Death by Humiliation

I live in Canada. In Canada, particularly in Ontario, I live amongst people who come from different backgrounds. Does this mean that moral values are relative? Let’s take the case of Honor killing. In some cultures like those of Afghanistan and India, honor killing is being practiced especially on females who have ‘wronged’ their fathers. Relativists would say that since there is no such thing as absolute morality, then ‘honor killing’ may be good or bad depending on the culture and situation.

I can understand why criminals are punished: they harm and kill people with a malicious intention. I don’t think any relativist can ever say, upon seeing their loved ones being murdered, that the act is relatively good or bad. If they do, they must be extremely detached and insensitive to human suffering and injustice. Perhaps, relativists are armchaired philosophers who resist any show of or being affected by sympathy.

Since murder (not killing) is evil in whatever context, then it implies that we have a responsibility towards the others. Our responsibility towards the others makes this ethical value absolute in whatever context.

So, to speak of honor killing or to term it as such is a confusion of terms, of responsibility or the sheer lack of it. Honor is “a perceived quality of worthiness and respectability “. In which case, there is no such thing as ‘honor killing’. For the man who killed his daughters just because he didn’t like what the daughters did (which was to love a man, or dress like a Westerner), he not only brought dishonor to himself but also display a blatant disregard for human life. What he did was not out of honor, but out of shame of being humiliated. He cared only for his image and what his peers of the same mind would think of him. He cared nothing for his daughters. Honor is about character, self respect, self worth, despite what others say of himself.

A man who has no respect for life cannot claim to have honor. A man who cares only for his image of his self has no honor.  A man who has no worth has no right to speak of honor, in honor. What he did was simple and plain murder, the malicious intention of killing a human being whom he perceived as a means or an object for his own pleasure of ‘looking good’ in the eyes of those who are equally sick.

Thou shalt not kill; or, better still thou shalt not murder is a universal ethics. It implies a universal respect for human life. Ethics is not and should never be an object of cool and detached contemplation. It is rather a subject to be reflected upon, to be thought of based on the experiences of others who are in genuine pain. Only in this way, can one feel the pain of the others as one painfully but meaningfully transform the experience into a subject of genuine philosophical reflection.