She baked a date cake as a thank-you
But of course the real crime is the murder of Leila Hussein – a story I can hardly make myself read.
Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband – the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal ‘honour’ killing for which he has shown no remorse. Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.
She was so close.
‘She had not been able to sleep the night before. I stayed up talking to her about her plans after she arrived in Amman. I gave her some clothes to take with her and she was packing the only bag she had. She was too excited to sleep.’ Mariam said that when she awoke Leila had already prepared breakfast, cleaned her house and even baked a date cake as a thank-you for the help she had been given.
And then they shot her.
As she lay in her own hospital bed receiving treatment, Mariam said that she heard someone saying that Leila had been shot in the head. But there were other mutterings that were clearly audible. ‘I could hear people talking on the corridors and the only thing that they had to say was that Leila was wrong for defending her daughter’s mistakes and that her death was God’s punishment. ‘In that minute I just had complete hatred in my heart for those who had killed her.’
Yeah. And I still do – and for the hateful malicious vindictive brutal shit god they invoke. I hate them all.
The Observer visited Rand’s father and two brothers at their Basra home, but they refused to talk beyond Hassan proclaiming his father’s innocence. When asked if he would be visiting his mother’s grave, he shrugged: ‘Maybe in the future.’
Yowch.
I suppose living in a warzone can desensitize you to violence in general, but your own mother? And sister?
This is such an incredibly sad story for the two women, a mother and a daughter, one killed because she talked to a man, the other because she stood up for her innocent daughter. What a twisted cruel world religion creates. But, you know something, call it whatever you like, every god yet created (and of course they all of them are human creations) are hateful, mallicious, vindictive and brutal, or at least some combination of these characteristics. They reflect accurately the nature of reality. What else would they be like?
Our task, as humans, is to dispense with the charade that we play with gods, and try to make the life of each person born into the world as full of love and joy as the world allows. The profoundly sad story of Rand and Leila shows how important it is that we get beyond the cruelty of the religious stories that erased their chance of happiness for ever. Remember the one thoughtful kind and joyful act of thanks before Leila died. That’s what it’s all about. Religion is blot on humanity.
It’s with a sad but certain sense of satisfaction that I note I showed this to a mate who’d thrown the cultural relativist card at me a couple too many times and all he could do was shut up and nod. It’s times like this I *know* we have grounds to view some cultures as intrinsically better.
Keep up the anger, OB.
My initial response was to think the issue of religion was separate to the ‘cultural’ attitude of Arabs to women and marriage, but I realised its bullshit. The religion cements and protects the worst attitudes and the worst violence and oppression, because the violence and sense of ownership of women is at its heart.
Eric,
Dunno about all gods being hateful etc,
Suijin is a nice fella, Haliya is a spledid conversationalist and Ulanji just acts according to his reptilian nature…
K,
So another post-post-colonialist, eh?
ChrisPer,
Eh? Arabs are not culturally homogenous. Swap that for “South East Asian” and see how ridiculous it looks.
Is this comming to a city near you? http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3550085,00.html
At what point do we stop being tolerant of this kind of mania. I don’t realy care what reason is given for it, society or religion, when are large chunks of the population of this planet going to grow up and realise that we are all Humans first before we are anything else.
As an aside, there is the intersting concept of honor, why do so many societies seem to believe that honor is something that other people can give and take from you, only by your own actions are you judged (sounds biblical, if so then it goes to show where theres muck theres brass). This is not just a comment on the parts of the world where Sharia law holds sway, how many times do you here about families in the supposed enlightneded west disowning children because they have brought shame on the family name.
The tragic thing about this is that if the country involved would just uphold it’s own laws then this would happen so much less, it dosn’t take much of a fanatic to kill some one if they think they are going to get away with it, they might think twice about it if they knew that bragging about murdering your daughter is going to get you seeing prison bars for a long time or an express route to explaining yourself to the object of your veneration. But when yoou hear that policemen where congratualtion him for his actions it seems to me that society is on a one way trip to a place they are all desperatly trying to avoid.
Hey, DFG, I don’t have a catalogue of gods here, and when I look your gods up on Wikipedia, there’s a paucity of evidence for their natures, let alone their existence. So, without further evidence, and based on the facts that most known gods are rather dreadful characters, I’ll have to assume that your three gods have at least some capacity for malign tendencies. Besides, even loving gods have their unloving devotees.
Sue,
I always saw the western concept of honour as more a personnal, individual thing than the eastern one. Think of “doing the right thing even if nobody knows about it” public school ethos kind of thing. Think also of Jesus’ right hand-left hand. Or the Chanson de Roland and the whole knightly ethos.
In Arabic countries a reason often cited by the perpetrators of honour killings are societal pressures, the need to regain the family’s honour and reputation.
In China it’s the concept of “face”…
OTOH for a long time in Anglo-Saxon (can we use that word, I was told it was a uniquely French concept?) countries as in the rest of Europe, for a long time the honour of a family was also dependent on the “purity” of its female members. I don’t know if routinely led to killing but it went quite far anyway. You only need to read Tom Jones.
Richard, don’t tell the Italians, they haven’t finish killing their gypsieshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7423165.stm yet…
Fortunately, Marie-Therese, we’re not all Rand/Leila. That’s the one thing that we should remember as we take a very soft line on the immigration of Muslims, as well as on a kind of indulgent multiculturalism. There must be some way to weed out people who would take the same attitude as Leila’s ‘husband’ (and Rand’s ‘father’) towards questions of women’s right to freedom of speech and action.
