Barbaric: woman stoned to death in Pakistan

[cesare]

There was a piece on either the 10pm or C4 news about child brides in Africa, this evening. The country they particularly identified was Niger.

 

[seventh bullet]

Interesting perspectives on this on World Service from Pakistani men and women. More than one blame wider society for these killings. The word 'impunity' was mentioned very forcefully by one contributor, who made the point that most honour killings take place in rural areas where they occur in the open, with the explicit permission of the local 'authorities', often after a tribunal has been held to establish the woman's 'guilt'. Women are simply considered the property of men. A woman marrying someone not of her family's choice is stealing herself from them in effect. This particular incident hit the headlines because it happened in Lahore, but such killings are a daily occurrence in Pakistan, and nobody is ever held to account.

BBC Urdu also receiving many messages of support for the killings.

tbh arguing about whether or not this should be called barbaric is absurd. Right-thinking Pakistanis think it is barbaric. Only someone who agreed with the mindset would disagree, imo.

Nobody here has been arguing that, though. It is indeed barbaric. I've seen Pickman's model's responses to farmerbarleymow's offensive ignorance jumped on and misunderstood (perhaps deliberately), however.

 

[xenon]

Are all those honour killings just family arguments gone out of control?

Condemning the acts as barbaric and wondering about the social / cultural circumstances which seem to a large degree, to support and condone those acts is absolutely fair enough. TO equivocate and diminish these crimes through moral relativism is patronising weak liberal crap. It's more or less saying "It's just what they do over there."

Alright, that's probably not quite fair to anyone who's posted in this thread. But that's just where I come from on stuff like this.

 

[kraepelin]

barbarian knuckledraggers

You know i get pretty pissed at the way this topic can become well we are just as bad. as if one wrong makes the other less horrific.

But i imagine your not an unintelligent person, your what i imagine is irritation with what you see as almost apologetic tone of others went contrasting this with our behaviour in the west.

But the phrase " barbarian knuckledraggers" just has to much baggage given our history of dehumanising non western people.
That language is like a call to arms to those who are sensitive to our past behaviour with non western peoples.

Being senstive to the baggage language has is not giving in to the people you might see as too senstive.

Really in the end its paying respect to the women who are suffering these appalling crime.

Lets not make their pain and death the battle ground of opposing views.

If none of this applies to you, my apology.

I doubt more than a handful of posters here view the people involed as innately different from us.

 

[Awesome Wells]

There are quite a few examples of honour based killings in the UK, the streets have never exploded.

Outside courthouses?

 

[Lemon Eddy]

There are quite a few examples of honour based killings in the UK, the streets have never exploded.

Can you cite some where the honour killing was carried out by 20 members of the victims family, in front of a crowd, outside of a court, while the police looked on?

 

[Pickman's model]

Outside courthouses?

indeed: i can't think of one which has occurred within the precincts of a court.

 

[Dr Jon]

But the phrase " barbarian knuckledraggers" just has to much baggage....

Barbarian baggage-handlers then?
Beating a woman (family member!) to death is only considered acceptable behaviour by barbarians.

 

[Pickman's model]

Can you cite some where the honour killing was carried out by 20 members of the victims family, in front of a crowd, outside of a court, while the police looked on?

so you only give a fuck about this sort of killing if it's a spectator sport? yesterday i posted links to 2 stories about women killed by their partners in the uk; you've not even told me it was irrelevant to the thread. seems to me you get more het up about this sort of thing the further away it is.

 

[dylanredefined]

so you only give a fuck about this sort of killing if it's a spectator sport? yesterday i posted links to 2 stories about women killed by their partners in the uk; you've not even told me it was irrelevant to the thread. seems to me you get more het up about this sort of thing the further away it is.

And anyone thinks that is a good thing it is against the law. While in Pakistan it is considered acceptable ,by, some part of the population.

 

[Pickman's model]

And anyone thinks that is a good thing it is against the law. While in Pakistan it is considered acceptable ,by, some part of the population.

it's obviously considered acceptable in the uk by part of the population or you wouldn't see so many women killed by their partners or other family members. incidentally, there are lots of things which are "against the law" yet are considered acceptable by "some part" of the population - drug taking, for example. let's not start using "the law" as a criterion for what's right and what's wrong as law and right are by no means synonymous.

if you're going to jump in and try to fight someone else's battles please in future make sure you have a fucking point worth making.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

it's obviously considered acceptable in the uk by part of the population or you wouldn't see so many women killed by their partners or other family members. incidentally, there are lots of things which are "against the law" yet are considered acceptable by "some part" of the population - drug taking, for example. let's not start using "the law" as a criterion for what's right and what's wrong as law and right are by no means synonymous.

if you're going to jump in and try to fight someone else's battles please in future make sure you have a fucking point worth making.

