They call this honor?

I think there would be some deep cultural honor in my going after each one of these guys with a baseball bat.

Sorry, that story just pissed me off.

Another country that is supposed to be secular marred by religious fanatics. -sigh-

I would suggest these assholes be drawn and quartered, seems only appropriate as they want to live in the dark ages then whatever happens to them should reflect that era. All this in the name of bullshit religiion

These idiots are followers of the prophet Mu-ham-mad, piss be upon him, and upon them.

We're moral and upstanding--
I don't see what's the fuss;
We do this to protect these girls...
From guys who think like us.

I wish every rational liberal was as even-handed in his condemnations of cultural and religious irrationality as PZ. Unfortunately, many fellow liberals have a blind spot when it comes to Islamic countries, and especially Turkey -- liberals who rightly and properly condemn the excesses and stupidity of our Christianists, seem to go all wobbly for this one Islamic country. I sent a couple of e-mails, for instance, to Josh Marshal asking him why he keeps referring to himself as an "ardent Turkophile" (he never answered) and I was baffled by many other prominent liberals who criticized the Congress recently over its attempt to merely recognize the Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turks as a historical event. I consider Turks to be no different than any other set of humans beings, with the same potential for acts of benevolence, as well as malevolence. But their culture is one of hyper-nationalism, and Islam is a very strong element of their national identity, despite the fact that officially the country is supposed to be secular.

____________________________________________

This could have happened in any country, religious or not. Don't want to be the nay-sayer here, but blaming a single violent misogynistic act somewhere on the globe entirely on religion seems a bit short-sighted to me. As a youth gang with destructive ambitions, they could've done any number of things.

Same goes for people who are obviously psychotic, in a clinical psychiatric sense. Yeah, they often refer to religion, but if one of them goes and says he's a giant monster penguin, then his sickness still stays the same and it's a waste of blog space to blame it on the penguins.

Sorry for the rambling. I like Pharyngula, and that's why I feel like stating my opinion sometimes when a post seems to me like a dent in quality.

I'm not so sure this would be an isolated event(s), gang-like activity. Many Muslim countries/communities have morality police - Taliban much?

a single violent misogynistic act

Yes, because nothing like this has ever happened before.

1) The young men have natural urges and desires

2) These urges and desires are easily inflamed by the sight of too much leg or face exposed by young women

3) The young men thus aroused can not possibly be expected to restrain themselves from sexually assaulting the young women

4) Throwing acid at the women is a way for the young men to:
* render these young women less attractive
* discourage continuation of the practice of provocative dress by these women, and make an example of them to discourage other women
* sublimate the young men's sexual desires into violence.

Thus, honour is protected for all.

"blaming a single violent misogynistic act somewhere on the globe entirely on religion seems a bit short-sighted to me"

It may be a paraphrase from a scrubs episode but;
"yes, they're each one incident but when you put them all together it makes like.... a hundred incidents"

The simple fact is that while this sort of person exists all over the globe, religion gives them their excuse. The problem is not that violence occurs (although of course thats bad), the problem is that these "men", if you can call them that, did this with a clear conscience and approval from their "god" and many of their peers and elders.

Theo: I wanna ask why, given that it's the men who lack self-control, it's the women who have to suffer for it either by dressing in a way they wouldn't necessarily choose or by enduring pain for dressing how they please.

With due respect, Theo, bullshit. Mutilating women isn't sublimation of sexual desire; if they're fucked in the head, it's consummating it, and if they're just motivated by cultural assholism, it's a means of controlling women.

I plump for the second one; it has nothing to do with "throwing acid on the bitches that get me hot" and everything to do with "throwing acid on the bitches who won't do what they're supposed to".

I'm with you, Ric. Baseball bat it is. But it will be covered with rusty nails, and I might add a katana to the bunch of weapons.

And I'll beat the shit out of them while wearing an anime clichéed ultra-skimpy japanese schoolgirl outfit. Not that I'm a creepy otaku but I think it fits.

If one of them goes and says he's a giant monster penguin, then his sickness still stays the same and it's a waste of blog space to blame it on the penguins.

Do I really need to point out that in this case no rational person would blame penguins because currently there's no evidence whatsoever that penguins could have caused someone to commit a violent act? The fact that a psychotic person claims a connection between his violent act and penguins does not establish a connection between the two.

However, what if we had evidence that penguins had established a supernatural belief system and wrote a manual for this system, which explained how those who follow the system will get a great reward if they just follow the instructions in the manual? Indeed, one instruction is to prevent women from showing flesh by terrorizing them, for their own good of course. Now some people -- clinically psychotic or not -- follow these imperatives contained in the penguin manual and commit violent acts against women who show flesh. Can we now blame the penguins?

I like Pharyngula too, and its comments' section, but some comments do seems to me like a dent in quality.
____________________________________________

Yenzo said:

This could have happened in any country, religious or not. Don't want to be the nay-sayer here, but blaming a single violent misogynistic act somewhere on the globe entirely on religion seems a bit short-sighted to me.

That's odd, because I don't live in fear of being sprayed with acid (or attacked at all in fact) by cowardly Christian fundies because of the length of my skirt in the UK. I clearly must pay more attention to the news.

As a youth gang with destructive ambitions, they could've done any number of things.

This type of crime is not a crime caused by bored deliquent youths of the type that might steal a car and go joyriding or whatever in the West. It is an entirely different cultural phenomenon that is well documented and about controlling women who are seen as bringing shame on their culture or family. Attacks like these are misogynist, violent and controlling and can (and do) lead to the horrific murders of women deemed to have transgressed social codes, codes which are informed and enforced by the dictates of the various religions of the cultures which practice it.

Therefore, in so far as such cultures and their norms and traditions are informed by religion, yes religion does have a case to answer in this setting and needs to be one hell of a lot more active in condemning and putting an end to this practice than it has so far been (mostly the religious leaders, when asked, get mealy mouthed and say something along the lines of "it was all the woman's fault and even if it wasn't you can't blame us" - and that's just the nice ones) in order to exculpate itself from it.

As for the little thugs who did this - I agree whole-heartedly with PZ, it is a very strange and repugnant sort of honour which consists of terrorising of people who can't fight back. It may be a cultural thing, but to me they are simply spineless, bigotted and cowardly bullies.

In her book Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells of how she was astounded the first time she was in a Western, non-Islamic country and saw women exposing their bodies, and men ... ignoring them. It made no sense to her. She had always been taught and told that women's bodies drove men to distraction, and they could not control their urges. Without modest attire, women would be treated as sex objects and degraded.

She found out that it was the opposite. Women who wore scanty clothes and sandals on their feet were treated respectfully in the Netherlands, and women who wore full burkhas which covered everything but their eyes were shoved off the sidewalks as if they were animals in Saudi Arabia.

Ophelia Benson (of the blog Butterflies and Wheels) is apparently writing a book on fundamentalism and the treatment of women. If so, I will buy it. I agree with Phoenician in a time of Romans #13 above. For crying out loud, one of the girls was in elementary school. This was about control. In religion, you can be different than infidels because, unlike them, you are responsible for controlling your women. It sets you apart.

I suggest these girls accessorize their outfits with purely ceremonial razor-sharp machetes in decorative scabbards, perhaps with matching trench knives, and military sidearms. Then we'll see, as I suspect, that 'honor' nuttiness will prove to be just another passing fad.