A recent news item from Britain. Women in Birmingham (?) have said that they did not vote, though they wished to, because of the pressure brought to bear by ‘family.’ This is unacceptable in a democracy, and if people cannot accept normal democratic procedures, they should not be given permanent resident status in democratic countries. There are too many murders of young women in Britain, the United States and Canada – one is too many – and something should be done, quite deliberately, to ensure that this kind of person is not permitted to immigrate to countries whose political polities they do not endorse.
Damn! I messed up my link! Oh well, copy and paste, people, copy and paste…
“You only need to read Tom Jones.”
Or Elizabethan plays, including many of Shakespeare’s – Othello, Cymbeline, Much Ado, Winter’s Tale.
What’s interesting about Sxhpr’s is that the women are always suspected unjustly, and the men are always dead wrong to suspect them – not just factually mistaken, but morally wrong. The conventional version was very much the opposite – the women were always treacherous sluts and the men were always wronged.
Of course, OB, who else could be at fault? That’s why women are cloaked and closeted. Were in medieval Europe too. A medieval monk complained that, by hanging her undergraments out to dry, women were tempting monks beyond endurance. The sight of an ankle, or a strand of hair, or a sensuous mouth, will stir uncontrollable desire in men. Didn’t you know?
The European conception of ‘honour’ is so different to the Middle Eastern/Asian.
Not really. In both cultures there are two coexisting yet warring concepts of honor:
(1) personal honesty and integrity and reputation for these things, usually applicable to men, and
(2) compliance with conservative sexual mores and reputation for these things, usually applicable to women.
“Honorable woman” in traditional Western culture means chaste woman. It’s only very recently in the West that “honor” has lost its sexual connotation with regard to women.
Re: Shakespeare. It is very hard to pin down Shakespeare’s real opinion on anything because there is so much contradictory evidence. I think the man probably had fairly controversial views for his time and had to couch his language in a way to disguise them. Take Othello for example. It is Othello, a Moor (ie a North African) who murders Desdemona, and it is seen as an example of an honour killing. The comedy ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ concerns whether a girl is a virgin or not. It is apposite to mention here that a woman’s vagina was known in Elizabethan slang as ‘nothing’, simply because it is not a thing like a penis. The very title of the play is playful. It means a fuss about a vagina, but also a fuss about something of not much importance ie a hyman. ‘Measure for Measure’ is an anti-Puritan play that revolves around sexual intercourse. My feeling is that Shakespeare is tappping into that lustiness enjoyed by healthy, uninhibited people where sex is the major topic of conversation and communication. Not quite the same as Islamic concepts of honour is it? But of course, no-one has to agree with me. The other point I wanted to make is that undoubtedly both cultures prefer their women to be chaste, but as far as I know, actually killing a woman for not being chaste has never been a Northern European tradition. In fact, in peasant England it was most common for a bride to be pregnant on her wedding day; the explanation given for this is that it was important to ensure that the bride was not barren. There would have been cases of bastardy, which the ruling classes of the day was not to keen on because such children would have to be supported out of the parish rates, but such children were always accepted, not exposed on hillsides. One bastard (at least) went on to conquer England and change English society forever (William the Conquereor). As I said, I would be delighted if anyone could adduce some evidence to support the view that ‘honour’ killings took place in Northern Europe at any stage in it’s history. My own belief is that teh agricultural nature of the society required greater equality between family members and also the abundance of resources meant that people could allow a little tolerance.
Not all blame falls on religion and on men, the base for all this is genetic: genetically it is the winning strategy to make sure no effort is spent on the bloodline of others. The asymmetry you see in honour between men and women is rather obviously related to, err, what makes men different from women.
Religion merely steps in to defend the beastly arrangement of things (I don’t know how people can split religion and culture so easily as if religion would be something supernatural). The misery is – as OB pointed out – that ‘secular courts’ (what other courts could there be that are worth the name) step in to defend a religion that defends that we have the right to be kept in the state of beasts.
I would be delighted if anyone could adduce some evidence to support the view that ‘honour’ killings took place in Northern Europe at any stage in it’s history.
Seriously?
An “honor” killing is the killing of a woman by her menfolk because of her sexual misconduct. It’s very common, even now and even in the West (though much less socially sanctioned than in the Middle East). Your garden-variety wife-beater will often assault (and eventually kill) his wife because he feels she’s shaming him if she’s not 100% under his control, sexually and otherwise. Yes, this includes American wife-beaters (and daughter-abusers).
Islam may give sanction to “honor” killings, but it’s a near-universal phenomenon and happens even now in Northern Europe as well as the rest of the world. I recommend looking through the National Coalition Agaist Domestic Violence website: http://www.ncadv.org.
In fact Northern European society has been less gender equal than Middle Eastern society during many time periods (not now, obviously).
Hmm, Jenavir, you will grant, I trust, that there is SOME significant difference between what an individual does, which is a crime in law, and generally abhorred by the public, and what quite often whole families seem to conspire to do, and for which they are, to all appearances, untouchable? Or else you are simply going down that 70s road, which leads nowhere, of arguing that all men, everywhere, are raping, murdering bastards, and every society is a patriarchal conspiracy dedicated to preserving their power over all women.
I might add that the ‘problem’ is not Islam, per se. Read this:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/TOXICVAL.HTM
Doubtless one could scream ‘inadequate ability to appreciate diversity’ at the author….
It’s too easy to say that the problem is not Islam per se, because that’s certainly the problem right now. I’ve had a look at the article, “The World’s Most Toxic Value System,” and it is very compelling. However, because The Thar mentality has been prevalent elsewhere doesn’t reduce the relevance of Islam as the primary cultural/religious divide in the modern world, because these people are quite prepared to take this mentality right into the heart of democratic polities, and are determined to keep it alive, even though, in many cases, the reasons for them coming is precisely because their lives had reached a dead end where they were. Nevertheless, the essay, “The World’s Most Toxic Value System” is an eye-opener.
