The Christian Science Monitor reports that “Police say that at least six Muslim men have been arrested in the US in the past two years for crimes that suggest honor killings.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t point to the specific incidents, nor tell us the number of honor killings (the number of arrestees may not match the number of crimes); the six arrests number also appears in this earlier USA Today story. It does, however, point to a murder plus what is likely an attempted murder from two months ago, which I hadn’t heard about before:
An Iraqi immigrant accused of slaying his daughter in an “honor killing” has been charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty ….Faleh Hassan Almaleki … is accused of using his Jeep Cherokee to run over his daughter, 20-year-old Noor Almaleki, and [Almaleki's boyfriend's mother, Amal Khalaf,] in a Peoria[, Arizona] parking lot on Oct. 20. His daughter died of her injuries [but Klahaf is expected to recover]….
Almaleki was reportedly furious with his daughter for becoming “too Westernized,” police said.
Prosecutors have labeled Noor Almaleki’s death an “honor killing,” saying the elder Almaleki killed his daughter because she dishonored the family by not following traditional Iraqi or Muslim values….
At Almaleki’s initial court appearance on Oct. 31, county prosecutor Stephanie Low said he admitted deliberately running down his daughter….
UPDATE: I blogged about this because this suggests that there’s a serious problem in various Muslim communities, a cultural pathology of some very significant Muslim subcultures that deserves attention. But I should remind people of my post from last year, where I pointed out that Islamic cultures are by no means unique in unduly tolerating killings justified by a sense of family honor, and that American manslaughter law has treated certain kinds of killings (of cheating spouses and their lovers) as less serious than ordinary murder. Until recently, this treatment has been even starker in some situations and some jurisdictions, occasionally to the point of entirely excusing the killing and leaving it unpunished.
The two are not the same: American manslaughter law is generally limited to infidelity by spouses (historically) and occasionally lovers, and not to perceived sexual improprieties by daughters. Manslaughter also covers only more or less immediate reaction to a provocation (though some recent departures from the law, often perceived as coming from a “liberal” perspective on criminal justice, have relaxed that condition), while many of the Muslim “honor killings” appear to be more planned out. And this reflects, I think, a different ideology behind the act, an ideology that strikes me as especially troublesome (all ideologies that lead people to kill, setting aside self-defense and the like, are troublesome, but some may be more so than others). Whatever might be said about modern American manslaughter law, it rests on the premise that there’s something less culpable in someone’s giving in to uncontrollable impulses stemming from broken vows (especially when focused on adultery, which I believe is more commonly seen as mitigating the offense to manslaughter than is cheating by a girlfriend or boyfriend), not on the premise that a planned killing of one’s child is a way to regain honor.
Nonetheless, there are enough similarities that we can’t claim that the generally problem is uniquely present in Muslim cultures, though there does seem to be a version of the problem that is specific to some significant Muslim subcultures, and the problem needs to be recognized and aired in order to be ultimately reduced and perhaps even solved.
Dan Hamilton says:
Honor Killings are NOT PC. Unless they are as blantant as the Almaleki case they are classed as anything but Honor Killings. It just wouldn’t be right to stigmentize Muslims with Honor Killings. That might cause people to realize that Islam and Muslims aren’t the NICE people the multicultrualist want us to believe they are.
So Honor Killings don’t exist. It is all a plot by the war mongers to justify their illegal wars.
December 25, 2009, 5:21 pmHans says:
These honor killings target girls, not boys — so they are based partly on sex. Moreover, the killer killed the victim because she was perceived as insufficiently Muslim — based on her perceived religious characteristic.
As such, they qualify as “hate crimes” in violation of many state hate crimes laws, as well as potentially the new, expanded federal hate-crimes law, which — contrary to its popular name — doesn’t actually require hate (or bigotry in the typical sense) as a motivation, only that the perpetrator act at least partly because of the victim’s sex, religion, race, sexual orientation transgender status, or disability.
Yet they are not being prosecuted as such.
Not that I expect any hate-crimes prosecution, since the killing is not “politically incorrect.” (It was committed by a minority group member).
The purpose of the new federal hate crimes law isn’t really to prosecute clearly guilty criminals (violent crime is against the law in all 50 states, and most have hate crimes laws to boot, making a federal law largely duplicative), but rather to reprosecute people found NOT guilty in state court, who may well actually be innocent, all over again in federal court, taking advantage of the “dual sovereignty” loophole in constitutional protections against double jeopardy.
The Fort Hood shooter clearly committed his crimes partly because of his victims’ religion (sufficient under the federal hate crimes law, which merely requires that victims be selected in part because of their protected characteristic, cf. Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins), but he’s not being prosecuted for hate crimes, because his crimes, however abhorrent, were not as politically incorrect in the eyes of the Obama Justice Department as, say, a white supremacist’s bigoted assault.
Meanwhile, the Obama Justice Department is reprosecuting two teenagers found not guilty in Pennsylvania state court of hate crimes against an illegal immigrant in the Shenandoah incident, in federal court (the state jury quite reasonably believed it was a prosecution witness, not the two defendants, who committed the principal crime, as another witness indicated was in fact the case). The two were indicted on December 16, even though the case against them for hate crimes is much weaker than it would be against the Fort Hood shooter.
December 25, 2009, 5:29 pmDan Hamilton says:
NOW and the femenist should be screeming from the rooftops about Honor Killings. There should be an almost constant uproar about Honor Killings and the treatment of women under Islam. But all you hear is silence.
NOW and the rest never got off their knees from their Clinton debacle. They have PUT THEMSELVES in their Liberial Burkas. They see and speak only what the Lib Menfolk allow them to.