My Mom tells me that when her high school became desegregated the white boys would escort the white girls to class for "protection", just in case the black boys got any ideas. The whole set of behaviors is so bizarre, misguided and wrong, and seem to me more like an elephant seal "protecting" his harem by controlling his cows than the behavior of rational human beings.

re: Post #10, 1 - 3, points out a salient consequence to that which secular societies applaud, the liberated female.

I read no religious justification (name of allah crap) in the article, so why conflate it with such? One can just as easily see the culturally provocative acts of the girls and the response applied as one of the law of unintended consequences in regards to the culturally destructive secular progression on display.

@18:

I fear that if that happened (women defending themselves) the reprisals would be grisly.

what I don't understand, as a father of 2 girls, is how a father could control his anger and not severely kick a few muslim asses.

to Aris:
all evil in the world is caused by liberals, just ask Rush. It is very important to blame someone else for our failures, just ask Rush. Yet we all know that only conservatives have miserable lives, they hate a lot and most suck cock. conservative = simplistic moron!

Evil, but they pale in comparison to honor killings--where your brother or uncle offs you [you = a female ] for some perceived moral failing. Some of these are religious in motivation, others appear to be rooted in some kind of tribal culture. Nevertheless is appalling that these sort of things can still occur in the 21st century.

The Bible may say that the human heart is evil in its inclinations, but I find it a little ironic that some of greatest evils are carried out in compliance with some sort of twisted moral code, often to satisfy some bloodthirsty deity.

richCares: 'what I don't understand, as a father of 2 girls, is how a father could control his anger and not severely kick a few muslim asses.'

In 'honour killings' the father is often directly involved if the girl has brought (perceived) shame on the family. Like by dating the wrong flavour of boy (Mothers are occasionallly not wholly blameless, either.) In some schools in the UK, posters advising young pupils what to do and whom to contact in the event of being threatened with forced marriage were not displayed because of 'cultural sensitivities'.

@Salt- you appear to be blaming the girls for being "provocative." How exactly does _any_ form of "cultural provocation" justify maiming people with acid?

#14: Great. I'll bust out my summer yukata and a garotting wire and join you.

Don't want to be the nay-sayer here, but blaming a single violent misogynistic act somewhere on the globe entirely on religion seems a bit short-sighted to me.

I dunno - ignoring a widespread pattern of almost identical attacks across multiple countries, all explicitly motivated by the same specific set of religious beliefs is what seems short-sighted to me.

The only unusual thing about this attack is that the victims didn't get it in the face.

I read no religious justification (name of allah crap) in the article, so why conflate it with such? One can just as easily see the culturally provocative acts of the girls and the response applied as one of the law of unintended consequences in regards to the culturally destructive secular progression on display.

Posted by: Salt | February 20, 2008 10:18 AM

Shorter Salt: dem gals asked for it. Classic 'blame the victim'.

So, if it is 'destructive secular progression' that caused these girls to be attacked, why would the gang of boys, influenced by a morally superior religious upbringing, sneak attack individual girls?

So sad that you besmirch the name of a useful substance.

"I read no religious justification (name of allah crap) in the article, so why conflate it with such? One can just as easily see the culturally provocative acts of the girls and the response applied as one of the law of unintended consequences in regards to the culturally destructive secular progression on display."

Hold on. If you're calling "secular progression" "culturally destructive" then aren't you kind of undercutting your whole point that there's no "religious justification" being used in the committing of that crime? In other words, what, exactly, is your point?

to Aris: all evil in the world is caused by liberals, just ask Rush.

I have no idea what you're driving at.
____________________________________________

She found out that it was the opposite. Women who wore scanty clothes and sandals on their feet were treated respectfully in the Netherlands

Which brings me to the next point: to even find out what "sandals on their feet" is doing in the same sentence as "scanty clothes", I need to think rationally. What -- at least -- men find sexy is strongly and negatively correlated to what they are used to seeing. 100 years ago, Salvador Dalí wrote "a woman's feet and forearms must be of exhibitionist beauty", and nowadays I read that line and wonder what a strange fetish that strange guy had. Then I remember this was just a decade or three after the sight of a lady's ankle drove gentlemen insane.

regarding my comments @ #10:

Possibly as a result of my anger and sadness in response to this story, I forgot about the Internet Sarcasm Filters. I was attempting to illuminate the twisted logic that might lead to this sort of reprehensible behaviour. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that some think I was seriously suggesting sublimating the the young men's sexual desires into violence.

To be very clear about my position: I strongly support women's (and men's) rights to dress however they choose. There are certainly cases in which I disagree with people's choice of dress - both on the side of the sexualization of dress for young girls, and on the side of burkas and hiqabs, but I think that is to be addressed by educating and encouraging correct choices. 35 years ago, female students at my highschool were required to wear skirts or dresses - pants were not permitted. However, when I chose to challenge the rules and wear pants, I only risked the ire of the teachers, and did not have to face the possibility of anything like the attack on these unfortunate young women.

the culturally destructive secular progression on display.

It isn't the modern western McDonald's Coca Cola civilization that destroys culture. Fundamentalism destroys culture.

One can just as easily see the culturally provocative acts of the girls and the response applied as one of the law of unintended consequences in regards to the culturally destructive secular progression on display.

Wonderfull! So the girls actions are "provocative" and the boys actions merely "the law of unintended consequences". You speak almost as though the boys were some impersonal physical force with no will of their own whereas the girls (one of them in elementary school) were the active agents whose foolishness in displaying "culturally destructive secular progression" was responsible for the attack.

Tell me, is there anything, anywhere in the world that can be done by a man to a woman that some idiot, somewhere, will not try and rewrite as her fault?

Piece on Turkey and the clash between secularism and religion in the NY Times, for what it's worth:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/europe/19turkeyweb.html?_r=1&sc…

Evil, but they pale in comparison to honor killings--where your brother or uncle offs you [you = a female ] for some perceived moral failing.

In 'honour killings' the father is often directly involved if the girl has brought (perceived) shame on the family.

I wonder how the evolutionary psychology folks explain that behaviour.

God can always punish short-skirt wearers if It wants to in the afterlife - so why do these guys have to get involved? It is the fact that so many have to defend what they think is God's will that perplexes me.

These dudes need to holster their gentlemen and go learn, say, evolutionary theory.

Michelle: I can see your anime series in my mind's eye. Haven't thought of a title for it yet. Atheist Bitch Kendoka?

Tell me, is there anything, anywhere in the world that can be done by a man to a woman that some idiot, somewhere, will not try and rewrite as her fault?

No, there isn't.

I read no religious justification (name of allah crap) in the article, so why conflate it with such? One can just as easily see the culturally provocative acts of the girls and the response applied as one of the law of unintended consequences in regards to the culturally destructive secular progression on display.

So are we to take it that you're completely unaware of the very widespread use of this specific form of attack (acid) in regressive Muslim countries, specifically to punish women who are seen as violating religious dress codes, and the justifications repeatedly offered both for it and the persistent failure to tackle it?

It isn't the modern western McDonald's Coca Cola civilization that destroys culture. Fundamentalism destroys culture.

White man speak truth. Coca Cola go good with buffalo.

"I wonder how the evolutionary psychology folks explain that behaviour."

It's that damn Y chromosome --the source of all evil (well maybe not all of it, but still an awful lot of it).

"I wonder how the evolutionary psychology folks explain that behaviour."
It's that damn Y chromosome --the source of all evil (well maybe not all of it, but still an awful lot of it).

