on someone's opinion. For example, ISIS members think the people that pulled off the Paris attacks of last week are "Good" guys and the people killed were the "Bad" guys when everyone else sees them the other way around. I didn't do it to say that there aren't truly good members of Islam just that it's a subjective term. There was no disrespect intended, I'm sorry if it seemed differently.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Askias » Sat Nov 21, 2015 3:12 am

Damn.

I've combed through my national news for anything related to honor killing. Unfortunately despite my small country there are 500 cases of honor-related violence each year (reported. God knows how many there actually are), 20 of which end in death. Honor-related murders account for over half of the total amount of women murdered (but that is largely because out of the 144 murder victims in my country last year 113 were men)*.

Even if I knew her real name, victims of these crimes are rarely named, especially when they're not dead.

On the 25th of September two brothers were arrested in Tilburg after threatening a family member, and the police states they suspected honor-related violence. On the 4th of November a dead Syrian woman was found in a small town in the middle of the country. The police stated it was an honor killing. Neither story has much reported development.

I'll keep my eyes open.

*I should note that it basically only counts as 'honor killing' if the people involved are immigrants or decendants thereof, usually from Afghanistan, Turkey, or Morroco.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Tesseracts » Sat Nov 21, 2015 3:53 am

rowdyrodimus wrote:I put quotes around them whenever I am using the terms in ways that indicates something that is based on someone's opinion. For example, ISIS members think the people that pulled off the Paris attacks of last week are "Good" guys and the people killed were the "Bad" guys when everyone else sees them the other way around. I didn't do it to say that there aren't truly good members of Islam just that it's a subjective term. There was no disrespect intended, I'm sorry if it seemed differently.

That makes sense, I think peaceful is a less subjective term than good though.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby Knicholas » Sat Nov 21, 2015 4:51 am

rowdyrodimus wrote:Reading through all of the comments on the article I've constantly read "Not all Muslims" like it's a Tumblr hashtag activist convention. That is true, there are good and bad Muslims just as there are good and bad members of EVERY religion and good and bad people who see themselves as Atheist. However, let's take an article about the Westboro Church or a story about Catholic Priests and all you see is people running over each other to say stuff like "Christfags" and stuff like that to verbally assault members of the Christian faith. I admit that Christians aren't being targeted like Islam is, but then again it's not groups of altar boys going on terrorist attacks.


Rowdyrodimus, I agree with pretty much everything you say, and I would count myself as one of the #NotAllMuslims in the same way I dislike "Christian equals homophobe". In North America, its necessary in so far as Muslims are a minority in the United States and Canada, and we have an unfortunate habit of scapegoating anyone with brownish skin. There have been a small series of hate crime in Canada following the Paris attacks already. One was on a Sikh gentlemen. Another was an assault and robbery. A third was arson against a Mosque. The arson had a happy ending-people in the town promptly raised the money for repairs, and then some.

My western view is that we need to remind ourselves that thinking in terms of "we" and "they" from the actions of a few is destructive.

Personally, I do not like Christian-bashing either, or Church bashing. It's childish. On the other hand, I've never been fearful of being assaulted for my religious beliefs while walking down the street.
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Re: When Religious Parents Kill Kids: Inside 'Honor Killings

Postby rowdyrodimus » Sat Nov 21, 2015 9:10 am

Knicholas, first of all, nice to meet you. My computer crapped out on me a few weeks back and just now found my old one to use until I get a new one, so haven't had the pleasure to read or respond to you and your comments.

As for "On the other hand, I've never been fearful of being assaulted for my religious beliefs while walking down the street." I completely agree with what you said and that's why I added that last part. It's like someone is setting fire to trash cans all around town and they have a town meeting where everyone shows up, who are they going to watch more closely, the guy with the three kids in a suit and tie or the group of kids that arrived smelling of gasoline with matches falling out of their pockets? (Admittedly the analogy isn't the best, but, as clunky as it is, it works in a way.)
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