Neocons and Honor Killings

Two article stand out today: One is not on Syria; rather, it is on the philosphy of the neoconservatives. Although short, it gives many fresh and new insights into the thinking and intellectual starting points of the conservative movement.

Many of these "neoconservative" assumptions have spread far beyond the narrow confines of the true believers to become accepted wisdom. The authors are both experienced historians and policy analysts.

Acts of faith
By Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke, Asia Times, June 5, 2006
(Also see the other articles in this excellent series. Hat tip to War in Context)

The attacks on September 11 catapulted [Bernard] Lewis from the world of scholarly debates into the home of Vice President Dick Cheney, who convened a dinner of experts to help shape a policy toward Islam. Lewis dominated the discussion, telling Cheney that radical Islamists viewed the US as incapable of maintaining a strong foreign-policy course, as evidenced by the US retreat from Beirut in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993.

Cheney was entranced by Lewis's views, though not simply because he agreed with him: here was a man with a vision of Islam and the credentials that would give US policy legitimacy. Cheney was particularly attracted by Lewis's view that Islam's problems are largely self-inflicted, and that the legacy of Western colonialism and economic exploitation has little to do with Muslim attacks on Western societies.

This fit well with the neo-conservative view - which was already maintaining that "when we were attacked on September 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms". The attacks had nothing to do with Western policies, with the legacy of colonialism, or with the support for Middle Eastern dictators. It wasn't that we in the West have bad policies, it was that they have no values.

It is not hard to see how the young Lewis (a scholar diligently bent over his researches in the dusty Ottoman archives in the wake of World War II) was so taken with Kemal Ataturk. Here was a Muslim, Lewis believed, who understood that modernization of his culture could only take place when Islam adopted the narrative of the West.

Lewis set about his life's work with a fury, transmitting Ataturk's vision of a new Middle East for a generation of US and British policymakers. His influence is undeniable: Lewis's views on Islam embody the now prevalent Western vision of Islamists as reactionaries at war with modernism, as obscuritanists doing battle with values, as technophobes seeking a return to the 7th century. Lewis was particularly intrigued by Ataturk's description of Islam as "a putrefied corpse which poisons our lives" and as "the enemy of civilization and science".
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This article from MEMRI is well worth reading in full.

The September 2005 murder of a young Druze woman, Huda Abu 'Asali, by members of her family because of her marriage to a man outside of her ethnic group, sparked a wave of outraged reaction throughout Syria against the phenomenon of "honor killings" of women by their male relatives. The independent Syrian website "Syrian Women" launched a sweeping campaign, under the slogan "Stop the Murder of Women, Stop the 'Honor Crimes!'"(1) and posted numerous articles by Syrian Muslim and Christian clerics as well as by attorneys, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens. As part of the campaign, the site posted a petition calling for a stop to honor killings. To date, nearly 10,000 people have signed this petition, most of them from Syria.

The main goal of the campaign is the amendment of Articles 548, 239, 240, 241, and 242 of the Syrian penal code, which grant immunity or a significantly reduced sentence to a man who murders a female relative.(2)

A few months later the Syrian government press joined the campaign. The Syrian daily Teshreen published several harsh articles stating that honor killings were the product of "historical backwardness" and calling for changes in both the Syrian penal code and the school curricula. The Syrian government daily Al-Thawra published a special investigation of honor killings, which found that over 40 honor killings took place every year in Syria. The investigation also included comments by Syrian attorneys and clerics, who said that murder is forbidden by all religions and that the articles of the penal code permitting those guilty of murdering women to evade just punishment must be abolished. [Continued]