The strong independant women are on the Right. As Muslims treat their women the Left treats theirs. They are not second class Libs, they don’t rate that high. That is why the Left supports Muslims against the West.
December 25, 2009, 6:00 pmjakecollins says:
@ Dan Hamilton
NOW gad denounced honor killings.
http://www.now.org/press/10-07/10-08b.html
Many times.
It’s sad that you’ve taken this horrific incident to push your anti-women agenda. Maybe you should move to Afghanistan–with your attitudes towards women, you’d fit right in.
December 25, 2009, 6:04 pmyankee says:
I feel obliged to point out that we have honor killings by non-Muslims in the U.S. too, we just call them “provocation so severe or extreme as to provoke a reasonable man to commit the act.” This is, of course, utter nonsense; no reasonable person would commit an extrajudicial killing in the absence of any violence or threat of violence. But it is the law here that it is perfectly reasonable for a man to kill his wife/girlfriend on finding that she is cheating on him, and such killings should be subjected to a lesser punishment.
December 25, 2009, 6:25 pmdrunkdriver says:
yankee, I searched in a legal database for the phrase “provocation so severe or extreme as to provoke a reasonable man to commit the act” and couldn’t find anything.
Can you tell me what state’s law contains such a provision?
December 25, 2009, 6:33 pmAnonymous says:
Indeed. In each of the cases I’ve heard about, there has been one murderer and one or multiple murdered, often each of the man’s daughters.
Immediately, by which I mean “walking in to”, and physically responding to an intruder in one’s bed like one would an intruder to one’s home in general seems reasonable.
December 25, 2009, 6:40 pmEli Rabett says:
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
You may now resume pretending that the only way that women get killed by guys is if they are Moslems.
December 25, 2009, 7:03 pmyankee says:
That wasn’t actually supposed to be a literal quote of any state’s law; different states and cases use different wording. But if you check google you get the idea.
December 25, 2009, 7:05 pmyankee says:
It’s not remotely reasonable to kill nonviolent, nonthreatening licensee merely because the licensee’s presence was authorized by someone else with the right to authorize licensees, rather than by you personally.
December 25, 2009, 7:08 pmAnonymous says:
“licensee”? Am I missing something?
On a different point: the fact that the state regulates interpersonal contracts doesn’t make it right or beneficial.
December 25, 2009, 7:17 pmdrunkdriver says:
Well, if was “remotely reasonable” the law would probably not punish it. Do you equate such crimes with a man murdering his daughter and her boyfriend because she’s “too Western?”
December 25, 2009, 7:38 pmjohn says:
So upset that his daughter has become westernized, her father kills her ….. with his Jeep Cherokee.
December 25, 2009, 8:26 pmGEORGE LARSON says:
Dueling can be considered a type of honor killing that is no longer permitted. At times it was over a women’s honor.
It is my understanding that honor killing predated Islam in the middle east, but it was incorporated into Islam.
I was going to give Dan Sickles as an example of an honor killing but Wikipedia states:
Daniel Edgar Sickles (October 20, 1819 – May 3, 1914) was a colorful and controversial American politician, Union General in the American Civil War, and diplomat.
As an antebellum New York politician, Sickles was involved in a number of public scandals, most notably the killing of his wife’s lover, Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key. He was acquitted with the first use of temporary insanity as a legal defense in U.S. history
December 25, 2009, 8:33 pmlgm says:
What makes this blog different from malkin or redstate? With posts like these, not much. I call racism on this post.
December 25, 2009, 8:55 pmdave from woodstock says:
@lgm:
Gee, that’s certainly a creative response to language you don’t like. /sarcasm off/
December 25, 2009, 9:01 pmDan Hamilton says:
It can’t be racist. Muslim is NOT a race. It is like Hispanic. It has nothing to do with Race everything to do with culture. All cultures ARE NOT EQUAL.
So stick your racism. Can’t you find something real to say?
December 25, 2009, 9:04 pmptt says:
All you hear is silence. This might be because you don’t listen to women, no?
December 25, 2009, 9:05 pmKen Arromdee says:
It’s my understanding that the majority of a religion’s customs predated the religion and were incorporated into it, whatever the religion. That’s how religions arise–they come out of preexisting populations and will inevitably share most of the attitudes of the people the religion arises from.
December 25, 2009, 9:20 pmGEORGE LARSON says:
Ken Arromdee
I agree with your point, but I have used it used to say that Islam is not misogynistic because it merely incorporated existing cutoms. But if it is okay for Islam why not Christianity?
lgm
Why is my post racist? How is the specific criticism of Islam on any of these posts racists? Is criticising Christians racist too?
December 25, 2009, 9:34 pmGEORGE LARSON says:
Sorry,
I agree with your point, but I have heard it used to claim that Islam is not misogynistic because it merely incorporated existing customs. But if it is okay for Islam why not Christianity?
December 25, 2009, 9:43 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » “Honor Killings” by Muslim Men in the U.S. -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by PostRank – Law, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: “Honor Killings” by Muslim Men in the U.S.: The Christian Science Monitor reports that “Police say that at leas.. http://bit.ly/68nmMR [...]
December 25, 2009, 10:37 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Yankee, I remember a case in Germantown, TN, in which a man walked in on his wife and another man having sex on the couch. He shot and killed both and claimed it was heat-of-the-moment, but they nailed him when they counted bullets and realized that he had to stop and reload.
December 25, 2009, 10:58 pmHouston Lawyer says:
What is the fixation with having to protect Muslims from observations of their own behavior? A large majority of Muslims appear to view women as little more than chattel. Denying that or calling the observation racist won’t make the behavior go away.
