By now, almost anyone in Syria who follows the news can supply certain basic details about Zahra al-Azzo’s life and death: how the girl, then only 15, was kidnapped in the spring of 2006 near her home in northern Syria, taken to Damascus by her abductor and raped; how the police who discovered her feared that her family, as commonly happens in Syria, would blame Zahra for the rape and kill her; how these authorities then placed Zahra in a prison for girls, believing it the only way to protect her from her relatives. And then in December, how a cousin of Zahra’s, 27-year-old Fawaz, agreed to marry her in order to secure her release and also, he hoped, restore her reputation in the eyes of her family; how, just a month after her wedding to Fawaz, Zahra’s 25-year-old brother, Fayyez, stabbed her as she slept.
Zahra died from her wounds at the hospital the following morning, one of about 300 girls and women who die each year in Syria in so-called honor killings, according to estimates by women’s rights advocates there. In Syria and other Arab countries, many men are brought up to believe in an idea of personal honor that regards defending the chastity of their sisters, their daughters and other women in the family as a primary social obligation. Honor crimes tend to occur, activists say, when men feel pressed by their communities to demonstrate that they are sufficiently protective of their female relatives’ virtue. Pairs of lovers are sometimes killed together, but most frequently only the women are singled out for punishment. Sometimes women are killed for the mere suspicion of an affair, or on account of a false accusation, or because they were sexually abused, or because, like Zahra, they were raped.
In speaking with the police, Zahra’s brother used a colloquial expression, ghasalat al arr (washing away the shame), which means the killing of a woman or girl whose very life has come to be seen as an unbearable stain on the honor of her male relatives. Once this kind of familial sexual shame has been “washed,” the killing is traditionally forgotten as quickly as possible. Under Syrian law, an honor killing is not murder, and the man who commits it is not a murderer. As in many other Arab countries, even if the killer is convicted on the lesser charge of a “crime of honor,” he is usually set free within months. Mentioning the killing — or even the name of the victim — generally becomes taboo.
Emphasis mine.
Luckily, things in Syria are changing, and Zhara’s case has hit a national nerve:
That this has not happened with Zahra’s story — that her case, far from being ignored, has become something of a cause célèbre, a rallying point for lawyers, Islamic scholars and Syrian officials hoping to change the laws that protect the perpetrators of honor crimes — is a result of a peculiar confluence of circumstances. It is due in part to the efforts of a group of women’s rights activists and in part to the specifics of her story, which has galvanized public sympathy in a way previously unseen in Syria. But at heart it is because of Zahra’s young widower, Fawaz, who had spoken to his bride only once before they became engaged. Now, defying his tribe and their traditions, he has brought a civil lawsuit against Zahra’s killer and is refusing to let her case be forgotten.
It’s not surprising that cases like this are ignored until a male relative steps in, but at least something is happening.
After Zhara was raped, she was put in jail for her own protection — because why regulate the actions of the people who intended to kill her?
“Honor killings” are widely hyped to be about Islamic law, but that isn’t exactly the case:
Yet the notion that Islam condones honor killing is a misconception, according to some lawyers and a few prominent Islamic scholars. Daad Mousa, a Syrian women’s rights advocate and lawyer, told me that though beliefs about cleansing a man’s honor derive from Bedouin tradition, the three Syrian laws used to pardon men who commit honor crimes can be traced back not to Islamic law but to the law codes, based on the Napoleonic code, that were imposed in the Levant during the French mandate. “Article 192 states that if a man commits a crime with an ‘honorable motive,’ he will go free,” Mousa said. “In Western countries this law usually applies in cases where doctors kill their patients accidentally, intending to save them, but here the idea of ‘honorable motive’ is often expanded to include men who are seen as acting in defense of their honor.
“Article 242 refers to crimes of passion,” Mousa continued. “But it’s Article 548 that we’re really up against. Article 548 states precisely that if a man witnesses a female relative in an immoral act and kills her, he will go free.” Judges frequently interpret these laws so loosely that a premeditated killing — like the one Fayyez is accused of — is often judged a “crime of passion”; “witnessing” a female relative’s behavior is sometimes defined as hearing neighborhood gossip about it; and for a woman, merely speaking to a man may be ruled an “immoral act.” Syria, which has been governed since 1963 by a secular Baathist regime, has a strong reputation in the region for sex equality; women graduate from high schools and universities in numbers roughly equal to men, and they frequently hold influential positions as doctors, professors and even government ministers. But in the family, a different standard applies. “Honor here means only one thing: women, and especially the sexual life of women,” Mousa said. The decision to carry out an honor killing is usually made by the family as a group, and an under-age boy is often nominated to carry out the task, to eliminate even the smallest risk of a prison sentence.
