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You can find the idea of the individual being subsumed to the kin group to be disconcerting or strange (I do), without categorizing it as a "fundamentally evil" way of thinking. Honor killings are an extreme end of the spectrum of behaviors exhibited by people with this belief system; but there are equivalently extremes in the behaviors of people with Western, liberal-individualistic belief systems. Both belief systems are just survival strategies evolved by different groups of humans exposed to different historical and environmental contingencies. Both can be perverted to justify extreme evil acts, just as both can fairly point to the extremes, in themselves and the other, and declare them as evil. And note, this isn't cultural relativism: one can respect the sovereignty of the Islamic value system without excusing honor killings, just as one needn't cast Western liberal individualism as "fundamentally evil" because taken to it's extreme people have used it to justify mass shootings of strangers.



> but there are equivalently extremes in the behaviors of people with Western, liberal-individualistic belief systems

These are?


Killing strangers for minor violations of your property rights... killing multiple strangers in a rage of entitlement... calling police to kill or punish strangers who are having mental health crises for minor violations of public behavior ordinances... basically killing or punishing strangers for any old reason. I'd venture to guess we do orders of magnitude more of it per capita in the West than people in Muslism countries do honor killings of kin.


> Killing strangers for minor violations of your property rights

You give no examples. Also I'm in the UK and can't remember the last time anyone was killed for trespass or other minor violations (okay, one or two over a decade I think).

> killing multiple strangers in a rage of entitlement

You give no examples. Post some evidence, overall numbers of such cases, details please.

> calling police to kill or punish strangers who are having mental health crises for minor violations of public behavior ordinances

You give no examples - post summary details.

> basically killing or punishing strangers for any old reason. I

You give no examples.

> I'd venture to guess

so no evidence whatsover

> we do orders of magnitude more of it per capita in the West

The US is not 'the West'. Perhaps you'd like to consider the UK, Germany, Scandinavia....

I suspect you're right in thinking honour killings aren't common (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan#Pre...> "The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan lists 460 cases of reported honour killings in 2017, with 194 males and 376 females as victims"), but it's the extreme point of a pervasively oppressive/intolerant system which can ruin lives without actually killing people.


The US is not 'the West', but it's certainly an example of the

> extremes in the behaviors of people with Western, liberal-individualistic belief systems

I can think a of few similar non-US examples of the above behaviors, but he's already answered the original question.


> The US is not 'the West', but it's certainly an example of the

Yes, I take your point, he was talking of that specific subset, not (as I read it) the west in general.

> ..but he's already answered the original question.

Within that specific subset, I'd agree he has. Thanks.




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