Heaven help you if you're a woman who belongs to the gang known as Islam.

"prevalent in certain segments" my ass. Like the small segment of a billion or so people. But it's just a "cultural difference". We must respect a muslim parent's "right" to enslave, assault, torture, and murder his own children.

What is the "Muslim Canadian Congress"? What kind of "reform" are you talking about Amy?

And no, this sort of thing is not a rare occurrence -- that is, except amongst Jews, Christians, and Buddhists.

Don't forget atheists, who also tend to frown on honor killing.

I blame Canada.

I blame cars, SUVs, and guns. Knives and blunt object too.

Islam the religion of.... Peace.

The peace of catlle in the chute to the abattoir

In Western countries, if your daughter moves out, your friends envy you, because their kids are almost thirty and haven't moved out yet. If she moves out and shacks up with some guy, and you belong to a religion or social group that frowns upon that, your friends pity you. They join you in throwing up their hands, shaking their heads, and asking, 'What can you do?' They might try to help you talk her out of it, or embarrass her out of it. But eventually, everyone reaches a point where they acknowledge that she is an adult and can do what she wants.

Maybe the Islamagoons are afraid of empty nest syndrome. They never seem to reach a point where they let the kid go. This girl was 23 for chrissake, not 13.

I don't mean to dismiss the violent aspect of this - the threats and so on. But American parents abuse their kids too, so you could always just say this is the equivalent, small subset of abusive parents from Muslim cultures.

This tendency to keep your foot on your kid's neck until well into adulthood, though - you don't see much of that in America. Even the parents get tired of it after a while - they want to go buy a Winnebago and retire.

I lived with a boyfriend once - I had been living on my own for quite a few years, and this would have been when I was about 30. My mother was horrified, and went so far as to tell me that she didn't know if she could continue to have a relationship with me if I was going to keep living an "immoral lifestyle." I said be my guest, and for an entire month, I was blissfully free of her annoying phone calls. I don't think my dad could have cared less one way or the other what I did. But none of that lasted. She got over it.

"How can some Wahhabis be so violent? I believe it begins like this:

In some traditional and strict tribes, the Saudi child is forbidden creative play. The lack of use of imagination and the constant reinforcement of hateful propaganda leads to training the mind in linear thought, including encouragement of martyrdom as a viable “career choice”."

Good old Google. I looked up Wahhabism, then Sharia law and Wahhabism, then Wahhabi extremism inside Saudi, and found the paragraph I pasted above.

(Amy, if you have already blogged about M.D. Kavanwal, I missed it.)

Anyway. That paragraph was sort of an eye opener for me. Lack of imagination. That's a brick wall to me. I can't imagine a lack of imagination. Seriously. Try it. See if it doesn't lock your fingers on the keyboard as you stare into space.

You have to take what you can get. See the first paragraph:

"Madam Justice Lynn Ratushny of the Ontario Supreme Court...identified his deed for what it was: a crime of honur, committed in the name of a seriously dangerous belief system"

Any time a judge or elected leader states explicitly that a Muslim has committed a crime because of his dangerous belief system, that is a small victory for sanity & Western civilization. The vast majority of politicians & officials can't bring themselves to admit this, even after a Muslim slaughters a room full of innocent people while shouting "Allah Akbar!".

And Pirate Jo, it's not empty nest syndrome. The victims of honor killings are often young girls who've barely reached puberty & have no intention of running off with a man. And sometimes women are murdered years after they've left home with their parent's consent, when some mullah declares they've done something shameful. They're tortured & killed because Islam commands they must be, to preserve some goatfucker's precious honor.

Well, as atheist writer Sam Harris would say, you certainly can't blame "honor killings" on any non-Muslim country's foreign policy......

To Pirate Jo:

"In Western countries, if your daughter moves out, your friends envy you, because their kids are almost thirty and haven't moved out yet."

(snip)

"This tendency to keep your foot on your kid's neck until well into adulthood, though - you don't see much of that in America."

Why can't parents just say to their kids: "Move out or I'll charge you more rent than you could pay elsewhere." It's ridiculous. If parents were strict, but in a way that encourages kids to learn independence and then leave, maybe they would.

This so-called "Honor" behavior was around before Mohammed was born. This means it has a cultural origin not religious. Many Muslim have adopted this barbarism into their religion. In other places, people adopted Islam without adopting honor atrocities.

This attitude was wide-spread in the ancient world including Europe and the church helped to end it. BTW, the Bible has disgusting honor behavior such as offering a concubine to be raped and then chopping her up into 12 pieces the next. (Judges)

If you want to learn more about different cultures' view of honor, I suggest reading Honor: A History by James Bowman. It is also recommended by Sam Harris if that matters.

This so-called "Honor" behavior was around before Mohammed was born. This means it has a cultural origin not religious.

Its origin is not really relevant at this point. Right now, this kind of behavior is pretty much limited, at least in Western countries, to Muslims. Besides, they themselves seem to have incorporated it into their religion, so its origins are a moot point. What is not a moot point is that such people should have no place in a civilized society.

To Curtis: I'm not surprised that it predates Isalm.

What I should have said was something like: "One can't blame 'honor killings' on anything other than the unwillingness of Muslims to abolish a barbarity that predates Islam." Same goes for female genital mutilation (FGM), which has strong enough roots in tradition that even some Middle Eastern Jews and Christians practice it, though I'm guessing their religions cannot be said to support it.