The notion of protecting women’s chastity is certainly not solely an Islamic one. Honor killings are the most brutal outcome of a system that fetishizes virginity, female submission and male authority and ownership, but it’s dishonest to pretend that these killings come from some crazy foreign value system totally unlike our own.
Reading the reactions of local Syrians to Zhara’s murder, I couldn’t help but think of some of the anti-choice arguments that get trotted out. Her case is sympathetic precisely because she young and the victim of kidnapping and rape — therefore, she “deserved” to live, unlike women who are murdered because they had sex of their own choosing. Who does that sound like?
The people who killed Zhara, and the people who kill thousands of girls and women all over the world in the name of “honor,” are evil extremists. But they aren’t rare, and they aren’t unique in their view of women as property, their emphasis on “chastity” as an all-important freshness guarantee, and their desire to control women’s bodies and sexual choices.
It is completly irrelavant wheather this is about islamic law or not. This behaviour is using Percieved islamic law as a cover and thus it is irrelavant wheather it is or isn’t Strictly commanded per Islamic legality. An islamic society is much more than the strict laws and the permissions or limitations of those laws. What the laws do is create cultural fertile ground for these behaviours to grow, just as the old testament if followed literally would and does allow fertile ground for abuse while rarely conding such abuse specifically. Fundementalism of any stripe any religion, or anti religion (Athesim) is an attempt to provide a thought and reponsibilty free area. It relieves the adhearent of thought or doubt if they just follow what the book or leader commands. It is a siren song to those who want to be relieved of thought and reposibility. Eagerness to join or belong to things is a close parralel
Actually, it’s not irrelevant at all. Interpretations of Islamic law are what currently justify honor killings; interpreting it the opposite way can turn that trend around.
Nitpicking! – Atheism is not “anti-religion” it’s none. That’s not to say that their aren’t atheists who are anti-religion.
Agnosticsm is none for common purposes. Athesim may technicaly mean none but in actual practice becomes anti religion for the standard bearers in the public sphere.
Jill
You are technically correct but it will not matter without discrediting fundementalism and absoute male supremacist traditions
Steve, my point is that it will matter, even without discrediting fundamentalism and absolute male supremacy. It won’t fix the situation, and I agree that fundamentalism and male supremacy have got to go. But that’s going to be a long time coming, and in the meantime, I think it’s a good idea to push for policies that will make life a little more tolerable. Interpreting Islamic law to give women greater rights is a pretty good step to make things better for women in the here and now.
Jill
Point taken. I concede in the details.
Thanks for the history of it. While I still can’t comprehend the motives at least now I can see the misinterpretation of law behind it. I’m wondering if there’s a way, in court, for Fawaz to turn this back on the family. Example: You were her family. It was your job to protect her. You did not. Why did you not kill yourself for allowing her to be dishonored?
Just a thought.
“Agnosticsm is none for common purposes. Athesim may technicaly mean none but in actual practice becomes anti religion for the standard bearers in the public sphere.”
Steve, you’re redefining terms that are in public use for your own purposes, and then whining that other people won’t reframe their use to accept yours. You’re also taking a post about honor killing and using it to dig at atheists. This is not pleasant behavior.
“Interpreting Islamic law to give women greater rights is a pretty good step to make things better for women in the here and now.”
It seems to me that it has a similar role to the work that liberal christians need to do to emphasize the concept of a liberal interpretation of the bible. It’s important, but at the same time, it concedes the concept that one’s society should be ruled by one’s religious rules, and therefore continues to allow women’s rights to be subject to an interpreted text, instead of a universal standard. I agree it’s important, but I think it’s also important to keep a strong voice in criticizing its necessity. (Not that such a strong voice does not exist here.)
I’ve never understood why these “honor killers” don’t get violent with the men who raped (or had consensual sex with) their female relatives.
Could it be that women and young girls are easier to pick on?
I suspect it’s because “men can’t help it.” They have sexual urges that must be met, and it’s the fault of the woman for not appropriate staving them off.
What b.s. So, it’s the bedouins’ fault? Or the French? But not Islam? What about Pakistan? Jordan? Turkey? Iraq? Malaysia? Nigeria? Iran? All these countries (and more) violently repress women (and gays people, who fare much worse) and the only thing they all have in common is Islam.
It’s really disgusting to read feminists who are so terrified of being called Islamophobic, they will defend Islam no matter what. Why not just say the obvious: Islam is a cruel, deadly political system, deeply anti-gay, anti-female, and of course, deeply anti-Semitic.
Plus, doing that might set a precedent which might just mean someone else coming after them.
Right. And women in China, Africa, and the Americas are totally not oppressed at all.
My point is that the emphasis on chastity and female submission to male dominance is hardly unique to radical Islam — that isn’t the same thing as me saying extremist Islam is a-ok. But pinning these things on religion alone, as opposed to a complex social structure of which religion is only one part, is simple-minded and, quite frankly, ignorant.