That doesn't cover the evolutionary angle, though -- what is happening is that individuals are killing highly related kin, in some cases offspring, and offspring generally of reproductive age (who therefore have had a lot of resources invested). This specific behaviour doesn't make sense from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.

Memes don't care if you live or die, so long as they survive (if you subscribe to the cultural evolution theory involving memes, that is).

Acid disfigurement attacks in Pakistan (2006):

"While precise figures of the number of women who suffer from these crimes are not available due to lack of research, hundreds of cases of acid burns have been recorded annually over the past three or four years in Pakistan. The New York-based rights body, Human Rights Watch (HRW), estimates at least 280 women died and 750 suffered injuries in 2002 alone as a result of acid attacks.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan documented 46 attacks in 2004 in the southern Punjab alone.

Sameena Afzal, the chief coordinator of the 'Depilex Smile Again' organisation, set up in 2003 to offer medical help to female burn victims, said: "It is very difficult to find definite statistics. But we know the number is high. I have 150 acid and stove burn victims registered with me at the moment for treatment.""

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=34245

Lilley De Lure,

That's odd, because I don't live in fear of being sprayed with acid (or attacked at all in fact) by cowardly Christian fundies because of the length of my skirt in the UK. I clearly must pay more attention to the news.

We still a problem with so-called honor crimes in the UK, so I'm not sure it is fair to think of this as being a Turkish problem. Religiously motivated crimes, many of them involving serious violence, affect every society, so we should certainly guard against complacency.

Turkey has a relatively low crime rate, especially for the region, and they take law-enforcement very seriously. (The murder rate is somewhat lower than that in the US, for instance). Turkey has made great strides in creating and maintaining a secular system of government in the face of an enormously powerful and influential religious movement; they make at least as good a job of it as the US. (Possibly more so, because the secularization of Turkey has persisted in the face of Islamist revolution throughout the middle-east.)

Still, acid attacks do take place in the UK and US, so we shouldn't assume that liberal societies are immune from fundamentalist idiots carrying out hateful, misogynistic, cowardly attacks.

Also, we should take note of the small, but very serious, problem of violence against children - up to, and including, ritual murder - by fundamentalist Christian sects in the UK.

That doesn't cover the evolutionary angle, though -- what is happening is that individuals are killing highly related kin, in some cases offspring, and offspring generally of reproductive age (who therefore have had a lot of resources invested). This specific behaviour doesn't make sense from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.

Consider the fact that it is a matter of family honor though, and the 'stain' on the honor of a family resulting from a daughter's behavior, can affect the reproductive prospects of other offspring. Where marriages tend to be arranged, status of a suitor family is likely to matter greatly in selecting mates.

Other than the obvious religious factor, the biggest
problem is the dominance of the freaking male sex, the
biggest overwhelming perpetrator of crimes on this damn
planet. It is the male sex that is involved in the
majority of all manner and severity of violence and crimes
committed in any society, particularly more so in those
countries of arab origin because this slime is able to
exercise complete control through sheer and abject
violence. Without sounding extreme and totally trying to
be realistic in the face of controversy, if you could kill
off ninety percent of the male sex, you would wipe out
almost ninety nine percent of crime. This isn't survival
of the fittest, but rather perpetuation of the unduly
oppressed. Those European countries that have females in
charge seem to work well. Let us now confront the dire and
outrageous rebuttals, especially from males who seem to be
potentially threatened by such gender bashing.

"Some of our worst mistakes do not come so much from bad deductions or faulty logic - but from a faulty premise and proneness to delusion."

Propagandists and framers know this axiom very well.

FRAME THE DEBATE! FRAME THE DEBATE!

Yes, this IS an UGLY story, and what are we to make of it?

This "story" originates from MEMRI.
MEMRI is a well-known notorious Israeli propaganda/peeyar organization dedicated to advancing Israeli interests.

PZ, you are either doing an experiment about framing, propaganda, and naivete; or you are a conscious Islam basher.

A commentary about MEMRI, and there are plenty more if you chose to look;

http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/15069/135/

Holbach,

a) Don't you think that a better explanation is that any culture or society with is predicated on the superiority of any gender (or race, or class, etc), it likely to breed opression, contempt, and violence against the supposedly inferior group.

b) That men have a greater propensity for violence is pretty much a physiological phenomenon, but it is also true that men are perfectly able to overcome such quirks of biology. Social factors - mental illness aside - breed and trigger violence, not simply hormonal imperatives.

Bernard said:

We still a problem with so-called honor crimes in the UK, so I'm not sure it is fair to think of this as being a Turkish problem. Religiously motivated crimes, many of them involving serious violence, affect every society, so we should certainly guard against complacency.

I understand that (I possibly should have made my post clearer) - I was responding to a previous post that was saying that this was just another group of bored youngsters and that it could have happened anywhere, so we shouldn't get steamed up about the religious and cultural implications of the attack.

I was making the point that this clearly is a religious and cultural issue (as are the UK and US religious crimes (I refuse to dignify such acts with the term "honour") that you mention) and we do ourselves and more importantly the victims, no favours by pretending it ain't so.

This is the origin of my comment about me in the UK. If this type of behaviour is just violent thugs being violent thugs and not a religious and cultural thing, then why don't I have this problem when wandering around in short skirts in a different culture which, nonetheless, has no shortage of violent thugs?

This "story" originates from MEMRI.

No, the story did not originate with MEMRI but with the Doğan News Agency, one of Turkey's mainstream press syndicates and was widely published in Turkey's major dailies. PZ just linked to MEMRI's coverage, but MEMRI did not have anything to do with the story (BTW, this is not a defense of MEMRI, but of the story's validity).

And what's wrong exactly with being an Islam basher? Shouldn't all rational people bash all superstition, wherever they find it? We should all be bashing away at Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Scientology, etc. etc. It is the obligation of anyone who cares about what is happening to our world to bash any irrational, transcendental belief system.
____________________________________________

Evil, but they pale in comparison to honor killings--where your brother or uncle offs you [you = a female ] for some perceived moral failing.

I dunno. I'm not entirely convinced that it really is better to stay alive in a cultural environment where an elementary school girl can be publically mutilated on the theory that God hates even the tiniest visible hint of her sexuality.

My wife and I saw Persepolis a few days ago, and I spent the whole movie wondering how people can stay in an environment like that. If I were the father of the little girl in this Turkey case (either of the girls, actually; the defference in age and presumed sexual maturity shouldn't really matter), I'd take my family and leave the country that day, even if it meant living in poverty somewhere else. This isn't an instance of juvenile delinquency or street crime; it's a symptom of a sick culture. I don't know what the prognosis for curing that culture is, but as a father I wouldn't bet my family on it.

I shudder to think what those "honorable" curs would do to this young lady.

Acid spray attacks are probably about 1000x as "culturally provocative" as miniskirts in Turkey.

I am a conscious Islam basher. I'm also a conscious Christianity basher, a conscious Judaism basher, a conscious Scientology basher, a conscious Wiccan basher...you name any religion, I'll bash it for you.

I'm surprised that anyone is still surprised by this obvious fact.

Lilly,

I think that the coinage of the term honour-killing, and its continued use is a problem; I simply used the term here because it is common vernacular. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to avoid using the term.

More so, I think that the media should substitute a more appropriate label, possibly, something along the lines of religiously- or culturally- motivated violence/murder. (I suspect that it is politically convenient for them to avoid using such direct language, for fear of upsetting cutlural and religious groups.)

