Indian village proud after double honor killing

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2008-05-23 01:12pm

Darth Wong wrote:Question: why do we always call them "honour killings" when they're done in the east, but when "sinners" are killed in Africa or South America or (in past centuries) in Europe, we call them "lynchings" instead?

That's an interesting question. Usually such terrorism/freedom fighter distinctions are obviously a case of assigned values, in this case, lynching on the face of it subjectively sounds worse than "honour killing," but everyone generally detests honour killings. It might just be a way of distinguishing "us" from "them" again; a muslim that kills his sister because she fucked a white christian american and it's an honour killing, a white christian american that kills his sister because she fucked a muslim and the media would presumably call it something else.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2008-05-23 01:14pm

Maxentius wrote:Personally, I don't see what there is to understand beyond the fact that this woman and her husband were executed by an extra-judicial mob.

That's because there isn't anything to understand beyond that. There's no honor about it; they were murdered. Fuck, not even the people who did it mince words about that.

"The people who have done this should get an award for it," said 48-year-old Satvir Singh. "This was a murder of morality."

They admit it was murder, and they don't care. In fact, the only person I see caring about mincing words over it is the Reuters title editor (whose title I used for the thread); the phrase "honor killing" doesn't appear in the body of the story.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-05-23 01:22pm

Darth Wong wrote:Question: why do we always call them "honour killings" when they're done in the east, but when "sinners" are killed in Africa or South America or (in past centuries) in Europe, we call them "lynchings" instead?

Because lost or injured honour is not a component or motivation of lynchings, thus the term would be inappropriate.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2008-05-23 01:25pm

Adrian Laguna wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Question: why do we always call them "honour killings" when they're done in the east, but when "sinners" are killed in Africa or South America or (in past centuries) in Europe, we call them "lynchings" instead?
Because lost or injured honour is not a component or motivation of lynchings, thus the term would be inappropriate.

Actually, it often was in the American South; black men suspected of having sex with a white woman would be hung from the nearest tree for "sullying" her. It might not have been called honor (though with the antebellum South's fixation with personal honor, I wouldn't be surprised), but it works out to the same thing.

Terralthra · Post by **Terralthra** » 2008-05-23 01:25pm

You can tell there's a massive cultural divide when you realize that Romeo & Juliet would be a heart-warming tale of honor restoration in India.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-05-23 01:34pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Actually, it often was in the American South; black men suspected of having sex with a white woman would be hung from the nearest tree for "sullying" her. It might not have been called honor (though with the antebellum South's fixation with personal honor, I wouldn't be surprised), but it works out to the same thing.

It is a bit different in that the white woman would be left untouched, and the "sullying" didn't extend to the rest of the family or even the whole community. In the East, when one member of a family breaks the rules, the whole family becomes a social outcast until they punish the individual. In the West the family could get away with just disowning the person.

In any case, we could call it an "honour killing" if it happens in the US. To me it doesn't sound any better than "lynching".

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-05-23 01:49pm

Adrian Laguna wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Question: why do we always call them "honour killings" when they're done in the east, but when "sinners" are killed in Africa or South America or (in past centuries) in Europe, we call them "lynchings" instead?
Because lost or injured honour is not a component or motivation of lynchings, thus the term would be inappropriate.

In both cases, they believe they are killing "sinners". There is no difference. We seize upon the word "honour" only because it sounds different than what we did in the past ourselves.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-05-23 02:25pm

Darth Wong wrote:In both cases, they believe they are killing "sinners". There is no difference. We seize upon the word "honour" only because it sounds different than what we did in the past ourselves.

There is a difference that in one case it's usually a crowd of angry neighbors, wherein in the other case it's a crowd of angry family members. Now an honour killing can be called a lynching, it is. However, using the word "lynching" brings up a slightly different mental image than using the word "honour killing", because of that subtle difference I mentioned.

Death from the Sea · Post by **Death from the Sea** » 2008-05-23 02:50pm

I don't see any real difference between this and the extremist islamists that just happened to live in a part of the world that oil was found in, making them rich.

Sidewinder · Post by **Sidewinder** » 2008-05-23 03:21pm

Darth Wong wrote:Question: why do we always call them "honour killings" when they're done in the east, but when "sinners" are killed in Africa or South America or (in past centuries) in Europe, we call them "lynchings" instead?

My guess is the people committing the lynchings don't refer to the murders as "honor killings" (at least, the murders of accused but possibly innocent Blacks in the US aren't referred to as "honor killings" in the media I've seen), but the people committing the "honor killings" refer to the murders by that term.

Tasoth · Post by **Tasoth** » 2008-05-23 04:30pm

From reading a bit of the article Tithonus posted, I'm beginning to think we call them 'honour killings' instead of lycnhes because doing the latter to one of the practioners face is going to get you, yourself, lynched.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2008-05-25 02:57am

Darth Wong wrote:
Adrian Laguna wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Question: why do we always call them "honour killings" when they're done in the east, but when "sinners" are killed in Africa or South America or (in past centuries) in Europe, we call them "lynchings" instead?
Because lost or injured honour is not a component or motivation of lynchings, thus the term would be inappropriate.
In both cases, they believe they are killing "sinners". There is no difference. We seize upon the word "honour" only because it sounds different than what we did in the past ourselves.

I don't see where sin is important here. It's closer to 'crime', since it's more a matter of local custom than organised religion. It's not difficult to imagine a perfectly atheist, humanist tribal society with wild-eyed ideas about honour.

I think 'honour killings' should be a subset of lynchings, if you consider lynching to be any murder committed to carry out extralegal 'justice'. In the case of honour killings, the main purpose of the lynching is not to punish them for its own sake, but to punish them for the benefit of an associated group (family/clan/etc).

The point of calling it 'honour killing' is then because its more specific about why the lynching happened. I wouldn't be surprised if it caught on because of the need for headlines to be short and catchy. 'Honour killing' takes up much less line space than 'honour lynching' and grabs people's attention better.

Anyway, in witch-hunts, I see the main purpose as punitive vengeance, with sin being secondary and with no need for shame or honour to be involved. In slavery-era America, racist lynchings were also primarily about punitive vengeance. The limited personal shame of a raped woman may be involved, but it's not the main purpose as it is with institutionalised collective shame in India.