I suspect you’re new to the feminist blogosphere, so I’d encourage you to read through the archives here and check out the myriad ways that misogyny plays out, across all cultures. I think you’ll see that no one is denying that it’s worse in some contexts than others, but I hope you’ll also discover that it’s a wide-spread phenomenon, and it is most certainly not confined to the Muslim world.
I just wrote a book about “honor” killings in neighboring Jordan, where they occur more or less in the same manner as the ones in Syria, with penal code articles on the books offering leniency to the killers (average sentence in Jordan=six months).
“Honor” killings are believed to have their origins in misinterpretations of pre-Islamic Arab tribal codes. They pre-date Islam by centuries. And they are un-Islamic. So it’s really not fair to blame to the faith. . .or the tribes, for that matter.
That said, it is the case that the overwhelming majority of the estimated 5,000 “honor” killings per annum that occur globally (the U.N.’s estimate in 2000) take place in Arab/Muslim countries and in Arab/Muslim immigrant communities elsewhere. So there’s a correlation, but no causality. Something just got horribly misconstrued along the way and no one’s managed to set it straight.
I recently conducted a nationwide attitude and opinion survey in Jordan on “honor” killings. In my representative sample, approximately one in five people said they believe Islam tells them they must avenge family honor by killing. Islam says no such thing. But, obviously, there is a huge opportunity in the schools and the mosques to correct this fatal misunderstanding.
Bitter Scribe, the reason the women are held to account in rape cases is because, in some cultures, it is believed that a family’s honor resides in its females. So if there is an affront to it, whether actual or perceived or imagined, it is the girls and the women who are held to account, even in cases of rape. Zahra’s life was snuffed out because her family held her responsible for maintaining honor, not the male who raped her. I’m not saying I agree with this way of thinking. . .I don’t. But that is the underlying “logic.”
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
Thank you for this post. I have been reading (and enjoying) your blog for some time now. There are a couple of things I wanted to address with this entry, but please know that overall I agree with you and I’m glad you’re talking about this subject.
You say:
While I applaud this man’s bravery in going against his family and community on this case, I think that to say male attention is the only reason these cases get attention does a disservice to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Arab, Iranian, and other Muslim feminists who have been working on this issue for twenty years or more. Honor killings do not always get the attention they deserve, but when they have it has usually been because of the dedication of the feminist movement in majority-Muslim countries; in a number of cases these women have successfully changed the laws of their countries, or succeeded in getting existing laws enforced.
Also, regarding dissent within the Islamic community:
and
Both of these are understatements. It’s not that honor killings of the type you describe aren’t “exactly” about Islamic law, or that “a few” Islamic scholars take issue with them — they’re not about Islamic law, period, and there is very little debate about this within the Islamic community. Honor killings are not practiced in the majority of Muslim countries, and where they are it can be traced to cultural traditions either pre-dating Islam or, as you point out, post-colonialism. It’s true that men who engage in them usually defend them as religious practice, but this does not mean the Qur’an is ambiguous on the subject. It means those men don’t know the Qur’an.
This is not to say that Islamic readings on quote-unquote “chastity violations” constitute a feminist utopia; like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has quite a bit to say about the honor of a woman being tied up with her sexuality. I don’t want to trivialize that. It’s also true that in a hypothetically “pure” Islamic society a married woman (or man) could be killed for adultery if a number of conditions were met and the punishment were handed down by a judge or other impartial actor. The conditions for proving this kind of zina act are so stringent that many view the issue as essentially theoretical, but they nevertheless do frame sex outside marriage as a crime; this, IMO, is problematic even under the most liberal readings of sharia. (It would, however, be preferable to the rogue justice currently passing as “Islamic” behavior.)
No, it’s not some “complex social structure” but Islam.That is what the most of the world’s worst countries have in common. Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt (besides fgm, forced conversions and of course honor killing), and the rest of them. Islam is what binds them. That is not to say that Islam has a monopoly on cruelty. Certainly you can find plenty of cruelty in Africa, India and China as well. These places have long histories of cruelty towards women and gay people (well, India, not China so much), but for Islamic countries, it is Islam which has codified it (not to mention rampant anti-Semitism). By comparison, Europe, and North America are rather well off. We should be considered the model; to me, we are. And we are lucky we (or at least I) live in the West. For sure, I, as a gay, atheist, of Jewsih descent, would have been killed in all of the Islamic world assuming I couldn’t escape.
The problem is the unwillingness of some feminists (or rather, self-styled feminists) to call it as it is. No one has a problem decrying the horrible cruelty inflicted on women by the U.S., but once it’s Islam, it’s really a “complex social dynamic.” I wonder, if you are being buried up to your neck and then slowly stoned to death (as per Iranian law, which is very complex and social, you know, to make it as drawn out and painful as possible), just what is the dynamic? What does it take to say it’s an evil political system? (Islam)??