You're still employing a misguided sense of cultural relativism here. There is not a comparable part of the population that considers it acceptable for a man to kill his partner. Go out into the street and you'll struggle to find a single person who does not consider such a thing murder that should be punished by a long jail sentence.

Really, this is not comparable to the situation in Pakistan. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you would claim that it is.

 

[Pickman's model]

You're still employing a misguided sense of cultural relativism here. There is not a comparable part of the population that considers it acceptable for a man to kill his partner. Go out into the street and you'll struggle to find a single person who does not consider such a thing murder that should be punished by a long jail sentence.

Really, this is not comparable to the situation in Pakistan. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you would claim that it is.

i never said there was a 'comparable' part of the population, just that there is part of the population. i don't know the size of this part here and i don't know it in pakistan. and neither do you. but if i went out into the street and asked a load of random strangers about a wide range of subjects - from terrorism to infidelity to drug taking - i expect i wouldn't get a true picture of their views being as people won't tell everything to a complete stranger no matter how much you'd like them to. i am not saying the position in the uk is equivalent to pakistan, i am simply saying that this sort of thing - the murder of women by family members - goes on here too. do you deny it does?

 

[seventh bullet]

Are all those honour killings just family arguments gone out of control?

Condemning the acts as barbaric and wandering about the social / cultural circumstances which seem to a large degree, to support and condone those acts is absolutely fair enough. TO equivocate and diminish these crimes through moral relativism is patronising weak liberal crap. It's more or less saying "It's just what they do over there."

I've seen no-one here failing to condemn the act and others like it as barbaric. To crudely talk of advanced and backward doesn't help in understanding either, apart from arriving at and reinforcing that very idea above, that it is those people over there that do this because of their apparently centuries-behind backwardness. It's just what they do, isn't it, we grew up.

 

[Pickman's model]

I've seen no-one here failing to condemn the act and others like it as barbaric. To crudely talk of advanced and backward doesn't help in understanding either, apart from arriving at and reinforcing that very idea above, that it is those people over there that do this because of their apparently centuries-behind backwardness. It's just what they do, isn't it, we grew up.

i don't suppose the name 'laura wilson' means much to many of the posters so incensed by the brutal killing in lahore. or banaz mahmod.

of course this is the sort of thing which only occurs in backward pakistan

the brutality of a lenny murphy or of a fred west, the sheer number of killings by someone like harold shipman - barbarism alive and well and living in britain. so it's really rather perverse to suggest that this country's less barbaric than pakistan or india or wherever.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

the brutality of a lenny murphy or of a fred west, the sheer number of killings by someone like harold shipman - barbarism alive and well and living in britain. so it's really rather perverse to suggest that this country's less barbaric than pakistan or india or wherever.

Fred West and Harold Shipman were both convicted and sent to jail. The point of difference between these and other examples you have been citing and the honour killings in Pakistan is the impunity with which honour killings are carried out in Pakistan. They receive implicit or explicit approval from the wider society in which they are carried out.

This is not some attempt to set up a hierarchy of 'advanced' to 'backwards'. It is simply recognising difference between the two situations. And for every woman who is killed, there will be thousands that are living a life of effective slavery, knowing full well the consequences of stepping out of line. They are chattels.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fred West and Harold Shipman were both convicted and sent to jail. The point of difference between these and other examples you have been citing and the honour killings in Pakistan is the impunity with which honour killings are carried out in Pakistan. They receive implicit or explicit approval from the wider society in which they are carried out.

This is not some attempt to set up a hierarchy of 'advanced' to 'backwards'. It is simply recognising difference between the two situations. And for every woman who is killed, there will be thousands that are living a life of effective slavery, knowing full well the consequences of stepping out of line. They are chattels.

pls answer the question in post 163.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fred West and Harold Shipman were both convicted and sent to jail. The point of difference between these and other examples you have been citing and the honour killings in Pakistan is the impunity with which honour killings are carried out in Pakistan. They receive implicit or explicit approval from the wider society in which they are carried out.

