Legal Commentary

?Honor Killings? by Muslim Men in the U.S.

By Eugene Volokh

The Christian Science Monitor reports that ?Police say that at least six Muslim men have been arrested in the US in the past two years for crimes that suggest honor killings.? Unfortunately, it doesn?t point to the specific incidents, nor tell us the number of honor killings (the number of arrestees may not match the number of crimes); the six arrests number also appears in this earlier USA Today story. It does, however, point to a murder plus what is likely an attempted murder from two months ago, which I hadn?t heard about before:

An Iraqi immigrant accused of slaying his daughter in an ?honor killing? has been charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty ....

Faleh Hassan Almaleki ... is accused of using his Jeep Cherokee to run over his daughter, 20-year-old Noor Almaleki, and [Almaleki?s boyfriend?s mother, Amal Khalaf,] in a Peoria[, Arizona] parking lot on Oct. 20. His daughter died of her injuries [but Klahaf is expected to recover]....

Almaleki was reportedly furious with his daughter for becoming ?too Westernized,? police said.

Prosecutors have labeled Noor Almaleki?s death an ?honor killing,? saying the elder Almaleki killed his daughter because she dishonored the family by not following traditional Iraqi or Muslim values....

At Almaleki?s initial court appearance on Oct. 31, county prosecutor Stephanie Low said he admitted deliberately running down his daughter....

UPDATE: I blogged about this because this suggests that there?s a serious problem in various Muslim communities, a cultural pathology of some very significant Muslim subcultures that deserves attention. But I should remind people of my post from last year, where I pointed out that Islamic cultures are by no means unique in unduly tolerating killings justified by a sense of family honor, and that American manslaughter law has treated certain kinds of killings (of cheating spouses and their lovers) as less serious than ordinary murder. Until recently, this treatment has been even starker in some situations and some jurisdictions, occasionally to the point of entirely excusing the killing and leaving it unpunished.

The two are not the same: American manslaughter law is generally limited to infidelity by spouses (historically) and occasionally lovers, and not to perceived sexual improprieties by daughters. Manslaughter also covers only more or less immediate reaction to a provocation (though some recent departures from the law, often perceived as coming from a ?liberal? perspective on criminal justice, have relaxed that condition), while many of the Muslim ?honor killings? appear to be more planned out. And this reflects, I think, a different ideology behind the act, an ideology that strikes me as especially troublesome (all ideologies that lead people to kill, setting aside self-defense and the like, are troublesome, but some may be more so than others). Whatever might be said about modern American manslaughter law, it rests on the premise that there?s something less culpable in someone?s giving in to uncontrollable impulses stemming from broken vows (especially when focused on adultery, which I believe is more commonly seen as mitigating the offense to manslaughter than is cheating by a girlfriend or boyfriend), not on the premise that a planned killing of one?s child is a way to regain honor.

Nonetheless, there are enough similarities that we can?t claim that the generally problem is uniquely present in Muslim cultures, though there does seem to be a version of the problem that is specific to some significant Muslim subcultures, and the problem needs to be recognized and aired in order to be ultimately reduced and perhaps even solved.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on December 25, 2009 (boomark / email).