December 5, 2005

Honor vs. Honour

There's an interesting little comment at Don't Bomb Us, a blog run by three Al Jazeera staffers. It seems that an anonymous poster can't find any articles at the Al Jazeera website for the topic "honor killings."

"Don't you think that the murder of women throughout the Islamic world by their uncles and fathers and husbands because these women have the audacity to date who they want or express what they think is newsworthy?"


And Mohammed, one of the staffers, came back with this reply:

"You make mention that our website does not mention "Honor Killings" - that is true since we don't use American English - we use English English.

"Try your search using "honour" instead - or just click here for Google results.

"You see, sometimes little cultural misunderstands can cause such a big fuss."


How true. This is just one of those little incidents that seems to be so representative of how ignorant people "think." They don't understand the subtleties of the world, expect everyone else to be like them down to the smallest details, and then get upset before considering the idea that perhaps the fault lies with them.

And, just for the record, honor (or "honour") killings are not limited to Muslims. In the UK, honor killings are done not only by Muslims, but by Sikhs, Hindus and even Christians. See more at the BBC's "Lamp and Owl." Moreover, as the "Lamp and Owl" article points out, there is nothing in Islam, Hinduism or the Sikh religions that condones honor killings.

1 comment:

DA said...

Great example. Where, though, in Qu'ran or Sunnah, do people ever get the idea to kill fornicators?