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Honor killing in Pakistan

I would say that it is odd there are no news stories about a family who brought shame on themselves by not punishing a daughter who had dishonoured them.

Surely it would be big news and needed news to remind all families of the consequences of not punishing an act of dishonour.

Not necessarily. Many beliefs persist with little or no objective evidence to support them. I would have to agree with you that this belief s a very costly one to entertain, but I think you could find other examples in other cultures of extreme measures taken to comply with certain cultural mores and taboos.

Skeptic Ginger makes some good points about cultural evolution. Certain cultural elements may nave no adaptive benefit, yet they persist. Culture is a very conservative thing. It will not change until objective conditions make it impossible not to.
 
I would say that it is odd there are no news stories about a family who brought shame on themselves by not punishing a daughter who had dishonoured them.

Surely it would be big news and needed news to remind all families of the consequences of not punishing an act of dishonour.

Maybe - maybe not. Though I'd suggest that awarding a 2 year jail sentence to a woman who slit her own daughters wrists, then bludgeoned her to death for good measure shows a certain lack of regard for the severity of the act.
 
It maybe a case that there are so few instances of not killing for honour because the honour system is so ingrained in the culture.

I am so glad I am not a woman in those places. What a horrible, ****** life many must have to endure.
 
It maybe a case that there are so few instances of not killing for honour because the honour system is so ingrained in the culture.

I am so glad I am not a woman in those places. What a horrible, ****** life many must have to endure.

Agreed; by western standards. Do they know any different though, if being downtrodden as a woman is the cultural norm?
 
I am sure they do now, especially with access to the internet to see how other women get to live their lives. The campaign for education for Afghan girls is one of the few things we have got right in invading that country

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19911341

yet there are people who hate that idea

http://www.cnn.co.uk/2012/08/02/world/meast/cnnheroes-jan-afghan-school/index.html

"People are crazy," said Razia Jan, founder of a girls' school outside Kabul. "The day we opened the school, (on) the other side of town, they threw hand grenades in a girls' school, and 100 girls were killed.

"Every day, you hear that somebody's thrown acid at a girl's face ... or they poison their water."

There were at least 185 documented attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan last year, according to the United Nations. The majority were attributed to armed groups opposed to girls' education."
 
It maybe a case that there are so few instances of not killing for honour because the honour system is so ingrained in the culture.

I am so glad I am not a woman in those places. What a horrible, ****** life many must have to endure.
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Goddamn right! And yet, western women will go there for whatever reasons.
 
In my neighborhood, Arabic women walk around every day all by themselves. And they drive cars!
And the hijab disappears over time. :)
No one who observes them thinks they need to be raped/murdered just for doing that.
 
There was a family holiday to Turkey a while back, which i could not go to as I was working. Everyone said they were very shocked how even in that secular state it was clear women were marginalised and expected to be mothers, not go out except during the day to shop and to keep pretty much covered up.

But the Turkish men would happily consort with bikini clad or topless women from the UK or Germany where the bulk of the tourists came from, many drank and the hypocrisy was startling in its blatancy. Yet their culture made it all OK.
 
Wow. We're playing the 'Hitler' comparison card this early in the game? Please explain how not interfering with a culture that has been carrying out a practice at a family level (however barbaric) for probably hundreds of years, is the same as condoning the (relatively) overnight attempted ethnic cleansing of millions by their own Government?

Logic is great when used logically...
Your defense was whatever was legal/the norm in the country said events occurred in.

If you want to clarify now and add in only social, not governmental acts, fine. How do you feel about killing albinos and harvesting their body parts for rituals in some African countries? Burning people accused of witchcraft? Hey, it's their culture, who are we to interfere?

How about selling your prepubescent girl children into sex slavery? That's a cultural norm in some parts of the world. Can't pay the bills? Sell off a couple of the kids to a carpet factory owner who needs a labor source.
 
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Call me a 'Cultural Apologist', but that's their way. I don't have to like it or agree with it, but that doesn't give me any right to interfere. They will be punished accordingly if they have contravened their laws.
If they do this in a country that is not theirs where 'honour killing' is (quite rightly) treated as a primitive act of murder, and whose laws they have chosen to abide by, and are governed by whether they like it or not, then they should suffer the full force of those laws.