Jenavir: Men do kill women in Western Europe while in a rage. Sometimes it’s because they believe that the woman has made them look ‘small’, which you no doubt may say is a western version of ‘honour’. However, Christianity does not support such killings and neither does the secular law. The feminist movement in this country back in the 1970’s fought a hard battle to get the police to intervene in domestic violence cases, which eventually the police were forced to do. The point is that even though they were reluctant to get involved in domestic violence cases, saying that it is hard to intervene between a man and wife, never once did I hear of a man being CONGRATULATED on beating his wife . It should also be added that although the police were loath to get involved in beating cases, there was never any hesitation in grevious bodily harm or murder. To return to one of my favourite subjects, William Shakespeare, he, himself, got Anne Hathaway into the pudding club as we say in England and that was the reason he married her at such a young age. Also, as his plays are saturated with country lore, one can hear the authentic voice of the peasanty in them, I think that is a reason for saying that the English were laid back concerning sex, ‘Cymbaline’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’ are based on myths and legends(Greek and British) and so do not necessarily represent contemporary attitudes.
Jenavir: Another aspect of gender relations that we have never enjoyed in Europe is a woman walking at least four paces behind a man. If he should allow her to walk level or in front, then he will surely burn in Hell, as it tells us in the Koran.
But Dave, the concept of honor – as in honor killings – isn’t a derivative of any culture; it is a derivative of our genetic make-up. So this whole complex analysis of your link fails from point 1. That there is a concept of honor as in meriting the applause of peers in a system of values is cultural but it is a central concept in all cultures – it suffices to watch The Godfather. There is nothing intrinsically good about it either (it suffices again to watch The Godfather) so all this theorizing on a better culture because of ‘less pounds of this honor & more of the other’ can be of no help.
Meritocracy, to its extreme, is as bad as anything because it denies that the individual is more important than this ot that culture in which he resides.
From an evolutionary point of view it’s true that the first honor predates your second honor but, so what? The thing to defend is that we as individuals can be thinking for ourselves regardless of an evolutionary pressure here or there. It is not enough for your article to claim that rationalism is the way to go, it’s much more important to promote rational reaction over conditioned reaction (and at that level genetic conditioning does not trump cultural conditioning).
PS: & yes on that 70s road, if you were not to deliberately overstate the point so as to make it easier to ridicule it: all men have instinctive issues with an adultery case, up to us to to deal with our instincts & give our brain a place!
Interesting how as a woman my points are ignored, but still, you’ll think I’m some kind of batty feminist if I go on about it. JoB: Did you know that Sicily (the home of the Mafia) was a colony of Tunis/Marrocco for a couple of hundred years? Enough time for North African ideas to percolate the local mind-set. I’m not quite sure what Jenavir and JoB are saying, of-course all societies have definitions of ‘honour’ and of-course no-one wants to be ‘shamed’ in those societies, but we are talking about a specific example of ‘honour’, sexual misdemenours. It’s also true that different societies around the world have different acts that they hold shameful. For example some think stealing or swindling is not shameful, because you are outwitting someone else. Other societies do not agree. Actually, ‘honour killings’ are not just about sex, from what I can make out, they seem to be about insubordinaton to the men in control of you. There was a young man killed in England a few years ago because he dared to have a relationship with a Muslim girl whom he wanted to marry. Her family insisted this was an honour killing. He had insulted their family by going out with their daughter and getting her pregnant without permission. It’s all about control.
Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale of course do not necessarily represent contemporary attitudes but on the other hand it is suggestive that 1) Shxpr was so interested in the subject 2) Shxpr treated it in a way directly contrary to the way his contemporaries did (check out ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’ sometime) 3) Shxpr, who was nothing if not a savvy theatrical producer and had a large financial stake in the success of the Chamberlain’s/King’s Men, thought plays on the subject would appeal to audiences.
Sue, I was not ignoring you & certainly not ‘as a woman’ – I just lack the time to react to everything & in this case I reacted to Dave’s link – & I assure you I did not not ignore him ‘as a man’.
If you read what I wrote – I do contend that honour killings are just about sex (rather about maintaining integrity of the blood line) so if you ignore that you should not be surprised I ignore you.
*sigh*all in the DNA, is it? So presumably there is actually *no difference* between, say, a society where men are legally superior to women, and one where they are not? No difference between a society, speaking historically, where a noble caste is recognised as essentially superior to other people, and one where it is not? No difference between a society where women cannot inherit property, and one where they can? No difference, in the end, between a stone-age subsistence culture and Imperial Rome, or Imperial Rome and Calvin’s Geneva and San Francisco ca. 1976?
*sigh*
And BTW, if it’s all about sex, why are so many of these killings carried out by fathers, brothers, cousins? Are they all banging them too?
Dave,
Fathers, brothers & cousins are in the same bloodline. The origin of the type of killings clearly lies in genetics – elementary Dawkins my dear.
And, sigh, yes there is a difference – there is that difference of overcoming the beastly state I talked about. And, yes Islam as phenomenon is, currently, more correlated with not overcoming it but to attribute Islam as necessarily, by excellence, not overcoming it (or – worse with Arabs not overcoming it) is honestly speaking hogwash. Promoting a meritocracy as intrinsically better is clogging the debate by, yes, political correct introduction of WASP (and, for the gallery, Japanese Samurai Romance) superiority.
No, not all cultures are equal but the excellence of our secular system isn’t about honour (whatever the sense used) but about reason.
Hmm, Jenavir, you will grant, I trust, that there is SOME significant difference between what an individual does, which is a crime in law, and generally abhorred by the public, and what quite often whole families seem to conspire to do, and for which they are, to all appearances, untouchable?