I did suspect that your point was as you clarified, but I just wanted to be clear that none of us should think that this particular case necessarily has to do with geography.

Tulse, "...individuals are killing highly related kin, in some cases offspring, and offspring generally of reproductive age (who therefore have had a lot of resources invested). This specific behaviour doesn't make sense from the perspective of evolutionary psychology."

Why should it? Cultural influences can sometimes override instinctive influences.

Bernard Bumner said:

I think that the coinage of the term honour-killing, and its continued use is a problem; I simply used the term here because it is common vernacular. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to avoid using the term.

No worries, I didn't mean to come across as precious at all, it just sticks in my craw to call crimes like these "honour" crimes when it's so perfectly obvious that honour is the last thing they demonstrate on the part of the perpetrator.

I did suspect that your point was as you clarified, but I just wanted to be clear that none of us should think that this particular case necessarily has to do with geography.

Granted, I'll try and be more clear next time :)

Although this nasty incident seems to have been motivated by religious "morality", specifically Muslim morality, misogyny is nothing new in any country. I'm not defending supposedly "secular" Turkey. I think that religion is a problem everywhere it rears its ugly mind-warping head - but there's plenty of this kind of crap going on against women right here at home. Just check out all the creepy, hysterically hate-filled anti-female websites based right here in the US. Rape, mutilation, torture, murder - it's all out there for those who, for some unfathomable reason, think a person's humanity is based on what their genitalia looks like.

Aris, gerald spezio is a silly little git who pops up here every so often and accuses PZ and the rest of here that makes up the echo chamber of being deluded by Israeli propaganda. The proof that we are deluded by such propaganda, most people here do not have kind things to say about islam. Which is really funny because there are some conservatives who accuse us of coddling that religion.

I think of gerald as being a vile and thinly veiled anti-semite. How else can one explain why he thinks The Mossad hold such control over all of us.

Any male who acts or thinks in terms of "honor" probably needs to be castrated.

@Jit 37: Love it. You write, I draw!

Memes don't care if you live or die,

Appropos of nothing directly related to the current conversation, when I read this line I couldn't help hearing k.d. lang's voice in my head, singing "Tears don't care who cries them...."

"I wonder how the evolutionary psychology folks explain that behaviour." It's that damn Y chromosome --the source of all evil (well maybe not all of it, but still an awful lot of it).

That doesn't cover the evolutionary angle, though -- what is happening is that individuals are killing highly related kin, in some cases offspring, and offspring generally of reproductive age (who therefore have had a lot of resources invested). This specific behaviour doesn't make sense from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.

Actually the Y-chromozone has no regard to the survival of female daughters, males whom have a propensity to kill daughters have more resources to dedicate towards raising male children. Thus their Y-chromozone is more likely to be passed on then a father that loves both male and female children equally. Of course this logic can be turned over and a womans m-dna could lead them to kill male off-spring and increase the resources dedicated to female off-spring.

I think in this case though meme theory is a far more likely a culprit then evolutionary psychology. Although wouldn't susceptibility to a destructive meme be an aspect of evolutionary psychology and emergence?

I fail at blockquotes :(

@Salt- you appear to be blaming the girls for being "provocative." How exactly does _any_ form of "cultural provocation" justify maiming people with acid?

Posted by: Stephen Wells | February 20, 2008 10:35 AM

It doesn't. But neither can it be deemed religiously based.

As PZ said:
I understand this kind of thing is done to 'protect' the honor of women with a religious justification

> Shouldn't there be some kind of deep cultural shame that
> their young men are being indoctrinated into growing up as
> bullying cowards?

In my experience, men from Middle-Eastern countries will threaten to sneak up behind you, in groups, to attack you. I had a run-in with a group of Middle-Eastern penis-weilders (they definitely weren't "men") at an airport where they collectively tried to cut in front of everybody else in line. One of the idiots had a huge cart loaded with stuff that he pushed into my bags which knocked all of his crap off of the cart. He, and his friends, all threatened me to "watch my back."

Middle-Eastern men seem to avoid direct conflict, instead choosing to sneak up from behind to ambush. To me, this is a dictionary definition of chickenshitness.

After that incident, I read a bit about the cultural differences and I have even less respect for Eastern culture than I did before. While there are certainly exceptions (individuals who act like people instead of mindless cattle), the normative seems to be a bunch of cowardly dickheads... so it's no surprise to me that a group of cowardly Middle-Eastern men would attack women from behind. They're only a slight step up from a pack of wild dogs.

Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.

— Sir John Falstaff, in Henry IV, Part One

Hal,

Any male who acts or thinks in terms of "honor" probably needs to be castrated.

a) Plenty of men are also the victims of such killings ( stonings of unmarried lovers in Pakistan, for example).

b) Women are often complicit in them, via condonation and provision of alibis, if not participation in the actual violence.

This is a cultural sickness, and although its seeds might have been sown almost exclusively by men, its continued existance goes beyond mere issues of gender.

This isn't about the women's "honor" at all. The men in question are worried about their own "honor", which appears to depend largely on keeping women from gaining very much independence.

I'm reminded of a British colonial official whose job it was to suppress suttee, the religious tradition of immolating a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. When told that banning suttee would interfere with traditional practices, he stated that it was his country's traditional practice to hang anyone who burned women to death, and he fully intended to honor it. Apparently the sort of thing the Turks could use right now.

Abortion opponents are the local version. They are caught between feeding rhetoric to the rabid fundies on how doctors performing medical procedures should be killed and then watching their coffers dry up when one of the elect actually kills a doctor. Rather than go the legislatures and do the difficult work of changing laws, they post the names, addresses, and schedules of abortion providers.

Another point is the dearth of women in the movement. For decades, the only public face was that of a loser male seeking to "kick the dog". Now there are paid female spokesmodels to adjust public conceptions of the actual membership.

The group actually cowers in fear of what the populace would do if we knew their true aims. Prison is the least of their worries.

Richard Harris :

Cultural influences can sometimes override instinctive influences.

As someone who is deeply suspicious of the imperialism of evolutionary psychology, that was precisely my point. Here is a behaviour that seems to deeply reduce the inclusive fitness of the practitioners, and yet it is very common in some cultures.

If a male animal acts irrationally violent and aggressive the proper response is to remove the over-excited animals testicles. Relieved of the burden of the aggression producing testosterone the male animals become calmer, more manageable and less prone to violence.

This is not punishment. It is simply a matter of removing the malignant influence of a hormone these young men are clearly unable to handle without become a threat to themselves and others.

It is the humane thing to do.

The E-string from a guitar, pruning shears or a sharp knife will work. As would a squirt of a strong acid or caustic...

Hold on. If you're calling "secular progression" "culturally destructive" then aren't you kind of undercutting your whole point that there's no "religious justification" being used in the committing of that crime? In other words, what, exactly, is your point?

Posted by: Rey Fox | February 20, 2008 10:50 AM

Are you implying that in a purely secular culture such "crime" would not happen? If so, then it appears you'd say that secular progression can only be culturally destructive where religion is present.

I've heard of these killings when women are raped or found to have been committing adultery, but I don't hear about any men being killed for the same crimes - since in some of the religions providing justification, both of the adulterous partners are supposed to be killed, you would figure a religious justification would lead to similar numbers of men being killed (or if, as in previous cultures with similar sexual mores, multiple men have sex with a single woman, the ratio of males to females killed would be > 1). Are the killings of men not reported or are the perpetrators of such acts that baldly hypocritical (and disrespectful of the religions they take as justification, to boot)?