Again, the "crime" committed by the Pakistani girl whose parents murdered her by pouring acid on her, was that she looked at a boy. Again, her parents showed no remorse over murdering their own child.

Again, the Palestinian girl whose mother murdered her because she was pregnant out of wedlock had been impregnated as a result of her two brothers raping her. Did you miss that little detail?

Again, hundreds of Pakistani women are murdered in the name of "honor" every year. Young people in India murdered for such things as marrying someone of a different caste are about 1,000 per year. The young woman beaten to death by her own father in Palestine was a Christian who married a Muslim. So much for the religions of love and peace.

Perhaps I'm being ethnocentric in being appalled by such acts. Guess what: I have no problem with that aspect of my feelings of moral superiority over these people and their cultures. What I find particularly appalling about these honor killings is the gratuitous cruelty involved in them. The horrid couple who killed their 15 year-old daughter for looking at boys didn't do her in with a bullet in the head or sleeping pills or even snapping her neck. Rather, they slowly killed her by pouring acid on her.

My response to such crimes would be an automatic death penalty for all perpetrators - without exception. If my solution seems harsh, consider that nuclear arsenals have fallen into the hands of countries once part of the Soviet Union, quite possibly cultures of the sort that mete out gratuitously cruel death to those who don't conform to their cultural standards.
 
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There are certain cultural acts which cannot be accepted, cannibalism is one that has been pretty much ended. I think honour killings should also be ended, no matter what the feels of those who practice it are.
 
Here is another article on honor killings in the Near East, this example from Jordan is another one involving a girl who disgraced her family by having been raped by one of her brothers (from the article, emphasis added):

On May 31, 1994, Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out into the street, waving the bloody knife and crying, 'I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor.' Kifaya's crime? She was raped by another brother, a 21-year-old man. Her judge and jury? Her own uncles, who convinced her eldest brother that Kifaya was too much of a disgrace to the family honor to be allowed to live."[1] The murderer was sentenced to fifteen years, but the sentence was subsequently reduced to seven and a half years, an extremely severe penalty by Jordanian standards.

However, it turns out that in this case the brother who murdered her actually felt some reorse for what he had done (from the article, emphasis added):

A Jordanian murdered his sister who was raped by another brother. The family tried initially to save its honor by marrying the victim to an old man, but this new husband turned her into a prostitute and she escaped from him. The murderer confessed that if he had to go through it all again he would not kill her, but rather would kill his father, mother, uncles, and all the relatives that pressured him to murder and led him to jail. Instead of killing his sister and going to jail, he said he should have "tied her with a rope like a goat and let her spend her life like that until she dies.

So this ***hole would have liked to have shown his raped sister mercy by making her live like a goat for the rest of her life.

Here's another example from the article:

A young Palestinian who murdered his sister who had been sexually assaulted: "Before the incident, I drank tea and it tasted bitter because my honor was violated. After the killing I felt much better... I don't wish anybody the mental state I was in. I was under tremendous mental pressure."

Poor baby! He was under "tremendous mental pressure"! I wonder what sort of pressure his poor raped sister was under.

ETA: I did a Google images search on honor killing and found a lot of gruesome pictures. However this picture of teenage sisters Amina and Sarah Said is far more damning (though I'm not necessarily a fan of the website on which I found the picture). These two girls were born in Texas of an Egyptian Muslim father and a Christian mother. Apparently, their father shot them (multiple times) to death for having Christian boyfriends.
 
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Again, the "crime" committed by the Pakistani girl whose parents murdered her by pouring acid on her, was that she looked at a boy. Again, her parents showed no remorse over murdering their own child.

Again, the Palestinian girl whose mother murdered her because she was pregnant out of wedlock had been impregnated as a result of her two brothers raping her. Did you miss that little detail?

Again, hundreds of Pakistani women are murdered in the name of "honor" every year. Young people in India murdered for such things as marrying someone of a different caste are about 1,000 per year. The young woman beaten to death by her own father in Palestine was a Christian who married a Muslim. So much for the religions of love and peace.

Perhaps I'm being ethnocentric in being appalled by such acts. Guess what: I have no problem with that aspect of my feelings of moral superiority over these people and their cultures. What I find particularly appalling about these honor killings is the gratuitous cruelty involved in them. The horrid couple who killed their 15 year-old daughter for looking at boys didn't do her in with a bullet in the head or sleeping pills or even snapping her neck. Rather, they slowly killed her by pouring acid on her.

