Another Heartwarmer

[HDPM]

Facetious title warning. How many things are wrong with this story? web page (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=757&e=7&u=/nm/20020909/od_nm/beheading_dc)

Uh, let's see. A guy thinks his 7 year old daughter was raped. Oh, Ok, go kill the guy who molested her. No, kill the girl because she "disgraced" the family name or whatever. And then the government in your whacked out country gives your defense enough credence to see if the girl is "still a virgin" in the autopsy. Even though such examinations don't always prove a whole lot. So since she is "still a virgin", well you maybe made a mistake chopping off her head. So to all the relativists, no, I do not think every "lifestyle choice" or "cultural tradition" or religious belief is worthy of respect or dignity. This one shocks me, and I've seen a lot of cases where unspeakable stuff was done to kids.

[tsherif]

Um... what "lifestyle choice" or "cultural tradition" or religious belief does this represent? He's under arrest. His neighbors want him dead. This is one man and his heinous crime. Why imply anything else?

[andyfox]

There is a poster here on 2+2 who would, I think, defend the man's action, claiming that it would be wrong for we internet users 10,000 miles away to insist that our standards of morality should be imposed on a society that has worked for thousands of years.

Unbelievable.

[tsherif]

What does this have to do with society? The society wants him hanged. Inferring anything about the culture based on this one man is like trying to infer anything about American society based on Jeffrey Dahmer.

[MMMMMM]

I wish I could find the sources now (tried for 1/2 hour no luck), but in the last few weeks I read other simlar although less extreme accounts. So while this one man stepped over even many of his compatriots' lines, what many in his culture approve of is not as far away from this as it might seem. For instance it is common to blame the woman for being raped in Islamic countries--far more common than in the West. Also in a certain Islamic country (I forget right now precisely which one), a woman must have 4 male witnesses if she wishes to successfully prosecute rape charges against a man. Failing this, she opens herself to charges of adultery by bringing the case to court--and she can be faced with dire and horrible penalties if convicted of adultery.

Islamic culture in much of the Islamic world (less so in Egypt) is simply anachronous--backward ideas in conflict with the modern world. Well, the collision course is increasing. The Islamic world had better wake up and adapt, or else get crushed as many of their elements insist on confronting the West through violent means. It's already happening and it's going to accelerate unless something unforeseen develops, and it's quite sad, because the Islamic world has a rich tradition of art and literature. However if they themselves cannot contain their militants, the West will be forced to do it--an ugly scenario for the world, and worst of all for the Islamic world.

I read recently that more students graduate college in Saudi Arabia with degrees in theology than in any other subject. Now that's not going to prepare them for the world, and if Wahhabism is any indication, it's just going to make things worse.

I see the Islamic world on a headlong collision course with the modern world, and it is a battle they can only lose and suffer greatly for. And so much of it is due to archaic ideology. In fact, their lack of democratic-style government greatly hampers their ability to prosper and compete in international business--their primary saving financial grace is oil which they essentially lucked into. Unless and until the Islamic world modernizes--which means ideologically as well as technologically--they will be doomed to second-class status in the world and this will feed the "Islamic rage" of their youth. Well...if they won't modernize on their own, and they insist on attacking us, I'm afraid they will eventually be occupied and modernized by force by those they hate and attack. So sad, so unnecessary, but probably unavoidable.

Andy,

That poster, unfortunately, isn't the exception. A few years ago, I gave students a reading and writing assignment in which we looked at and responded to Alice Walker's article on Female Genital Mutilation; I was shocked to find many students defending the practice based on very obscure notions of cultural difference. Fortunately, one student spoke out rather forcefully against this practice. He was from Ghana, and he had witnessed the effects of this barbarism first hand. To their credit, those students who had argued for a particular culture's right to maintain these sorts of practices, listened to his argument intently. I'm not sure, however, if they would have listened just as carefully an African woman. They sure as hell didn't listen to Alice Walker.

John

[tsherif]

"Well...if they won't modernize on their own, and they insist on attacking us, I'm afraid they will eventually be occupied and modernized by force by those they hate and attack."

Hmmm...change "modernize" to "convert to Islam" and you have...OsaMMMMMMa Bin Laden! Seriously though, it's scary how the same arguments you're making are being used by extremists to justify attacks like 9/11. What does that make you?

[MMMMMM]

MMMMMM: "Well...if they won't modernize on their own, and they insist on attacking us, I'm afraid they will eventually be occupied and modernized by force by those they hate and attack."

tsherif: "Hmmm...change "modernize" to "convert to Islam" and you have...OsaMMMMMMa Bin Laden! Seriously though, it's scary how the same arguments you're making are being used by extremists to justify attacks like 9/11. What does that make you?"