December 25, 2009, 11:12 pmA. Zarkov says:
While it’s true that the NOW website condemns honor killings, it carefully avoids any connection to Islam or Islamic countries where most honor killings of women take place. If the US had fewer Muslims, we would have fewer female honor killings. While women and men sometimes kill over a sexual transgression, I have never heard of a non-Muslim father killing his daughter because of an affront to the family’s honor, and this applies to non-Muslim Arabs as well. Iran is the most part non-Arab and we certainly have fathers killing their daughters. Islam is the problem. If the US stops Muslim immigration to the US we will have fewer honor killings in the future. If we keep importing them we will have more honor killings, more acts of terror etc. As Geert Wilders says, while we have moderate Muslims, “… there is no such thing as moderate Islam.” Observant Muslims believe the Koran is the literal word of Allah. In other words, they regard the Koran as a transcription. Allah spoke to Mohamed in Arabic, and he transcribed the words, and that’s why for the most part the Koran is not subject to interpretation. You also need to read the Koran in Arabic to glean the full extent and import of what it says. These PC translations for westerners don’t give an accurate picture. Once you do that, you will see what drives these honor killings.
December 25, 2009, 11:46 pmjakecollins says:
So it’s not enough for NOW to denounce honor killings, they need to denounce Islam too?
December 26, 2009, 12:06 amIf it had done so, that ya’ll right wing nuts would just move the goal posts once again. Ya’ll are insatiable in your hatred, a perfect mirror image of the Islamic terrorists that ya’ll claim to oppose. Is it any wonder that few people under 40 wants anything to do with conservatives or the Republican party? Conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists, locked arm and arm in your journey back to the 11th century.
A. Zarkov says:
Yes.
Let’s try it and see what happens.
When conservatives start killing their daughters over the family’s honor, blowing up airplanes, and machine gunning people in their hotel rooms, I’ll accept your notion of symmetry. Until that happens I can’t take you seriously. Notice that you have only presented insults, not argument or facts. I guess that’s because you have neither.
December 26, 2009, 12:13 amneurodoc says:
Isn’t Hassan going to be prosecuted by the military under the UCMJ? Does the federal hate crimes law pertain? Does DOJ have any role in his prosecution? Any reason to believe that anyone in the military or elsewhere is pulling their punches in prosecuting Hassan?
December 26, 2009, 12:27 amLarryA says:
Murder X 13 + attempted murder X 30 doesn’t seem to leave much room for “hate crime” to increase a possible sentence.
December 26, 2009, 1:06 amjakecollins says:
Conservatives do kill their daughters over honor, they do commit terrorists acts on American soil (Timothy McVeigh), and they do gun down people in their churches (Adkisson).
December 26, 2009, 1:07 amDo you think that it’s just a coincidence that Islamic fundamentalists describe themselves as “conservative”? It’s conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists that hate gays, want to restrict the rights of women, and view Western media and political institutions as corrupt manifestations of Satan. Ya’ll have way more in common than you might think.
theobromophile says:
Jake Collins: liberals usually take a very holistic view of wrongs in society. One thing that they do very well (often) is to try to explore the root causes of an issue. (As a conservative, I often disagree with them about the underlying causes of many of our social problems, but that is another comment for another thread.) Whether the issue be affirmative action and the difficulty of trying to convince young men and women to even consider college, or poverty and drugs, liberals rarely address only the symptom of a problem.
Given that, it is downright bizarre that liberals are so afraid to explore the underlying cause of this particular misogyny; when it is so deadly and so very chilling to the behaviour of a free people, such reticence is even more appalling.
December 26, 2009, 1:10 amGary Rosen says:
lgm frequently posts to malkin so I guess he’s a RAAAAAAACIST!!!
December 26, 2009, 1:25 amGary Rosen says:
“Conservatives do kill their daughters over honor …”
Liberals only drown their girlfriends in their cars.
December 26, 2009, 1:30 amyankee says:
A man who has sex with with another man’s wife/girlfriend in her (and her husband/boyfriend’s) bed is a social guest,
not someone who’s there for business, so he’s a licensee. Unless he’s a prostitute (or the proverbial plumber), in which case he’s an invitee. Either way, he’s not a trespasser.
If the law doesn’t consider it “remotely reasonable,” why do we have a defense in which you get acquitted of murder (but convicted of manslaughter) for killing your wife/girlfriend for sleeping with another guy on the grounds that it was a provocation that would have caused a reasonable person to fly into an uncontrollable rage, etc.?
And no, I don’t equate killing your wife/girlfriend because she slept with another guy with killing your daughter for being “too Western”; it’s more like killing your daughter because she had premarital sex. Either way the idea that such killings aren’t as bad as others is based on a view of women as property.
Of course, there’s a difference between treating one murder as completely acceptable, and the other as merely not as bad. But honor killings are illegal in Muslim countries just as they are here, and here we allow you to get convicted of a less serious crime if you commit a certain type of honor killing. I’m not sure about the legal details in Muslim countries, and it’s entirely possible honor killings may be rarely prosecuted/hard to convict for.
December 26, 2009, 1:39 amyankee says:
And no true Scotsman …
December 26, 2009, 1:43 amA. Zarkov says:
What conservative has killed his daughter over family honor?
What makes Timothy McVeigh a “conservative?” He was essentially apolitical. Timothy McVeigh resembles George Metesky, Theodore Kaczynski, the McNamera Brothers, (trade unionists who did the 1910 LA Times Bombing) Andrew Kehoe (Bath School bombing) and whoever did the bombing at 23 Wall Street. The common thread here is a bunch of disturbed people with a grudge. Politics or religion plays little or no part. James Adkisson is a better example because he did have a strong animus against liberals and liberal institutions. But does that make him conservative?