Of course–though I think we often overestimate the extent to which OUR laws and society don’t sanction this stuff, because it’s easy to become complacent about it. I personally know three American women who were told, by their pastors, that their husbands wouldn’t hit them or humiliate them if they dressed less “provocatively” around other men and if they were more submissive and “sweet.”
Sue R.:
The point is that even though they were reluctant to get involved in domestic violence cases, saying that it is hard to intervene between a man and wife, never once did I hear of a man being CONGRATULATED on beating his wife .
I have! Also of men killing their cheating wives and getting away with it in a court of law, which is much less likely to happen if the genders are reversed, and of men beating and otherwise abusing their daughters for sleeping around, or sending them off to Christian disciplinary camps so others can beat and abuse them, which is perfectly legal in some U.S. states.
In any case, your point was that honor killings don’t happen in the West, and they do. It’s not “killing in a rage,” it’s killing for control. Some Western countries have made some strides towards making it socially unacceptable and it’s much rarer in those countries…though the U.S. is not the strongest example in this regard.
All I can say to Jenavir that there is a totally different social dynamic in Britain than there is in the States. I repeat, it has never been acceptable in Britain, even from pre-Roman days, to kill a woman to defend some notion of honour. That women are killed in Britain is undeniable, but the reasons are not to do with social disgrace. As for the West, that’s a very big term, it may be that in some areas of Western Europe it is acceptable to snuff out a woman’s life because she won’t do what she is told. If so, I would like chapter and verse. Actually, I’ve just remembered that last year there was a case of an Englishwoman who had married a Sardinian. After many years of unhappy marriage she left him and took up again with an old (English) boyfriend. The Sardianian husband pursued her to England and murdered the boyfriend. His defence in court was that it was perfectly acceptable behaviour in his country. It may be on tiny Mediterrean islands honour killings are legitimate ways of behaving, but they are hardly the mainstream of Western European Culture and thought. As for Shakespeare’s plays: The Winters Tale is et in Sicily, and although Cymbeline is obstensibly set in England, the characters have Latinate names and the sources of the story are classical. Incidentally, the entry in Wikipedia says that it can be interpreted as a play about Anne Bolyn (who was beheaded for adultery, not her inability to provide a male heir of course) and Perdita may represent Gloriana (QE1)herself. Course people are interested in sex comedies. Have you ever heard of the Brian Rix farces? Lots of light-hearted bed-room jumping and frustrated attempts at seduction that used to be popular in the theatre about thirty years ago? Still doesn’t suggest that honour killings are an ancient British tradition.
Sue, I didn’t say it did suggest that; what I was originally replying to was Arnaud’s ‘for a long time the honour of a family was also dependent on the “purity” of its female members.’ I do think the plays of Sxhpr and his contemporaries are suggestive of that.
But ‘it has never been acceptable in Britain, even from pre-Roman days, to kill a woman to defend some notion of honour’ is a very positive statement (of a negative). Do you really know that? If so, how?
“Women in Birmingham (?) have said that they did not vote, though they wished to, because of the pressure brought to bear by ‘family.'”
Families of this ilk should be frog –
marched to the courts and held accountable for their despicable acts. They have no God darn right to coerce anybody belonging to them not to vote. It is illegal.
I now have such a broader view of Birmingham than I ever had in the past.
Sue,
They may demonstrate a deep level of study, but the constant Shakie references, combined with rather sketchy genealogical proposals (Sicily?) don’t really aid your arguement. In fact, they tend to betray the one-sidedness of your learning and your cherry-picked knowledge of Islam.
The past is another country
Sue I agree completly with your refutation of the cultural relatives, but cant you knock off this (its because I am a woman stuff?) its not 1968.
Sue,
If you make claims as broad as that you have to realize you can run into this:
“On the issue of adultery, laws concerning women became progressively more punitive over the Anglo-Saxon period. For instance, Aethelberht 31 rather casually specifies that should a freeman lie with a freeman’s wife, he must pay her “wergild” as well as provide a new wife for the cuckolded man. Later, the laws of Alfred (871-899) state that a man can fight without legally incurring penalty if he finds another man with his wife; in Cnut’s reign (1016-35), Law 53 specifies that if a woman commits adultery, her ears and nose can be cut off.”
I would not quote from:
http://www.english.uga.edu/~mathelie/mathi3.html
if I did not verify that the author was sympathetic to the view the Anglo-Saxon tradition was more woman-friendly than other traditions – at similar stages of civilization.
It cost me 10′ of google’ing. Not a lot I say.
DFK: Do you mean geographical or politico-geographical? I fail to see how knowing that a play is set in Sicily demonstrates knowledge of genetics and heritidary.
I would never claim that the Anglo-Saxons were ‘women-friendly’. Later on in the Medieval period there was the scold’s bridle and women who were considered to be hen-pecking their men where paraded around town carrying a distaff. I dare say they were not allowed to own property either, but I have never heard of women being executed for bringing the family into disrepute. Yes, yes, there were barabiric punishments in the past, slitting of noses and tongues for seditious libel, nailing ears to pillories, ducking of people to determine their guilt, and we all knowd about the witch-hunts. But I have never seen an elephant fly! So, bring it on, cite me an example of the Anglo-Saxon or English/Scottidh/Welsh/Irish legal code where a man could lawfully kill his wife for adultery. Or his daughter or his cousin, or his brothers daughter etc etc. As I say, I am not happy to be proved wrong, but if anyone can I will of-course accept it and start saying that ‘honour-killings’ are an inescapable part of our biological inheritance, if not to say geneology, and not a merel nasty Eastern practice. So, we should accept them, becasue we can no more stop them than we can fly through the air unaided.
