Honor Killing

[Daki]

This is making the rounds on CNN. A 17 year old year was dragged into the street and beaten/stoned to death.

You can find the article here.

Included with the article is a video that shows the beating itself. CNN is hosting video taken with a camera phone of the beating death of a girl. On the one hand, I'm a little surprised they would show footage but on the other hand I'm glad to see them showing it because maybe it will help emphasize what is happening.

What amazes me is how many people are gathered around to watch. The number of others you can see capturing the event with their phones. The police who are standing by (but I honestly don't know if they could have done anything). It makes me wonder if everyone there believed this was an honorable killing or just caught up in the mob mentality.

[3278]

It makes me wonder if everyone there believed this was an honorable killing or just caught up in the mob mentality.

It's got to be a fair amount of each. I guess it's a lot like prison: not everyone - hell, not very many people - think that prisons, as we have them, are particularly just or effective, but our culture says they're okay, and bucking the culture is pointless and possibly dangerous. Plus, hey, if everyone else says it's okay, most people don't even question it in the first place.

This kind of punishment used to be considered by most world cultures to be perfectly acceptable. It's not a surprise to me that people wouldn't try to stop a mob stoning, you know? You either think it's okay, or you don't want to get mobbed yourself, or you don't care, or you think it's funny, or you've never considered the morality of this common cultural norm.

And who are we to say this is better or worse than our own cultural norms? [Which no one has - yet - said.] This is all relative, and subjective, and so on, and I think it's interesting to think about how every culture has these behaviors that are looked on, by perfectly rational people in other cultures, as being anathema, but which to people in that culture, look perfectly normal. We ourselves accept as given things our grandparents would have killed for, things our parents still won't talk about. Any time it's time for me to judge, I try to remember how I would be judged, from outside, and I wonder if there's any point to judgment at all.

[Crazy Elf]

If you want to bring about change in the Middle East, you're going to have to accept a few things about the Middle East. Honour killings, within some groups, are perfectly acceptable. If that's the cultural trend, you're not going to make many friends by saying, "You're all fucking wrong, you primates!"

Honour killings may change in the long run... and if I recall correctly weren't nearly as much of an issue while Saddam was at the reins. However, if you're trying to bring about cultural sensitivity, then you're actually going to have to be *gasp* culturally sensitive about these sorts of practices.

It's a major issue. The West really really doesn't like honour killings. I sure as fuck don't like them. However, if you want to bring about support in an area... what the fuck are you going to do? Any solution to the problem is going to cause a lot of harm before any good. Charging them with murder is enforcing your own cultural views. Threatening them to toe the line is Saddam. Removing support from the Kurds while they do this sort of thing will result in a fuckload more deaths in the meantime.

There is no easy solution to this.

[Serious Paul]

If you want to bring about change in the Middle East, you're going to have to accept a few things about the Middle East. Honour killings, within some groups, are perfectly acceptable.

Right, because we want to avoid any possible appearance of cultural hegemony.

However, if you want to bring about support in an area... what the fuck are you going to do?

What if I just want to stop murders?

Any solution to the problem is going to cause a lot of harm before any good.

And? Why exactly is that wrong?

Charging them with murder is enforcing your own cultural views.

Which, of course, we should never do?

There is no easy solution to this.

Why does the solution have to be easy? Or fair?

[Crazy Elf]

Tell people that honour killings are wrong, and then you increase the perception of crisis within the community, and then you increase the number of people that join insurgent groups to blow away US forces.

There are a few dozen honour killing in Iraq a year, according to the article. Is stomping down on those few deaths worth the increased recruitment of insurgents and increased risk of US forces being gunned down? That's the problem.

[Cain]

What if I just want to stop murders?

Except that honor killings aren't any more murder to them than capital punishment is to you. If it's legal, by definition it's not murder.

Why exactly is that wrong?

Because the Middle East is already a powderkeg ready to blow. Why throw matches at it?

Which, of course, we should never do?

Never. Persuading people to come to your cultural views is one thing. Forcing them to do so is another. How'd you like it if someone held you at gunpoint and forced you to convert to Islam?

[jo_alex]

Except that honor killings aren't any more murder to them than capital punishment is to you. If it's legal, by definition it's not murder.

From what I understand it's not that the honor killing is legal. It just won't be prosecuted or if it is prosecuted the accused will be able to invoke a defense exempting him from a penalty for it.

[Crazy Elf]

From what I understand it's not that the honor killing is legal. It just won't be prosecuted or if it is prosecuted the accused will be able to invoke a defense exempting him from a penalty for it.