It’s absolutely a coincidence? Islam (“fundamentalism” is redundant) has nothing to do with western political conservatism as advocated by Edmund Burke and Russel Kirk. There is nothing I can see in the conservative political philosophy that advocates violence. Indeed Burke wrote against the excesses of the French Revolution.
December 26, 2009, 3:20 amAnonymous says:
Those who can’t read are doomed to poorly recreate writing.
December 26, 2009, 4:39 ampot meet kettle says:
Well played, EV. Well played.
December 26, 2009, 5:02 amRicardo says:
In fact, honor killing does exist among Sikhs. I’m not sure if honor killing still happens in Hindu society but there have been cases of women being arguably pushed to suicide over some perceived dishonorable action. I know less about Arab Christian culture so I don’t know whether it happens in Christian communities in the Middle East or not.
I will say, though, that the case of the Sikhs suggests it is more of a problem with roots in Arab or Central Asian culture than in religion. Punjab — the state in India where Sikhism originates — is known as having something of a swaggering macho culture. The large imbalance of male to female Punjabis suggests female infanticide is still practiced there. It is a part of the world where women — whether Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim — don’t always feel comfortable going out in public without covering up with a salwar kameez and without having a man by her side.
December 26, 2009, 5:29 ampublic_defender says:
Six “honor killings” is six too many, but this statistic doesn’t say much about whether Muslims are disproportionately violent. I bet every felony public defender in every major city in the US has had at least murder cases where the defendant is (at least nominally) Christian in the same time period. Many of those are in DV cases, which are the Western equivalent of “honor killings.”
If anything, I suspect that six deaths for Muslim “honor killings” shows that American Muslims are less violent in their personal relationships than their fellow Christian Americans.
December 26, 2009, 8:22 ampublic_defender says:
Just to repeat, “honor killings” are not unique to Muslims. When non-Muslims do it in the US, we just call it “domestic violence.” The motivations are basically the same. The results are exactly the same. Both are serious problems. Both are signs of serious cultural problems. But I haven’t seen anything that shows its worse among Muslims.
December 26, 2009, 8:28 ampublic_defender says:
drunkdriver,
Check the manslaughter statute in pretty much any state. Severe provocation (or words to that effect) can reduce murder to manslaughter, but it’s not a total excuse. The classic example everyone learns in law school is a man who finds his wife in bed with another man. If he shoots them both immediately, it’s manslaughter, not murder.
December 26, 2009, 8:55 amRicardo says:
Can I assume you are fluent in classical Arabic given your strong opinions on what the Koran does or does not say?
There are actually better uses of everyone’s time than trying to learn enough Arabic to read what the Koran “really” says, though. Most Muslims (e.g. Turks, Indonesians, Malays, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Bosnians, Iranians, the Muslim minorities of the Philippines, India, China or Thailand, etc) know very little Arabic and learn to recite the Koran by rote learning rather than actually understanding what the text says. It’s not particularly relevant one way or another compared to what people are exposed to through their Imams, at home or at school. And there is a lot of variation in this.
December 26, 2009, 9:04 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
The results are the same. I’m not sure the motivations are even basically the same. Both may be partially just your garden-variety control issue, of course. But I think domestic violence is a result of uncontrolled anger, and honor killing is a result of the man needing to control his women in order to feel that he can respect himself and others can respect him. If you read about cases in the Middle East, the men and women kill their wayward daughters (and “wayward” could mean “her brothers raped her and got her pregnant”) because otherwise they couldn’t hold their heads up in the group.
December 26, 2009, 9:33 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I will add that I peruse Muslim mommy blogs from time to time. Muslims have their own continuum from nominally Muslim to devout and observant, just as other religions do.
December 26, 2009, 9:34 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Assuming any killing is religiously motivated and that it satisfies the requirements the religion puts on such killings, how can it fail to be protected behavior under the “free exercise thereof” part of an incorporated First Amendment?
I’m pretty sure I know the answer; but unless they cite the Zeroth Amendment (“When convenient, the following apply:”), I don’t know how those who hold the conventional view of the Establishment Clause can criminalise ‘honor’ killings.
December 26, 2009, 9:38 ampublic_defender says:
Domestic violence is very controlled killing. Few batterers would beat up their bosses or a cop. They beat their wives and girlfriends for control and because they can.
Also, I said that the motivations were basically the same, not exactly the same. The reality is that non-Muslims in the US have a serious family violence problem, and I see no evidence that the problem is worse among Muslims.
Worse, we only started to take domestic violence seriously in the last couple of decades. Not that long ago, cops considered wife-beating to be a private family matter. Some places, that’s still the case.
December 26, 2009, 9:58 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
When you say we have a serious DV problem in this country, are you including the entire range of violence from abusive language to murder? Because I don’t think you should conflate all of that if you are going to compare it to honor killings.
December 26, 2009, 10:08 amSG says:
The reality is that non-Muslims in the US have a serious family violence problem, and I see no evidence that the problem is worse among Muslims.
It doesn’t need to be “worse” (by whatever metric you choose) to be worthy of condemnation – honor killings are abhorrent and should be condemned irrespective of how it statistically compares statistically to other forms of domestic violence.
Yet you (and others) are going well out of your way to avoid condemning it, and instead seek to find ways to minimize it. Why is is that?