It seems as if conservative religious cultures hate their own beliefs (why else would they do such violence to them, by violating them?), the world (for refusing to cooperate with their wishes), and by implication the deities that are implied in both. They can't really like people much, either (why else would they choose to cause people such harm?). What do those cultures want from life (other than perhaps its end)? (I know that most here would generalize this - though I think some of the questions diminish in relevance the more respect accorded by the beliefs to people, to the world at large, and to themselves.)

#61

Any male who acts or thinks in terms of "honor" probably needs to be castrated.

Posted by: Hal

Well, I've been vasectomized, but regardless, I think you are incredibly naive.

Matters of honor/respect/status play important roles in all social primate societies including human ones. Variations in perspective result in variation in what is seen as honorable, but it is simply human nature to categorize others according to relative status. If you think you are above such things, may I suggest that you are a hypocrite.

RE "Atheist Bitch Kendoka" in #14, #37, and #62:

I'd love to see that! I picture something a little like Blood+ mixed with Club-to-Death-Angel Dokuro-chan. Maybe a bit of Read or Die too. Yomiko Readman seems like a good fit on this idea.

A cute schoolgirl going around all innocent until she wreaks horrible vengance on the perpetrators of destructive insanity. With maybe a whack from the classic Anime Mallet Of DOOOM for those whose irrationality isn't quite severe enough to deserve swift death. But you'd need the obligatory cute mascot character, maybe the IPU or FSM. Probably couldn't get the rights for Saint Dogbert, exorcising the Demons of Stupidity.

(And I AM a crazed otaku, as if this post was not evidence enough :P )

PZ, any posited transcendental & infallible system/religion deserves to be bashed from the cool objectivity of a scientific perspective.

Yessir, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc. are no different. All are rife with dogmatic religious blinders, and all of them belong in our scientific gun sights.

It appears, however, that you are practicing "un-natural" selection when you routinely pounce on the idiocies of Islam much more than any other - except Christianity.
Four such Muslim bashings in the last few weeks.

One of those recent posts, the alleged story of a Muslim mother teaching her daughter the "joys" of suicide bombing, has been debunked as pure unadulterated anti-Muslim agit-prop.

I suggest that if you quantify your recent routine focus on the clear idiocies of Islam (four in a row); you will find the exclusion of monstrous daily atrocities in the name of Jewish exceptionalism and outright genocide in Palestine.

Moreover, the amount of anti-Muslim agit-prop to select from dwarfs the amount of anti-Israel propaganda in the mass media.

The recent escalation of anti-Iranian agit-prop in the name of outright pre-emptive attack and murder cannot be missed by any objective observer, and anti-Muslim propaganda is part of the framing for attacking Iran.

Shouldn't there be some kind of deep cultural shame that their young men are being indoctrinated into growing up as bullying cowards?

Isn't this a bit redundant, in that bullies are usually cowards to begin with?

And are people sick enough to do something like this and consider it honorable even capable of shame?

And are people sick enough to do something like this and consider it honorable even capable of shame?

Of course.

Learn some psychology people. There, but for the fortuity of your circumstances, go you.

So, gerald, what do you propose should be done about all these Jewish atrocities and genocides you speak of (but don't actually name)?

What is your final solution to this problem that has you so worked up?

Dorris at # 59, you write, correctly, that there's

plenty of this kind of crap going on against women right here at home. Just check out all the creepy, hysterically hate-filled anti-female websites based right here in the US.

The difference, surely, is how the society itself views this crap. In the US, for all its faults, people like this are way outside the mainstream. In religious societies they are the mainstream.

P. S. gerald, sod off.

"Learn some psychology people. There, but for the fortuity of your circumstances, go you."

So you do not think people are responsible for their actions ?

Being brought up in an environment where a man's honour is so fragile it cannot cope with seeing a women in a short skirt is not deterministic. And even if people are a victim of the circumstances it still does not excuse actions such as these. A person who commits crimes because they are mentally ill may not be held criminally liable, but they are still detained.

Are you implying that in a purely secular culture such "crime" would not happen?

I don't know what others are implying; I'm saying outright that this particular crime would not happen in a purely secular society. I don't claim secularism is a magical cure for violence or sexual repression or gender-based oppression; I do claim that this particular crime is both motivated and justified by specifically religious social customs.

Plenty of people in more secular cultures might be scandalized by the dress and deportment they see on the streets; the difference is that they don't believe their God has commanded them to teach the "sluts" a lesson by mutilating them.

More generally, the notion that there is an absolute will of God, and that it is the duty of God's people to enforce that will at whatever cost, creates an additional predicate for social violence, above and beyond all the other sins that mortal flesh is heir to.

Bill makes an important point. After all there cannot be many parents who have not at some stage objected to the clothes that their teenage daughter was planning to go out in.

Of course most parents in such a situation would just have an argument with the girl, and not throw acid over her legs.

It's not just the Muslims, it's also the Christians (African), Druze, the Hindus and the Sikhs. Basically in primitive/tribal areas where the value of a woman is as a breeder.

I wonder if acid-washed jeans were the result of...

Nah.

That's odd, because I don't live in fear of being sprayed with acid (or attacked at all in fact) by cowardly Christian fundies because of the length of my skirt in the UK. I clearly must pay more attention to the news.

Posted by: Lilly de Lure | February 20, 2008 10:00 AM

But if you lived in Africa, you would. Because African Christians perform honor killings and enforce mores in this manner. If you lived in Northern and Western Europe hundreds of years ago, when Europe was backwards, you'd have to worry about honor killings, as well. There are even occasional reports of Southern Europeans (Italians and Greeks) that still (rarely) conduct honor killings.

Honestly, even today, in relatively modern America we've had honor killings. There are books and articles about honor killings that have happened in America as recently as the 1920's. And we're not talking Muslims. One was an Italian-Catholic family, another a well-connected blue-blood "American Aristocrat" family. They were lurid tales in their days, but largely forgotten today.

That most of the Euro-centric world has civilized itself out of this barbaric practice doesn't mean we can look down our nose at religion as the direct cause. I think that when one group of people, sharing common religion with another, and one has given up the practice hundreds of years ago while the second continues on only serves, in my mind, to reinforce that these are primarily primitive-cultural artifacts the society hasn't yet abandoned, rather than events caused by religious adherence.

Now, if we want to talk about things that retard the cultural growth of a society and enable it's least emotionally fit to act in this manner, I'm all for piling on religion as a co-factor. Because I think the evidence is clear that Religion does mess up a society and retards its properly evolving to equality between ethnic groups, gender and other demographic factors people make much ado about.

I dunno - ignoring a widespread pattern of almost identical attacks across multiple countries, all explicitly motivated by the same specific set of religious beliefs is what seems short-sighted to me.

The only unusual thing about this attack is that the victims didn't get it in the face.

Posted by: Dunc | February 20, 2008 10:41 AM

Ah, nice rebuttal but one factor: YOU'RE WRONG. Seriously, honor killings have occurred across every major religion practiced in the world. Act as if it's just the Muslims says more about xenophobia than your ability to familiarize yourself with the practice of honor killings.

Really, there's a WHOLE HISTORY of honor killings in primitive societies that go across all religious demographics.