MMMMMM: Please try to be a little more precise in your interpretations. Note "...AND they insist on attacking us." That is quite different than bin Laden's stance, which is to attack and kill Americans everywhere until the last infidel leaves Saudi Arabian lands (he's upset at 4500 soldiers stationed in a remote corner of the Saudi desert, who are doing NOTHING aggressive whatsoever to the Saudis, and who incidentally saved their butts from Saddam a decade ago). What I'm prognosticating as being likely to occur probably hinges upon the degree to which radical Islam continues to attack us (although they've gone too far already, so there will be repercussions yet from their attacks).

Also, I didn't say that they should necessarily be occupied and modernized by force, as you misleadingly imply...I just said that "I'm afraid" that that would happen (and if it does, it probably would have been averted in the absence of their aggressive behaviors). So your implication about me is quite off base. A little more critical thinking, a little less emotion, are generally good things to bring to discussions like this;-)

[HDPM]

To tsherif: M beat me to some of this with his reference to his prior post about the application of Islamic law in various places. I had that type of thing in mind as background when I read the article I posted. But more importantly, the article I cited does not "imply" negative cultural problems, it specifies them.

The short article specifically mentions that many rapes in Iran go unreported because the people there take it as a taint on the family. This is an idiotic, barbaric, tribalist-collectivist belief. I won't go into great detail about all the ways this belief is awful, but it is on many different levels. Variations of this belief exist many places but are falling out of favor for good reason.

The article then talks about the state of the death penalty for this crime in Iran. The death sentence procedure is obviously based on Islamic legal tradition in that the father of the victim has the final say about whether his daughters murderer gets death. This tradition is not as bad as the rape belief, at least at first glance. I don't want to get into a discussion of the death penalty in general now, but just want to point out one thing that is legally and morally ridiculous about the death penalty in Iran. If you have a death penalty you must at least try to give it to people in some rational way. When you have a system that allows the victim's father to decide life or death, you need the OBVIOUS exception that the killer of his own kid does not get to benefit from his own decision in regard to the death penalty. This exception would exist anywhere that people even attempt to have a rational legal system. The death penalty is not always so rational, but at least in other places that have the death penalty the killer does not get to let himself of the hook in the most heinous crimes. So here again the culture/tradition/religion leads to a moronic and crazy law.

And as I said in the main post, the fact that it was very important to figure out if the girl was a "virgin"
(the article should have said whether there was evidence of sexual abuse-not whether this 7 year old was a virgin, a word that implies a choice in sexual conduct which a 7 year old obviously does not have, especially w/ an uncle)is shocking as well. If they were looking for evidence of molestation to prosecute the uncle, fine. But they don't appear to be doing that, rather they are seeing if dad has a good defense to the beheading.
So I really didn't "infer" anything from the article, I was hit over the head by the cultural and traditional problems there. You are right though that the murderer is a real POS. I would also lay odds the uncle is a molester too, despite the flimsy evidence that implies otherwise from the postmortem. Think of that girl's likely last days. Something happened with uncle to give rise to the rape accusation that was believable enough to the guy's own brother that he killed the daughter. So the girl prolly got sodomized or otherwise molested by uncle and tried to tell someone. Then her own father beheads her. Nice last moment of life for a 7 year old, eh. Having dad kill you for something that wasn't your fault or maybe didn't happen. What a horrible death. And all those great cultural traditions played a role. I may do some research on Iranian law and its Islamic law requirements. I have not done that, so I might be wrong on something. but if i find I am wrong i will post something about it. If I find more disgusting stuff in their law, I will post that too.

[MMMMMM]

If you're actually going to research the general subject, my guess is that you will find no shortage of barbaric, disgusting, unfair laws in Iran and in most or all of the other Islamic countries. While "barbaric" and "disgusting" are terms subject to custom and interpretation to a significant degree, "unfair" is much less so.

There can be no argument, even by those in the country in which this occurred, that such laws are unfair to 7-year-old girls.

[HDPM]

Unfair is more open to interpretation. We were nearly forbidden to use the word "unfair" by one professor in law school. He had drawn out, graphic and scatological explanation for what fairness meant. I have avoided the word since. /forums/images/icons/smirk.gif

[MMMMMM]

I'm afraid I don't see why that should be. For instance, it may be arguable as to whether certain punishments are barbaric, and this may depend much upon culture (the death penalty is often arguably considered "barbaric", yet there are some who consider corporal punishment in schools "barbaric.") However punishing a sister for her brother's crimes is obviously and unarguably unfair. The case where a Muslim tribal jury sentenced a woman to be raped because her brother had commited sex with a woman from a higher caste was both barbaric and unfair. Yet if the punishment had been far milder--say a small fine--it would have not been barbaric but it still certainly would have been unfair to the woman to be punished for her brother's transgressions.