December 26, 2009, 10:30 amneurodoc says:
What does “worse” mean here? Higher/lower overall numbers, greater/lesser incidence among Muslim vs non-Muslim families, more/less brutal murders, or what? So-called “honor killings” may not be that numerous in the US and still be of concern, can’t they? Different dynamics too, aren’t there, since it is most often an unmarried young woman being murdered by her father or other male relatives, sometimes with mother complicitous. Culturally distinctive too, like arranged/forced marriages of 12 and 13 year-old girl to older men.
December 26, 2009, 11:05 amSarcastro says:
Word, SG. Unless public_defender specially condemns Muslims, he totally doesn’t mind when they kill women!
There is no chance he is addressing folks like A. Zarkov, who’s plan to stop allowing Muslim immigration to lower violence against women is kinda eviscerated by noting Muslims are not inherently more violent than Christians.
Though it should be noted that Zarkov is right, we would lower violence if we lowered Muslim immigration. Or any immigration. It’s like the Onion says
December 26, 2009, 11:08 ampireader says:
OK, six honor killers over two years out of a population of about 2 million Muslims in America … 1.5 per million per year. And this “suggests that there’s a serious problem in various Muslim communities, a cultural pathology of some very significant Muslim subcultures that deserves attention”
Wow. Let’s apply that same logic to the 120+ million Americans in gun-owning households. There are 13,000+ murders committed each year with guns … 100 killers per million per year. Does this suggest a hugely more serious cultural pathology in the American gun-owners community?
My answer is NO. To me, both statistics merely suggest that every large group has a few crazed and/or vicious people … but YMMV.
December 26, 2009, 11:46 ampublic_defender says:
I guess I’ll flip that on you. Why do you go out of your way to avoid condemning family violence by non-Muslims and instead seek to find ways to minimize it?
I said that both were wrong. I said that six honor killings is six too many. But criminal justice resources are scarce, and I see no reason to single out Muslim family violence when the rate of Muslim family violence might actually be lower than the rate of non-Muslim family violence.
All too many people fail to realize just how much violence American family members commit against each other. I think we should address Muslim-American family violence as part of the bigger problem of American family violence.
December 26, 2009, 12:02 pmA. Zarkov says:
Tell that to the Europeans. The “youth” violence in the Paris suburbs is Muslim violence. It’s so bad the French police have “no-go” zones. Areas where the police consider it too dangerous to enter. Then we have Holland which was previously a very peaceful place before the Muslims arrived in great numbers. Now some members of the Dutch Parliament must live under round-the-clock police protection. How about Sweden? Specifically Malmö. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported several years ago that 9 out of 10 of the most criminal ethnic groups in Sweden came from Muslim countries. From Brussels Journal we get the following translation of the Swedish newspaper article. Now remember when you read this that Swedes are subject to heavy censorship when it concerns Islam. You can and do get sent to jail for insulting Islam.
Here we have a previously low crime city turned into a high crime city from Muslim immigration. We don’t have this bad a problem in the US– yet. We don’t have as many Muslims in the US to cause crime waves, but we do have enough to cause trouble. If the US should close off immigration, I don’t see a downside. I don’t see what I won’t be able to do once that happens. I might or might not feel safer, but the cost to me and other Americans is little to zero. After all the US had very little immigration from anywhere between 1925 and 1965. At over 303 million, we hardly have any kind of population shortage.
December 26, 2009, 1:02 pmpublic_defender says:
A. Zarkov,
What evidence do you have that American Muslims are any more violent that their non-Muslim neighbors?
Neurodoc,
I’ve personally handled at least to cases of non-Muslim American men convicted of raping their daughters (more if you include step-daughters). Grossly abusive treatment of daughters by fathers is, alas, not solely a problem in the Muslim community.
Laura(southernxyl),
When I speak of the DV problem we have in the US, I am talking of the range of behavior between assault and murder. And I guarantee you that there were more than six murders of wives and daughters by non-Muslim men in the same period covered by the CSM article. Also, assaultive DV was pretty much officially tolerated until very recently. And it’s been awhile, but I remember reading some older US studies showing that men who killed their wives generally got lower penalties. I would have to spend more time researching that than I have right now to make that assertion confidently.
And as to Professor Volokh’s update, I think the manslaughter analogy is interesting, but I think the DV analogy is more helpful in analyzing the problem of societal tolerance of family violence.
It’s fair to condemn “Muslim” “honor killings,” but we must be cautious that we don’t miss the bigger problem of family violence among non-Muslims and Muslims alike. That lets us non-Muslims off the hook for the harm that we cause.
December 26, 2009, 1:44 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Not surprising, since there are probably more non-Muslim men than Muslim men in this country, in the first place.
I don’t think anybody here is saying that non-Muslims don’t commit DV, or that it’s not a concern when they do. But you are acting like no one can mention honor killings without first condemning other kinds of DV. You can make a statement without making every other related statement at the same time. Let’s not set up a false dichotomy, where you either condemn non-Muslim DV in every sentence where you mention honor killings, or else you obviously don’t care about non-Muslim DV.
December 26, 2009, 2:02 pmA. Zarkov says:
They certainly are with respect to killing their daughters to preserve the family’s honor. Crime in general is another question. I don’t have the US numbers, nor am I sure we could get them. But we do know from the European experience that when the Muslim population reaches a critical mass, about 5%, we get a synergism producing an explosive growth in crime. In other words, linear extrapolation won’t get you the right prediction. Acting alone is different than acting as part of a community group.
December 26, 2009, 2:14 pmChris Travers says:
“Licensee” as in someone who had been granted license to do something. Most licenses are nto state controlled unless I missed something (case in point: How many state licenses do you own? How many End User License Agreements have you agreed to for the software on your computer?).
