When in doubt, kill the nearest woman
Funny how ‘religion’ often seems to manifest largely as an unappeasable loathing of women. How the very first item on the agenda seems to be punishing women for being women, and terrorizing women for the crime of existing, and telling women what to do and killing them if they don’t do it.
The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her “honour killing” is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a “genocide” against women in the name of religion…
She has an unknown number on her phone, so let’s kill her. Her life is worth nothing, our rage is worth an infinite amount.
Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase…[R]ecent calls by the Kurdish MP Narmin Osman to outlaw honour killings have been blocked by fundamentalists. “Honour killings are not actually a crime in the eyes of the government,” said Houzan Mahmoud, who has had a fatwa on her head since raising a petition against the introduction of sharia law in Kurdistan. “If before there was one dictator persecuting people, now almost everyone is persecuting women…It is difficult to described how terrible it is, how badly we have been pushed back to the dark ages. Women are being beheaded for taking their veil off. Self immolation is rising – women are left with no choice. There is no government body or institution to provide any sort of support. Sharia law is being used to underpin government rule, denying women their most basic human rights.”
I wonder if Seumas Milne considers that kind of thing ‘non-violent.’
The new Iraqi constitution, according to Mahmoud, is a mass of confusing contradictions. While it states that men and women are equal under law it also decrees that sharia law – which considers one male witness worth two females – must be observed. The days when women could hold down key jobs or enjoy any freedom of movement are long gone. The fundamentalists have sent out too many chilling messages. In Mosul two years ago, eight women were beheaded in a terror campaign…”We urge the international community, the government to condemn this barbaric practice, and help the women of Iraq.”
It’s not just according to Houzan Mahmoud that it’s contradictory to say women and men are equal under law and that sharia must be observed. Women and men are not equal under sharia, so of course it’s contradictory.
This, too, is what my country has wrought. If there were any real justice in the U.S., the politicians who started the current Iraq war would be tried for war crimes against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, for creating such a terrible situation in Iraq and neglecting the security of Afghanistan. I can’t imagine leaving the U.S. right now. I couldn’t hold my head up in public for embarrassment.
Karen. These people were given a shot at freedom its not our fault they are abusing that priviledge.
Karen. Are you suggesting that Arab men will inevitably mistreat women if they are not under the control of a vicious dictator? Isn’t that a trifle racist?
Here is some rather better news from Iraq:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3671861.ece
Bob I dont think Karen is sugesting that,I think she takes the veiw that after the invasion of Iraq George Bush is responsible for anything that takes place there. In other words if a bank is robbed in Basra or a wife beaten in Bagdad it is G.W.B,s fault! I just wonder what people will do for a scapegoat when he leaves office?
Also Karen if I were you I would be proud to come from a nation with a history of spreading freedom and democracy(for the most part) throughout the world.
Richard is right. Karen’s views actually are racist – the kind of ‘soft’ racism of low expectations that is endemic on the ‘anti-imperialist’ left. On the one hand, westerners are presumed to have full moral responsibility for all their actions, including the far-sightedness to envisage consequences years down the line. Non-westerners, on the other hand, have no free will or moral responsibility at all. These Iraqi men just ‘had to’ kill a young girl. Why? Because George Bush, in some unexplained way, made them do it.
On Karen’s argument, has no-one thought of posthumously charging Lloyd George with genocide on the grounds that the treaty of Versailles ‘led to’ Auschwitz etc etc? We can’t blame the poor Nazis, who clearly had no choice.
Let’s just accept that moral responsibility for murder lies with the murderers.
On the original problem, it is clear that the major obstacle to change is the political power wielded by the fundamentalist minority (both Sunni and Shia). This power doesn’t come primarily from the ballot box (they are a minority, although a substantial one), but from the guns in the hands of the militias, and their ability a) to enforce their rule on the streets, and b) to threaten civil war if they don’t get their way on legislation.
On this basis, the steps taken by the elected government to exert its authority in Basra, for example, and to disarm the militias, are clearly positive and should be supported.
I’m not saying this would solve the problem by itself, but it would certainly help to create the preconditions for a solution.
Even in the short term, the success in driving the militias off the streets has alleviated some of the worst abuses, such as women being beaten up if they appear in public in ‘un-Islamic’ dress.
Oh come on. It has to be very enjoyable to perform a verbal gang bang reusing a couple of one-liners from somebody else but it is nevertheless a sorry sight. I strongly believe those religious idiots are fully accountable but that does not change the fact that the conditions for religious idiocy have been furthered by certain policies.