I think that depends on your definition of “worst.”
Look, no one here has ever said that extremist Muslims aren’t fucked up as all hell. You’re beating up strawmen when you argue that we won’t decry the horrible cruelties inflicted on women in the name of Islam. My point is that these things are more complicated than “It’s Islam’s fault,” just as, say, anti-choice nutbags shooting abortion providers is more complicated than “Jesus told him to.”
If Islam is the root cause of these things, then how do we explain the pre-Islamic practices that parallel with them? How do we explain the fact that things like female genital mutilation are attributed to Islam, but only happen in a few Islamic countries — and happen with great frequency among non-Islamic people? How do we explain the fact that Western women are killed all the time for violating their family’s “honor” — only we call it a “domestic dispute” instead of an honor killing?
It’s ignorant to attribute these things to any religion. Religion is a man-made creation, and the interpretation of that religion depends on how the people in power want to use it. Blame them.
All “honor” killings, by definition, since they are intrafamilial, involve domestic violence, but the converse is not true. I would never equate all forms of domestic disputes with “honor” killings. They have quite different underlying dynamics. Same with crimes of passion. These things have occurred across time throughout cultures, but “honor” killings have not.
Right, ERS, I agree that the dynamic is not the same. My point, though, is that many cultures have created some sort of way to punish women who are sexually or otherwise deviant; often the punishment is death. The focus on “honor,” and the killing being carried out in a particular way, is unique to honor killings. But the concepts underlying those killings certainly are not.
Worst: There are many countries I would rank worst: Zimbawbe, Nigeria (Northern parts); much of Pakistan; Saudi Arabia; Iran; Iraq; North Korea; Burma; Sudan; much of the Congo. I’ve no doubt there are many more as bad. Some are horrible because of military dictatorships; others because of social disorganization (allowing thugs to run rampant); Islamic countries because they are horrible by design: their political playbook institutionalizes horror. And yes, while there some bad people who act horribly in the name of Christianity, it is only Islam which sponsors a worldwide (and many century-long) movement to inflict pain and horror on others and that makes it unique. It is unlike Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism in that it enshrines making others suffer in this world.
The blast faxes are really working overtime. I’ve seen this argument a lot lately from the anti-feminist crowd. Who somehow imagine that feminists are in league with fundamentalist Muslims, plotting to put women in burqas and institute sharia law here.
You have heard of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch hunts, yes? All centuries long, all inflicted on the part of the world that Christianity had influence over at the time.
And remember, Christianity didn’t stop its campaigns of pain and horror because it’s somehow morally superior. It stopped (to the degree that it did stop) because society became secular and the various Christian denominations lost the ability to make their doctrines into laws…at least directly.
Which is, of course, what the Religious Right in this country is trying to change. The only difference between Christian fundamentalists in this country and Muslim Fundamentalists in the countries you name is legal power.
“It relieves the adhearent of thought or doubt if they just follow what the book or leader commands.”
I’m curious who the Supreme Leader of the Atheists is, and what our Unholy Text is called. I’ve never heard of them…
Gee, it couldn’t possibly be both, could it?
Islam is a problematic social force, but it is not the root cause of the world’s evils, and it is not the root cause of women’s oppression in the Mideast. Islam does contribute, as far as that region goes, but its influence is little more than that of Judeo-Christianity’s in the West. The chief difference between the two (and the gap closes every year) is the lack of a central institutional authority in Islam. There is no muslim Vatican with millenia of dominance over the theology of Islam; there are only cultural trends toward one set of hadith over another, spread by splintered cults of personality.
The problem of honor killings does predate Islam (so does the veil, btw). I can find little that condemns or redeems it more than, say, the inquisition or the Salem witch trials or the Holocaust. They all have roots in religious zealotry, and they all have roots in the persecution of targeted populations. There isn’t a culture in the world that escapes such treatment of its own citizens (recognized or not), not even our own.
So lay off the Islam until you find conclusive proof that it is the only contributing force here, or you have the power to spark reform across the faith and its patron nations.
You don’t understand, Matt. Seymour doesn’t want Islam reformed. He wants it eliminated.
And no, Seymour. Before you even say it. I’m not “twisting your words”, or “reading into what you said”. When you describe something as
, the only moral course of action is to work toward its destruction.
“the only moral course of action is to work toward its destruction.”
Or its reform. For instance, I oppose patriarchy, not the existence of westerners.
I think all the major monotheistic religions are cruel, deadly, and dangerous. Certain branches of them are livable. I’d be loads happier with huge amounts of Unitarian Universalists walking around, than with people who take the Bible’s message literally. I suppose that means I’m in favor of a kind of reform.