The point is that if I kill someone who is in my house because I know my wife invited him/her there, that is not like killing a burgler who has just broken in. In the latter case, I might well be afraid for my own safety and legitimately acting in self-defence. I don’t think self-defence is applicable to killing someone who is haing an affair with one’s spouse.
On the other hand, sexual restrictions have strong emotions attached. Maybe that is why we grant leeway.
December 26, 2009, 5:28 pmChris Travers says:
There are a couple problems with broadening such a condemnation to Islam though. These include:
1) What is “Islam?” How do we define Islam for the purpose of the condemnation? (Iirc, the Israeli court ended up hearing an immigration case not to long ago over the question of whether the Turkish “Donmeh” were legally Muslims or Jews for purposes of Israeli immigration law. Iirc, they ruled “Jews” but I could be mistaken).
2) Is this a problem throughout all Muslim subcultures? I.e. is it as prevalent among African American Islamic groups such as the Nation of Islam as it is among immigrant groups?
3) Are there specific interpretations of Islam, like Salafism, which specifically seem to corrolate to this sort of crime?
At the same time, I agree that there isn’t enough attention to what sociological factors drive this sort of behavior. It does nevertheless appear senseless to me that someone would seem to be in this country on his own initiative and feel like assimilation is sufficient motivation to murder.
BTW, the following is an interesting and thought provoking read. I highly recommend everyone read it:
December 26, 2009, 5:57 pmUnderstanding Islamism by the International Crisis Group.
public_defender says:
I’m talking about the rate of family violence among Muslim Americans and Non-Muslim Americans. Do you have any evidence that the rate of violence is higher among Muslim Americans?
As to the “false dichotomy,” I think it’s fair to keep a problem in proportion. As A. Zarkov’s posts show, some use statistics of Muslim family violence to try to show that there is something inherently more violence about Islam and Muslims. My point is that six “honor killings” in a year is, alas, a very small number of family violence homicides.
And A. Zarkov, do you have actual statistics showing that European Muslims as a whole engage in more family violence than non-Muslim Europeans? What about Muslims in the US where their population is more than 5% people in a given locality? I also think the American idea of religious liberty (generally, practice what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone else) is more conducive to a productive integration than European society’s which have a bizarre mixture of state religious preference and societal secularism.
December 26, 2009, 7:01 pmMe says:
Muslims are a small fraction of France’s population, but comprise perhaps 70 percent of its prison inmates.
That answers Public Defender’s request for hard statistics.
By the way, Public Defender ought to know (as most real world public defenders do) that few if any prosecutors ignore domestic violence or treat it as a private matter. (Quite the contrary: mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence, and federal funding rewarding domestic violence prosecutions, result in the arrest and prosecution of many people who are accused of committing simple assaults against loved ones that do not lead to any physical injury — where analogous simple assaults against strangers would not even be prosecuted).
December 26, 2009, 7:25 pmpublic_defender says:
Me, you’re going to have to give me a source for that 70% figure. Plus, if you read my posts more closely, you will see that I pointed out that domestic violence has started to be taken seriously only in the last couple of decades in the US. It was, until very recently, a “private family matter.”
December 26, 2009, 7:51 pmRandy says:
Volokh: “The two are not the same: American manslaughter law is generally limited to infidelity by spouses (historically) and occasionally lovers, and not to perceived sexual improprieties by daughters.”
Although not exactly the same, the “gay panic defense” is similar. In this, a man gets to kill a gay man by proclaiming that the gay man made advances upon him. This outraged the killer so much to have his manhood questioned, that he was thereby justified in killing him.
This defense was used extensively and often quite successfully. However, since the 90s, it’s use and effectiveness have declined dramatically. Many jurisdictions even prevent it being raised as a defense at all. Nonetheless, at least for a while in some cases, it worked quite nicely to acquit some men of brutal murders.
December 26, 2009, 11:12 pmRandy says:
Theo and Zarkov are absolutely correct. If we can just get all the women’s feminists and other lefty groups of the world to denounce Islam, all honor killings will come to an immediate and permanent halt. It’s the power of a press release!
This way, Theo and Zarkov don’t have to actually DO anything to stop these killings — they can just blame others for not stopping these killings. And hey, if the lefties aren’t interested enough to issue a press release, then we certainly can’t expect *anyone else* to do anything, right?
December 26, 2009, 11:47 pmrobin says:
I think that muslim men all over the world are heartless
December 27, 2009, 12:36 amtheobromophile says:
Randy: excuse me? I never said that denouncing honour killings would end them; I just said that I find it strange that a group that normally denounces these things does not here.
Now, a query for you: would you take your b.s. sarcasm to its logical conclusion? Would you have it apply to feminism in general? the gay rights movement? any cause normally associated with liberalism?
Seems like you, Randy, have a pretty easy time trashing Catholics. So why the sacred cow here? Why the downright pathetic comment and personal attack?
December 27, 2009, 2:04 ampublic_defender says:
If you want an effective criminal justice response, you need facts, not just Oprah-style, crime-of-the-week emotion. Six killings in a year is six too many. But, alas, there are many, many, many problems that cause more than six deaths a year. If you focus resources inefficiently or ineffectively, you can make other problems worse.
December 27, 2009, 8:20 amneurodoc says:
Who suggested that “abusive treatment of daughters by fathers is…solely a problem in the Muslim community”? I’m sure I didn’t, because I believe nothing of the sort. The question is whether those rapes of girls by their fathers that you prosecuted are all of a kind with so-called “honor killings” of girls by their fathers or other family members. Was there anyone anywhere around who could “understand” why those fathers raped their daughters, let alone expressed approval? “Honor killings” are motivated by a sense of honor and fear of shaming, which makes them not just intrafamilial matters, but rather a cultural/community issues that is not native to these shores.