To be frank (since we are talking of Saxons, a-ha!) Sue, I do not really understand what you are trying to prove. You say that “it has never been acceptable in Britain, even from pre-Roman days, to kill a woman to defend some notion of honour” (but a bit later on bring the case of Ann Boleyn).
The problem here is that mainly we know practically nothing of legal systems in pre-Saxon Britain. We, at least, know that, according to Roman law, an adulterous woman would be killed (while the punishment for a man was much more lenient) so that’s already nearly 400 years during which your assertion is proved false. (Roman Britannia lasted from 43CE to 410CE) That’s a long time.
What we know of Saxon law shows that women were indeed propriety. Rape for instance in King Alfred’s Doom carried less of a penalty than forcefully shaving another man’s beard and, at the difference of the shaving, that penalty wasn’t paid to the woman but to her husband, father, family plus a fine payable to the king. As far as I have been able to find, in case of married women the law made no difference between rape and consenting sex.
And that was at a time when christianity “allowed for the old Saxon laws to substitute criminal and civil compensation payments”. I dread to think of earlier systems!
Now I may be mistaken, but it seems that if a husband, father, head of family were to exert bloody retribution on his wife/daughter/whatever for whatever crime, there isn’t in that system any way for him to be held into account. Simply because as the owner he was the one toward whom accounting and reparation were supposed to be done!
In my (admittedly not learned) opinion there was no reference to “honour killing” in such bodies of law because there didn’t need to be, any more than we’d prosecute a man nowadays for breaking a glass or losing his iPod!
Ohmigod!!!! Then it is encoded in our DNA and not a cultural question. I curse the day…. I mentioned Anne Bolyen and then realsie that that could undermine my argument, so I am glad of the chance to distinguish it. Anne Boleyn was the Queen and it was against the law to have sexual relations with the King’s wife or the King’s daughter without his permission ie never. It was called ‘petty treason’ and came from a period in our history when pretenders to the throne would sieze the Queen or Princess and declare themselves the lawful ruler. So, it is actually an exceptional case and not what the generality of people would have experienced. Can you please tell me, Arnaud, when you stopped killing wives, daughters and sisters for infidelity or insubordination in France. I would be interested to know. I know you have a cateogory of ‘crime of passion’ in France that we do not have at all in this country and as far as I know never have done. I repeat, can you please clarify when the French stopped executing women for crimes against their menfolk’s honour?
I thought this was meant to be a ‘feminist-friendly’ website, by the way.
You know what, I will! I will have a look and see when the last time was it happened (I was having a look at Retz’s Memoirs recently and I have a suspicion it may not have been so long ago… Our legal system owes at lot to Rome after all.)
I still don’t really know what that would prove though…
Now, I noticed that you didn’t say anything about the points I raised regarding Roman and Saxon Law…
As for not being feminist-friendly, that’s twice now that you are making this accusation. Can you explain? (I am really asking, by the way. Not being a woman or member of an ethnic minority I am well aware that I may always make mistakes or faux pas so I know I don’t really have the right to get angry when accused of sexism or racism. But I always like to learn, so please enlighten me!)
Sue, cutting of ears/nose in pre-Roman days, do you think many women survived that?
Ooops, I got distracted here. I first had a look at the Loi salique, (the old Frankish Law which was the equivalent of King Alfred’s and was later exhumed under Charles V to keep the English -and the women- away from the throne of France) but then I had a flash!
The “epuration”! I, of all people, should know!
So here you are Sue, after WWII in France a lot of women were accused of collaborating with the enemy. Some had been sleeping with German soldiers, other simply were serving as maids or housekeepers to the occupying forces. The usual punishment -numbering around 20 000- was the “Tonte”, shaving, usually in public and accompanied by other degrading rituals : nudity, display and parading (the “carnaval moche”) through the village, town or city, markings with paint or lipstick and others.
But in some cases -specially while the war was still going on- there were summary executions: 454 says Wikipedia France, some of them paying for a man, husband, boss, son, lover… but in most cases it was for (real or perceived) sexual transgressions.
And while these executions were not condoned by the judiciary (some courts of justice even stating that having sexual relations with a member of the occupation troops did not constitute aiding and abetting Germany) I do not think that many of the killers were ever brought to court.
So here you are, Sue. I do not know what that proves, I would certainly not contend that it is in our DNA to subjugate women or treat the female body as an object and invest in it (male) notions of honour or propriety. But I am afraid that the tendency to do just that is or was culturally present in far too many places and that we in the West cannot afford to be complacent.
That doesn’t mean we are not, in this aspect at least, better. Just that, in my opinion, we have grown to be better.
And we still have some growing up to do…
Sue…”I thought this was meant to be a ‘feminist-friendly’ website, by the way.”
Eh?
I can’t see anything above that matches up with that comment, except possibly Richard’s drive-by shot? But surely you know Richard does that kind of thing, despite frequent requests or commands not to.
Anyway it’s not reasonable to conclude that this is not a ‘feminist-friendly’ website on the basis of comments on Notes and Comment. I’m not here 24 hours a day and I don’t want to filter everything people say anyway.
And frankly I think the bit yesterday about your comments being ignored because they were a woman’s was a little off the mark. If comments here were ignored when they came from a woman, why would anyone be reading Notes and Comment at all? It’s all written by a woman!
Also…there’s an epistemological issue here, Sue. You didn’t answer my question, which wasn’t rhetorical – how do you know that?
