Last night I picked up the Washington Post. On the front cover was a 32 year old woman from Afghanistan. Her eyes had been gouged out; her nose and earlobes were gone.
Her husband admitted to tying her up and mutilating her, because he suspected her of having an extra-marital affair. After 16 months, he was finally brought to trial. Relatives and friends shook his cuffed hands as he walked to the courthouse. Chances are that despite the evidence against him, this man will not go to prison. Many judges even justify this kind of behavior.
She deserved it. He did what had to be done.
Makes me feel nauseated just writing it.
Apparently very few of these cases are even reported to the police--they are called "accidents" instead, even by the women who are the victims. Why? Because it doesn't happen? Of course not. Because they are afraid and there are few people they can turn to for help.
The couple is Muslim. Islam as a religion (if you look directly to the Koran) does not condone this sort of behavior. In fact, the Koran grants women basic equality to men. However, certain interpretative texts, written later, have effectively abolished these rights.
This is akin to using the teachings of Jesus to justify the Spanish Inquisition.
I ask you, in these circumstances, do you think it is morally wrong for people outside of Muslim fundamentalist culture to condemn these actions, when the judicial system of Aghanistan will not?
After I spent an hour in the bathtub with my hands over my eyes, I decided I had to condemn these "honor killings" and punishments at the risk of treading on someone else's cultural values with my lilly-white American toes, which have not been slashed off with a razor. I just couldn't stop at the individual level on this one.
I feel similarly about female circumsicion--particularly when it is performed on children.
Update: I did not mean to say that all Western cultural values are in any way superior to those of other cultures. I was speaking about a specific practice that I cannot help but judge. On the other hand, even though I am American, (yes, we too can have a sense of perspective) I recognize how consumer culture(and with it Western ideology and self-righteousness) has descended on the rest of the world. I think this imperialism is obscene and rather fascist.
On the other hand, it is not solely an American phenomenon, but one that is tied to the possession of international power. But that is a subject for another node...