Silly Little Country

Lucky? Not four women killed in Kingston

Jonathan Gatehouse writes, I think ominously, on Canada's ability to contain the practice of 'honor murder', and I guess the quotation marks in the headline of the article point to the ominousness.

The twin currents of fundamentalism and identity politics are strengthening all over the globe, says Wikan, making true integration of immigrants more and more difficult. But at the same time, she rejects the notion that there are fundamental incompatibilities between societies, or a need to proscribe immigration from certain countries. “Honour killings are a matter of tradition more than religion,” she says. “And tradition can be changed. We have to take hope.”

Well, religions can be changed, too, and in my view they all should be. (It has been very satisfying to watch the Christian hegemony I gew up in the midst of vanish here; we don't want any other goofy beliefs replacing that one.) Certainly neither tradition nor religion should be used to justify the murder of Aqsa Parvez nor the four women in Kingston, and our legal system should try to get well ahead of the curve on this challenge.
In the end, I suspect what he describes is what will happen; we'll have some more instances and then get sensible and start worrying more about the problem.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:19 AM