Proportionality and Honor Killing of Du'a Aswad

In the USA we have some laws regarding the punishment of crimes. Specifically, cruel and unusual punishment is restricted. This laws have come in to conflict with certain death penalty cases in the US regarding lethal injection.

In the US and most countries we have laws that prescribe sentences for specific crimes. The duration of sentence is set to be proportional to the crime committed. Multiple crimes of the same nature are compounded with sentences often a few years each served sequentially.

This is not to say that there aren't problems with legal systems, punishment and rehabilitation of prisoners convicted of crimes. The system is flawed, but it is an honest attempt to be ethical when dealing with those who have been unethical or downright morally wrong.

So, perhaps a person gets 5 years penalty for stealing a car or life in prison without the possibility of parole if they kill a few people. Arguable, that these serve as punishments and will not likely play a role in the rehabilitation of these individuals.

What crime did Du'a Aswad commit? This is not totally clear as there was no trial of Du'a Aswad. Rumors that filtered to the media probably from her family indicated that she ran away from home to marry someone of a different religion. Later the news outlets recanted this statement. Apparently, she either just liked or was seen with a Muslim male.

So, we will make a couple of assumptions for a hypothetical case.
1) Marrying outside your faith is illegal.
2) As a female, being seen with a male of another religion is illegal.


In the court case, I think it is clear that Du'a would not be convicted of this crime. However, for the purposes of going through the case, even if she was guilty of the crime, what would be an appropriate punishment?

I think capture, annulment of the marriage and perhaps a house arrest plus some education on why this is wrong, perhaps visits from communal leaders saying that they are a small population and that if the women leave their society that their society may cease to exist.

I don't particularly agree with the logic of what would need to be taught, but that is what I would think of as proportional punishment for the crime (if it were an actual crime).

Please note that the punishment of killing Du'a or any other woman in a similar position will negatively impact the population of the small society just as much as if she had left that society. It really doesn't matter that she would be contributing to the numbers of Islamic people around these particular Kurds. They are already surrounded and outnumbered thousands to millions to 1.

Now, she wouldn't have been convicted of #1, but perhaps she could have been convicted of #2 - associating with a male of another religion.

Again, the proportional punishment, even if they went on a date - would be house arrest, education and some kind of probation. In reality, I don't see how such a law would be enforceable as women in a society will need to interact with males of other religions. The question would be what is allowed interaction and what isn't allowed.

By killing her as punishment, the actual perform an action that is against their own best needs.

It is ironic even, that in punishing her they do their own society damage on many levels.

It is odd, that the women of their society due the vast majority of the work and are what is required for their to be future generations of their society, and yet it is the women who live in the restrictive fear-based society. Wondering if any action they do might result in their deaths and afraid to associate with others because to associate with others is to court death.

In the end, the punishment leveled at Du'a is based on increasing the fear in all the women in their society that such actions to keep them in line. The problem with this is that it increases the dissatisfaction of women in their society. This in turn will eventually result in women defecting from that society through things like underground railroads and leaving to any society that might have the smallest trace of treating them better.