by VorJack
Since America has become confronted with the reality of honor killings, there have been a number of cases circulating around the internet for us to cluck over. The latest is the story of Noor Almaleki, reported on by an article in Marie Claire entitled An American Honor Killing. Long story short: When sending Noor to Iraq to get her married off didn’t straighten her out, her father ran over her with a jeep.
Marie Claire is not a magazine known for its hard hitting journalism. The article frames the story as an examination of Islam: religion of peace? or violence? Fortunately, The Last Psychiatrist does a better job of opening it up and looking at it. Even better, LP does a good job of getting to the heart of what “honor killings” mean in the culture:
Why didn’t he kill her when she when she first started talking to boys? Why didn’t he kill her when she started wearing American clothes at age 4?
The answer is: they lived in America for 16 years, where that behavior doesn’t shame him. He may not like it, but there is no one who would look down on him here. Shame is exposure, and as long as all these behaviors stay in Phoenix, no one knows what “s/he’s” done.
It all fell apart because he sent her to Iraq. When he committed to the all-in, hail mary plan of sending his daughter to Iraq to get married, where she either rejected five men as unsuitable(!) or worse, got married to one of them and then went on cavorting with men in the U.S. (!!!!)…
… never mind what Allah thinks, now everyone in Iraq knows what kind of a man he is.
For the record, America has had its own honor cultures, like in the Old South. The South Carolina politician James Henry Hammond said, “Reputation is everything. Everything with me depends upon the estimation in which I am held.” That’s as good a statement of what it means to live in an honor culture as any I’ve heard.
Living in an honor culture means being very sensitive to being “discussed,” to borrow a southern euphemism. You don’t want the neighbors talking about how you can’t handle your daughter. This can be serious business, since such things will affect your status in the society. But Noor‘s father was living in American society, and doesn’t have that excuse. Again, here’s LP with the diagnosis:
He doesn’t care that she’s Americanized or even an adulteress. He cares that people are laughing at him.
This is narcissism, and here I do not hesitate to spell it out explicitly. The obvious is that he sees her only as an extension of himself, only as she impacts his own existence and not as an independent entity. He’s not better than her, she’s just not a fully formed character, she’s an extra. But the more telling and scary part of the narcissism is that he thinks that by killing her, he has not merely stopped her but fixed things, erased his shame, as if it never happened. As if the people back in Iraq aren’t still snickering, as if human nature and reality are subservient to the magical thinking of a man who believes a Jeep can alter what God already saw.
and now we know what kind of man he is!
Indeed. The sad thing is there are those who condone this and think it makes him more of a man.
Those who share his culture now think he’s a decent man of honour. And people wonder at my Islamophobia…..
Sorry to disappoint you: about 30 years ago, similar things happened to daughters of roamn catholic spanish parents that were living in other european countries. One father daily hit his daughter because she was adapting to the standards in the country they lived in (christian country by the way), dressing not appropriately and such. She had to go to the hospital many times excusing her wounds as accidents. Eventually he beat her to death.
You haven’t disappointed me, JK. The key phrases in your post were “30 years ago” and “Catholic”.
A) It doesn’t happen now outside of Islam – everybody else has grown past it, and
B) I dislike Catholicism every bit as much as I hate dogmatic Islam.
Hi Custador
The situation (especially) women are in in some islamic countries are often compared to the dark ages here in Europe. I just wanted to point out that there were similar cases here in Europe not to long ago.
I don’t like the catholic church any more than you do. It’s just some kind of religious mafia, that want to control ppls minds (and get their share of ppls money too).
Greets
JK
It’s hard to wrap your brain around the reasoning.
With you Tina. I can’t imagine putting a reputation before your own child’s life.
From what I’ve read about anthropology, certain aspects of the “honor culture” may even predate formal religion. However, religion certainly sustains and justifies it.
Religion does NOT justify it. It is simply the disguise of justification.
I think nazani would agree, but your point is semantic. As far as fellow worshippers are concerned, the man acted for the best as a good Muslim – his religion does justify his behaviour to his fellow worshippers. Somebody want to post a link to that Brian idiot getting pwned about moral absolutism?
Pretty sure by justifies it, he/she meant the killer feels justified by the religion – not that the act is actually justified.
The fact is that because religion remains ambiguous, and because there is not final authority on interpretation of the dogma, Islam does justify this type of behavior. It’s a sin of silence.
And the point about narcissism is interesting. Why should we be surprised that people who think the universe was created with them specifically in mind also have a hard time viewing other people as full entities with individual identities?
This is the first American honor killing I’ve heard of – though I am sure there have been many.
I think this tale may become more and more common in Western civilization as many Muslims are flocking to Western countries. As stupid as the American ‘war in Iraq’ is, maybe westernizing the middle east will slowly begin people to their senses.
How sick do you have to be to kill your own child because of their ‘mistakes’?
I cannot even fathom being so completely backwards – it makes me sick.
They’re just following the example of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, God sacrificing Jesus. Someone has to pay for their shame, their embarassment. And blood seems to make everything better for people who believe in human sacrifice (eye for an eye).