My response to such crimes would be an automatic death penalty for all perpetrators - without exception. If my solution seems harsh, consider that nuclear arsenals have fallen into the hands of countries once part of the Soviet Union, quite possibly cultures of the sort that mete out gratuitously cruel death to those who don't conform to their cultural standards.

I think you misunderstand me - I'm talking about those who commit 'Honour Killings' being punished by law; not the social/religious 'crimes' of the victims.
 
Your defense was whatever was legal/the norm in the country said events occurred in.

Yes, so how was the holocaust 'the norm'?

If you want to clarify now and add in only social, not governmental acts, fine. How do you feel about killing albinos and harvesting their body parts for rituals in some African countries? Burning people accused of witchcraft?

I think it's both disgusting and primitive.

Hey, it's their culture, who are we to interfere?

Correct. Who gives us the right to interfere in another countries cultural matters? What do you propose to do about stopping 'Honour Killings' - send an armed force into Pakistan and enforce the law at gunpoint? Get your Government to impose sanctions on Pakistan until they comply with your way of thinking, and conform to your standard of what is socially acceptable?

Is it Hitler comparison time again?

How about selling your prepubescent girl children into sex slavery? That's a cultural norm in some parts of the world. Can't pay the bills? Sell off a couple of the kids to a carpet factory owner who needs a labor source.

Don't agree with that either. What's your point?
 
There are certain cultural acts which cannot be accepted, cannibalism is one that has been pretty much ended. I think honour killings should also be ended, no matter what the feels of those who practice it are.

'Ended' now there's a loaded word...

How was cannibalism 'ended', and how do you propose to 'end' Honour Killings?
 
'Ended' now there's a loaded word...

How was cannibalism 'ended', and how do you propose to 'end' Honour Killings?

I do not subscribe to your negative attitude and total respect to all of these campaigns to stop honour killings

http://www.stophonourkillings.com/

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/26461/PAKISTAN-Oxfam-to-launch-campaign-against-honour-killing

http://commit.tigweb.org/wake-up-campaign-against-honor-killings

there are others as well.

In Scotland there has been many a male who has found himself locked up for domestic violence who comes from a country were such and honour killings are accepted. They make appeals, as do their wives that it is their culture and no action should be taken against the husband. The response is it is not acceptable in Scotland and you have to respect that.

Honour killings is the top of the iceberg that is abuse and oppression of women in many countries, that goes from no education or jobs, to taking beatings and arranged marriages.

Anyone of who even suggests it is OK because it what they do is vile in my eyes.
 
I do not subscribe to your negative attitude and total respect to all of these campaigns to stop honour killings

http://www.stophonourkillings.com/

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/26461/PAKISTAN-Oxfam-to-launch-campaign-against-honour-killing

http://commit.tigweb.org/wake-up-campaign-against-honor-killings

there are others as well.

In Scotland there has been many a male who has found himself locked up for domestic violence who comes from a country were such and honour killings are accepted. They make appeals, as do their wives that it is their culture and no action should be taken against the husband. The response is it is not acceptable in Scotland and you have to respect that.

Honour killings is the top of the iceberg that is abuse and oppression of women in many countries, that goes from no education or jobs, to taking beatings and arranged marriages.

Anyone of who even suggests it is OK because it what they do is vile in my eyes.

It is not OK. I have never said it is 'OK'. I have also said earlier that if they commit these crimes in another country they have moved to, they should be punished to the full extent of the law of that country - just as in the example you gave in Scotland.

My point is how do you propose to stop this from happening in other cultures, and how do you justify interfering with another culture? What gives you the right to tell these people how to conduct their lives, just because you don't like it?

Many Islamic cultures don't like our Western culture. What would your reaction be if an Islamic Delegation visited Scotland and said that your way of life was disgusting to them and they wished to see Sharia Law imposed on Scotland? Would you like that?
 
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I have shown you one way by supporting local campaigns to stop it.

Honour killings and suppression of women is way worse than anything we get up to in our Western Culture that Muslims may not like. They get upset about pineapples being labeled Mohammad. That is clearly different form pouring acid over and killing a daughter who brings supposed shame when she was raped by a male relative.

People in our own Western Culture thankfully stepped in and campaigned against something wholesomely evil that our culture was doing and stopped it. Slavery.
 

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