Sunday, November 1, 2009

Honor Killing I Can Believe In

This may come as a surprise, but I kind of like the idea of honor killing. No, not the sick kind of "honor" killing done by Muslims, but a truly honorable form of honor killing. Let me explain.

In the Islamic world there's this weird obsession with family "honor", epitomized by the chastity of the family's women. A family is only as honorable as it's women are virginal. Any breach of female purity brings egregious disgrace on the family, disgrace that can be alleviated only by the death of the sullied woman. And it doesn't matter how the female became impure, nor does her age make any difference in applying the "remedy". A victim of rape or incest is just as much a cause of disgrace as a purposely promiscuous woman. A child can be just as much a cause of disgrace as an adult female. In Iran a man living in a podunk village beheaded his 7-year-old daughter because he suspected his brother of molesting her. He killed his daughter, not her alleged attacker. This is barbaric, and isn't the kind of honor killing I believe in.

When I hear the phrase "honor killing", I ask myself this question: what's more dishonorable, to have a rape victim in the family or a rapist in the family? Those of us in the West know the right answer to that question; Muslims don't. We Westerners know that the real disgrace is being the relative of a man who brutalizes women and/or children. The real disgrace is seeing all of your child training effort end in the creation of a predator. Honor killing should be about expunging the shame of the rapist's family. If a rapist's father or brother kills him as the ultimate way to say, "We're sorry", and in order to remove the family's shame, that's honor killing I can believe in.

That father in Iran should've beheaded his brother, not his daughter. A child or woman who's been attacked by a larger and stronger male isn't the cause of anyone's shame. The Iranian father murdered his baby girl because of Islam's perverted vision of morality and justice. And to think some PC whipped Westerners want to facilitate the spread of that perverted vision into the West. Perhaps they should be beheaded. That, too, would be honor killing I can believe in.