Some Fundamentalist Christians have their own version of an honor culture, although not as extreme. My partner’s father felt compelled to step down as a church elder when his son came out as gay (700 miles away in another state, no less). The rationale was that he wasn’t a good enough example of a Christian to be a church elder if his son turned out to be gay, because in the eyes of everyone in the church that meant that he’d simply raised his son wrong.
Imagine the shame when son #2 converted to Buddhism, and THEN came out of the closet as gay too.
I was just thinking about this. Killing is obviously harsh rectification of a perceived dishonor. I wonder if the daughter in this story, having been raised with American values, realized what was the punishment for opposing her father’s plan. I mean, she could have known she was making a stand that she’d rather die than marry someone she didn’t love, grown up in an atmosphere to expect to marry anyone she liked only to be ordered then to revert to fundamentalist expectations of her religion. Maybe she just didn’t think he’d actually be that unreasonable.
I think that is a hard thing for gay people, and other people. Nobody wants to disappoint their parents, even if their parents have silly reasons to be disappointed. When I got pregnant, my mother was this way because I was unmarried, she shamed me and cried over what her friends would think of her. We’re not even religious, I think she has a lot of the strict beliefs of a religious morality though. And she doesn’t have any status in the community either, she just had some crushed aspiration of it, and it’s bad enough the way things are, she doesn’t need any more embarrassment (she cares what other people think too much even if they don’t care). I don’t think she would take it well at all if one of her children was gay. I think my mom is warped and at this age, would not feel terrible if my mom said she disowned me, but I used to care what she thinks too much.
When you’re raised by a parent or in a family who cares what people think too much about their quality as parents or their status, I think that’s part of the problem, because you tend to have inherited that mindset and care what they think, avoid their disapproval as much as possible and live a painful life. The alternative is to live free but without parents, and a lot of people seem to rather have dysfunctional parents than no parents. Give it a few years to mellow out, and a lot of parents come around to accept it also. Maybe the daughter in this story thought that might happen if she asserted and lived her own life, that a Muslim father exposed to US culture who had allowed her some freedom to be a normal American teenage girl would seem to be the type to eventually get over it if she didn’t back down.
Very interesting read. Thx for posting it.
If he’d done that here in Texas he’d get death by lethal injection. He’d deserve it, too. (I normally abhor the death penalty, but in this case…)
There should be a difference between murder and murder of your own immediate family.
Even if you think murder doesn’t warrant a death penalty (I think it does), killing your immediate family definitely warrants the death penalty.
I agree – he should have been in Texas.
A killer deserves to be killed? Just how ironic is that? It’s less of a crime because it is the “society” who choosed the punishment?
What if the society was the responsible -to some extent- of the education and living conditions of the killer? What if their family didn’t do their work and the society should have put an end before? What if we are speaking about a mental disorder? Can any person who is mentally fit kill someone withouth a reason?
What about sending thousand of people to kill and get killed for economic reasons, that’s not a worst crime?
No, just stopped, and death is cheaper. Murderers, rapists and the like tend to make a habit of such actions and then more and more people are hurt. If my country had the death penalty, I imagine people might behave a bit better. Mental illness, sure, but “insanity” is a plea I hear of far too often.
What if this guy does it again? Does he have more kids? His death may not make anyone feel better or change anything back, but it might help others rest easier.
I know this is incredibly “uncivilized”, but being civil doesn’t seem to be the choice of this world.
In Utah, this week, a bear that had been attacking humans was put down. There’s no huge moral outcry about putting down violent animals that pose a danger to the rest of us human animals. We put down aggressive dogs and animals infected with rabies and other diseases. No moral outcry.
This man is an animal, and he should be put down. Just because the disease he suffers from is the result of religious indoctrination doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
This type of behavior probably arose from the evolutionary advantage of ostracizing, which is a way for social species to weed out those psychological or physiological traits that are not conducive to group survival. Religion and nationalism are just other forms of this, whereby the group – and ones place in it – supersedes any concept of other. But evolution is amoral. Humans do not have to be. We have evolved the capacity to throw off instinct when it does not recognize that the intrinsic importance and rights of the individual must be balanced against the needs of the group.
That many in this world do not exercise this capacity is heartbreaking. It is especially sad in this case, considering there was a viable option available to this father and daughter, one which they had already experienced: relocation to America or some other country where ostracizing, if not absent, is greatly restricted in severity.
Of course, there are plenty of places and circumstances where relocation is not an option, such as Maldives, where being Muslim is compulsory. Recently, a openly atheist Maldivian, unable to receive political asylum elsewhere, apparently committed suicide. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south+asia-10644685
I think you’re attributing evolutionary principles where they don’t apply. Killing your own family members doesn’t benefit the human species overall – or your own family, for that matter – in any evolutionary sense.
Rather, honor killings are a byproduct of a patriarchal culture and religion where social standing is very important, to the point where it to some becomes so essential that they will perform or condone such a vile act. Honor killings are a product of society, not nature.