You’re claiming to know something that it’s really not possible to know, and you’re extrapolating from ‘never having heard of X’ to ‘knowing that not-X’ – which doesn’t work. (Black swan.) Saying ‘never once did I hear of a man being CONGRATULATED on beating his wife’ doesn’t get you to secure knowledge that a man has never been congratulated on beating his wife.
This website could be considered feminist-friendly, but it’s also friendly to caution about what we can and can’t know.
Thanks, Ophelia, & I assure you that my being here has absolutely nothing to do with you being a woman – and everything with you being witty, to the point, and offering a place like this.
This being said, Sue, or you know going to ignore me ‘as a man’?
Am I missing the point here somehow? This began with the very sad story of Rand and Leila, and seems to have devolved into the question whether honour killing was ever known to occur in northern Europe. I’m not sure I get the connexion.
That Islam at the moment is a vector for honour killings seems to be unquestionable. Whether it is a part of the innner core of the religion is questionable, but not altogether far-fetched. After all, women do come off rather badly in the Qu’ran.
I think Sue is perhaps a bit hypersensitive when she asks whether this is a ‘feminist friendly’ site. On the other hand, women, despite the fact, OB, that you are one, do still feel a bit defensive when it comes to issues of women’s rights, especially since so large a part of the world, especially the religious world, thinks that women are, after all, somewhat lesser beings than men. We’ve just heard Benedict reasserting this, and this particular thread concerns the fact that two women were killed because one of them spoke (that’s all folks!) with a man! Two precious lives lost because of some antediluvian idea that men should be able to control their women. And Richard’s drive-by shooting didn’t help. Reminding us that this is not 1968 hasn’t changed Benedict’s mind. And the amount of pornography on the web, and the number of women killed every year to satisfy some weird sense of male honour indicates that he’s just one of millions.
Eric, please, of course women feel defensive when it comes to issues of women’s rights despite the fact that I am one – godalmighty, I’m not such a fool as that! Nor such an egomaniac! (I’m not Senator Clinton. cough.) I just think (and said) it’s a bit off to conclude that an overlooked comment on this particular site is a sign of anti-feminism. I do hope that you can see that that’s a much much smaller claim.
Jeez – do I need telling about what Benedict says, or the rest of it? I’ve posted hundreds of links on that and related subjects, I’m writing a book about it – I don’t think I need to learn the alphabet at this point!
No, of course Richard’s drive-by comment didn’t help – but I am not responsible for what other people post.
‘or you know´ or ´are you now´ – sorry for the Billy Childish I inflict here, all too regulalry
As a Marxist, I look for reasons why things are so in one society and not in another. I suggested a reason why Eastern societies are ‘honour-killing friendly’ due to their mode of production, and said the alternative is to posit an eternal genetic reason for such behaviour. Incidentally, it is not just Islam, but all Eastern societies that go in for dishonour killings. Last week there was a story in the newspaper concerning a Hindu village where a woman and her boyfriend were murdered for an illicit relationship. So, the French weren’t too keen on the collaborators? Go on, you surprise me. I’m sorry but are you unable to see the difference between behaviour in a war and its aftermath and the normal village situation? I thought this was a scientific site, for people with trained minds.
As for the point about one can’t argue that -x equals y. I think in this case you bloody well can. I was an active feminist in the English movement thirty years ago when there was a lot of publicity on the issue of wife beating. Any examples of coppers actually congratualating perpentarators (such as in the Iraqi) story would have been made known immediately. I am confident of this because at the time we face a rising fascist threat as well, and it was well publicised that some coppers in sympathesied with the fascists. There is not a widespread culture of mysogyny in working class England, and I speak as a working class woman. Of-course our laws have in the past disadvantaged women but that is not the same as a widespread acceptance in the murder of women for unaccpetable behaviour. I am very sorry that this point has proved so contraversial on a site like this. I seem to have upset quite a few point with my throwaway remark viz-a-vie the feminist credentials of this site.
Well, you also thought that it was a feminist site, you seem to be constantly mistaken…
(That was sarcastic by the way before you start quoting me.)
Seriously though, can you answer my previous query about my interventions being “feminist-unfriendly”? Because, you know, you never explain. I’d love to know.
As for discussing your point, once again I do not know where to start. I don’t think anybody here made any assertion about misogyny in current times white(I suppose you mean) working-class England. You made very far-sweeping assertions about the mind-state of medieval and pre-medieval Britons (as in inhabitants of the islands that nowadays constitute Britain: they obviously have very little in common, if any, with present day British people). Are these based on your experience too? How old are you, exactly?
I am not surprised you didn’t get my point about the epuration in France post-WWII, I would have expanded further but my post was already quite long. Since we were talking about feminism, you may want to look for the classic feminist readings on this period.
When it comes to genetic reasons (your terms, your interpretation, not mine), you have been trying in all your past posts to establish a very rosy picture of a Western Europe – or a least a Britain or an England, you keep changing the boundaries – miraculously exempt during the whole of history of misogynistic killings. What and why is that? A special destiny for this here island race? Is that a new interpretation of Marx historical materialism?
Arnaud: I can only assume that the fact you are not a native speaker of English means you do not always understand the subtleties of English. As for my age? I’m as old as my tongue but older than my teeth. Anyway, I’m so sorry, I had hopes of this site but I can see I was mistaken. Look, can anyone on this site grasp the distinction between attitudes and law? I never said that there are not mysognistic killings in Western Europe, you can read any number of lurid magazines about how men murder their girl friends, I just read an awful story on the BBC website about a man who murdered his girlfriend and her grown up daughter because she was being awkward, but all I said was that it has never been IN LAW considered to be permissible or even in attitudes. If Arnaud no wished to argue that the ppulation of the British Isles is changing and there are now inhabitants who thik it is acceptable, then I am afraid I would have to agree with him. I woudl not however, regard this as a good thing. Are we allowed to swear on this site, because there are some words I would like to use to vent my spleen. Words to describe wilful ignorance and RACISM that is rearing its head here. Perhaps someone could tell me when IN LAW it has been acceptable to murder women for naughtiness instead of accusing me of being a fascist. As I said, though, Arnaud, your lack of native English may mean that you cannot grasp the background of a lot of what I say, but I don’t know about the other people on this site.
