The Honor Killing Will Be Televised!

Often the conservative Christians of the United States of America go after the media as creating violence. They claim that violence on TV equates to violence in reality; therefore, violence should be eliminated or reduced on TV.

It is easy to explain that this is in fact fascism and attempting to dictate to others what is morally correct and does not have anything to do with violence in reality, the prevention of violence or the creation of a better, safer world.

The honor killing of Du'a Aswad has had a profound impact upon me. Unlike the magazine articles about India and people aborting female fetuses and running a huge gap in the ratio of males to females and similar activities in China - Du'a Aswad's death was visceral.

However, the culture she came from and the entire region despises western movies and television. The video games that people claim encourage violence would be rarely occurring in their society just as computers themselves would be more valued and in fact more expensive.

The question is simple. What is the source of violence in the death of Du'a Aswad? It is clearly not television or movies. The source of her honor killing is both cultural and religious. Cultural in that Arabic culture had this element far before the current religions in the region had reign. Religious in that the religion is now hardly discernible from the culture and that the religious leaders in the region have not in the past, do not in the present and most likely will not in the future stand with a united front and say 'Honor killings are wrong and should not be allowed.'

On the other side of the spectrum you have a country like Japan. Their television and movies can typically far surpass the levels of violence in television in the United States of America. Despite this, their culture has lower incidence of violence in a much more cramped area. The theory that violence on TV and movies causes violence in the real world is nonsensical at best.

The cause of violence might simply be the combination of two factors: 1) The hormones in humans drives them toward violence in the face of helpless circumstances and 2) the lack of people being taught self-control and to override for the betterment of humanity their emotional needs that seem to require violence.

Here is a link to the current wikipedia article on Du'a Aswad (and my discovery that I am apparently spelling her last name wrong).