No nostalgia for the good old days

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Honour killings

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by George Patrick

A 14-year-old girl in Afghanistan is raped. Five months later, with her pregnancy (her “shame”) showing, her mother and brother take a razor blade and cut her fetus out of her. In England, Tahir Mahmood is accused of killing the man his sister married without his approval. In Iran, a woman is murdered by the man she was forced to marry. In Italy, a Mafia boss kills his girlfriend’s lover. Just a few of today’s postings on stophonourkillings.com. And every day, more and yet more sick, stupid, benighted, abhorrent acts of bestial cruelty. Every day, hundreds of little African girls with their clitorises sliced off with dirty razor blades. Every day, 20 or so Indian wives incinerated because their dowries were unpaid. Every day, countless women and girls forced to marry.

Somehow humans just can’t seem to let go of all the nasty little tribal idiocies passed down from generation to generation. Because we’re social creatures, we find great comfort in conforming to the customs of our own particular herd. It’s our culture, we say, and we’re proud of it. It saves us having to think for ourselves. So if one must kill one’s daughter to maintain one’s social standing (“honour”), then kill her we shall.
Pathetic.
All these old cultures suck slime from the bottom of the primeval cesspool. Show me any traditional culture — yours, mine, theirs — strip away the glossy Hollywood romanticization we love to bathe the past in, and I’ll show you a witches’ brew of cruelty, bigotry, ignorance, injustice, and infinite human misery.

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