[Skybird]

Islam is both
-influenced by deeply patriarchalic-tyrannic social and especially family structures, and
-mixing with them to feed back on the mentality of people. so in case of Islamic people commiting a crime like described here, you always deal with a motivation that finds its legitimation in an ideology (Islam) that has embraced and was build upon this mentality (of the ancient arab tribal system), and with social habits that already existed before islam, and run parallel to it, but at the same time has become part of it.

The three theistic world religions all have or have had a very disturbed and inhumane relation to sexuality. The major branches of christianity has thankfully moved beyond this, so have most secular Jews, if I may call them that way to separate them from the fundamentalist nutheads that you find in every religion. but the basis of Islamic theology to which Islam refers until today, and threatens disobedience to them with Sharia, still embraces these ancient views in full. women are defined as a lower life form possessed by satan, and it is the man's duty to control the demons in her by a.) keeping them under tight control, and b.) to "ground" their basic demonic energy by controlled sexual intercourse. If you think this sounds hillarious, yes , it is. It is also a wonderful self-justification for man to hold women at his disposal and deal with them as he pleases - sexually, and as a work force at home as well. It is not a human being he is dealing with. It is worth less than a dog, and it is potentially a threat.

islam is obsessed with both sexuality, and a understanding of male pride and honour that has the constant supression of such sexual drives as a basis. It is deeply sexually inhibited in a psychopathologic meaning, and at the same time fixiated on sex. For German readers I can recommend you a whole book on the role of females in Islam and especially the fetishist obsession with the idea of a girl'S virginity, there is much more behind it than just that a bride has to be clean and untouched at marriage. Islam's relation to female sexuality is a deeply pathologic one - women being seen as objects and possessions are just a consequence from this.

And this, Neal, is the reason why I wrote - although you deleted it - that islam holds the Quran in one hand and it's #### in the other, you remember. maybe I shouldn'T have posted it all alone without explanation, and not in a state of angry emotions, that is true. But as a factual statement it is correct what I said.

Combine this with social circumstances that have been male-oriented and patriarchalic long since before islam arrived. In all Islamic countries where i ever have been, so many, many families I witnessed were the more dysfunctional and characterised by the father's tyrannic regiment and the appeareance order and functionality established by complete surrender of the females in the household, the more they tend to uphold their claim to consider themselves as truly islamic by the meaning of islamic teaching, which is expressed in the quran, and to some degree in the hadith. Young men grow up in a climate of sexual self-supression, which of course seeks outlets to the inner pressure, and this forms the motivation that makes many of them so receptive for what Westerners would call extremist views (but in fact are just Islamic views for the most) and a haughty, aggressive attitude towards females as well. Saying this as an ex-psychologist I must say that the social family constructions in Islamic societies are the most pressurised and most unhealthy and pathologic that I have ever seen in huge numbers, anywhere. They create frustrated male energy by routine - and this is what gives these socieites such a conflict-heavy, threatening dynamic.

It has been described in scientific research and literature that there is a link between the average age of a society, the ammount and role of young men in it - and it'S vulknerability to forming aggressive, expansionistic, and in modern context: terrorist tendencies. The more young sexually frustrated men you have - the more potential for violence, extremism and terrorism, conquest and war you have. If you look at the history of wars over the past millenias, this is old news, really, both in a context of the looting and raping at the end of a battle for a city, and the rise and fall of nations and civilisations.

Seen in this context, the assassination by beheading cannot be excluded from a religious context, and a cultural one as well. do not forget that isolam is polititics and relgion, and has long since molten with today's cultures and traditions in various places, like the ancient Greek heritage has molten into the western civilisation that formed our present. Like you cannot calculate the Greeks out of the Western world, you cannot calculate Islam out of such traditions - or such crimes. Mentality or culture, and ideology have been in bed for so many centuries that it is hard to separate them anymore. The pathologic and pathetic concepts of a male's pride and a family's "honour" today must be seen as a result of both. Islam's sick understanding of human relations between man and woman or course does nothing to help to ease the pressure from (unworthy, to say that loud and clear) cultural traditions, thus it puts even more oil into the flames. If such a family would live by concepts owing to a philosophy that bases on kindness and tolerance and self-control (almost unknown to islamic males: sexual self-control in the meaning of own responsibility, thus they try to control their drives by demanding females to stay out of sight), this would help to ease the pathology deriving from an arch-patriarchalic tyranny of the father as ultimate dictator in the family. remember, we talk of a patriarchalism that by far exceeds the sexual role models for mother and father in families living in the past 50 years in the West, and that secures it'S power by much more ruthless force, even violence, if needed.

I'm not shy to declare that the west's view of these "honour killings" is superior to these primitive culture'S claim that they must be respected for the barbarism that they propagate. Honour killings in families have nothing to do with true human honour, they are deeds of malice and of shame. They are acts of social terror, and murder for lower motives, and committed with explicit malice. The fact that such affected families act by the standards of the culture and religion that has formed them, does not change the much more important fact that they nevertheless are object to our western laws as long as they live in our homes and countries. Thus there cannot be a different sentence than the maximum penalty the law reserves for assassination for lower motives and with special malice (Mord aus niederen Beweggründen und erfülltem Tatmerkmal besonderer Heimtücke).