HarryG

While trying to do some research, I came across the case of the young Kurdish woman stoned to death in Iraq last year – a so-called honor killing.


YouTube - CNN airs portions of Du'a Khalil Aswad's stoning


I was horrified and yet again reminded of how little we know of the faiths and beliefs of our fellow humans. The gulf between East and West, to be blunt, is beyond imagination.


We've had honor killings in the UK too, and young women are usually the victims when they are killed by their own family members; all for bringing shame on their families.


I was researching feminism when I came across this video, and it stopped my research in its tracks.

Mklangelo

These are backward people. I don't have to understand anyone who would kill their daughter or wife on some twisted point of "honor" and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise. There are also people that would, if they could, push a button and kill every man, woman and child in America; and they would call it a good days work. I don't have to understand him either, all I need to know is that he would like to kill me. It's just that simple.

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Ungood

She commit adultery so they killed her.

There is nothing honorable about killing anyone in that manner, nothing at all.

Ungood.

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lin

You look into the majority of the "good" killing in the world and you keep coming up with how it was done for "honor". It's a marching cry for war that is hard to beat.

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lin

BTW Putting up videos of shit like that is fairly fucked up, in my book. I keep seeing people putting horrible shit for others to watch, then tsking about how awful it is to keep from seeing ghoulish and morbid.

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HarryG

It's more than those people being backward, when we come across behavior that is totally alien to us, we want to isolate ourselves from them, or, if they're in our midst, get rid of them.


The Romans built Hadrian's wall to keep out those fierce Scots with their Claymores, and the English sent their thieves to Australia to get rid of them. The French sent their thieves to a remote island, and the Germans? It doesn't need repeating.


I believe that those Kurds who stoned a young girl, in front of a large crowd that included a policeman, should be shunned and excluded from our society, such barbarity has no place in our world.

HarryG

That 'shit' was an extract from CNN news. If it offends your sensibilities, and I'm surprised that you should even suggest anything like that, complain to them and not the poster.


I agree that some of the video clips linked on this forum are dire, but surely not a clip from the biggest news channel in the US?

HarryG

Sorry, Lin, but I need to answer this one too. Of course it's a marching cry to war. We fight for our beliefs.


I've been around the block a few times, I'm not squeamish, but after watching that video and reading about what happened, they could have put me in a B52, and after making sure that all the women and children had been evacuated, along with the men who didn't believe in honor killings, I would happily have bombed the fucking lot of what was left.

Truth-Teller

Wouldn't that be in itself "honored" killing?

What's taboo for us; is not taboo for others.

Noirllyn

While it's sad to hear about these things, to my understanding it is not the "norm" and it is not accepted by the average Kurd.

The problem in Kurdistan is that they, as a group, have becoming significantly more "Western" than surrounding communities in the Middle East. It is becoming more acceptable to do things that only decades ago families would not have allowed, this is dangerous, though, because these things are different from door to door. I know some Kurds who were allowed to have boyfriends before marriage, and some that are still arranged to be wed. I know some Kurds who never wear scarves, and others who go around with their hair out and cut it short, wear short tops, or even... less. Two Kurdish weddings that happened within the past five years come to mind: one was done entirely in Traditional dress, the other was done in all modern clothing (the bride wore a very thin black dress and you can tell she didn't have a bra on under it, the groom wore a shirt and tie, and guests went about in jeans).

I'm not trying to excuse or justify what happened, but I can feel for them as a people. It must be very confusing to not know where the lines are, or which ones can be crossed. I don't think Kurdistan is going to be entirely westernized, nor do I think that's a bad thing. I think that the people in their society would be much happier if they could decide on the middle ground ASAP.



I'm honestly more bothered by the faked honor-killings: when a family will say that a woman was adulterous or something of the sort and kill her, just so they won't have to finance her life any longer. None of the killings are particularly honorable, but those are severely more disgusting to me.

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lin

Gee, you think I might have been talking about CNN? Keep your shirt on.

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Ilasir Maroa

Older cultures can be slow to adapt. Many still do practice honor killings, because when the customs started, honor was all a man had, and the equality of women was far down the list of important issues. I am not defending the practice of honor killings, but maybe a little understanding would go a long way towards trying to bring them to an end.

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Writ-with-Hand

[shakes head] That was a beautiful young girl too.

These things happened in Europe too, but I'm not sure if it was culturally homegrown or if the killing of one's female family member for "honor" was culturally adopt from Islam through Islamic occupation.

I think several years ago, in some part of rural Sicily, a young ethnic Sicilian man murdered his sister in an "honor killing."

I don't know if this thing with killing women for familial "honor" in Sicily was adopted from Islam centuries ago or not.

I do know that Byzantium was influenced by Islamic iconoclasm just as Catholicism was influenced by Protestant iconoclasm. It's assumed by many in the West that as Islam becomes more apart of Western nation's cultures that the cultural exchange will be one way. I'm not certain about that and perhaps herein I can introduce a proposition I have illustrating a Western secular move toward Islamic conservatism. I'll refer to Fernand Braudel; I mentioned some of this in passing in a different thread but I never posted up any of my points really.

I'll do it in a post below but I want to find a picture online because the visualization will be help in understand a progression in fashion.

Swamp Thing

Islam - a religion of peace.

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Swamp Thing

Laila Lalami just sent me her book "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits". I'll put a review up in a couple of days. Seems appropriate to post this here.

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To identify the elements of style, perhaps we should begin by eliminating the idea of correctness.

- Mario Vargas Llosa