[Monty Python Impersonation]Help! Help! I am being patronized[/Monty Python Impersonation]
But obviously Sue, if you do not want to talk to me, there is no way I can force you. Anybody here, whose “background” would be more acceptable to Sue? Because personally, as a racist and a misogynist, and a foreigner to boot, I am all argued out…
Yikes, Sue, calm down, willya? And read a little more charitably, too – Arnaud may be a foreigner, but he knows a joke when he sees one. The question about your age was a bit of irony about your apparent claim to inside knowledge of English history going back to the beginning of time.
“all I said was that it has never been IN LAW considered to be permissible or even in attitudes.”
No that’s not all you said, you said more than that.
“never once did I hear of a man being CONGRATULATED on beating his wife”
June 4 at 16:48
“it has never been acceptable in Britain, even from pre-Roman days, to kill a woman to defend some notion of honour. That women are killed in Britain is undeniable, but the reasons are not to do with social disgrace.”
June 4 at 22:43
You just can’t know that, because there isn’t enough evidence to know it. Really – you’re just claiming to know too much, that’s all. It’s not worth getting all agitated about, but it doesn’t make sense to claim to know things that no one can know. Seriously – it’s crucial to clear thinking, to know what we don’t know. You’re talking about unknown unknowns here.
You didn’t upset anyone with your remark about “the feminist credentials of this site” (whatever that means), it was just silly, that’s all; it was silly for several reasons. Whatever “credentials” a particular website may have, if it allows comments, the comments won’t be guaranteed to line up with the “credentials” (unless the site’s editor screens all the comments, which I certainly don’t have time or inclination to do). It just doesn’t make any sense to keep expressing disappointment with comments on “this site” as if you’d been issued some kind of consumer guarantee.
“Incidentally, it is not just Islam, but all Eastern societies that go in for dishonour killings.”
whisky tango foxtrot??
They “go in” for it, do they?
I am starting to get a bit narky with this kind of absolute BULLSHIT. If you are going to make such a broad and bold statement, you’d better have some evidence. The plural of anecdote is not evidence. I don’t care about your self-proclaimed anti-fascist credentials, because statements like the above vastly diminish them.
Sorry O.B I do try and refrain from drive by,s but Sue pulls that because I am a woman stuff nearly every time she posts here, the last time was because several of us jumped on Karen for saying something silly and that was because we were Men! It seems lost on Sue that the fragile shrinking violet that runs this site is female.
Sue you are a marxist? are you kidding?
When´s the last time you saw a Marxist kidding? Probably around the same time OBL did the silly walk sketch.
Isn’t the French word for Arnaud ‘phallocrat’?
Nope, no potential for kidding there – good riddance I guess. Too bad for KM, I wish him a lot of posthumous Shiraz, he´ll need it.
Arnaud, are you a frog?
Yes JoB, guilty as charged.
Cooee, it’s me again! JoB shows his/her vast intelligence in reaslising that Arnaud is actually French, but s/he prefers to use a racist term. Just for the record guys, why are you so resistant to admitting that honour killings are not part of the Western European tradition?
A FACT: Under Anglo-Saxon Law an adulterous woman was fined, ie not killed. King Cnut (or Canute) who reigned from 1016-1935 introduced a formalised law code that instituted the slitting of her nose and cutting off her ears. Still not killed. Social diapprobation has always been the English response to unsuitable behaviour. But, as you say, in France it is quite normal to kill naughty girls, I guss you must know best.
Sue, bollocks, I argued these killings are in all traditions. I quoted Anglo-Saxon law (cutting ears & stuff). I am sure ´frog´ is not a racist term – but I leave you to figure it out.
In fact I´ll leave you alltogether and put your mind to rest: I´m a he ;-)
Godalmighty.
‘This site’ is its content – the original articles, the news links, In Focus, Julian’s column, In the Library, the Guide to Rhetoric, the two dictionaries, Notes and Comment, the links in Flashback. ‘This site’ doesn’t stand or fall by comments on Notes and Comment. Thinking it does is like judging a newspaper by its letters to the editor!
“Just for the record guys, why are you so resistant to admitting that honour killings are not part of the Western European tradition?”
Why are you so resistant to reading what’s written? What I’m resistant to is claims to knowledge that are impossible to have – you (and anyone) can’t know that there’s never been any social approval for honour killings in W. Europe; the most you can know is that you’re not aware of any. You can say that you have an in depth scholarly knowledge of W European history, and that would make the limited claim more convincing, but it would still necessarily be a limited claim.
Arnaud,
Ha! God, that’s funny – wake up a long-dead discussion to complain about disagreements on a completely unrelated one. Whee-ew.
And this inability to get that [not knowing of any instances of X] does not equal [knowing that not-X] is…really somewhat unnerving. It’s so basic.
Arnaud – I do hope by the way that you did not take offense at being called a frog by a Belgian.
I can assure you ‘frog’ for a French person is considered as a racist insult in England. it referes to the French’s predilection for eating frogs’ legs. |But wht the hell do I know, I’m only a native speaker. So, can I call a Belgian ‘Chips with mayonnaise’?
Sue, Sue, Sue – JoB isn’t English, and in any case ‘frog’ isn’t really racist even when used unironically – because ‘French’ isn’t a race. But JoB wasn’t using it unironically.