FTR, Seymour’s still an asshole, in hir decision to criticize Islam more than the world’s other dangerous, deadly, cruel, etc. religions, and in hir willingness to mock the situationis complex. Everything’s complex. It’s just that, within western culture, we have a ubiquitous understanding of the complexities sometimes, so we don’t have to re-explain to ourselves and others what purity balls mean. They aren’t as isolated and reified as cultural phenomena that exist elsewhere, and which have been removed from their context over decades of western conversation.
What’s up with “it’s complex” coming from all these so-called feminists? Killing a female relative for dating someone is not fucking complex. And if it is then maybe your brain needs an upgrade to handle situations that most people could tell right from wrong in a subnanosecond. Its a cold-blooded murder and any country condoning it for whatever fucking reason deserves to not be considered civilized and its subjects should not be considered human. Calling Seymour an asshole is exactly like calling someone a slut to shame her. He should be applauded for taking an unapologetic stance for women’s rights and not coming up with some compromised, watered down statement that makes sure we don’t hurt the feelings of some guy who murdered his sister without prefacing it with some statements about how bad US treats women.
Also, whether or not some vague interpretation of Quran supports honor killings or not, it can be easily seen that it is an Islamic practice. In the sense that Muslims are a significantly large percentage of practitioners of offing their female relatives. There is some latitude about “crimes of passion” in some western countries but that’s only if you catch, say, your wife with someone and get carried away. No court would call it a crime of passion if it happened months back and you plotted to get your wife back home to kill her. And it wouldn’t wash at all if she was your sister.
I got angry in my previous post because a fair number of otherwise intelligent women suddenly don rosy glasses when it comes to Islam. People who wouldn’t think twice before calling Pat Robertson anti-women will actually call Mohammed a feminist and everything nice. The article say 300 women a year are honor-killed every years in Syria alone with their perpetrators legally going off scot free and admired by society. Internationally, it is estimated to be 3000-4000 women a year. That’s approximately 10 women a day, for doing things like having a relationship on their own terms. There is little outcry in any of the Muslim countries about it and strong support for the perpetrators. Islam also proscribes death for apostates. A major reason why many Islamic countries haven’t signed on to the Human Rights treaty is that it allows for freedom of religion and they would like to keep the right to kill apostates. And unlike honor killings there is little controversy in Islam about whether apostates should be killed or not. And all this is not theoretical. There are people who die every day for going against Islam.
Islam is not peace. Islam is submission, literally. Islam did have an enlightened period relatively early in its development, but its been downward since then and there is every indication that most Muslims want to take the world back to 10 century or so when they were ascendant. They demand all sorts of accommodations when they are in the west but don’t even concede a nanometer in their own countries.
“Islam is not peace. Islam is submission, literally”
So is Christianity.
Anyway, if you want to actually effect change, you have to work within cultural frameworks. Doing otherwise often exacerbates the problem. See: the entire history of colonialism.
So is Christianity.
non-sequitor.
-G
Just because we don’t tag on to the wholesale hate-fest of muslims and islam doesn’t mean we’re cheerleaders for sharia law. We keep showing examples of how the situation is culturally complex, with many different factors from both ancient culture and modern religion. That is an attempt to find approaches that work. But to some people that’s being “soft” on the situation and condoning murder. Anything short of condeming the whole goddamn religion to being bombed out of existence is condoning honor killings, apparently.
“non-sequitor.”
No. Not when you’re singling out Islam as a religion we must hate and revile and beat our breasts about, rather than dealing with practically.
You know, it really helps to read the post. Because you pulled this prefacing business out of your ass.
And I do so love how you compare calling an asshole an asshole to shaming women by calling them sluts. Sorry, punkin. Calling women sluts is a means of controlling them. Calling Seymour an asshole is simple disagreement.
In fact, let’s talk about shaming, shall we? Every time feminists broach this subject (or, for that matter, don’t), the antifeminists and anti-Muslims start huffing about where the feminists are and how dare they not sign on to your Muslim-hating agenda, because can’t you see it’s a special kind of evil, OHMYGODCAN’TYOUSEETHEYHATEWOMEN???
Heaven forfend anyone point out that the treatment of women in certain Arabic and North African countries predates Islam, or that the burqa is not that different from the prairie dresses favored by Millenialist or Dominionist Christian Fundamentalists in this country.
I mean, it couldn’t be that the problem is fundamentalism and misogyny, could it? It couldn’t be that these are not the exclusive province of Islam.
All the huffing and puffing is designed to shut up feminists who want to talk about context. And fanatics such as yourself aren’t too big on context.
And the US, in particular the Reagan Administration, objected to it because it states that economic rights are human rights. And we can’t have the poor getting ideas that they have rights, can we?