Laura(southernxyl) said we should not “conflate” different crimes of violence all under the heading of “domestic violence.” I agree with her.
December 27, 2009, 9:40 amMe says:
Data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown for decades that the criminal justice system does not discriminate against victims of domestic violence. And a simple assault unaccompanied by injury is far more likely to lead to arrest when it is against a wife, rather than against a non-family member.
Public Defender is completely wrong to claim that “domestic violence has started to be taken seriously only in the last couple of decades in the US. It was, until very recently, a ‘private family matter.’”
Actually, prosecutors take domestic violence more seriously than similarly violent non-domestic violence.
Unless, that is, the victim is male. Since the 1920s, courts like the North Carolina Supreme Court have held that spousal immunity does NOT shield male perpetrators of domestic violence in civil suits, much less criminal prosecution.
But in the 1950s, the state supreme courts of both North Carolina and South Carolina held that spousal immunity did bar tort claims against female perpetrators of domestic violence against husbands — but not against male perpetrators, whose immunity was abrogated and repealed by the married-women’s emancipation laws. (State legislatures in both states eventually made clear that spousal immunity applies to NO domestic violence, whether the victim is male or female).
The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ study of large urban counties shows that unprovoked killings of husbands by wives lead to a ridiculously short sentence of 7 years, on average — compared to a more reasonable (but still slightly inadequate) 17 years for unprovoked killings of wives by husbands.
(Sad to say, unprovoked killings without premeditation often result in slightly-inadequate sentences among non-intimates, too, so I guess it’s no surprise that that is also true of killings among intimates).
December 27, 2009, 10:52 ampublic_defender says:
The lack of immunity from civil suits in North Carolina is interesting, but not all that probative. You also say (without proof) that “Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown for decades that the criminal justice system does not discriminate against victims of domestic violence.” What is the source for that? And what does it prove?
As to my point about “honor killings” being a relatively small number, the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows well more than 1,000 intra-family homicides a year.
If there were six Muslim “honor killings” in a year, that seems like a low number. It’s pretty much impossible to reduce any type of crime to zero, and six is about as close to zero as the system can get. If that’s your statistic, it seems that Muslim “honor killings” are not a large problem in American society and that American Muslims maintain more peaceful homes than non-Muslim Americans.
And here’s a 1984 study that discusses the traditional police practice of non-arrest for domestic violence.
I agree that sometimes police, legislatures and courts go too far. Mandatory arrest is silly where charges can’t stick up in court. And now some defendants face years in prison for misconduct that would get others days in jail. But it’s silly to argue that police and prosecutors routinely took domestic violence seriously 30 years ago. Taking domestic violence seriously is something new in the US, and it’s far from uniform.
December 27, 2009, 12:52 pmpublic_defender says:
One more point. I suspect that the statistic showing six “honor killings” is incomplete. There’s probably more violence than that. But that’s a suspicion, not a statistic. This statistic doesn’t show any need for a concerted public effort unless you think everything that causes six deaths demonstrates need for a concerted public effort.
We’d save more lives (many, many more lives) by reducing the interstate speed limit to 55 mph. If protecting life is your goal, there’s one for you. I also suspect that more than six people were murdered by stab wounds from pencils, but I haven’t seen any of you condemn that. (Go ahead, do a Google search for “pencil deadly weapon.”
December 27, 2009, 1:00 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Randy, was it really? I knew of it in theory but the only time I know of it even potentially being tried was the case with that stupid talk-show host whose name I’ve carefully blocked, and that was not a successful defense. Wikipedia lists about four in this country, the only successful one being Joseph Biedermann, but then when I looked that up I saw that he was claiming that he was defending himself from actual rape. And he was acquitted of first-degree murder, the jury not being allowed to consider second-degree.
So has it really been extensively used?
December 27, 2009, 1:13 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Is every killing in an American Muslim home designated an “honor killing”?
December 27, 2009, 1:18 pmpublic_defender says:
Laura,
I don’t know. But the burden of the “I don’t know’s” in this case falls on those who say the statistic is meaningful. On its face, I suggest that the statistic shows that the Muslim-Americans are disproportionately non-violence when compared to other Americans. If you have an alternative take, back it up.
This statistic seems to me to be a weird convergence of Oprah and Lou Dobbs in terms of accuracy and meaning.
December 27, 2009, 1:58 pmgeokstr says:
I realize that people of the left distrust and/or ridicule every source someone on the right provides, but this is one of your own:
In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims
You will be happy to note that, of course, those same “Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers” blame it all on the French.
I would mention the epidemic of rape being perped by Islamists in Scandanavia and other countries, but then you’d probably make me look that up for you too.
December 27, 2009, 2:03 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
But, public defender, you were the one who asserted that the 6/year figure must mean that American Muslim households are more peaceful. So you should be able to back up your claim that overall, DV is less in American Muslim households.
I don’t think the rest of us are making any sweeping comments except that honor-killing daughters for being too Western is a fairly new thing in this country and we don’t want to see it, and we certainly don’t want to see more of it.
Your comments are more like, “well, we already have measles, so give us the mumps too”.
December 27, 2009, 2:19 pmpublic_defender says:
Interesting. I don’t “blame it all on the French” (after all, many Muslims are French, too). Much of the problem in Europe is the weird discrimination coupled with segregation and even religious ghettos. Societies there still do officially discriminate for instance, barring headscarves in French schools (was that ever repealed?) or minarets in Switzerland. Couple that with real racism (Jean Marie LePen had a substantial portion of the vote) and an (at least partly) non-assimilating Muslim culture, and you have a volatile mix. Many European countries also have an identity tied to race and religion that makes it difficult for non-natives (or native kids of non-natives) to assimilate without completely giving up their identity.