Which still sets up the same situation. What is considered legal and illegal doesn't always have the same resonance that it does in Western countries.

[jo_alex]

From what I understand it's not that the honor killing is legal. It just won't be prosecuted or if it is prosecuted the accused will be able to invoke a defense exempting him from a penalty for it.

Which still sets up the same situation. What is considered legal and illegal doesn't always have the same resonance that it does in Western countries.

In this case I believe you can totally compare it to Western laws. You kill someone. There you'd be tried and exempted by using the defense of "family honor", in the West - by using the defense of e.g. "self-defense". That's the same legal mechanism - it's not _legal_ to kill someone. It's just that there are certain situations when punishment for it is suspended. And the difference between Western and Eastern societies is in what is considered to be an exemption ground.

[TheScamp]

That's the same legal mechanism - it's not _legal_ to kill someone.

But it is legal to kill someone. To use your example, killing someone in self defense is perfectly legal. Sure, often a trial takes place to determine that it wasn't an illegal killing (and thus murder or some variant thereof), but that doesn't change its legal status as a perfectly acceptable reason to off someone.

[3278]

I think the semantics of "legal" versus "illegal and justified" are probably extraneous to the situation at hand.

[jo_alex]

That's the same legal mechanism - it's not _legal_ to kill someone.

But it is legal to kill someone. To use your example, killing someone in self defense is perfectly legal. Sure, often a trial takes place to determine that it wasn't an illegal killing (and thus murder or some variant thereof), but that doesn't change its legal status as a perfectly acceptable reason to off someone.

I believe there is a difference between legal acts and illegal acts which you won't be held liable for later on. The law doesn't say you may kill someone because your family honor was offended or someone attacked you. No, it says that in that case the person who did that won't be punished. Maybe it's a technicality only, but it changes the whole perspective to me.

[Crazy Elf]

In this case I believe you can totally compare it to Western laws. You kill someone. There you'd be tried...

This assumes that such a trial would be undertaken in a traditional Western manner, or that it would even go to trial in the first place, or that someone would even be arrested for it. That's a lot of assumptions.

I don't know what the actual process of crime and punishment is in Iraq at the moment, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not CSI.

[jo_alex]

I don't know what the actual process of crime and punishment is in Iraq at the moment, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not CSI.

Probably not. And that's the most important difference, I believe. Because the cases in the Western society when the police wouldn't investigate a self-defense murder are probably much more scarce to the family-honor murders not being prosecuted at all in the East.

[TheScamp]

The law doesn't say you may kill someone because your family honor was offended or someone attacked you.

Well, the law in general doesn't say what you may do at all. It describes what you may not do.

Maybe it's a technicality only, but it changes the whole perspective to me.

"Technicality only" is not a good phrase to use when describing law. Everything is a technicality.

[Crazy Elf]

Probably not. And that's the most important difference, I believe. Because the cases in the Western society when the police wouldn't investigate a self-defense murder are probably much more scarce to the family-honor murders not being prosecuted at all in the East.

Which indicates one fuck of a cultural difference. Telling them how they should do things probably won't go down so well due to that.

[3278]

Any solution to the problem is going to cause a lot of harm before any good.

Why exactly is that wrong?

Because the Middle East is already a powderkeg ready to blow. Why throw matches at it?

To save the lives of the people being killed by vigilantism, of course, and to achieve order, where cultural norms are enforced by the government, and not by individuals. We can certainly argue there's no use in doing such a thing, but it's not particularly difficult to tell that's why it's being done.

Personally, I don't think the general tenor of instability is going to prevent the elimination of vigilantism. Yes, it's likely that such elimination is going to cause problems, but I don't think it's likely to blow the powderkeg. That's just opinion, of course.

Charging them with murder is enforcing your own cultural views.

Which, of course, we should never do?

Never. Persuading people to come to your cultural views is one thing. Forcing them to do so is another. How'd you like it if someone held you at gunpoint and forced you to convert to Islam?

Well, how would I like it if someone held me at gunpoint and forced me not to kill my sister? The fact that it's not a cultural view, but a personal one, shouldn't matter, right? We have to "tolerate difference," and that means throwing out absolute morality. If we don't want to cause massive problems in the United States, we need to not enforce law or order. We need to tolerate people, by letting them kill each other whenever they want. We definitely shouldn't enforce our cultural views on Iraq, so we shouldn't try to maintain any kind of order there at all. Let the prevailing views of culture do that work, yeah?