(From what I've heard, it IS mentioned in the Koran, but not in a way that encourages it. In Fauziya Kassindja's book "Do They Hear You When You Cry," she tells of how when her loving, modern Muslim father suddenly died, her greedy relatives legally forced her mother to leave and tried to marry her off - at 17 - to a rich middle-aged stranger who would insist on her mutilation. With help, she fled the country and found her way to the U.S. - only to be imprisoned for 18 months before getting asylum. She is now 32, a U.S. citizen, married, and the mother of triplet sons. Also, in the book, she talks of her religious sex ed class as a teen in Togo. Quote: "The malam never spoke about (FGM). If it had been a requirement of the Islam faith, he would have told us as much. But he never even mentioned the word. He did talk about polygamy, though...." )

You single out Muslin honor killings and not Hindu or other cultures. Honor killings have more to do with a cultural mentality than a religious as evidenced by Christian honor killings in Palestine and Egypt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jun/23/israel
http://islam-west.com/2008/10/muslim-victim-of-christian-honour.html

By all means, belittle these patriarchal cultures that perpetrate these crimes, but it is unfair to say this violence is inherent in Islam

Offtopic—

There are other cultures where women don't seem to do so well...

In the fundamentalist branches, worse than pets, Amy... I mean, would any of you kill your dog because it licked your neighbor?

"I mean, would any of you kill your dog because it licked your neighbor?"

Floor is now open for "lonely people with peanut butter" jokes. Begin.

Or would you kill your dog for licking peanut butter off the floor?

(Actually, cleaning the floor is one of my dog's more useful purposes. If only she could get a job ...)

"This tendency to keep your foot on your kid's neck until well into adulthood, though - you don't see much of that in America. Even the parents get tired of it after a while - they want to go buy a Winnebago and retire." - Pirate Jo

Actually, you might be surprised if you scratch the surface a little. While that is probably true for most people, it is by no means true for all sections of society.

My mother has systematically set out to jeopardize and wreck every relationship my sister has ever had, and yet she blames my sister for a lack of grandchildren. When I was still a kid, she regularly went crazy and trashed the house because she didn't approve of the guy my sister was seeing.

I have no doubt that either my mother or my father would have had no qualms about doing away with any of their children if they thought it would be advantageous to them, and if there would be no legal repercussions or social disapproval attached to it.

I am not denying that these problems tend to be worse or more widespread in some cultures than in others. But you may be surprised at just how many pathological abusive individuals really exist, and this is not confined to any religion or other group.

Johnny P violence is inherent in Islam

It inherent in every religion, the only difference is 99.9% of chritians and jews and hindis are capable of magnificent feats of mental gymnastics that allow them to ignore the deplorable edicts of their various texts.

WHen it comes to muslims, those who dont commit acts of mass murder and mayhem dont speak out against it. The few who are brave enough to question and condemn are given a death sentance by their fellow followers of 'peace'

A religiously intolerant manners maven. Just what the world needs! Awesome!

I agree with Ana Ng, Amy

I mean seriously, the hypocrisy of someone like you who stresses treating people kindly criticizing someone for such paltry things as murder is just unconscionable.

Oh wait, maybe slaughtering someone over perceived slights and differences in the composition of the magic fairy they worship is not good manners.

What do you think Ana Ng? Is shooting unarmed civilians in the back, chopping people’s heads off, and murdering your daughters because they don’t follow ever order you give them like the slaves you wish them to be a good thing?

Is it good manners in your world to murder people because the god they believe in doesn’t have a beard and yours does? Or to kill the citizens of a country that have little say in the way their government runs?

Because that’s what you seem to be suggesting with your comment.

Of course maybe you are just a giant fucking moron who doesn’t bother to think things thru.

So which is it, are you the type of person who thinks murder is indicative of good manners or are you just an idiot?

And this is why sharia law can't become an acceptable alternative to the American system of justice, flawed as it may be. (I"m not crazy about Orthodox Jewish bets, either.) You live here, you accept the laws, you abide by them and if you break one, you get the punishment. No whining about your culture, your honor, your clan, etc.

And why the NRA doesn't offer weapons training for daughters of fundamentalist fathers is beyond me. If just one of these young women shot and maimed/killed her loving family members, I predict that honor killings would become less acceptable.

And Amy's not intolerant of religion, just the abuses practiced under the guise of following the Koran, the Torah, the New Testament, etc. Honor killings are cultural artifacts, not religious tenets.

A religiously intolerant manners maven.

I just noticed this idiotic comment. As though we should be tolerant of murder. What a fool.

BTW, I am religious, and don't agree with Amy's views on religion, but I don't consider her intolerant in the least.

Relegious tenets, indeed religions themselves are cultural artifacts as well.

Stop and think a moment suppose someone asked you to worship a scizophrenic rapist zombie who gave birth to himself.

On what level does any of that make sense?

But that is what christianity is. And angel appeared to Mary to inform her of her pregnancy, to to get her permission, but to tell her it was a done deal.

That is rape.

Jesus and god are apperntly the same person to many christians, most christian faiths are triniatrian in belief, but jesus doesnt grant forgivness, instead he askes a differnet aspect of himself to do it for him

That is multipule personality disorder

The he rises from the dead, but not fully healed, no he still has the woounds on his hands and feet and back and side

That is a zombie

In comparison the flying feathered snake worshiped by the myans sounds far more plausible

A religiously intolerant manners maven.

Yeah, everyone knows that we're supposed to tolerate honor killings, beheadings, and suicide bombings as long as they're motivated by religion. It's only when they're done out of some selfish reason, e.g. profit, revenge, bad hair day, etc., that it's permissible to condemn them. Get with it, people!