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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Joss Whedon, cell phone videos and feminism

Joss Whedon, creator of the Buffyverse, wrote this excellent essay on feminism that begins with a description of a recent "honor killing." Some Muslim men stoned a Muslim woman to death, and among the crowd of killers were a couple guys who caught the murder on their cell phone cameras.

It's pretty sick stuff, and Joss Whedon puts it all in perspective.

Thanks for the email, Selene.

Reminds me of Ken Picard's story in Seven Days this week, about male violence in Vermont.

CORRECTION: One of the comments below brought this to light, so I thought I'd bump it up here:

Just a factual note - the perpetrators were not Muslim. They were Yezidis, followers of a distinctive Kurdish religion. In fact one of the "rationales" for this horrendous act was that the girl had allegedly dated a Muslim.

DM

Thanks. Sorry for the error.

May 24, 2007 at 08:10 PM in House Rules | Permalink

Comments

Hi,

Just a factual note - the perpetrators were not Muslim. They were Yezidis, followers of a distinctive Kurdish religion. In fact one of the "rationales" for this horrendous act was that the girl had allegedly dated a Muslim.

DM

Posted by: Don | May 25, 2007 1:55:35 PM

Here's the Wiki article on Du’a Khalil Aswad, the victim of this barbaric crime.

This is where cultural sensitivity stops. I do not respect this evil tradition of so called "honor killing."

I don't want this bullshit in my daughter's world.

Posted by: Haik Bedrosian | May 26, 2007 7:35:13 AM

Just a factual note - the perpetrators were not Muslim.

Which is not to say that Honor Killings are not practiced by Muslims

Though it must be remembered this is not an artifact of the Muslim religion, but an artifact of Turkish-Kurd culture that has been grafted to the Muslim religion by virtue of the fact that the vast majority of Turkish-Kurds became Muslim. But it certainly is not restricted to Kurds and Honor killings have a place in other cultures as well such as Arab, Druze and Bedouin. There are many Muslim countries in which Honor Killings have no place.

Posted by: Frank | May 26, 2007 8:46:25 AM

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