Letters to the Editor
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Christ, fetboy
A therapist woud have been a good start!
"How should the father who honor killed his daughter have better dealt with the great sense of betrayal he felt?"
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To Topha
Please read my point carefully, if a woman chooses, I repeat: chooses. If she is free to make the choice and only then, it is her choice. The issue is that the state and the family forces in the current Moslem nations. It is a lie that it is in the name of religion, it's in the name of tyranny. Then it is not a religious/human rights choice. The question is how many places now are people afforded a true religious choice?
The tyranny is when the individual does not make a true choice. If you offer freedom and then tell the person, you chose your religion but now I will not let you wear the hijab, that is as well tyranny as well. Many westerners have transferred the tyranny of the state into the hijab. The hijab is not the tyranny, the state and the father are.
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Where would YOU rather live?
I've always found the Israel-hating of the American left to be completely hypocritical.
Where would YOU rather live -- in a democracy, where women and gays are accorded equal rights, and where there is a free press (= Israel) or a misogynistic country where openly gay people are murdered without a thought, and where the press is rigidly monitored (= any Islamic country)? It's beyond ridiculous that Israel has to defend herself against charges of being an "apartheid state" (thanks, Jimmy C., you sure showed the world what an asshole you are with your book title) or against building a discriminatory "wall". What would YOU do, if you were being bombed and shelled by the state next door? Pull-eeze, get real here!
Israel will always prevail, and thank God for that!
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fetboy, isn't there a difference?
Is there no difference at all between the kind of father who kills his daughter when she violates cultural norms, and the kind of father who, say, has a stern conversation with her, or even kicks her out of the house? Surely murder is worse?
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where did 18wishes come from...
and why is he talking about a totally unrelated topic?
18wishes, this is not the Bash-Islam-Blindly forum, okay?
If you have anything relevant to say about the issue at hand, please share. If not, save it for some other time.
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@ Tim Behrend
Values are social constructs. The only thing that makes them "universal" is power. -- Tim Behrend
Just like the doyen of deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida, found in Czechoslovakia once, I'd place a steep bet that your moral reltavism would vanish in a heartbeat if you were being subject to mental, legal or physical abuse by non-Western diversity.
It is so easy is it not to rail against 'the evils of Western hegemony' when that same power allows and protects all the basic rights and freedoms you exercise every day?
Ensconsed in New Zealand it must also very easy for you ignore the fact that Islam has an unbroken history of hegemonic actions, with absolutely no internal doctrinal checks on its ambition.
Your deconstructionist methodology serves in the end only to deflect Islam's own essentialist nature. The variety you speak of is a meaningless variation on a theme, namely that Allah prescribes different moral obligations for women than men, that Qur'an is a revelation intended for all humanity, that violence in the name of god is permitted, etc.
And no I am no longer interested in debating Muslim women. When I used to make the effort all I got answers so hackneyed that I could have prescripted them. Like Renegade Iconoclast noted most arguments with believers generate into knee-jerk statements of faith. As Thomas Paine said:
"To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead."
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18Wishes is right
Chop off some girls head OVER THERE and it's maybe 60 seconds of hand wringing. Chop her head off over here and it's 5 minutes of evil America made me do it. Hopefully though before it all turns to shit, we'll be able to take a people safari over there, sample the interesting culture and take some pictures. But if you want to stop them from chopping heads off over here, I guess it's the same criminal problem as any other murder though and one need not explore, twist, agonize, excuse or play amateur anthropologist.
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To Anonymous December 16, 2007 02:44 PM
In the father's mind, he could not live with his daughter's betrayal of everything he believed in. In his mind he saw the sacrifice of his daughter as less harsh than the effective suicide of his heritage, history, culture, beliefs, morals, values, traditions, customs and religion.
To Juliebird
Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe there is a therapy designed to help a parent cope with their child's most devastating betrayal. For a lot of people (most people actually) their ethnic identity is their most valuable asset, if it wasn't, we wouldn't have so much ethnic strife, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in the world (all of which America itself is guilty of at one time or another in our history). And a lot people (most people in the world actually) would rather kill than see their ethnicity fade away.
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where's my salon?
I know this isn't really your beat, but where is my Salon this week? The last time I got one was December 8. I contacted Salon but nothing happened. Thanks for any help you can give!
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@Scullerymaid
"A religious believer has by their very act of belief precluded meaningful, disinterested self-analysis because they fundamentally cannot (or will not) criticize the belief itself." - me
"Concise, to the point, brilliant!" -- Renegade Iconoclast [To answer your question, I hate you for the sake of consistency as a misanthrope, but I love you for your outstanding posts.]
"But demonstrably false. Do you actually know anyone who is a member of a religious community? I don't mean Sunday churchgoes, but the community members themselves -- nuns, monks, priests, etc. Those are some of the most self-critical, thoughtful people around, and they are constantly analyzing their own beliefs and the nature of belief itself. Your stereotype is unfortunate, and downright insulting." --Kitchengirl
I have never been impressed by the writings of religious figures be it Meister Eckhart seven centuries back or Thich Nhat Hanh today. Tortured religious souls always end up in my experience defending the indefensible because their exercise of reason is limited as I said by faith and tradition. See 'thoughtful questioner of belief' Martin Luther's blood-thirsty response to socio-economic rebels in his day. 'Kill'em all' captures the subtlety of his thought.
Salonista favourite Karen Armstrong also comes to mind, where her 'thoughtful insights into faith' lead her to make grotesque apologetics for Mohammed's brutal massacre and enslavement of non-Muslim tribes in Arabia in her biography of him. Today we would call it ethnic cleansing, which ironically the predominantly-Muslim Palestinian people complain about, but when it is their prophet I guess all things are permitted, eh?
Generally "nuns, monks, priests, etc" are the footsoldiers of religious oppression, demanding conformity with shameless scare-mongering, ostracisation, carrying out indoctrination rituals, etc. Just look at all the arrogant imams in the Canadian Press trying to spin Aqsa Parvez's murder as a matter of culture or worse trying to tacitly make it her fault.