So, if the Colorado murder was an "honor killing" instead of a "crime of passion," would that make it worse, somehow, and in addition to that, actually different?  What is the difference between killing a woman who is trying to leave you because you think she has no right to leave you, refuse you, or secure another mate (here, called "passion") and a Muslim killing a woman because she tried to leave him, or refuse him, or secure another mate (here, tentatively, being defined as "honor")?

Must the sickness reside only in the individual mind, or only in the community's values?  Violent people always find justifications for their crimes.  

Don't get me wrong: I am very sympathetic to the goal of documenting new forms of culture-driven, violent misogyny, particularly as they emerge as social problems in specific communities.  Police and social workers must know what they are dealing with.  And I know first-hand there is a need to counter the tendencies of some refugee workers and feminists to minimize certain crimes precisely because they are committed by men they define as social victims.

But when you go down the road of creating a hierarchy of harms, including a hierarchy in media response, you are buying into precisely the ideology you oppose.  

It is particularly troubling to me that the people trying to publicize "honor killings" are now vehemently denying that these crimes are a type of domestic violence.  What does it tell us, when honor crime activists now deny any relation between the two, even as they simultaneously rely on the domestic violence shelter system to address the needs of the actual victims? There is unavoidable hierarchy at work here.  

Several years ago, when the state of Georgia passed its "hate crimes" law, activists were (frankly, eagerly) awaiting the first crime that could be trumpeted as hate.  A transvestite prostitute was found beaten nearly to death in Cordele: before she died, she told her rescuers that "her boyfriend" had done it to her -- it was unclear whether it was an actual boyfriend, pimp, or John.

The hate crimes activists geared up to await the ruling by the GBI on whether the crime would be called a "hate crime" or "just killing a woman."  The operative question was this: if her killer was a John who became angry when he discovered that the prostitute he picked up was really a man, that would be a hate crime, an ethically and legally worse offense, and also one worthy of federal dollars, public commemoration, political grandstanding, classroom training so children would pick up the right lessons from the death, enhanced criminal penalties, possible Hollywood treatment, and so on.

But if the killer did not see the male genitalia and thus thought he was just killing a woman, none of these would apply.  "Just killing a woman" is not hate. 

The GBI couldn't find enough proof to call the murder a "hate crime."  In other words, they couldn't determine whether the killer saw the prostitute's male genitalia or not before beating her to death.  The activists wandered off to await the next incident around which they could rally: the prostitute was forgotten because she was not politically useful.

I am troubled by similarities in the recent direction of the "honor crimes" movement.  At this moment, activists must openly resist going down the road of the hate crime activists, or else they will find themselves cultivating a legal response that conflicts with the central Western legal value they are actually striving to promote: equality, not identity-based difference, under the law.  

And there is much more to a legal response than just codified sentencing enhancement.  There is also media attention, activist-driven political clout, and financial resources, all of which impact investigations, prosecutions, and sentencing.  Courts are political animals, and judges are political animals living inside other political animals. 

At this juncture, those publicizing honor crimes must take a hard look at their motives for denying that these are acts of domestic violence that happen to arise from Islamic attitudes towards (mostly) female member of their families and communities.  They need to consider the consequences of going on television and say: this wasn't [merely] domestic violence: it was honor killing.     

Frankly, I believe the best thing to do with people who commit these crimes is make sure they get treated like the garden-variety, excuse-mongering wife beaters and child abusers that they are: doing so would be the real validation of Western values.

And if that means they don't get adequately punished because perpetrators of domestic violence get off too easy (precisely because their premeditated and repeated acts of violence are viewed as crimes of passion and reduced to lesser charges): well, that needs to be tacked as a failure of our domestic violence prosecutions, rather than denying these crimes are domestic violence at all for political expediency's sake.

What, after all, is wrong with acknowledging that honor crimes are culturally justified domestic violence?  Can't a culture that justifies, even conspires in, domestic violence be condemned for doing that?