Wednesday, May 28, 2008

"Honor Killings" & the Primitive Sacred

The truly wrongful death of Matthew Shepard will be rerun interminably by proponents of "progressive" agendas. Students of René Girard's mimetic theory will be correct in seeing his murder as a case of ad hoc priests of the primitive Sacred carrying out sacred violence due in large part (a) to diminishing influence of the gospel in the West with (b) a growing recrudescence of the pagan.

But there is a mythic silence shrouding a continuing and structurally identical phenomenon today: so-called "honor killing." These too fit the criteria of mimetic theory with an important difference: honor killings are sanctioned by the religion of the Scimitar.

Take for instance the most recent example: the case of Morsal Obeidi in Germany, reported by Spiegel Online. An immigrant teen from Afghanistan, she "wanted was to live the way other girls in Germany do. She paid dearly: Obeidi's brother stabbed her 20 times."

"Progressives" are silent about cases of "honor killing" within Islamic communities due to an ideological presupposition of multiculturalism: non-Western cultures get a free ride because of our (sic.) belief that Western culture, based on Catholic faith, truth, and morals, too long has been "oppressive", "patronizing", and "imperialistic". We (sic.) must not foist our Western values on non-Western peoples.

In this petri dish of value-free multiculturalism, succubi of the primitive Sacred are given free rein to grow, multiply, and migrate like tendrils of an invasive malignancy. Meanwhile, the mandarins of Western multiculturalism smile beneficently in ignorance of what their presuppositions blind them from seeing: the stark and dangerous realities of fallen human nature and a rising tide of the primitive Sacred swirling at their ankles, shins, and knees.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree with you that the silence about dishonor killings is sometimes deafening. But did you know that they occur outside Muslim communities, too?

Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"