if they had just stuck to killing men no one here would have any objections then?

Now if we could just figure out how to keep Iranian men from treating their women worse than the "Butcher of Baghdad". Maybe a secular dictatership wan't such a bad thing after all.

Thanks for the link. I think.

So much for the idea that a scarcity of women would make them somehow precious, eh?

Another village proud of a double honor killing:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUKNOA63974220080516

I'm not sure how tied the Caste system is to Hinduism, but it is interesting to note that religion isn't touted as the primary justification, but the good of the society.

And again, this can't be written off as the actions of some extremist kooks. The whole village supports the crime, and no one is likely to be prosecuted. I'm not sure what can be done to change this.

Let's fight the real enemy.

Okay, maybe I'm wrong about this, which is why I'd like someone to explain it.

How exactly are these organizations we're supposed to contribute to going to make a lick of difference? What exactly do they DO? Raising awareness among liberals doesn't really accomplish anything. The only thing I can see that would accomplish anything is if the Archangel Gabriel personally got off his ass and went down there and beat the crap out of these guys until they rethought the whole "I'm bigger than you therefore my word is law" thing.

@Creepo, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that there was anything good from this situation, or that understanding these men will lead alleviate our horror. As @beball suggested, I was just pointing out that we're looking at an intersection of religion, state, and culture. This is why the WLUML group is so important--they point out the context so outsiders don't just dive in and start cracking heads (as beball so aptly put it). There's no such thing as "purely religious" law based on a single text: people always interpret the holy text in ways that fit into their existing mindset. And as other commenters indicated, honor killings aren't just a Muslim thing. Medieval Spanish law within Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities would have suggested similar responses (yep, I'm a medieval historian).

Some cultural practices need to be stamped out, eliminated, burned away, and the ground they grew on salted and shunned.

This case raises anew the question: just what the hell is "victory" in Iraq going to look like, Mr. President?

All of you people praying for this piece of shit who murdered his daughter. Stop. Just stop.

I consider myself a liberal and I even believe in freedom of religion. I'm also an atheist. So I look on in bemused detachment when I see people bending over backwards to excuse religion when something like this is done by people who use religion to justify their actions.

What exactly is so hard to understand about the connection between the guy's religion and his actions in this case? Judging by his comments about his poor daughter, it's difficult to conceive he would've done this had he not been a devout Muslim. Al-Qaeda similarly justifies it.s own actions -- especially against civilian Shia like Rand. It's God's will. Say what you will about fundamentalist terrorists, but they are never shy about proclaiming their motivations. It's the

Cultural differences don't account for it, either. That's like saying the Nazi regeme could've succeeded peacefully if it had just been implemented under a different culture.

And no, the guy is not just a "kook". Certainly not every Iraqi would act as Rand did, but not every Iraqi will condemn it either. It doesn't mean that Islam caused the guy to murder his daughter; it does say that he justified his daughter's murder with Islam, and his family and community apparently agree. To put it another way, Islam as interpreted by Rand and his family justifies the murder of his daughter and exile of his wife.

I suppose you could say that Islam cannot be interpreted this way, but that is solipsism because clearly some people DO interpret it that way. In religion, subjective interpretation is all there is.

Some things can be neither justified, nor explained away by saying "it's just a different culture, it's not the religion's fault". I emphatically disagree with that idea, because for all its flaws and mistakes, the secular, liberal democratic promise of the West is the only ideal that can justify equal rights for all -- freedom of speech, association, religion, freedom from oppression.

This is not a justification for the war in Iraq, but precisely the opposite. Installing a secular, democratic government was never a very realistic goal in Iraq in the first place. The liberal ideals and moral authority of the West (if they ever existed) are dying on the streets of Iraq. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I certainly am not singling out Islam for its propensity to violence. Christianity has its own ugly history of glorifying needless, stupid violence. Violence is how religion has managed to hang around so long, after all. I just wish the religious extremists would all annihilate each other and leave the rest of us who have no interest in such a contest out of it.

This horrible incident at least lays bare the fact that religion has less to do with worshiping an Invisible Man In The Sky, and more to do with superstition, ignorance, greed, barbaric notions of honor and above all control. Religion is a lie.

Shemina Hirji - popular school principal killed in a 'home invasion'. Husband suffered only minor injuries. Sikh community calls it an honour killing.

Amandeep Atwal (17 years old) - stabbed four times by her father for dating a white boy. Interestingly, her brother had dated several white girls wihtout invoking any familial ire.

Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu - 25 year old killed by her parents, who took out a contract on her after she married a poor rickshaw driver. She was murdered in India, and Canada has neither extradicted nor charged her family.

Aqsa Parvez (16 years old)- strangled to death by her father (with the aid of her older brother) for, among other things, refusing to wear a hijab.

And that's just since 2000. Oh, and for the record, with the exception of Aqsa, the murderers were Sikh, not Muslim. In every case, even the contract killing, the murder was as brutal as possible, involving punching, stabbing, stomping, and strangling. In many cases siblings, uncles, and other family members helped with planning/getting the victim to the murderer.