In any event, bringing up Islamic countries’ unwillingness to sign human rights treaties is a lousy argument tactic, particularly considering the utterly dismal record the US has on these treaties. Won’t ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child because we want to execute minors, and won’t ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women because we might have to guarantee abortion rights.
Christianity did go through many long periods when it was a force for suppression, in Spain, in South America and Mexico; in the Middle Ages in some countries. Then again, those were often brutish times (look at China, not Christian). But at least (and it often wasn’t much) the crueller aspects of Christianity were not supported by the New Testament.
Unfortunately for a large part of the world, that is not the case regarding Islam, which directly commands its followers to make war on non-believers (in Islam); it also has many passages in which Jews, specifically (and not Christians) are characterized in rather vile ways, making them fair game. Since the Koran is supposed to be the literal word of god and not interpreted (at least, not much) there is very little to be done about it.
That is not the case with Judaism and Christianity. No one, for instance, follows all the commands in Leviticus, which are extremely cruel. Also, the battles depicted in the Old Testament are not read by anyone as models for all time; they are read as historical descriptions.
In the present time, no one flees to Moslem countries (except from worse Moslem countries, like Iraq to Syria); people flee from Moslem countries to Christian countries, i.e., the West.
As for the comment about the Crusades: It was a defensive series of wars. Arab armies had not all that long before invaded and captured the Holy Land. That area was not host to Arabs, but was populated mostly by Christians and Jews. Arabs invaded (in the 800s) and captured many parts of it. Granted it took Europe a while to get it together to try to retake it, but that’s what Crusades were, at least on paper. True, they were not spiritual journyes; some of the players were very anti-Jewish; and they did sack Constantinople in 1204 (4th Crusade), but the main point of them was to retake land that had been captured by invading Moslem armeis (like the Spanish did in Spain, for instance; or the Byzantines did several times in Italy).
The reason that people bring up some of the worst aspects of Christainity (abortion clinic bombers, for instance) is to make some sort of moral equivalence. There just isn’t any. The scale of Moslem oppression, world wide and over centuries, dwarfs anything we have seen, apart from the Nazis and Communists.
You know every single one of those things like about the burqa predating Islam could be said about Christianity as well. Most Christian festivals are, in fact, modified pagan festivals. Does this now mean Christianity is also beyond criticism? Or is this context stuff only for the one, true Islam?
Also the conflation of not ratifying a treaty because you may have objections to taxing one section of the population to support another, and not ratifying it because you want to kill someone for choosing to stop believing in the sky-daddy is like conflating double parking with gang rape.
I didn’t realize they had Prairie Muffins in Judea.
people flee from Moslem countries to Christian countries, i.e., the West
Actually, they flee to Secular countries. The West isn’t (officially) governed by Religion.
And Christianity isn’t the only religion practiced in the West.
Then you need to read up more on pagan rituals surrounding fertility.
Which pagans? Romans? Greeks? Druids? Vikings?
Also, I’m not aware that any of the pre-Christian groups were notably anti-sex. Indeed, the shame and controlling of women’s bodies via promises of burning in Hell for all eternity for tempting men into sin really came along with the Christians themselves.
So, nice try. But no.
Islam is not above reproach. It sucks. All the monotheistic religions do.
And I’m sure the homosexuals who are targetted by Christian assholes using the text to support their bigotry are greatly comforted by your assertions that the violence of Christianity is an echo of bygone eras. So will the terrorized doctors, and the women seeking abortions.
Your refusal to see the cruelty of Christianity is because it’s like water here in the United States, like our manifestations of the patriarchy are. We see the cruelty more sharply in other places because they are different from our own.
Christianity — and indeed, the adorable new testament, but thanks for trying to pin all Christian violence on the Jews — has been used to justify slavery, and to prop up colonialism. It’s not pure as driven snow, or even purer than Islam.
Gay people are not hung and persecuted by the state in western countries (except for Poland, Lithuania and Russia) and in any event, are not executed, as they are in Iran (and also Saudi Arabia and Northern Nigeria; and arrested in Egypt and in the PA terroritories; gay Palestinains flee when the can to Israel). As usual, while bad things do happen in the West, most often similar type events are off the scale in Moslem countries. The horror of living under Moslem rule is something most of us can be thankful we will never experience.
It’s not that I don’t see the cruelty of Christianity (in the past) or that some adherents today are horrible people, as in Nigeria; any belief system can be made to lend itself to persecution. It’s just that persecution and murder are part of the core Islamic beliefs and they are definitely not in Christianity (and not practiced in Judaism, for several 1000 years).
And while Christianity was used to justify slavery, Christians were also in the forefront to eliminate slavery. Slavery is still practiced in Moslem countries and is definitely and explictly part of Islam. You might enjoy reading about the rules concerning what a Moslem man can do to his non-Moslem slave girl. And, this is not some dead letter but permanently part of their beliefs.