Whilst I am a big fan for waging war to liberate people from religious idiocy – it’s eminently true that the war wasn’t waged for that. When this were the goal & Iraqi’s were central to securing that goal one would not start destroying all established secular traditions and then be surprised that the only things left standing were religious in nature.
Obviously an administration indoctrined by fundamentalist religion did nothing whatsoever to avoid the fundamentalist local religion to take over.
If you start a ghastly thing like war – it is not too much to ask to think over the consequences. Karen is absolutely right. She did not say Bush killed the girl or that the killers could plead a mitigating factor, she just said policy on Iraq was conducive to creating the context in which idiots were freer to roam.
Karen is absolutely right.
She is not.
“War Crimes” is a legal term, not an emotive one. The US is not the sole mover in Iraq, however god-like both Dubya’s supporters and opposers believe him to be. And, as others have pointed out, her views are racist.
There’s irony in someone who opposes the liberation of Iraq supporting the unintended negative consequences of that act by making excuses for them.
Narcissism is not a sound basis for politics.
dirigible, it would be a better show of honesty if you would quote in a way not so obviously designed to support your petty little point against a person.
Is Iraq liberated? Is the type of thing Ophelia mentions a sign of liberation?
As to racism – isn’t it a tad racist to associate the current situation in Iraq as a quasi-unavoidable result of how it is to be a self-controlling Iraqi?
As to war crimes – if you use them just to your advantage did you consider that it is ironic that the US (together with the likes of Saudi Arabia) refuses flat to be legally bound by an international legal assessment of it?
I’d probably disagree on most things w. Karen but as I said, come on! It is not because Seamus heaps things together in an annoying way that we all should just do the same in reverse.
Might we actually consider the fact that, for all our rhetoric, part of the general strategy in Iraq has seen “our” forces, and the Iraqi government, using/allowing ‘moderate'(!) militias like the “Mehdi Army” to act as local security in some of the more dangerous areas?
And dear, unthinking knee-jerk responders (see above, you know who you are, as does anyone else who’s read this far down)…
When you go out of your house, do you lock your windows and doors? If you have a burglar alarm, might you activate it? Do you lock your car doors – even if you’re parked in a ‘nice’ area?
Of course you do, because you don’t want to create a context within which someone will find it easy to act deeply unethically and steal all your stuff.
That’s not being burglar-ist, is it? Not suggesting that every resident of, ooh, Glasgow, say, is a habitual criminal, who’ll knick your cd collection so they can score some more heroin? Let’s think – ah, that’s right – no, it’s not.
Now, stating the bleeding obvious, and pointing out that the (well-documented) complete lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq has made a significant contribution to creating a context wherein religious nutters can act out their personal fantasies with impunity…?
JoB – “verbal gang bang”…yeah. I’d have expected a little better round here…
I don’t see what the excitement here is all about. Karen said something that reflected her embarrassment at what her country had done by invading Iraq, and she gets to be called a racist. Where’s the sense in that?
The Americans invaded Iraq in anger, and because it was an ‘easy’ military target. The war was soon over. They had no plans for what would happen after the war was over. Saddam Hussain was a secularist dictator who used Islam as a cover for some of his activities, but at least under his rule women weren’t (as such) prime targets, because the law itself was not Muslim. Now it is, and the Americans have at least contributed to that change of affairs.
Without supervision by outside forces will Muslims tend to a system where women are second-rate citizens (if citizens at all)? Yes. Is that racist? No, it’s just a reflection of what is happening all around the Muslim world. Are the Americans and British responsible for permitting Sharia law to show its ugly head in Iraq and Kurdistan? Yes, because they had no idea in the world what was going to follow. They had no contingency plans. They had no idea that religious forces would be so strong. They went into the country with that little idea of what things were really like.
Shall we get very generous, non-racist (what has this to do with race, anyway? — this is a religion, not a race, as the Kurds will quite smartly tell you) and egalitarian now and say that, left to their own devices, Muslims will govern with dignity, and with concern for the rights of individuals? There are majority Muslim populations elsewhere in the world (particularly North Africa) where the attempt is being made to keep the worst aspects of Sharia law from expressing itself in the law of the land, but in many cases, as in Algeria, it has been fighting a rearguard action for decades, and abuse of women is rampant. The American invasion of Iraq did not help this struggle, and there are indications that it has set it back by generations. It is not racist to say this. From what I can see, it’s the plain truth.
Ouf!
Karen, if you still dare to read this after your verbal stoning – never you worry about going abroad, most people know that – despite some questionable initiatives – the US is a land of the free.