It doesn’t make sense evolutionarily (to me) to kill women at all for dishonor or any other superficial social reason. More women means more offspring. Given how abundant and renewable sperm is, and how long gestation takes and infant mortality in time before medicine, it makes more sense to consider men expendable (which I guess is why men get to go to war and other dangerous pursuits, and women have traditionally been kept from doing so). As a deterrent to behaving with dishonor, it’s likelier to spare most of the women but also keep them in their place.
Bateman’s Principle comes to ming. A long with women, for the reasons you stated, being less expendable than men, it seems that men are meant to take those more dangerous, and even more aggressive, roles simply because they are taxed less in the amount of energy put towards reproduction.
I see no reason whatsoever to bring gender issues into this discussion. Honor killings happen to men as well. For instance, a friend of mine was granted asylum in the U.S. because his homosexuality would have resulted in an honor killing had he returned home to Turkey.
And society is a product of nature. If it were not, it wouldn’t exist. It is also an evolutionary byproduct, i.e. it arose from and within a biological system. Evolution may not have the final word on the matter, but to deny that is has any say whatsoever is a dangerous notion.
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I think you should check your math. During 2002 alone, in the Sindh region of Pakistan, 245 women and 137 men were killed for adultery-based honor killings. That’s roughly 64% women – slightly skewed, certainly, but not 99.99999blahblahblah percent.
Women have different rules than men, that’s why. I’m starting to see the picture here. Not that it makes it ok.
Yeah, well, in Britain, where I actually give a shit, I haven’t heard of any male “honour killings” (can we find a better name than that? Hate it) but I’ve read about a lot of female ones. Sorry, but Muslims in theocracies choose to live in the fucking stone age, and that’s their problem.
Evolutionary principles always apply in every instance. Every possible system and its subsequent byproducts are, by definition, part of the environment that drives evolution. Evolution isn’t about benefit of a species, but about reproduction of a gene. And while killing your family members – or anyone – is certainly wrong, so long as the quantity of the gene or genes that lend toward this behavior remains roughly static or increases in subsequent generations, then it cannot be said to be a harmful gene. It is beneficial or, at the very least, neutral and invisible to natural selection.
I’ll give you a simple example: If the man’s other offspring are less likely to behave the way that she did, then his genes are more likely to be reproduced, because he won’t be tempted to kill them. Furthermore, if he was not the one to kill his daughter, the society that pressed him to do it might have done it for him – and they might not have stopped with her. Genocide arises from a similar impetus.
Please understand, I am not in any way condoning this behavior. It turns my stomach just as much as it turns yours. I’m just pointing out this is an evolutionary byproduct. Fortunately, freewill and morality are also evolutionary byproducts. While evolution is amoral, we do not have to be. However, in order to correct this behavior and, hopefully, eradicate it from our species, it is necessary to understand its true cause. While we hack at the branches, we must not forget to pull up the root.
Why would he be evolutionarily tempted to kill any of them? How is genocide productive for evolution? You make no sense, you seem to be working backward from the problem. I mean, how are the arbitrary rules of society to a benefit that would require killing primarily women for breaking them for the survival of most of them?
I will take a stab at my own question for you! Society needs rules to operate. Someone likes things their way, and so it is, everyone knows what to expect. It must have been difficult to imprison people for upsetting the order, costing resources in labor, dwellings and guards. Easier to just kill them to keep order, or enslave them if you can. It’s like a bug in your house is easier to squish than containing it and setting it free outdoors.
Then why is there patriarchy? To protect women from other men, to own their wombs for their own offspring, another valuable resource. I am getting it now. Patriarchy at its root keeps women from meddling in danger and getting themselves killed, and holding their uteruses hostage. If they misbehave, of course… kill them and teach the others a lesson.
Yeah, we’re not getting too much more sensible to catch up with the times.
“renewable sperm” If I did have a self asteem problem before….
and. This delusional “father” (biologically) needs to be punished here and now, and made an example…’cause it won’t happened later from any sky fairy.
“…and made an example…”
I think something of that may have gone through his head as well.
I do not condone the killing of a child or what he did but I do take issue with equating narcissism and honor culture.
I live in Japan and there is an honor culture here but not like the extreme one in the Middle East. If my neighbors teen stole something/got in big trouble the majority of the area/neighborhood would shun and reject the family. I’ve seen some local shops refuse service to families who had a teen or older family member get caught stealing. So it’s not just the silly gossip but it means being socially rejected and making life difficult for your family. In some cases it can even affect the parents employment status. So the family may move out of the neighborhood as result.
I know in the USA things are different culturally but I see no reason to lump all honor cultures together.
But the problem you just described in Japan is the same: the idea that children are an extension of their parents. This type of “honor” is really a form control, either of the society over the individual or the parents over the child. It’s a devaluing of the individual, turning a person into an object, into property. If the piece of property misbehaves, it reflects badly on the property owner.
You would be correct IF it only applied to children. Yet the parents can be “awful” and it will reflect on the children. Your spouse’s (wife OR husband) actions reflects upon you as well.
As far as society having a form of control I have no problem with this. If I was against it I would not be living here in Japan. Japan has a “we” mindset and individualism (me, me, me mindset) is discouraged. Ask most Japanese if they feel “devalued” because of the cultural norms here and I doubt the answer will be “yes”.