Honor Killings

Before you get too upset, yes, I know that most Muslims do not engage in "honor killings," such as the one described below. But the very nature of such murders--done because of what other people in the community would think if a woman were allowed to get away what she did--tells me that these aren't a bizarre deviant part of Islam, but something only a little out of the mainstream. Read this article from the July 21, 2007 Australian Age, and afterwards I will point out why this can't reflect the values of say, less than 0.1% of the British Muslim community:

The father and uncle of a woman who was brutally murdered for falling in love with the wrong man were sentenced to life in prison in London today.

The 2006 murder of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, 20, who was strangled after two hours of torture and sexual abuse, was the latest in an increasing trend of so-called "honour killings" in Britain, home to about 1.8 million Muslims.

Mahmod was a member of an Iraqi Kurd family which had emigrated to Britain in 1998.

Her father, Mahmod Mahmod, and uncle Ari Mahmod, were sentenced after being found guilty of ordering the killing.

A third man, Mohamad Hama, who had pleaded guilty to taking part in the killing, was sentenced to at least 17 years in prison.

Mahmod's family accused her of shaming them by ending an abusive arranged marriage, becoming too Westernised and falling in love with a man who did not come from their village.

The elder Mahmods ordered the killing after discovering she was having a relationship with an Iranian Kurd.

"This was a barbaric and callous crime," said Judge Brian Barker. "You are hard and unswerving men to whom apparently the respect from the community is more important that your own flesh and blood."

There are actions that people do entirely in secret--out of fear that others will find out, and you will be shamed. For example, child molesters work very hard to keep what they do a secret--even when they are in prison, surrounded by other felons. There aren't a lot of other really shameful acts anymore (maybe voting Republican in San Francisco), but it wasn't that many years ago that the vast majority of Americans would put considerable effort into keeping it a secret that they had cheated on a spouse, or had a drug addiction or alcoholism problem. Now, as P.J. O'Rourke observed a few years ago, if you call a Hollywood celebrity a drug-addicted philanderer, his response is likely to be, "Thank you for reading my autobiography."

Honor killings are done to earn the respect of other members of the Muslim community--to expiate shame for what their daughter (apparently, never the son) has done. By this fact alone, it tells us that honor killings are considered acceptable or even necessary by some non-trivial fraction of the Muslim community in Britain.

It isn't terribly PC, but there are differences between cultures and religions. Not all religions or cultures are equally valuable or positive. My previous book, Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Praeger Press, 1999), dealt with the question of how the back country South's honor culture made for a very ugly and unpleasant place--and how it was eventually replaced with a less savage culture. I don't see any room for Islam in civilized societies until the honor culture that brings these savage acts has been removed.