Posted on 10/06/2005 5:29:18 PM PDT by wagglebee
No I’m not a apologist for sharia, although it might have been a civilizing thing for those people when it was first brought in – back all those centuries ago – but in our time it has some very retrograde features, most notably the death penalty for apostacy.
What I was pointing out in this post, is that this case is not what it appears to be. It is neither about sharia, nor what we would normally consider an honour killing. It looks like an act of revenge, to me. And there laws of human behaviour much older than sharia, or our legal systems, which determine that a man who seduces another man’s daughter and leaves her unmarried and pregnant, is putting his life at risk. This is deplorable – but that’s the way it is. In England, right up until the mid-19th century, a man could be killed in a duel for doing that, and killing the seducer of your sister or daughter was not considered murder. In countries like Portugal or Cyprus, to this day, a court would take a very lenient view of such a case – and these are Christians.
And Tax-chick is right - such codes were a part of US culture, in the south, until relatively recently. Someone wrote a book about it - call "death and honor" or something like that - about men offing each other for "crimes" of unallowed sexual relationships. The juries could never get around to convicting them.
It may be that I am maligning this Iranian student, and he did intend to marry his girlfriend, in the future. But by leaving her to go home, unwed and pregnant, he was putting her in a very difficult situation. Of course, we might all be maligning the accused (they have pleaded innocent) maybe they are not guilty of this murder – but it looks like they are.
One thing I will say, is that I am absolutely against this plague of illegitimate children, being raised by single mothers with successions of boyfriends. It is social experiment of the worst kind. It is a plague, it is a disaster, and if it keeps on, it will destroy our society.
Excellent summary, and very much what I understood you to mean from the start.
My point (to the extent I had one other than humor), is that a murder based on an unmarried daughter's pregnancy is not unique to Islamic cultures or to Sharia law. This is how the Hatfield-McCoy fued started. It's not as easy as "marry the girl" when the father is associated with enemies of the family.
It's really unfathomable for us how they can be that way.
All cultures are equal, yeah sure. BTW, you've got a great tag-line!
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