The overwhelming majority
A little more on that BBC article about attitudes to ‘honour’ killing and its evasiveness about who exactly gets killed in such killings.
Sometimes it is men; Dsquared provided the link to this nightmare.
A university student was murdered to “vindicate a family’s honour” after he fell in love with their daughter and made her pregnant, a court was told yesterday.
Student was Iranian, daughter and family were Bangladeshi, father disapproved of student, said there was already a marriage arranged for daughter; she was forbidden to see student, confined to house, phone taken away; they met anyway, she got pregnant, they planned to marry.
On November 20 Mr Ghorbani-Zarin was found dead in his car, a green Renault, in Spencer Crescent, Oxford, which is close to his home…He was found with 46 stab wounds, mainly to the chest, the trial was told. His head had been tied to the headrest of the car following his death.
Sometimes it is gay men: Jeremy talked about one such case on Little Atoms last month. Sometimes it is children. But it’s usually women. The BBC should have said all that, instead of just vaguely saying ‘people’. As for instance Rajeshree Sisodia did in this article:
A family’s reputation is considered paramount in several cultures. And ‘honor killing’ is a centuries-old practice by which people – predominantly women – are murdered by relatives for behaving in a way that is perceived to destroy the family’s honor within the wider community.
That’s easy enough isn’t it? Just say it’s predominantly women. Or, go into more detail, as Sanchita Hosali does in this interview at AWID, Association for Women’s Rights in Development:
Research in the UK and elsewhere has shown that the overwhelming
majority of victims of ‘honour killings’ and ‘crimes of honour’ in general,
are women and girls, and the greater proportion of perpetrators are male.
The ‘Honour Crimes’ Project works from the basis that ‘crimes of honour’
encompass a variety of manifestations of violence against women including
‘honour killings’, assault, confinement, imprisonment, and forced marriage,
where the claimed motivation, justification or mitigation for the violence
is attributed to notions of ‘honour’ (related to family (natal), conjugal or
community ‘honour’) requiring the preservation of male control of women,
particularly women’s sexual conduct whether real or perceived.
There, that’s not so difficult. That’s how the BBC should have done it.
Women are, of course, usually the victims of this kind of thing. But the time I stumbled across it with some of my students (back when I was teaching, obviously – these students were Sikhs; I overheard them plotting!), they were going after some guy. He had already been warned for dating a cousin he wasn’t supposed to be dating, but he carried on dating her. They had been had assigned by some kind of family council – or something like that – to give the guy a beating.
When I confronted them about it, they were adamant that they were entitled (morally speaking) to do what they were about to do…
Yeah. Clearly there must be a very high level of moral conviction, to overcome (what one hopes is) the countervailing pressure not to murder or beat up daughters or cousins. It’s such terrible stuff. Greek tragedy isn’t in it.
According to Dr Indarjit Singh, Editor of the Sikh Messenger, on BBC R4’s Today programme this morning, we should distinguish between religion and culture, and religions shouldn’t be blamed for such customs as honour killing. Really? – then why isn’t it as rare as pork eating in Islamic societies?
Pakistan: Honour killings of girls & women
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA330181999
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If religions should not be blamed, then why are women deemed inferior, in both the islamic and christian “Holy” books?
Hey, Tingey, don’t leave the rest out, they’ll feel lonely! I used to have a copy of Fidelis Morgan’s “Misogynist’s Source Book”, and in it there were examples from Hindu texts, Buddhist teachings (what is woman? essentially a sack of shit – literally!), etc,etc. I haven’t got it to hand, or I’d use properly attributed quotes…can anyone else help?
There’s also “Not in God’s Image”
by Julia O’Faolain & Lauro Martines.
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. . . Buddhist teachings (what is woman? essentially a sack of shit – literally!) . . .
Buddhist eh? Silly me! I thought it was that alleged saint, Jerome.
G. Tingey – the big problem is here that we lack comparative evidence. The vast majority of (post-)agricultural and technological cultures have been both strongly marked by religious beliefs and by various degrees of oppression of women. Expressly atheistic societies have had too little chance to mess up yet.
In a way, it’s a no-brainer that organized religion tends to reinforce and reflect the power structures of a society. That’s boilerplate Marxism.
On the other hand, I would regard the misogyny of early Christian writers (Timothy, Paul) as not very relevant to the most central issues of Christian belief (God, crucifixion, resurrection). Similarly, I fail to see anything particularly misogynistic in the Sh’ma Yisrael or indeed in the “Do not unto others…” And as the rabbi said, all the rest is commentary. Which can be and is constantly evaluated and revised.
Finally, I have the impression that in many hunter/gatherer societies the position of women is rather more equal (though they may not be cultures one would want to grow up in for other reasons). Nonetheless they do not lack superstitious belief.
In the event, I am a political if not a philosophical secularist: it’s obvious that a diminished role of religion in political and cultural affairs will benefit women (and gays, and …). Nonetheless, I believe religion (its social side, rather than its core content) is the weapon itself rather than wielding the weapon. In the end, it’s husbands and fathers and cousins that oppress and kill women.
“In the end, it’s husbands and fathers and cousins that oppress and kill women.”
Well that’s what I think. (JS and I were wrangling about or discussing this recently – arrows of causation etc.) I think it just boils down to sexual dimorphism; or to the role of competition in all evolved life. Human males are generally stronger than human females, so they generally dominate; over the millennnia that gets built up into elaborate systems of justification and aestheticization. Religion doesn’t need to be the original cause or source in order to be a huge stumbling block in the way of improvement now.
OB,
You wrote “Religion doesn’t need to be the original cause or source in order to be a huge stumbling block in the way of improvement now.”
Reminds me of Christians spreading terrible lies about condoms in Africa and Asia: In places where local customs already discourage men from using them, for the Xians to drop in and reinforce such beliefs only makes things worse (for both women and men, but especially for women.)
G tingey.I dont hear of any christian honour killings do you know something I dont?
Richard – in recent history the treatment of girls who had fallen pregnant outside wedlock in Ireland is pretty close to all this…
Fair point mate,although I would say that Ireland has come a long way in recent years.My point was that lumping christianity together with islam as G.T. did ignores the obvious truth that virtually everyware christianity is practiced you will see a free people and womens rights respected.On the other hand virtually everyware islam is practiced you will see the complete reverse(I know there are exeptions).
Yeah, rather large exceptions. Guatemala springs to mind, as does much of the rest of South America. Then you have the Amish; the Southern Baptist Convention; Mormonism; torment of ‘witches’ in parts of Africa; the Vatican. Yeah, quite a few exceptions.
But I would say the U.S. Canada,U.K. western europe,Australia,New Zealand,South Africa,Kenya, are good examples and also add that both the liberal movement and the laboour movement were inspired by christian philosophy as was the abolision of slaverey,Philanthropy,charity,and kindness to puppies.
Richard, I agree, the kindness to puppies bit is key here.