Oh, I forgot, while I didn't mention Judaism in my post #86, they too (at one time) practiced honor killings. They even had a test for it in the bible - if it happens in the fields, it's rape. If it happens in the house, it's being a floozy.

It's not just the Muslims, it's also the Christians (African), Druze, the Hindus and the Sikhs. Basically in primitive/tribal areas where the value of a woman is as a breeder.

Again, I don't understand how this is supposed to work -- these actions significantly reduce the likelihood that the women in question will "breed" well, since they have been shamed, disfigured, or even killed. I suppose that such actions would serve to keep other women in line, but those who carry out these actions seem to be acting against their own self-interest in terms of "breeding". So I have serious doubts that straightforward appeal to control of production of offspring can explain this. It looks far more to me like misogyny and control of women's sexuality (which is not the same thing as control of reproduction, of course).

I'm confused. Who are we hating? Muslims or Turks? Whatever, I'm down with it. Anybody got a spare bat?

Why don't they just spray their own fucking eyes (with that acid), if the sight is too much for them to take? In fact, why don't all the men pluck out their eyes, to avoid the being distracted by the natural beauty of women, if it is such an immoral, shameful, and evil act?

They can take that false sense of honor and shove it up their rectums!

Hate? Hate clouds the mind. I object to these kinds of actions, to the underlying causes, and to the structures which perpetuate them. I approve of speaking out against them. The cracking of heads only leads to the cracking of more heads.

Moses said:

But if you lived in Africa, you would. Because African Christians perform honor killings and enforce mores in this manner. If you lived in Northern and Western Europe hundreds of years ago, when Europe was backwards, you'd have to worry about honor killings, as well. There are even occasional reports of Southern Europeans (Italians and Greeks) that still (rarely) conduct honor killings.

I don't doubt it, I'm well aware that many religions (not just Islam) endorse/turn a blind eye to this type of practice, as you rightly point out.

My issue was that when any of these religions act as (at the very least) a passive enabler in these crimes they do not get the right to sit back and say "oh, it's the culture, nothing to do with us" when these crimes occur. In each case religions have a major role in shaping the cultures they are in and their views of women and how we are supposed to act help to form the misogynist environment which allows these crimes to occur.

Kseniya said:

I object to these kinds of actions, to the underlying causes, and to the structures which perpetuate them. I approve of speaking out against them. The cracking of heads only leads to the cracking of more heads.

I completely agree - an eye for an eye leads to a kingdom of the blind.

#76
"Well, I've been vasectomized, but regardless, I think you are incredibly naive."

Vasectomy != Castration

Males who've had a vasectomy still have their testicles, and they are still producing testosterone. A vasectomy merely destroys the plumbing for your "little soldiers" (which are also still being produced).

"Matters of honor/respect/status play important roles in all social primate societies including human ones. Variations in perspective result in variation in what is seen as honorable, but it is simply human nature to categorize others according to relative status."

That does not mean we as a society should tolerate violent expression of these social behaviors. While I don't necessary agree that castration is the right answer, punishing those who act the way these misogynistic cowards did is certainly in order (and not hypocritical).

Jumper (if s/he's being ironic) does raise a point, though. The tribalistic "let's get'em!" response is common (of course) and natural (I think), but not necessarily where we wanna go with this. (Ever.)

However, to point out that the acid-throwers are contemptible beasts acting out some contemptible mores of their society is not exactly a literal call to arms, so maybe the comment was superfluous.

Eh. Whatever. Pass the Sudafed, please.

Posted by: Matt Penfold

So you do not think people are responsible for their actions ?

I confess to being a hypocritical social primate on the subject.

Objectively speaking I'd answer "No" because human behavior is a function of deterministic physics.

Subjectively speaking I'd answer "Yes" because I'm genetically and socially programmed to view people as responsible for their own actions.

For practical purposes, I'd say the answer is somewhere in between. IMO it is good for people to take responsibility for their own actions and for society to hold people responsible for their own actions, but that's a result of my subjective view as a social primate. In objective terms there are a huge number of factors that result in people being less than fully responsible for the actions that they take.

Being brought up in an environment where a man's honour is so fragile it cannot cope with seeing a women in a short skirt is not deterministic.

How so, unless people choose who they are born to?

And even if people are a victim of the circumstances it still does not excuse actions such as these.

It may not excuse these actions in your mind, but in other people's mind these actions don't need an excuse. Are you saying that there is an objective moral standard to judge things against?

A person who commits crimes because they are mentally ill may not be held criminally liable, but they are still detained.

I certainly don't have any objection to those who commit crimes being prevented from committing further crimes, regardless of their mental state. We social primates will take action to protect our societies. However your viewpoint as to what is good socialization and what is acceptable in socializing others, is itself a factor of your socialization.

That most of the Euro-centric world has civilized itself out of this barbaric practice doesn't mean we can look down our nose at religion as the direct cause.

I don't think it's as simple as to say religion is the "direct cause" of violence like this. I do think it's fair, though, to say that this crime -- the violent application of an inflexible notion of "moral" behavior -- has religious fundamentalism as a proximate cause... and religion itself is obviously a necessary precondition for religious fundamentalism.

As I said before, I don't think secularism is a magic shield against cultural repression or sexism... but I think it's impossible to conclude that religion has no role in these sorts of violent "moral enforcement" actions against women.

...these are primarily primitive-cultural artifacts the society hasn't yet abandoned, rather than events caused by religious adherence.

Now, if we want to talk about things that retard the cultural growth of a society...

You seem to suggest there's an inevitably upward path of cultural growth, from "primitive" violence to "civilized" tolerance. I'm not sure I believe that's true, anymore than biological evolution produces a steady march toward "better" organisms. In fact, we've seen (sadly) several examples in recent times of countries that have moved from relatively secular, socially tolerant societies to more religious, less open ones, either through revolution (Iran), outside meddling (Iraq), or a disconcerting combination of the two (Afghanistan). I'd be curious to see whether the statistics (if any can be had) on honor killings and violence against women based on "morality" correlate to the rise of theocratic rule in those countries.

Any anthropologists in the crowd? Is there any correlation between a society's position on the primitiveness-modernity spectrum (if that's even a valid concept) and repression of women's social expression that doesn't involve religiosity? Enquiring minds want to know!

...meant to add to my last: If you haven't seen Persepolis yet, do so. It's too bad it came out in the same year as Ratatouille (sp?), because I really think it deserves an Oscar.

#76 Posted by: Fedaykin

"Well, I've been vasectomized, but regardless, I think you are incredibly naive."

Vasectomy != Castration

Males who've had a vasectomy still have their testicles...

I was just joking about the vasectomy=castration thing.

"Matters of honor/respect/status play important roles in all social primate societies including human ones. Variations in perspective result in variation in what is seen as honorable, but it is simply human nature to categorize others according to relative status."

That does not mean we as a society should tolerate violent expression of these social behaviors. While I don't necessary agree that castration is the right answer, punishing those who act the way these misogynistic cowards did is certainly in order (and not hypocritical).

We as a society don't tolerate these kinds of actions, but unless you've got some claim to having an objective moral standard, your claims of how another society "should" be have no objective meaning.

Sorry, my quoting on that last one sucks.

Shouldn't there be some kind of deep cultural shame that their young men are being indoctrinated into growing up as bullying cowards?
I think they're too busy being offended by cartoons and knighthoods given to writers? You know...the really important stuff.