I don't have a problem with this in principle. All enforced order is coercive removal of individual freedom for subjective morality, but I think drawing the line at honor killings is either too much or too little. Either we accept that all morality is subjective and we have no right to enforce it, or we accept that we don't have any problem using coercive removal of individual liberties when it gets us what we want.

I agree with Elf's view that enforcing our cultural norms on another nation is probably going to do more harm than good at first, but it's also worth noting that honor killings are not a cultural norm in Iraq, but a reasonably rare form of coercion. If we want order - and by "we," I mean, "all authority in Iraq," then we're going to need to break a few eggs. If we don't want order, but instead want tolerance of whatever norm people feel they have a right to, then we need to pull out of Iraq, disband the police, and let nature do its thing.

[3278]

Probably not. And that's the most important difference, I believe. Because the cases in the Western society when the police wouldn't investigate a self-defense murder are probably much more scarce to the family-honor murders not being prosecuted at all in the East.

Which indicates one fuck of a cultural difference. Telling them how they should do things probably won't go down so well due to that.

Well, that's the price you pay for order. The United States was a chaotic land of "killing for whatever reason you felt like" once, and now it's...well, there are fewer gunfights at ranches, anyway. Just because it's hard, just because it's going to get worse before it gets better, isn't a reason not to do it.

I like your functional view, though: not what is "right" or "wrong," but whether such a thing is possible without drawbacks which outweigh the benefits. Personally, I think it could be done, and work out "better" in the long term, but I agree it will be difficult, and that attention needs to be paid to cultural differences as we make those changes, if we decide to make them. Whether it's Iraq or Australia doesn't matter, in that context.

[jo_alex]

We have to "tolerate difference," and that means throwing out absolute morality. If we don't want to cause massive problems in the United States, we need to not enforce law or order. We need to tolerate people, by letting them kill each other whenever they want. We definitely shouldn't enforce our cultural views on Iraq, so we shouldn't try to maintain any kind of order there at all. Let the prevailing views of culture do that work, yeah?

It goes even further since cultural differences are often used as a defense in the criminal processes on US soil itself. I remember learning about one case when a Japanese woman found out about her husband cheating on her. She was supposed to commit an honorable suicide but since they had two children - the children had to be killed first. She went with them into the ocean. They drowned, she didn't. She had a US citizenship and was prosecuted under US law. However, she claimed the defense of cultural differences (including various psychological defenses) and she wasn't found guilty of manslaughter. She got a sentence, I believe, but it wasn't a high one.

[Crazy Elf]

I like your functional view, though: not what is "right" or "wrong," but whether such a thing is possible without drawbacks which outweigh the benefits. Personally, I think it could be done, and work out "better" in the long term, but I agree it will be difficult, and that attention needs to be paid to cultural differences as we make those changes, if we decide to make them. Whether it's Iraq or Australia doesn't matter, in that context.

And I agree with you. As much as I do realise that cultural conflict is a huge issue, I'm completely and utterly against honour killings. There does come a point in which you have to stand by the values that you believe to be true, and the right to life is one that I find very hard to argue against.

Personally, if to save 10 lives that would be lost due to injustice cost 1,000 lives, I would fight all the same. This isn't about my personal life, though, and as such I'd have to think in different terms. Would those that held those 1,000 lives dear forgive such a stance on my behalf? I don't think they would.

As such, those 10 would have to die. I find that wrong, but I also find most people's intense selfishness wrong. These are all value judgements, though. They don't have a home in these sorts of equations. They shouldn't. It ends up being about math.

[3278]

It goes even further since cultural differences are often used as a defense in the criminal processes on US soil itself.

It's like the religious freedom conundrum: you're completely free to practice whatever religion you like in whatever way you choose, unless it breaks the law, which isn't really freedom, since the laws are based on a culture steeped in a small range of religions. If my religion says I'm allowed to sacrifice people, I'm not allowed to do that in the US.

This is how is has to be. I believe all freedoms - speech, religion, culture, whatever - have to come second to the survival of the nation, because without the nation we all die [in shorthand; really, we just have instability and chaos]. We all agree to surrender some of our freedoms - to kill, to steal, and so on, the most basic tenets of order - in exchange for the freedom to not get killed or stolen from or so on. In my opinion, our goal should be as much freedom as possible without sacrificing the existence of the state.

I don't think our goal should be much different in Iraq, and here I mean "our goal" to be "the goal of all persons involved." Vigilantism cannot be tolerated, because it genuinely is a threat to everyone. If we want "mating with another tribe" to be punishable by death, we need to make it a law, and let the government kill the people. I don't like the reduction of freedom, but I believe it is necessary.