And you’re the one who gave Arnaud a dig over language. And now you’re doing it again, boasting of being a native speaker. Seriously – as I said – calm down. You’re way too worked up, about nothing that I can figure out. Nobody has done anything to you!
Oh FFS! Forget it…
No JoB, it’s fine! Some of my mates here call me Froggy. FrogWasp used to be my handle on a rugby internet board I posted on. I know that Wikipedia lists it as a racial slur (I’ve just checked!), but in my 12 years in England I never had cause to hear it used in that way – and I spent these years working in and managing some quite rowdy bars, so I have been called a few nasty names! (Why! Just recently, I have been called a misogynist, a phallocrate and a racist!)
But obviously, what do I know? My pitiful grasp of the language do not allow me to understand all the subtleties of the natives…
Sorry OB, cross-posted! I’ll go away now…
No problem Arnaud!
My brother is a scholar of French literature (16th century) and he routinely uses ‘frog’ – it’s a joke, Sue, for crying out loud. Really, take a paranoia pill or something; there’s no problem except of your making.
Arnaud what supprises me is that Sue admits to being a marxist,it begs the comeback so 100 million deaths in the last century are not enough for you then Sue?
Not because Sue is a marxist but on reflection i think O.B is right I cant know that honour killings have never been part of Anglo Saxon tradition or western europe either,I dont think they have but I dont know.
I would also point out that frog although not racist is an ethnic slur (I took Jobs use as the joke it was meant to be) I am old enough to remmember when terms like frog,pady,wop,spic ect were hurled at people with real venom, for that reason I avoid their use.
Yes yes I am aware I just used those terms.
Richard, sure. I wouldn’t use ‘spic’ or ‘wop’ either…I suppose ‘frog’ is (or seems to me and others, anyway) less loaded because being French is less (as it were) loaded. In the US anyway ‘spic’ and ‘wop’ are highly derogatory words for people perceived as ‘undesirable’ immigrants; French people have never fit in that category. (‘Canuck’ however is a derogatory word for French-Canadian.) Even during the absurd wave of Francophobia in 2003, ‘frog’ still didn’t become the equivalent of other derogatory words (new ones were coined instead).
“She baked a date cake as a thank-you”
Little did she know that so very soon afterwards she was to have a date with death.
“Leila was wrong for defending her daughter’s mistakes and that her death was God’s punishment.”
Hospital whispers.
Crikey, to think that some of the people nearby Leila in the same building could justify her murder by saying saying that “her death was God’s punishment” leaves one cold.
They are so brainwashed these people.
Yeah, the same fate would await them if they were seen by all to be sympathetic.
‘Canuck’ however is a derogatory word for French-Canadian.
Canuck, eh?
Example Usage: “Johnny Canuck, a personification of Canada who appeared in early political cartoons of the 1860s resisting Uncle Sam’s bullying. Johnny Canuck was revived in 1942 by Leo Bachle to defend Canada against the Nazis.”
Unfortunately, that’s half of our defense budget and military strategy right there….
Hey, maybe Johnny Canuck could come out of retirement to fight the Motoons!
Oh, it’s not derogatory then? Or maybe it is when used by The Other but not when used by Canucks themselves?
The nuances of these things can be very difficult to keep track of.
But I think I’m right in saying that ‘spic’ and ‘wop’ are really venomous in the US, while ‘frog’ isn’t. The first two are fighting words and the third isn’t.
Meanwhile, Blame Canada.
I think you are right O.B frog does seem less loaded than spic or wop, I doubt that I would have thought Job funny had he used one of those terms.
I would imagine that the average French person would be as offended by ‘frog’ as I would be by ‘rosbif’. That is, not at all.
Here is a good and funny website for all news French, it’s called… Frogsmoke.
And to try to go back on topic, I’ve just discovered The Last Psychiatrist and read his take on the Rand Hussein murder. As I have said somewhere else, well worth reading, even if you don’t agree with him/her.
(OB, your brother’s a French literature scholar? Must make for interesting family dinners! Whatever they say about the “classical” period, the 16th century always seemed to me to be the period when French, the language, was at its most beautiful.)
Arnaud, well we live on opposite coasts, so family dinners are infrequent – but we do share a passion for Montaigne.
Thanks for the link!
Gosh! Aren’t we angry today, DFG?
Hey Arnaud. Naah, not really. That first bit was meant to be in jest.
The second bit was serious, though.
Making statements that are fundamentally bullshit and not backing them up? Cowardly.
Complaining about the way B&W treats you when you act like a petulant crank? Pathetic.
Spraying around words like racist and fascist while invoking your Britishness?
Just wrong.
Arnaud, she always forgets about the ears & the nose being cut off – that quote cost me 10 whole minutes & she always forgets about it – talk about ingratitude.
Can you hold on to a slice for me?
Or better still, tell her to show the evidence of being insulted here ;-)
I cannot tell Sue anything, JoB (mainly because she’s not really listening but also because my poor, broken English makes me an unworthy prey to her Anglo-Saxon debating skills), I am only looking on from outside while DFG goes to battle!
Go DFG!
And yeah, ingratitude… All that time I had to spend looking up Saxon law, for nothing. And after that I stayed trapped in Wikipedia for hours, as usual, looking for the exit. (You know how it goes: “Oooh, head-hunters shrinking techniques? That sounds interesting!” Click.)
There is no better way to close this thread than by saying: LOL!
And, oh, yes, go DFG!
Not for nothing, Arnaud! We got the benefit, after all.
The interesting and amusing thing about Sue’s response over as SS is that Scientist has been flung at me as a pejorative… Oh the humiliation!