I see gerry and the Elders are back

or you are a conscious Islam basher.

It took you this long to figure that out moron?

PZ bashes all religions, including Islam.
damn you're stupid.

#76
Well, Wonderer, I'm very aware of social ordering and of its different nature in different societies. I notice how you extend the notion, though, into respect and status; there are other orderings, viz., prestige, influence, etc., that also establish rank in a society. However, they all invoke, to varying degrees, merit-- which honor is conspicuously devoid of. I'm also assuming here that the translation of the Turkish concept into "honor" is adequate.

I'm condemning the fetish of honor as particularly empty, as the Shakespeare quote above shows, and resoundingly subjective. I condemn it also for its automatic violence against anyone who rejects it-- talk about self importance! And since honor cannot exist in isolation, the practice of it must impose itself on people nearby. Notice any parallels to religion?

If the honor-soaked could content themselves with quiet narcissism, all would be fine. But they don't. And they're virtually all males. And their actions promote a society governed by the manners and morals of a bunch of roosters.

This from the same country that gunned a journalist down for mentioning the Armenian Genocide, imprisoned many others, and created a specific law to deal with such hurtful comments about their past. How utterly surprising that spraying some innocent girls with acid is dignified. Supposedly Turkey's the most secular of all Islamic countries, but there's no shortage of religious bullshit either (remember the islamic creationist who wrote the book purporting to prove Darwin wrong, and ended up selling millions of copies --- guess where he's from?)

When I say authoritarian followers are aggressive
I don't mean they stride into bars and start fights. First of all, high RWAs go to church enormously more often than they go to bars. Secondly, they usually avoid anything approaching a fair fight. Instead they aggress when they believe right and might are on their side. "Right" for them means, more than anything else, that their hostility is (in their minds) endorsed by established authority, or supports such authority. "Might" means they have a huge physical advantage over their target, in weaponry say, or in numbers, as in a lynch mob. It's striking how often authoritarian aggression happens in dark and cowardly ways: in the dark, by cowards who later will do everything they possibly can to avoid responsibility for what they did. Women, children, and others unable to defend themselves are typical victims. Even more striking, the attackers typically feel morally superior to the people they are assaulting in an unfair fight.

— Robert Altemeyer

Sastra, 17# She found out that it was the opposite. Women who wore scanty clothes and sandals on their feet were treated respectfully in the Netherlands, and women who wore full burkhas which covered everything but their eyes were shoved off the sidewalks as if they were animals in Saudi Arabia.

That's a great account. The real challenge before us is how to facilitate the spread of these kinds of epiphanies.

I think there would be some deep cultural honor in my going after each one of these guys with a baseball bat.

It's not so much a matter of honor as pragmatism. If the thugs in question came to expect being thrashed within an inch of their lives, it would serve to deter the behavior. Also, depending on just how much damage you do, you might simply render them incapable of repeating their crime.

-jcr

"-- Robert Altemeyer

Posted by: Blake Stacey"

Thanks for the link.

Those European countries that have females in
charge seem to work well.

Well, as much as sexist dogma like yours gets on my nerves, I'd have to admit that Maggie Thatcher did a far better job than anyone since Winston Churchill.

-jcr

Act as if it's just the Muslims says more about xenophobia than your ability to familiarize yourself with the practice of honor killings.

Acting as if the distribution of such crimes isn't very heavily tilted towards Muslims makes you look rather ridiculous.

Before you try trotting out the shockingly high incidence of Hindu women being murdered in "kitchen accidents", I would point out that in most of those cases, it's not an "honor" killing, but an attack prompted by dissatisfaction over the amount of loot the bride's family was able to cough up for a dowry. The perps in those cases overwhelmingly are the in-laws, rarely the husband.

-jcr

The real challenge before us is how to facilitate the spread of these kinds of epiphanies.

Well, to put it simply, we need to increase communication with people all over the world. A lot of people will just accept a dismal situation because they can't conceive of an alternative.

-jcr

Sania Mirza, the Indian tennis player, has had some issues at home in regards to her dress...
Extremists drive out India's rising tennis star

Here is a powerful opposing comment about MEMRI (the website for the very ugly anti-Islam story) from the largest Islamist newspaper in the US.

"Indeed, MEMRI appears to view the Arab world as a malevolent, mind-numbing monsters' ball, populated almost exclusively by fanatics, freaks and fundamentalists.

Every story that could possibly make Middle Eastern people look deranged, hateful or diabolical gets translated; anything that could make them look informed, talented or admirable is ignored.

MEMRI says it covers reformers in the Arabic-speaking world, but longtime observers point out that people who make Islam or Arab culture look attractive rarely get translated, regardless of their position.

Nor does MEMRI feature stories about Palestinian suffering, Israeli dissenters, moderate Islamists, Christians in Arab governments or the growing nonviolent movement against the apartheid wall in the Occupied Territories, especially around Bal'in."

Sorry, the Sania Mirza link was...
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/02/05/1202090360404.html

As some of you might know, I am from Turkey and this "Acid Event" caused as much discussion back home as it did here.

Let me try to sum it up and clarify the situation for you:

The acid thrower was not an Islamist acting in defense of his honor. He was identified as homeless, peniless, poor and horny nobody. Of course, this is not to imply that his condition wasn't tempered by all the religious and patriarchial bullshit that accumulates in a country like Turkey.

Neither is honor killing completely absent from Turkey. Sadly, in the eastern parts of the country it is still sickeningly widespread -usually if not exclusively among the Kurdish tribes. They still see it customary to hunt down and kill young women to clean up their worthless names.

These barbaric acts are widely condemned by the secular Turks as well as the Islamists; the Turkish PM's headscarf wearing wife recently visited the Eastern provinces where she tried to help a campaign to help send more young women to university and higher education.

The PM (and his gang) are one filthy band of Machiavellian islamists, and nothing would make me happier to see an army coup sweeping them away, but not even they would stoop so low to defend honor killings. Assholes they might be, but Taliban they aren't.

Anyway, back to the Acid Incident. I already told you that the ruling party of religious right-wingers (they are like an exact moderate-muslim copy of the current government in the US,) are trying to have their field day in the country, packing the institutions with their pious friends, turning a blind eye to the spread of religious conservatism and trying to extend their control into the media.

This last bit, the islamists' desire to tame the Turkish press, is creating the problem behind the acid incident. The last weeks have seen a literal media war between the news companies loyal to the government (these contain islamist as well as turncoat secular groups), and those that want more freedom of speech.

Sparked by a controversial decision to allow headscaf-wearing students (who are a minority,) into certain universities, this media war has became a veritable poop fight of libel, agit-prop and slander.

Pro-government newspapers are trying to paint the government's critics as corrupt "secularists" and trying to pass off a concession in the face of religious stupidity as "freedom to dress in any way they like."

Anti-government newspapers are taking any obscure event of bigotry they can find and framing it as the proof of a sinister islamist movement that is poised to turn the country into Saudi Arabia.

This acid story was in the front-page headlines with the largest print they could get, to serve as a striking point against the islamist government. I think it was a little overblown, since stuff like this had been going on since time immemorial, as in all other countries. (ok, perhaps a bit more in places like Turkey, but still...)

So, dear readers, the Acid Incident is not really about honor killings, but a very pragmatic power struggle that' been going on in my country. You wouldn't have heard of it had it not been for that.