I really enjoy your cookie cutter reflexive use of patriarchy; what’s next, Penis is Patriarchy? I feel like I’m back in 1973.
So let me get this straight. We judge Christianity by what the bible does or doesn’t support, but we judge Islam by the excesses whose perpetrators claim inspiration? Is there any reason for that apart from omgbrownpeoplescary?
It seems any discussion of the excesses of Islam has to be met with “But Christianity…”. Also, some people want to bring in ideas about omgbrownpeople to see if they can shut people up by screaming racism. Time for a little edumacation, folks. Firstly, there is probably more brown people who aren’t Muslim than otherwise. About 800 million Indians, lots of people in the south and central America and a solid chunk of Africans. Secondly, plenty of Muslims are Caucasian, and have lighter skin tones than a typical Swiss. In fact, most of Iranians are pretty light if you haven’t noticed.
So please, be original in your arguments. When there are Sharia-based legal codes that let honor-killers go free, it is pretty hard to say the religion is not complicit in it. In a series of rape cases in Australia committed by Lebanese and Pakistani immigrants, this was used by their lawyers as a mitigating circumstance to reduce the sentence. “Women are more chaste in their countries, so they are unable to control themselves”. The Australian mufti gave sermons as to how if he was the judge, he would have sentenced the women 10 times longer than the men in a rape case because if they hadn’t exposed themselves the whole situation wouldn’t have happened. There was little outcry in the Muslims except for some people saying he was “mistranslated” even in the face of recorded TV footage.
I find the idea of holding Muslims or Muslim countries to lower standards terribly racist in a white man’s burden kind of way. “Well, they are little above animals anyway, what can we expect of them” kind of thinking.
I’m not going to get into the “which religion is worse” thing, or the “if you don’t condemn Islam, you embolden it” or whatever. I just want to mention that Ann Jone’s book, “Kabul In Winter”, is really excellent on the lives of women in Afghanistan. It’s a very different country from Syria, but it’s illuminating nonetheless. Jones describes how the various instances of subjugation of and violence against women is such an ingrained part of Afghani life. Granted, recent decades have shattered the country and exacerbated the suffering, but women and girls have typically been used as a sort of currency. The things that happen to them have been made to serve as social levelers. A rivalry or disagreement might be settled by giving the opponent several village girls, for example.
Melissa, it is complicated, and to say so is far from endorsing the status quo. Women as currency and property, women as a separate people without the worth and agency of “real” people, i.e. men – this permeates everything, from law to custom to the way we perceive our own selves. As a women in a secular Western society, my life is not totally autonomous (I recall obtaining an abortion in the hazy pre-Roe v. Wade months, which was weird precisely because I wasn’t perceived to be in full ownership of my own uterus), but in no way is it as dire as are the lives of vast numbers of women elsewhere. That doesn’t mean my objections are silly any more than it means we have to “solve” religion before we can address the wholesale murder and maiming of women.
I’ll support the work of any woman (or man) in these especially violent danger zones – whether it’s safe houses, underground railways, secret schools for girls’ literacy, or a boat-load of bandages. I’m in favor of easing suffering right now. And I’m in favor of breaking the silence, too, as is beginning to happen as these young women and girls’ names aren’t extinguished along with their lives.
Shorter Melissa: I’m a bigot, and if you challenge me, you’re trite.
Ah. so we are reduced to attacking the individual from attacking the arguments. The devolution has been rapid.
Oh, honey, your first post started off with attacking “so-called feminists,” and Seymour’s started with “What b.s.” and went on to say we aren’t real feminists.
So do bite me.
Larkspur: there are certain things that are complicated and deeply ingrained in culture. I am not going to deny that. That’s there everywhere. Where I draw the line is that things like honor killings, killing someone for drawing a fucking cartoon, or writing a book, are just plain wrong. To tell an incident, once traveling through a Middle Eastern country (Kuwait), I was almost arrested for some minor rule violation at the airport. That was well, about 5 years back, and I was a bit more naive then. Thankfully, the people was visiting were well-connected and able to bribe/call the right people and solve the situation. Then they told me how bad my situation could be if I was arrested in that country. A foreigner has simply no rights there (unless you are American, in which case you may as well be God in the eyes of the authority (this only applies to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia)). Slave trade is quasi-legal in many places there.
I have a wonderful Pakistani friend who happens to be an Ahmediyya muslim. Ahmediyyas are considered heretics and face tremendous persecution there. He broke down in tears describing the kinds of things he had to face, and Pakistan is among the more enlightened places. Pakistan refused to recognize their only Nobel Prize winner, Abdus Salam, because he wasn’t from a dominant Muslim sect. An woman here who isn’t an American might find a trip through Saudi Arabia, the heart of Islam to be rather educational. An event which for whatever reason didn’t get much publicity here, was that when a girls’ school caught fire the religious police refused to let them exit the building without those all-covering black veils. 20 girls died in the fire. If you travel as a woman alone (and don’t have an American passport), you can be arrested for just being outside. Most men (and sadly, women) will automatically assume you are a prostitute.