In the US, by contrast, you can be a Muslim American. You can wear or not wear the head scarf. You can build your mosques the same way Christians can build churches and Jews build synagogues. You can criticize the government the same way Christians and Jews do. But if you use violence to reach your goals, you get treated like Christian criminals such a Timothy McVeigh or the murderers of doctors who provide abortion. You can raise your kids in your faith and send them to school, but if you abuse them, you get to deal with child protective services or prosecutors, just like Christians and Jews.
The European model is a really dumb one to follow, since, as you point out, they have so much more violence than we have.
So I think it’s fair to hold Muslims to the same general standards as their fellow Americans, and the figure that we have had six “honor killings” is an indication that Muslims generally are following the rules here (possibly better than non-Muslims) and that American Muslims are generally not radicalized.
December 27, 2009, 2:34 pmreadery says:
One key difference between the American law and the Islamic world’s one is that the American law is regarded as an acknowledgement of human weakness — generally rational people will, under certain circumstances, behave in ways that can seem irrational. This is why the manslaughter and other lesser offenses are characterized in terms of responding in terms of impulse. That is, the American approach accepts the reality of the behavior without glorifying it or regarding it as correct behavior.
Glorifying the behavior — planning it, doing it coldly — is a different thing.
In my view I don’t think it would do anyone any justice or serve any deterrant value to regard this as a hate crime. If we characterize it as differently from an ordinary murder, it seems to me the proper aggravator is child abuse — a violation of the duties and the sense of duty our society imposes on parents with regard to their children even when families disagree and even when children behave in ways parents regard as wildly improper, perhaps justifiably. Parents are entitled to use corporal punishment on their minor children not resulting in serious or permanent injury. And they are entitled to shun their adult children — to regard them as dead if they want. But that’s as far as they can go.
I’ve sometimes suggested that society be lenient in cases where mores are somewhat different from ours — for example, when teenagers traditionally “come of age” a couple of years younger than we do, it’s not clear anyone is served by characterizing their traditional dating behavior as rape or similar forms of violence.
However, there are cases and matters where lenience is simply not possible — where we’re not and can’t be a purely culturally neutral society but have to take a stand, as culturally expressed morality is inherent to human nature including ours and societies simply cannot live without it.
This is one of those cases.
December 27, 2009, 4:00 pmRandy says:
Theo: “Randy: excuse me? I never said that denouncing honour killings would end them; I just said that I find it strange that a group that normally denounces these things does not here.”
JakeCollins defended liberals by quoting that they HAVE denounced honor killings. This wasn’t enough for you, and you complained that they should do more. To what end? Liberals can explore the root causes to their hearts content, but that certainly won’t stop the honor killings. And why should the burden be upon liberals groups? Shouldn’t conservative groups also denounce and explore and do everything that you claim is necessary? Even if it won’t do anything at all to actually help alleviate the problem? Sorry, but I saw your post as just a dig at liberals, and so I took a dig in return.
” So why the sacred cow here?” No sacred cows here! By all means, please go ahead and criticize a group for not doing what you think it should be doing. I get to do that too.
December 28, 2009, 1:44 amRandy says:
Laura: The gay panic defense was used many times in Washington, DC, throughout the 80s, and many times it was effective in getting an acquittal. The Washington Blade did a thorough analysis several years ago, which I’m sorry I can’t find.
However, just a few months ago, two gay men were walking in Adams Morgan (a neighborhood in Washington), and a black man came up to them, yelled some gay epithets and hit one. He fell, hit is head on the curb, and died. In addition to the other gay man, there was one other witness.
The suspect claimed that he was merely walking by and the gay man just grabbed his crotch for no reason at all. (On its face, that seems highly unlikely, and two witnesses denied it happened). In defense of this outrage, the suspect felt it necessary to hit him in the head — a classic gay panic defense. The two witnesses denied that the victim ever touched the suspect, but nonetheless the DA believed the suspect and charged him with manslaughter and was sentenced to a few months in jail.
So it’s still a powerful defense, even if not *always* successful.
December 28, 2009, 1:53 amFloridan says:
“I don’t think the rest of us are making any sweeping comments except that honor-killing daughters for being too Western is a fairly new thing in this country and we don’t want to see it, and we certainly don’t want to see more of it.”
Seems to me that there has been a whole lot of sweeping going on here.
December 28, 2009, 8:08 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
It’s not highly unlikely, unfortunately. Without telling too much of my daughter’s business, I’ll say that she was with her boyfriend in downtown Orlando recently when another woman, a stranger walking by, grabbed his crotch. It happens.
If a stranger, male or female, grabbed my crotch, I would feel it necessary to push that person away violently or whack the hell out of him or her with whatever I had in my hand. I don’t think that is a “classic gay panic” response.
Now this doesn’t mean that the perp in your story didn’t make all that up to excuse why he wanted to hit a stranger. If you want to call it a gay hate crime because he singled out a gay person to strike, I get that.
December 28, 2009, 11:35 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
To clarify – if a man gave as a defense, that another man propositioned him verbally so that he was forced to strike out and injure or kill that man, I’d give you “gay panic”. To react because of unwanted physical contact of an intimate nature – no.
December 28, 2009, 12:55 pmkaren says:
i think honor killing is wrong for people to do!!!!!!!!!!!1
May 20, 2010, 11:23 amangie says:
itz sad when you get raped itz like in your life for ever like a tattoo…..
May 20, 2010, 11:31 am