Things that are done don’t change any further, & being ashamed won’t change anything in the future. So, have some fun hacking into the nonsense of this religion apologetic!
Karen expressed her public shame that the country of which she is a citizen invaded another country and the consequences are less than pleasant, and you lot of MEN jump on her calling her a racist, thereby silencing dissent. Methinks that sounds similar to the subject of the post, how women are stifled under sharia. Of-course it is an insult to compare criticism of Karen’s viewpoint to women being beheaded and murdered but I think the whole male superiority thing is related. Incidentally, is this the same case that was in teh London papers last night about a girl who had befriended a British soldier (not sexually) and was killed by her family?
SueR:”..and you lot of MEN jump on her calling her a racist, thereby silencing dissent.”
Oh, get off your feminist high horse, Sue. Who the hell is being ‘silenced’? Karen has complete freedom to post back with a defence of her opinions. And why should the fact that her critics are men (sorry, MEN) make any difference? Aren’t women strong enough to stand up for themselves? Obviously not a problem for you!
Eric, Andy
Thanks, you said it more eloquently than I could, especially:
“The American invasion of Iraq did not help this struggle, and there are indications that it has set it back by generations.”
SueR, I don’t think gender is an issue here ? As a Brit male, I feel a lot of empathy for Karen, although I’m not convinced of the arguments ref ‘war-criminal.’ Embarassed & shamed by my govt’s actions – which I supoported? Yes, deeply.
Gender is always an issue. At the very least because it’s a horrible word.
“These people were given a shot at freedom its not our fault they are abusing that priviledge.”
“Lawless anarchy” is not the same thing as “freedom”, Richard.
The occupying power is responsible for maintaining order in the territories it administers. If it fails to do that and allows the worst and most vicious elements to butcher the most defenceless inhabitants of those territories, either through incompetence or indifference, it is culpable.
I took that to be Karen’s point.
I took Richard’s point to be … Richard being Richard.
I took Bob-B’s point to be a crock of shit.
I really wish we could lose the G word.
Grammars have gender. Human beings (Deo gratias!) have sex.
Not to bang on Karen, but the reality is that dishonor killings pre-date Islam and, thus (for those who can’t connect the dots ;-)), the invasion of Iraq. They are on the increase globally and, while the war in Iraq probably hasn’t helped the dishonor killings situation, there is no reason to think suddenly the number of these crimes would drop if only America and its allies butted out. There is no war in Jordan, Syria, or India, but that hasn’t stopped these crimes from happening.
These crimes are believed to have their origins in misinterpretations of pre-Islamic Arab tribal codes. They go wa-a-a-a-ay back. And part of the problem is that the laws in many of the countries where these crimes exist actually offer leniency to the killers. There have been some efforts at legal reform in the Kurdish part of Iraq, but there remain loopholes and enforcement is lax.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
Ellen–there is plenty of reason to think the number of killings would be lower if Saddam were still in power, because it in fact was.
All of these accusations of “racism” are disingenuous nonsense. If you invade a country and get rid of its leaders and infrastructure, then yes, you are responsible for creating a power vacuum that enables brutal monsters to gain control. Especially if you then proceed to give arms and support and make deals with the brutal monsters. If superpowered aliens invaded America today and demolished the existing order, I don’t doubt that fundamentalist Baptists and Mormons and the like would start being even more violent and abusive to all the women in their general vicinity than they already are and the Bible Belt would turn into a scene from the Handmaid’s Tale. And the aliens would be as blame-worthy as the Baptists. Nobody is saying “Arabs” will inevitably murder women. People are just pointing out the obvious fact that a country held together only by a dictator’s fist will dissolve into bloody anarchy when the dictator is gone. And women will suffer the most.
Sue what a load that was!Karen said something realy silly and got jumped on for it, not for being female.
Actually Richard Sue’s statement was only incorrect because plenty of men agree with Karen. I have been considering how to construct a scenario in which George Bush does not bear any moral responsibility for the current situation in Iraq as you suggest and I could only come up with two (lack of imagination on my part I suppose).
1. George Bush is not a moral agent.
2. The principle of pre-established harmony is actually true and all those buildings would have exploded spontaneously even if there had been no war.
Anyway, it’s a racist argument to say that Iraqis needed western intervention to get rid of the “control of a vicious dictator”. (/snark)
What’s going on with this site?
I jump into a thread and the only person I can disagree with is Richard (and Bob, who he?).
Afghanistan 2
UK 0