Honour Killing - An Islamic Practice?

Was not my intent, Jayhawker, although I came off that way. Perhaps I have been struggling to articulate what I want to say in this thread. In my posts I did not want to blame Jews for anything. But I wanted to bring attention to those who use Jewish scriptures and make them "islamic" version. At some point in ancient history honor killings might have been part of Jewish/Hebrew culture as it was an ancient practice that non-Jews and non-Muslims practiced long time ago. Jews may have abandoned it many centuries ago and for all right reasons. But those who seek to oppress Muslims would like Muslims to believe that it's ok for them to continue with such an evil practice. I am not saying that the practice originated with Jews. I am saying that those who support "honor" murders in certain Muslim communities today look to support their views. Since they cannot find it in the Qur'an, they have invented the hadiths I quoted earlier. And they have used certain verses from the OT (regardless of what Jews do/believe/what the verses actually mean in Hebrew, etc) to "provide the evidence."
 
salishan said:

Muslimwoman
exquisite creature

i cannot begin
to imagine the complex of emotions u must feel , here

my first reaction to this topic is personal
& visceral
...
honor-killing is not religious conduct
it's cultural ! (& vile)

(end of story , or should be)

my second reaction to the topic is more impersonal
(& is filtered thru a lot of neural networks)
Click to expand...
covered in black from head to toe
those women
when i saw them i thought two things
first , it must be comforting at times to be so anonymous
but (second) in the modern world such conduct
such opaque choice of attire
is the ultimate in antisocial behavior

my Aunt Pat tells me this
back one summer when i am a teen
& she shows me photographs she had taken

not just the women but the men
of these villages
looking , i remember their eyes
suspicious of Aunt Pat's camera
suspicious of any outsider

Aunt Pat calls these villages the black towns
hill-towns in the middle-of-nowhere in Italy
places u have to drive thru to get someplace else

Julian Pitt-Rivers publishes this landmark anthropological study in 1954 , The People of the Sierra
concerning an isolated town in Spain
people living year to year on a bare subsistence economy
who cling fiercely to tradition
highly religious , highly conservative
deeply resentful of outsiders , to the point of barely-camouflaged hatred

they are economically required to trade with outsiders , to survive
they grin & bear it
but do so rarely & reluctantly
clannish people

it's a pattern of life found across the Mediterranean , from Spain to Palestine
in isolated towns & amongst transhumant herders
(& occurring in slightly different form , from the Persian Gulf to India)
anthropologists label such clannish communities , "honor cultures"
because this clan-based morality privileges a "sense of honor" foremost
(family or clan honor being more important than life)

honor-based morality not only predates monotheism (as Bob X suggests)
but likely predates civilization itself
(a holdover from one particular set of Paleolithic hunter-gatherer values)
(& the Haidt-Graham-Nosek scientific study suggests that
such an "in-group/loyalty" moral-value may be instinctual in humans
a "morality" that's genetically hardwired)

there is one other significant & unavoidable point-of-contact with outsiders
for which these tight-knit marginal communities will also put on their false smile
it's done in order to arrange a marriage
(a strong incest-taboo reinforces the impetus to marry outside the clan)

dowry amongst Mediterranean honor cultures is a "bride price" dowry
where the bridegroom's family pays to the bride's family a large cache of money
in that sense , the husband purchases the bride
& she is expected to arrive pure , as advertised
(a shrink-wrapped "brand-new" commodity)
("purity/disgust" being listed
according again to the Haidt-Graham-Nosek study
as another instance of a genetic hardwired moral-value in humans)

more than cattle or wheat , a female to an honor culture represents a major cash windfall
a colossal 15-20 year investment , thus her "purity" is scrupulously protected by family males

