Should "culture" End At The Border?

[noname12]

Originally posted by ilw@8 October 2003 - 15:42
Yes Jordan does seem to give out the lightest sentences i've seen but i think you seriously underestimate the number. eg around 400 women are killed in Pakistan every year by members of their own family in so called honour killings.

ilw, in pakistan, saudi arabi, yemen, jordan and afghanistan you will find an un-accepted sect of Islam which are called the Wahabites, these people follow no traditional Islam, they pretty much make up the rules as they go along, these minorities see Honour killings as part of religion, and due to the lack of policing in Pakistan, and the majority of rulers in the mid east being wahabite origin, you will find that very little is done but it does not reflect the general culture of the people, just the minority who are hell bent on being evil and claiming it in the name of good.

[ilw]

Sorry i didn't really address nonames previious post, why is it that in Jordan its so hard for them to give tougher sentencing then? Whether or not the populous agree with it, it seems an accepted fact of life.And it is cultural and vaguely religious.

Originally posted by BBC news

"A woman is like an olive tree. When its branch catches woodworm, it has to be chopped off so that society stays clean and pure."
...
It is widely agreed that the root and cause of honour killing is a complex, historical phenomenon which has no justification in Islam's holy book, the Koran, and which has also been known to occur elsewhere in the world and among other religions.

Nonetheless, it is the insistence within Islamic culture of the need to preserve women's purity - and the disgrace that any stain on this purity may bring upon the family - that appears to be making it so tough in Jordan to stamp out the crime and to bring their perpetrators to court on murder charges

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/3094736.stm

This is getting confusing cos we're both posting at rougly the same time.

[noname12]

look up ilw question already answered... i'm sycic (spelling?)

[ilw]

But what you've just pointed out is that there is a culture that does this... And they don't seem minor if they wield enough political power in Jordan to prevent tougher sentencing (which amounts to vague acceptance of this tradition)

[noname12]

ilw, believe me, they are the smallest sect, compared to any religion, they probably only number in the thousands, and the only reason there in power is due to the history of the middle east... to long to explain

[ilw]

If that freak kurd commited that crime in the middle east, or even kurdistan, he would have been punished (most likely death penalty).

and the majority of rulers in the mid east being wahabite origin, you will find that very little is done

Not to be harsh, but which is it, the 2 statements are basically mutually exclusive.

[noname12]

[edit: ilw, I forgot about the wahabites :"> ]
[edit2: and I was thinking along the lines of kuwait, where a guy was imprisoned for life for such a killing, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Lebnon]

For it to be a culture it would need to be shared by all within that paticular community and had to pe practiced long enough to be considered part of that community, whereas the wahabite are just a break away sect that conforms more to the thinking of the sunnite sect but goes way to far even in the sunnites views, and there traditions are reletavly new and have not been practiced for a little more then I think 200 years, and even within the wahabite sect there is conflicts on certain rules, but the leaders way up are, as named here, traditionalists so they will most likely follow the leader Abdul-Wahab who was the founder, and he supported honour killings and such.
The Royal family of saudi arabia are wahabite, for one.

[ilw]

I find it hard to believe that theres anyhwere near the same kind of condemnation for honour killings in the Middle East as there is in the West. First off, in quite a few Middle Eastern countries the punishment for an honour killing may actually be lighter than in the west, despite the disproportionately harsher punishments for other crimes. Secondly correct me if i'm wrong, but don't quite a few Middle Eastern countries have Sharia law, ie if a women is found to have commited adultery she is stoned.
I would speculate that people coming from these countries are at the very least desensitised if not accepting of the idea that women who stray should be killed.

[noname12]

All Islamic countries follow sharia law, but it doesnt only apply to women, if a man is found to be commiting adultry then he is stoned too, which if you ask me is all cool ,
and in normal countries the penalty is death for murder, regardless of what the reason is, death penalty can only be dished out by Islamic courts or normal courts, so regardless in the normal mid-east states murder is murder, with or without honour.

edit: all my edited parts are shown in bold.

[Billy_Dean]

According to a report I read, there have been 5,000 such killings a year in the world. Estimates are that there have been 20 such killings in the UK, 12 in the last year.


On a lighter note, multi-culturalism can lead to some bizzare examples of political correctness. An example was the school in England that traditionally gave the kids hot-cross-buns at easter, this year the crosses were taken off, so as not too offend non-christians. It actually had the reverse effect, non-christians were outraged that people would think them so petty.