Sibling rivalry
Is there no limit?
A senior judge has called for an end to the use of the phrase “honour killings” to describe what is “in reality sordid, criminal behaviour”…The judge had heard that a mother had set fire to one of her three children and tried to burn down the house where they lived in an attempt to incriminate her sister-in-law. The sister-in-law “presented a problem to the family” and had fled the home after she had been beaten and her first child murdered by her husband, the mother’s brother.
So let me get this straight – a guy beats his wife and murders their child so she runs away – so the guy’s sister sets fire to her own child in order to get back at the woman who fled the man who beat her and killed their child? And they considered this a matter of ‘honour’? So what would fit their definition of violence and squalor then?
The mother of the children – a girl aged 11 and boys of 9 and 5 – is serving a five-year jail sentence for arson. One of her brothers had contracted a second marriage to a woman in Pakistan who came to England in 2003 pregnant with her first child. That child died after being taken to hospital aged 27 months suffering from multiple injuries. The motivation for the killing was not known, but among the injuries on the child were signs of chronic sexual abuse. The brother and his wife were arrested. He was convicted of murder and she was cleared of neglect. The grandfather in the family is on record as saying that the death was an accident and the will of God. He has made it clear that the son will return to live at the family home when he is released. His daughter-in-law returned to live at the family home and gave birth to her second child, a son…In May 2005, she fled with the help of the police and social services after complaining of severe ill-treatment. She was moved to a secret location after saying that the family would track her down and kill her because they would not allow her to disgrace them. She is still in fear of her life. Later that year, the mother of the three children alleged her sister-in-law and another had entered her home in burkhas, cut the mother’s hands and neck with a knife and poured white spirit on to one of the children’s clothing before setting fire to clothing at the bottom of the stairs…“Her flight and the disclosure of her treatment at their hands was seen by the family as being an insult to them. They saw it – and continue to see it – as a disgrace.”
Her flight is the disgrace, not the way she was treated. Their revolting cruelty and violence is just fine, her escape from it is a disgrace.
Words fail me.
Of course, in our ‘inclusive’, ‘culturally sensitive’, ‘liberal’ society, it is an offence to criticise any of this.
Tsk, tsk, OB. Naughty OB.
Yeah OB. Tsk Tsk. of course, by criticizing OB, are we not “priveleging” our view of morality? Of course, we (my fellow Brian) are taking the side of oppressed people of color…AND we are MALE, so our position of privelege is justified and probably healthy for everyone involved! I feel better now! :)
Brian, Brian, its all about Brian. WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?
This lot would roast them for Moloch.
I blame poverty,racism,Israel and G.W.B Cris, I would also say that these people were not true moslems because islam is a religion of peace.
This calls out for practical action. We should help the Underground Railroad – or become adoptive Uncles and form a defense organisation.
At one level I understand the demand to stop calling this heineous acts honourkillings. There is absolutely NO honour attached to such actions in our societies and jusprudence.
On the other hand, by not referring to honour, I would think important information on the context such actions are carried out in, and the explicit or tacit cultural/religious
“justifications” for such actions get obscured.
I think it will be difficult to fight effectively if not also fought against within the immigrant subcultures.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Cassanders, how about just “hate crimes against women”?
Because that’s what they are, lynchings of uppity women much as uppity African-Americans were lynched in the Jim Crow era.
Calling them “honor” killings not only dignifies them but also mystifies them. It makes the phenomenon into some capital-O Other, inscrutable, essential cultural practice, deriving from Those People’s exotic and inexplicable sense of ‘honor,’ that Westerners cannot understand, do not share, and perhaps cannot judge.
Not only does this encourage racism and exoticization of non-white ethnicities, but it also prevents a proper understanding of these sexist killings. The killings need to be located on the far end of a continuum of misogyny, a continuum that Western societies are a part of and are not completely alien to. Western societies are not nearly as extreme as the Deobandi Muslims, obviously. But they nevertheless do have a long history and a present tendency of “justifying” violence against women by pointing to the women’s sexual behavior. In order to fight honor killings we have to understand that they are an extreme, religion-sanctioned version of the same old story, not some obscure and esoteric cultural practice that only insiders can comprehend.
Anyway right now the Western pope is doing a bang-up job of rivaling anyone else in malevolence toward women.