& as a loyal family-member , she has a sacred duty to not louse that up
& if she does , it is the deepest kind of betrayal of her family & clan
the deepest kind of shaming of the family , punishable by death
(a broken commodity , which u toss away
it now being utterly worthless)

this is spelled out in Pitt-Rivers'
The Fate of Shechem : or , the politics of sex : essays in the anthropology of the Mediterranean (1977)

the Biblical incident of the title occurs in Genesis 34
Dinah is "defiled" by be-smitten neighbor Shechem
Shechem makes an offer to Dinah's father , Jacob
offering a considerable bride-price for Dinah
but Dinah's brothers Levi & Simeon (to erase the shame on the family)
take it upon themselves to slay Shechem & his entire clan , & carry Dinah away
& their shocked father Jacob disinherits the unruly pair , as punishment
(this is the same incident which Bananabrain refers to , above)
u have to wonder (though) what becomes of now-impure Dinah , since she is never mentioned again
& u also have to wonder how she would have felt about any of this)

honor-culture is a moral system which predates the Hebrew Bible
"honor killing" being an integral part of that moral system
a system of cultural values which certainly predates all historical religions
its source very deep in the human past

no modern religion promotes honor-killing
(or wanton killing of any kind)
to claim otherwise carries its own quantum of bigotry
honor-killing is a cultural survival of a mostly-dead past
arising amongst economically marginalized & resentful peoples
(values like "honor" & "purity" surviving 2 or 3 generations
even after community members uproot themselves for modern cities
coloring (on-going cultural) emotions & behavior
long after their economic situation has permanently changed)

to me , instinctual "moral" values (the ones described in the Haidt-Graham-Nosek study) are simply
not moral
(if there is such a thing as "original sin" , this is it)

but just because honor-killing is an ancient (& vile) cultural practice , not a modern religious practice
this does not (in my view) let religion of the hook

(in my book) genuine religious morality requires an act of self-awareness
of "witnessing"
to see a wrong , recognize it as a wrong
then act to stop it , or to at least prevent it from repeating in the future

when an honor-killing occurs , neighbors typically stand around & do nothing to prevent it
nor vociferously condemn it afterwards
(refuse to condemn it for the vile irreligious act that it is)
& as often as not , these neighbors (incredibly) are devoutly religious individuals
but they do not take the moral high-ground
their religion-based morality is an empty shell

here (regarding honor-killing , at least)
Islam is doing a pitiful job , at promoting genuinely moral conduct
Christianity is doing a pitiful job , at promoting genuinely moral conduct
Hinduism is doing a pitiful job , at promoting genuinely moral conduct
Sikhism is doing a pitiful job , at promoting genuinely moral conduct

Judaism ?
have u ever heard of an honor-killing in a modern Judaic community ?
me neither !

ancient Israelite culture does begin (like all tribal Mediterranean peoples) as a clannish honor-culture
then
evolves away from it

there are some pretty vile passages in the Torah
(as Amica points out)
holdovers from tribal origins

redneck Americans have frequently quoted Biblical scripture to "justify"
lynching blacks , beating-up homosexuals
& other such vile acts
(& i assume this happens too within Islam & other religious traditions)
a rationalization of vile deeds , an excuse-making which
appears (however) to not occur within Judaism

the Rabbinic practice of reading one scriptural passage not in isolation
but in the context of a whole array of other scriptural passages
effectively
quarantines vile ("instinctual") moral content

promoting this kind of sophisticated reading of scripture
emotionally carries over into a person's conduct in the world
no "one size fits all" moral answers
but an attitude of
look before u leap

an attitude of self-restraint

self-restraint does not destroy instinct (does not expunge "original sin")
it just quarantines it

it allows u
to witness with clarity
the moral complexity of the situation arising before u
& to make a decision u can (in good conscience) stand by
to make
a genuinely religious (a genuinely moral) decision

honor-killing (to me) is just a symptom
a symptom of how far most modern religions still need to go
to live up to their stated principles of faith
symptom , of how far modern religions still need to evolve

these religious faiths have a lot to learn , yet
(a lot which could be learned from the rabbis)

{originally posted 10-23-2011}​
 
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