I've posted stuff about "honor" killings before. Its disgusting. So, by the way, is suicide bombing.
'Virgin suicides' save Turks' 'honor'
Batman [Yes, Batman], Turkey -- For 17-year- old Derya, a waif-like woman, the order to kill herself
came from an uncle and was delivered in a text message to her
cellphone. "You have blackened our name," it read. "Kill yourself and
clean our shame or we will kill you first."
Derya said her crime was to fall for a boy she met at school. She knew
the risks: Her aunt had been killed by her grandfather for seeing a
boy. But after being cloistered and veiled for most of her life, she
said, she felt free for the first time and wanted to express her
independence.
When news of the love affair spread to her family, she said, her mother
warned her that her father would kill her. But she refused to listen.
Then came the threatening text messages, sent by her brothers and
uncles, sometimes 15 a day. Derya said they were the equivalent of a
death sentence.
Consumed by shame and fearful for her life, she said, she decided to
carry out her family's wishes. First, she said, she jumped into the
Tigris River, but she survived. Next she tried hanging herself, but an
uncle cut her down. Then she slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife.
"My family attacked my personality, and I felt I had committed the
biggest sin in the world," she said from a women's shelter where she
had traded in her veil for a T-shirt and jeans. She declined to give
her last name for fear her family was still hunting her. "I felt I had
no right to dishonor my family, that I have no right to be alive. So I
decided to respect my family's desire and to die."
Read the whole thing here (IHT).
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one of the nastiest things about (certain kinds of) islamic culture...
...is also one of the nastiest things about (certain kinds of) christian culture.
"Saeb Erekat, minister of municipal affairs in the Palestinian Authority, is both the senior civilian official in Palestinian-controlled Jericho, a tiny West Bank oasis, and a prominent member of a prestigious Muslim family.
For one month last summer, Erekat sheltered a Christian woman in his home because her family wanted to kill her for fleeing the cousin she had been forced to marry and trying to run away with the Muslim with whom she had fallen in love.
Vivian Dellou fled the West Bank town of Ramallah and managed to reach Jericho, where she begged Erekat to protect her. He agreed and faced down a crowd of her angry, armed relatives who came to his door demanding that Dellou be handed over.
It was an almost unheard-of act of courage, particularly because Erekat risked a confrontation between the majority Muslim community and the minority Christian community.
But Erekat said he felt that he simply had no choice.
"I saw the fear in her face," he said. "I told them that they would have to kill me to take her."
Erekat protected Dellou while Palestinian officials negotiated with her family. The case was considered so explosive that Arafat himself at one point tried to persuade Erekat to surrender Dellou to her family.
But Erekat demanded that the family guarantee her safety and allow her to divorce her cousin before he would hand her over. The family accepted his terms, and Dellou returned to Ramallah.
Erekat said he has visited her since, at her family's home, and finds her in good spirits. Friends say, however, that she lives under virtual house arrest, forbidden to go out without a chaperon.
"So they saved her life," said Jamila abu Dihhu, director of the Bisan Research Center in Ramallah. "But . . . we ended up with a woman who is a prisoner in her own house."
By negotiating with the family, Abu Dihhu said, the Palestinian Authority supported traditional tribal law, which calls for mediation of disputes by the heads of families and respected members of the community. It left the fate of a woman to be decided by her male relatives."
-- Paying a High Price for Honor, by Mary Curtius; Los Angeles Times, 12 March 1995. (No link because its in the subscription-only archives).
If both christians and muslims do it, maybe it's not primarily islamic, but tribal.
SK --
As someone recently pointed out, St. George was the patron saint of Lebanon (and may still be for all I know). I think the English have fallen victim to the silliness of contemporary, Western liberalism. They should get over it.
Anonymous --
"If both christians and muslims do it, maybe it's not primarily islamic, but tribal."
Maybe. But a big difference between Islam and Christianity is that the culure of the former seems inherently tribal / Arab, whereas the latter certainly is not. Put another way, Christians are being bad Christians when they give in to tribalism, whereas tribalism seems endemic to Islam from Muhammad's time, through the Sunni / Shi'a split over who is really Ahl al-Bayt, right down to the present.
In short, when there are cultural problems in nominally Muslim civilizations, it's a "problem with Islam", but when there are such problems amongst historically Christian peoples, it's a "failure to live up to the call of the Gospel." Funny, that.
Anonymous,
Argue; don't just assert.
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