To claim that this is local culture and not Islam is totally disingenuous. Islam and culture are one and the same as far they are concerned. You could even ask any practicing Muslim and hey wouldn’t deny it. They have gone to great lengths to suppress pre-Islamic culture. If Islam did not want such misogynist viewpoints, they could have been easily eliminated.
Side point: I just conversed about this with some of my middle-eastern friends about why men are not killed for honor. The answer was that it happens, but is rather rare. The reason it is rare is that killing another male would incur the wrath of his family which could easily lead to a decades long feud with many dead. The occasional male who is killed for looking at someone’s sister tends to be from the poorer sections of society with tenuous family ties. It is much easier to keep things in the family and just kill the woman. Moreover, most countries there have explicitly harsher punishments for killing a male than killing a female.
Melissa, you and I are not very far apart. Where women are not acknowledged to be 100% fully human, they are in mortal danger. Islamic countries feature some of the most hideous examples of that.
But railing about Islam as an inherently defective religion is a distracting sideshow. Fundamentalism is the problem, and it’s everywhere. It is a huge feature in the modern Muslim world, but you see its effects in the Papal prohibition against birth control, or the fringe LDS Fundamentalists appropriation of young girls for polygamous matches to higher status men, while young boys are driven away and literally dumped by the side of the road. When anyone says that there’s only one way, and they know what it is, and they will not tolerate anything else – whether that is exacted only within the group, or is deemed to be the one true way of life for every one of us – people are going to suffer, and women are always on the front line of that horror.
So why spin our wheels with diatribes about who’s less repressive? Why not locate and assist people within each critical area, people who are laboring for change? Anything else is too doctrinaire for me. If, for example, there’s a group of Syrian or Afghani women who are trying to get medical care for women who’d otherwise be denied it (as, for example, all the women who suffered and died under the Taliban because their bodies were deemed to be either defiled or subject to defilement, and thus could not be examined by male doctors – and of course, women doctors were forbidden to work at all), well, I am going to support these women even if each of them insists on the propriety of wearing head-scarves.
Ya know? And in sub-Saharan Africa, I’m going to support all the women and men who are struggling to explode the myth that men can be cured of AIDS by having sex with nine-year-old virgin girls – even if women citizens aren’t yet permitted to vote.
Women are 100% human. Mostly, they are not regarded as such. Sometimes they are falsely held up to be better than human, as in the idea of the eternally kind and compassionate Earth Mother Peace Keeper who is somehow Sanctified by the capacity to bring forth baby humans. (Because face it: on occasion, some mothers – being 100% human and thus subject to human depravity – eat their babies.)
I guess I have to leave it to someone else to figure out a grand theory. Myself, I would be a little less uncomfortable in this world if I could put out some fires now and then.
So honor killings should be rampant in Indonesia, right?
Honor killings are common in Pakistan; killings and honor rapes (if you can imagine such a combination of words). Our behavior is not preordained. The guiding or dominant philosophies of a country can and usually are strong enablers. Islam is aptly suited to the promotion of female suppression, so wherever it is, its influence will be that. Not to say that every Islamic country is exactly the same. Remnants of the pre-Islamic cultures also influence how people act. Indonesia, from the little I know of it, had a rather benign pre-Islamic culture (again, not my area of expertise). Also, there are some areas where Christianity and Hinduism claim many adherents.
While it is true that fundamentalism of all religious persuasions is dangerous, in our world, now, it is only Islam that actually poses an existential danger to the rest of the world.
It is amusing that so many left-wing, knee-jerk types see Western (=Christian/American/British/Western) colonialism, they are completely blind to the greater and more dangerous Islamic colonialism (and imperialism). It smothers every culture it takes over. All those Africans with Arabic names: where did that come from? And those Arabic costumes? All that is ignored or excused. Same with the genocide in Darfur. That gets a big fat yawn. Or Biafra? What was that? Or on-going slavery in Arab countries. Can you imagine if white Christians had a slave market today? But, I digress.
Islam got there late, give them time to fully implement it.
Good fucking gravy, you’re disturbed, Melissa.
Seems sarcasm is not your strong suit, I’ll avoid it in future. The thing was pointing out one country in which it happens rarely is like pointing out Austin when someone mentions Texas is conservative.
Melissa, if you’re going to blame Islam for the problem, then you can’t discount the most populous majority-Muslim country, where it doesn’t happen.
So, perhaps it’s a non-religious cultural practice that predates Islam but is justified by its practitioners by Islam.
Not that that’s unheard of with Christianity.