Honor Killings

I read this in the TIME magazine we just from July 26th because they somehow didn't mail us this one, and it's about how honor killings have gone up in Iraq. For those of you who have no idea what an honor killing is, they are when men in particular kill "sisters, wive, daughters or mothers whom they suspect of straying from traditional rules of chastity and fidelity."

When U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein 15 months ago, the Bush Administration proclaimed that women's rights would be a centerpiece of its project to make Iraq a democratic model for the rest of the Arab world. But for many Iraqi women, the tyranny of Saddam's regime has been replaced by chronic violence and growing religious conservatism that have stifled their hopes for wider freedoms -- and, for many, put their lives in even greater peril. ... the most terrifying development has been the rash of honor killings committed by Iraqi men against sisters, wives, daughters or mothers whom they suspect of straying from traditional rules of chastity and fidelity. Although such killings are hard to quantify and occured during Saddam's regime as well, Iraqi professionals believe that women are now being murdered by their kin at an unprecedented rate.
....
The rise in honor killings comes amid ongoing violence, including four car bombs last week that killed at least 28 Iraqis. The instability that has plagued Iraq since the war's end 15 months ago has curtailed the spread of liberties that U.S. officials once promised would have taken root by now. Violent crime remains rampant. And while interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi last week vowed to "annihilate" the armed insurgents, few Iraqis expect relief from the dangers that have become part of daily life.

Women are at the greatest risk. Many have become virtual prisoners inside their houses, seeking a safe haven amid rising rates of rape, kidnapping and carjacking. At the same time, as the power of Iraq's Muslim clerics has grown, the everyday freedoms that Iraqi women enjoyed under Saddam's secular Baathist regime have eroded. Women who once felt free to dress in Western clothing and shop alone now must wear a hijab, the traditional Muslim head scarf, when venturing outside. Many government offices require female employees to wear a veil at work. "Since the war, women feel they cannot go anywhere without it," says Jacqueline Zia, 30, who runs a hair salon in Baghdad.
...
The deadliest threats often come from their own familities. Reliable statistics on honor killings are nonexistent; as in other countries in the Middle East where the tradition is tolerated, such as Egypt and Morocco, honor killings are largely treated as private family matters in Iraq. In conservative tribal communities, women who have an extramarital affair are sometimes murdered by family members seeking to avoid the shame and social isolation that the clan is subject to if one of its female members has sex outside marriage. Under Saddam's laws, which are still in place, men convicted of honor killings can receive up to three years in jail. But because the crime is rarely reported, few are actually prosecuted. And since there is widespread sympathy for the killers among police and judges, those who are convicted rarely serve more than a few months.
...
Last November, Qadisiyah Misad, 16, ran away from her family's home on the outskirts of Baghdad. Within days, one of her brothers and a cousin tracked her down on a city street and hauled her back home. According to Essam Wafik al-Jadr, the judge who prosecuted the case, one of Misad's brothers cornered his teenage sister in the living room; he then drew a pistol and shot several bullets into her. "The parents requested that the brothers kill her," says al-Jadr
...
Last September, Ali Jasib Mushiji, 17, shot his mother and half brother because he suspected them of having an affair and killed his 4-year-old sister because he thought she was their child. Sitting in a jail cell in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, he says he wiped out his family to cleanse its shame. He had thought about killing his mother for some time but says it wasn't until the fall of Saddam that he was able to buy a Kalashnikov and carry it out. "With the security before, it wasn't possible," he says.

TIME Magazine, July 26th issue, pgs 42-45

Don't forget this, either: If a girl is raped there, the family still kills her even though she couldn't stop it!

There'd be a genocide here of "honor killings" if our people were that psycho about reaction to breaking of "morals" and such in such a magnitude that it would probably make the massacre in Sudan PALE IN COMPARISSON!

Is that reasoning to kill people any better than the reasoning Hitler and his minions had when they decided to exterminate the Jews?

Like money, killers make the world go round. We human beings kill people out of revenge, out of blind rage, out of ignorance, out of arrogance, on accident, for the fun of it, in defense, or in "defense", etc.

But, in the case of killers you sometimes have to fight Fire with Fire, if you're being invaded by murderers (or a sovereign government's army, depends on how you'd phrase it), you have to kill them or be killed yourself in some cases (such as against the Nazis), which means that they have to be trained to kill in the event that something like that occurs, which also means that therefore some of the more sociopathic people will be added to their ranks because they'd be effective and unwavering killers in such an event.

But those honor killings are just really fucked up. Seriously, how can you legislate love (obviously this is about the cases that don't involve rape) and kill them because of a minor technicality. If marriage is so fucking sacred, then how come so many people get divorces and marry multiple times?

And where is the help for these women? These civilians being slaughter not by the insurgents or the terroritst, but by their own LOVED ONES? Heh, it's like asking where's the help for the Darfur region of Sudan, it's nonexistent. They don't matter in the grand scheme of things, especially for the powers that first took this war there. And don't give me that crap about how we're on the offensive in Iraq. If we're on the offensive, howcome all we do is come under attack, and never go out there and take down the enemies if our cause is so righteous, if our commitment is so unwavering (if you can't tell, that's a rhetorical question)?