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Is It the Religion, Or the Culture? The Answer is “not Or, But AND”

With all the attention being placed on the story out of Buffalo about the beheading of Aasiya Z. Hassan the other day,  I’ve been watching the Buffalo outlets a bit more closely.  This morning, I note this story from yesterday [1], in the Buffalo News,  of which, I’ll echo a bit:

Nazim Mangera felt tears welling in his eyes as he said the final prayers over the body of Aasiya Z. Hassan around sunrise Tuesday morning.

Mangera wasn’t upset just by the loss of this vivacious, intelligent 37-year-old woman or by the vicious way that she was killed when she was beheaded Thursday.

He also was upset about suggestions that the Islamic religion may have had something to do with her death, that this may have been an “honor killing” tied to Muslim tradition or culture. Orchard Park police have charged her estranged husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with her killing.

“We’re all shocked. We’re all grieving,” said Mangera, imam of the Islamic Society of the Niagara Frontier. “To compound that, we have to face the difficulty of the religion of Islam being blamed for [the killer’s] personal actions. It was an individual person who did this act, for whatever reason. We don’t find any justification in the Islamic religion for any such violence.”

Mangera was upset about suggestions that Muslim attitudes, especially toward women, have been blamed for the Hassan killing.

And he disputed the notion made by others that any connection between Islam and “honor killing” comes from an extreme right-wing Islamic faction that uses the Quran for its own purposes.

“The main concern of the Muslim community is that whenever a Muslim does something wrong, Islam goes on trial,” Mangera added.

But what about the fact that Aasiya Hassan was beheaded, an act considered part of some Eastern cultures and traditions?

“Beheading has more to do with culture and country of origin [than religion],” Mangerastated. “It has nothing to do with Islam. We abhor domestic violence, and we categorically denounce it in all forms.”

(Sigh)

Within these spaces here at BitsBlog, I’ve made connections between western advanacement and the Judeo-Christian ethic many times, over the years.  The case for that connection on a historical basis I consdier to be unarguable, as is the case of the reasons behind our decay as we slip away from those foundations, as a people.  I have suggested that our culture and it’s value structures, even for unbelievers, is driven by the values taught in that Judeo-Christian ethic.  I’ve argued further that our status in the world diminishes as we move away from those values.

hanging_women_and_girls_in_iran.jpgSo it is, with the Muslim world… their relative success in the modern world, or rather, more honestly, the lack of it, in terms of their ability to interface with other cultures, particularly, stems directly from their own culture, which in turn is driven by it’s own moral code as laid out in Islamic tradition.

I find the attempt to separate Islam from it’s cultural ramifications pathetic at best, and at least dishonest.

KJL notes the story [2]at The Corner, this morning, and says, correctly I think:

How refreshing and important could it have been if the imam of the Islamic Society of the Niagara Frontier used this as an opportunity to take an offensive role instead of a defensive role? Instead, he takes offense that we notice the killer is a Muslim. There will be honor killings until the imams of Islamic Societies the world over are outraged not by outsiders making connections but by Muslims who kill.

Exactly so. The larger picture Lopez points out though, takes an ironic twist when we note, as we have before, that Muzzammil Hassanwasrunning a TV network, with the specific purpose of trying to better the image of Islam and it’s people. As I said last Friday, I think we can register that effort as a failure of epic proportions.

But isn’t the lesson here, that one is not going to be successful in raising the image of Islam and it’s people, without contronting directly and overcoming it’s negative side?

Phyllis Chesler, who has been tracking this story more closely than I, at Pajamas Media says in an entry dated the 17th: [3]

Yesterday, I published my study: “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” in Middle East Quarterly. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first such study of its kind. You may read it in full HERE [4]. It will be out in hardcopy at the beginning of March.

If we refuse to understand what an honor killing is and how it differs from western-style domestic violence, we will not be able to prosecute honor killers, grant asylum to those in flight from being honor murdered, nor will we be able to educate people against honor killing. Many Muslim-American organizations insist that honor killing is “Un-Islamic.” Yet, many scholars of Islam equally assert that the Qu’ran as well as custom permits grave punishment for “disobedient” women.

An honor killing does not only involve the misogynist control, isolation, soul-degradation and physical battering of a woman- although such abuse may precede an honor killing. An honor killing ends in the girl or woman’s murder. Most domestic violence in the West does not. An honor killing is a family-enabled and culturally and religiously approved form of “femicide.”

The bolding on the last line of the quote is my own. Note the word ‘AND’, here. That is true because as with the afore- mentioned Judeo-Christian ethic, the religion of Islam is totally inseperable from it’s cultural consequences.  Witness; They’re burying one of those consequences this morning at Buffalo.

Chesler again:

I know this is hard for us to believe but in Muslim lands and in many Muslim immigrant communities, an ownership/protector mentality, which is completely justified in the Qu’ran, normativelycharacterizesthe relationship of fathers and daughters, husband and wives, brothers and sisters. Verbal abuse and physical violence is not criminalized. Ninety percent of the women in Pakistan are routinely beaten in both their childhood and when they are married wives and mothers. A recent study [5] confirmed that “annually, one million Pakistani women are beaten while pregnant.”

So what do we in western culture do?  We treat the culture that accepts this behavior as cultural equals. The result is totally and sadly predictable.

I’ll point out that I have also argued repeatedly and strongly over the years that not all cultures are equally valid in today’s world, and that instead of aiming at equal respect for all cultures, under the  high-minded-sounding banner of ‘multiculturalism’  we should be in fact aim at being, in effect, cultural Darwinists. We open ourselves up to the kind of violence we saw in Buffalo the other day, when we treat such a culture as ‘equal’… cultural treatment which the murdering husband, Muzzammil Hassan endlessly promoted on his TV network.  Even someone supposedly so committed cannot separate himself from behavior which the west finds objectionable..

If we are honest, at some point, we need to reject the kind of culture that includes honor killing as a valid response to a perceived slight.  But in the doing, we also need to consider what is at the roots of that culture, it’s driver… in this case, Islam.. and reject it as we, as being causal. If we are being true to our own culture, and to advancement of the world, for that matter, we can do nothing less.