PS:
Meanwhile, real life in Turkey is going on like this: http://nemoramjet.blogspot.com
(This is my photoblog.)

Article quoted by gerald spezio: "Every story that could possibly make Middle Eastern people look deranged, hateful or diabolical gets translated; anything that could make them look informed, talented or admirable is ignored."

What about these cartoons from around the Arab world that condemn terrorism?
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA39807

There are other MEMRI features on Arab and Muslim condemnation of terrorism, advances in women's rights in Kuwait and elsewhere, and other articles not compatible with this characterization of MEMRI as unrelentingly negative.

Mr Nemo Ramjet, you mean that everybody in Turkey isn't a mad-dog-acid-throwing-woman killing homophobic pervert as many a reader could conclude from the some media releases.

You won't find the humanistic heresy that Islamists enjoy breakfast and smile at their children on the mad dog MEMRI website.

Colugo, Anybody can take a hard look at MEMRI and its foul framing tentacles and draw their own conclusions.

Two very scholarly American Professors, Juan Cole and Norman Finkelstein take MEMRI to the woodshed here;
http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/15069/135/

Norman Finkelstein on Hezbollah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDe65-nF3FQ

By the way, good riddance to Hezbollah's Imad Mugniyah.

The publicizing of this less than artful propaganda piece is a depressing display of the rampant well-funded propaganda wars fomenting more & more hatred against any and all Muslims.

The debate was framed and some bloggers took to their keyboards to wax whatever about mad dog Muslims who lurk in the bushes to strangle innocent young girls.

There are tens of thousands of trained peeyar whores able and willing to distort and fabricate anything for anybody.

gerry...if you take your medicine, the voices will go away.

"The debate was framed and some bloggers took to their keyboards to wax whatever about mad dog Muslims who lurk in the bushes to strangle innocent young girls."

You know Gerald, it's kind of funny: I don't see you ranting like this in any of the threads here detailing Christianist skullduggery. You could just as easily accuse PZ and whatever outlet he links to of trying to incite hatred against all Christians. The logic in both cases is transparently faulty.

Pedlar at #82,

Yes,outwardly there is a stigma attached to public displays of extreme misogyny in this country, but such attitudes are more prevalent than you'd think. Contempt for, and outright hatred of, women in this country is a major cause of violence against them. How many men do you see being killed by female serial killers? By sexually sadistic female killers? How many men are raped? How many men are beaten up by their wives and girlfriends? And, even in this day and age, their are many men (I personally have met more than a few) who really believe that women deserve whatever they get. This attitude has been reinforced by millenia of indoctrination by patriarchal religions, whose aim was to control women by painting them as the inferior sex, evil temptresses who are responsible for the downfall of the human race. The kind of acts in this post are part of a spectrum that runs the gamut from mild patronization to virulent hatred - and it is everywhere.

Here is a list of some of the bigger peeyar whorehouses who make big bucks poking their foul fingers in everybody's eyes from a every media angle.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Public_relations_firms

There is very little in the media about anything of significance that these boys and girls haven't framed and fugged with in order to distort somebody's brain.

Oh my God! He's right! The peeyar spider-whores are laying eggs in my brain! I am the walrus. Ooga booga.

Paisano DiPetro, All propagandistic skullduggery is reprehensible.

Good social science should go after all forms of it with an unbridled passion.

Of course, I don't think that PZ is consciously trying to foment hatred against Muslims.

But, the result was that the blogs above are filled with virulent anti-Muslim hatred - much of it readily "read into" the basic thrust of the article.

The FRAMING worked splendidly.

Yes, a few people may sound anti-muslim, but only so far as we're anti-religious all together. If you were christian or a jew and acted accordingly stupid, we'd call you on that too. You can't expect us to criticize a select few religions and leave others unscathed. The fact is that anybody who's willing to accept some idiotic belief structure that places the importance of some deity (deities) ahead of another human's life is worth criticism. It's funny how people get so defensive about their illogical religious system, when they're willing to claw and complain about other's stupid belief system. You criticize orthodox jews for thinking they're "chosen people", suddenly you're anti-semitic. You criticize muslims for rallying behind acid throwers, suddenly you're anti-islam. You criticize a bible thumper because they believe their idea of god is superior to the constitution, you're anti-christian.....All of this gets very old, very quickly. The sheer fact is that although a few people may be inclined towards racism, most anti-muslims on this site are not racist, but critical of illogical belief structures.

There are plenty of Turks that are critical of these issues, and willing to fight for their secular freedom, but ignoring these events does nothing but reinforces the false belief that religion is morally and ethically good. An educated society, placing their values on critical thinking, empirical evidence, and the inherent freedom of all human beings must be a goal for all, and is a constant struggle to maintain. It's easy to remain apathetic and drift off into ignorance. It's must harder to attempt a fix for irrational thought.

"Wiccan basher"? but P.Z., the Goddess loves you, and so do all her little cephalopodling children.

So basically because men in this country cannot control their carnal urges like the rest of us, woman have to suffer........nice.

The peeyar spider-whores

Now there's a phrase with "band name" written all over it!

This kind of thing has happened in the UK in my region too, but not with acid. That's shocking.

One of the issues is that young muslim men feel very repressed sexually due to their religion, and they react to women with less modest dress sense like men would have in the West in the 30s to a bit of shoulder or leg on display.

They can't handle it, and feel like lashing out, and their ugly evil religion gives them justification as the women are blatantly flouting Allah's word, are unbelievers, and we all know how the Koran treats them.

In the UK there are concerns that Muslim men are using young white girls for sex, treating them as less than human, as they can't touch their own women unless they are married to them. Parents are losing their daughters to these fiends as they bribe them away from society and into a form of prostitution generated by Islamic beliefs and customs.

Sick people following a sick religion.

Muslim Man Show exposed in all its horror.

In Turkey, the foul Islamists throw acid at immodest defenseless young ladies, BUT in the UK the foul Islamic beasts are slicker.

Sick perverted Muslim sex fiends driven to madness by "Islamic beliefs and customs" prowling the streets - preying on immodest UK ladies driving them into a form of prostitution.

Samuel Huntington's witchcraft social science, "The Clash of Civilizations" and Frank Gaffney warned us about those perverted Islamofascists and their fiendish designs on the purity of Western Civilization's vulnerable ladies.

Feminists of all persusaions unite against the shocking Islamic sex fiends who lust and lust some more - as you can plainly read and conclude.

BOMB, BOMB, BOMB, Iran.

Iran is full of perverted Muslims.

gerald, you might want to wipe that spittle off your chin.

She found out that it was the opposite. Women who wore scanty clothes and sandals on their feet were treated respectfully in the Netherlands

Which brings me to the next point: to even find out what "sandals on their feet" is doing in the same sentence as "scanty clothes", I need to think rationally. What -- at least -- men find sexy is strongly and negatively correlated to what they are used to seeing. 100 years ago, Salvador Dalí wrote "a woman's feet and forearms must be of exhibitionist beauty", and nowadays I read that line and wonder what a strange fetish that strange guy had. Then I remember this was just a decade or three after the sight of a lady's ankle drove gentlemen insane.

the culturally destructive secular progression on display.

It isn't the modern western McDonald's Coca Cola civilization that destroys culture. Fundamentalism destroys culture.

Piece on Turkey and the clash between secularism and religion in the NY Times, for what it's worth:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/europe/19turkeyweb.html?_r=1&sc…