This is not some attempt to set up a hierarchy of 'advanced' to 'backwards'. It is simply recognising difference between the two situations. And for every woman who is killed, there will be thousands that are living a life of effective slavery, knowing full well the consequences of stepping out of line. They are chattels.

incidentally, i wasn't replying to you in post 165. and you know full well that there are posters on this thread who have explicitly established a hierarchy of societies in which 'europe' is advanced and 'brown people' are backward.

 

[seventh bullet]

This is not some attempt to set up a hierarchy of 'advanced' to 'backwards'

A poster was doing just that yesterday, and Pickman's model's responses to that rubbish were for good reason. And you, as usual, got it wrong before in saying people were arguing over something else re barbarity.

I love how liberals here in their own ignorance can fall back on this 'we're better' nonsense (which does have origins in old ruling class imperialist and racist thinking in justifying 'superiority,' even though I don't think they are actually racist) while condemning a quite obvious act of sickening and harrowing violence carried out by brown people in a faraway land.

 

[MrSki]

Fatwa issued against honour killings.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A poster was doing just that yesterday, and Pickman's model's responses to that rubbish were for good reason. .

His responses are not strong. They are not comparing like with like.

But nice attempt to dismiss what I am saying by shouting 'liberal' at me. AFAIC, it is Pickman's who is being the hopeless liberal here by attempting to demonstrate that there is no difference between Pakistan and Britain. That kind of cultural relativism is the stuff of liberalism, is it not?

 

[Pickman's model]

His responses are not strong. They are not comparing like with like.

you're just bitter because you couldn't come up with a universal in human society. your "contributions" were nitpicking, derailing shit with no attempt to forward debate. look back at your posts yesterday and tell me which ones you're proudest of. oh - and answer the question in post 163.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

you're just bitter because you couldn't come up with a universal in human society. your "contributions" were nitpicking, derailing shit with no attempt to forward debate. look back at your posts yesterday and tell me which ones you're proudest of. oh - and answer the question in post 163.

lol

 

[Pickman's model]

lol

Incest taboo

now, about the question in post 163... a simple y/n question.

 

[Pickman's model]

ok, littlebabyjesus, i can see you're unhappy about answering that question. so here's one i hope you can answer: why haven't you said anything to people who've said "we" are more advanced than "they"?

 

[seventh bullet]

His responses are not strong. They are not comparing like with like.

But nice attempt to dismiss what I am saying by shouting 'liberal' at me. AFAIC, it is Pickman's who is being the hopeless liberal here by attempting to demonstrate that there is no difference between Pakistan and Britain. That kind of cultural relativism is the stuff of liberalism, is it not?

Who has been indulging in that? Not Pickman's.

And you are a wet liberal.

 

[Pickman's model]

oh dear littlebabyjesus you seem to support people like farmerbarleymow who claims we in europe are more advanced than them in pakistan, and that we no longer do that sort of thing.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Seems that the husband strangled his first wife so he could marry Farzana Parveen.

CNN here and Guardian here

A Pakistani man demanding justice after his pregnant wife was murdered outside Lahore's high court this week admitted on Thursday to strangling his first wife...
Muhummad Iqbal, the 45-year-old husband of Farzana Parveen, who was beaten to death by 20 male relatives on Tuesday, said he strangled his first wife in order to marry Parveen.
He avoided a prison sentence after his family used Islamic provisions of Pakistan's legal system to forgive him, precisely those he has insisted should not be available to his wife's killers.
"I was in love with Farzana and killed my first wife because of this love," he told Agence France-Presse.

fuck sake.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

It is worth mentioning that the police chief has denied that any officers were there and stood by and let the family murder their daughter. So it may not be useful for propagandists to promote this as an example of the corruption inherent in Islam. This may just be a family argument that went crazily out of control.

It seems to have been a family dispute involving arranged marriages, money changing hands, promises being made and broken, demands for money from the husband to compensate for having taken advantage of their daughter without their permission, that sort of thing

All this may sound primitive but - apart from the murder - it is part of the tradition of the country.

A contested part of the tradition of the country. One that Pakistani feminists, socialists, secularists, modernisers, human rights advocates and others would vociferously reject (as presumably would the women beaten to death by the misogynist lynch mob).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A contested part of the tradition of the country. One that Pakistani feminists, socialists, secularists, modernisers, human rights advocates and others would vociferously reject (as presumably would the women beaten to death by the misogynist lynch mob).

Yes, very much so, although it is more contested in some parts of the country than others. And as a Pakistani activist I heard talking yesterday pointed out, these traditions in many cases predate Islam - they have been incorporated into the particular Islam of Pakistan, or rather, Islam has been incorporated into them.