Premeditated Murder Is Premeditated Murder — Isn’t It?
Somehow I can’t help but think that Peter Van Loan has a cultural agenda involved in his current “tougher penalties for honour killings” gig – what does saying that honour killings are a crime that “Canadian society cannot accept” mean anyway?
Are we actually contemplating a society where some reasons for premeditated murder are somehow less acceptable than others, and therefore deserve harsher penalties?
If a 5th generation Canadian discovers that their partner has been playing slap and tickle with the next door neighbour, and that their child not only knows about this but likes their new mommy or daddy better so stays shut up about it, and the wronged partner kills them both and tries to make it look like an accident, should s/he get a lighter sentence than people like Mohammad Shafia and his wife and son who are charged with the killings in Kingston that have been labeled an honour killing?
Are people any less dead? Is that crime somehow more acceptable because it wasn’t a supposedly culturally related murder?
At what point do we as a society decide that some reasons for sitting down and figuring out how to kill someone one, and then carrying through with the plan, are not deserving of the same sentencing as other reasons for doing exactly the same thing?
Methinks that Mr Van Loan’s cultural bias is showing, as are the cultural biases of those who are lining up behind him to to say that the reasons for some premeditated murder are better than others.
It’s a typical Conservative appeal to the baser instincts (not that they have less than base instincts) of other Conservative Canadians who believe that bigoted manhandling of the justice system is a good thing. It’s the same approach as that taken in the Bill calling for harsher penalties for murder when a fetus happens to be involved, and yaddayaddablahblahinsertstupidConservativebumblinghere.
I wish an Act of God would descend upon the Conservative party.
” what does saying that honour killings are a crime that “Canadian society cannot accept” mean anyway?
It means that keeping your women in line by killing them isn’t acceptable here.
“Are we actually contemplating a society where some reasons for premeditated murder are somehow less acceptable than others, and therefore deserve harsher penalties?”
from the article
“I’m certainly open to seeing whether there is a place for changes but up to this point, I haven’t seen that there is a need for changes to the criminal code. Certainly that is something for the minister of justice to consider.”
“Are we actually contemplating a society where some reasons for premeditated murder are somehow less acceptable than others, and therefore deserve harsher penalties?”
I think we are living in that society now.
If I blow your head off for shagging my wife there may be some degree of sympathy for my act.
If instead I lock you and your loved ones in a car and dump it into canal there is likely to be less sympathy and more of a public outcry for my head.
I want to know where this “tougher on some crime committed by some people for certain reasons” idea ends.
Is not a jilted white husband planning to, and following through on the killing of his wife equally as unacceptable as a Muslim man killing his daughter over who she dates?
In each case a woman is dead, but according to Van Loan the latter is so much worse that it just may require a special law to deal with it.
Shall we have other classes of premeditated murder based on colour, ethnicity, and/or religious belief?
If a white man kills his black wife because she was cheating on him should he get a greater than, equal to, or less than, sentence than a black man killing a white woman for the same reason?
– should the religion of either the murderer or the murderee matter?
– should it matter if either the murderer or the murderee is an immigrant or a natural born Canadian? And if it does…. does how long they have been Canadian play a role in the discussion?
– and if one, or both, are from ‘one of those countries‘ should it be treated differently than if one or both are from a different country.
Don’t try and play off honour killings as some kind of routine spousal or child abuse. Because it isn’t. Mr.Van Loan is 100% on the right track here.
So killing women to keep them in line is somehow worse than killing them for other reason?
If he saw no reason to change the law why did he bring it up?
If you catch me in the act of shagging your wife and kill me in a fit of jealous rage there is a class of law that covers that.
If you discover that I’m shagging your wife, and you stalk me for a month to discover where I go, what I do, and who my friends are, and hatch a plan to kill me and make it look like an accident, and follow through on the plan, and kill me (and my girlfriend, and her son in the process) why should you get more sympathy, and more lenient treatment from the courts, than the guy who off’s part of his family because his daughter is dating the wrong guy?
And if we are going to bring religion into the mix, as so many (Right)WingNuts have, would we not be acting more fairly if we were to create different class of law for any and all crimes committed based on religious belief?
@Raphael: Ya know what, I not the least bit surprised that you are cheering for Van Loan.
Maybe you can explain to me why western society doug newton discovering that I’m shagging his wife and hatching a plan to kill me and make it look like an accident is somehow deserving of more leniency than Muslim doug newton killing his daughter for shagging the wrong guy.
A big no to all of your reductio scenarios. We should all be equal under the law.
The message wasn’t about changing existing laws, it was a warning that the patriarchy doesn’t operate here like it does in some cultures.
It’s real, real simple.
Murder is murder.
The Criminal Code works, by and large. It DOES represent a statement of our social and cultural values.
Honour killing, a practice of some of the primitive cultural branches of Islam but not sanctioned by the Koran, is murder. It’s adequately addressed under the Criminal Code.
Vendetta, a practice of some primitive cultural branches Christianity but not sanctioned by the Bible, is murder. It’s adequately addressed under the Criminal Code.
Murdering your husband because you caught him screwing around, a practice of some primitive Western subcultures, is murder. It’s adequately addressed under the Criminal Code.
Here endeth the lesson.
“Don’t try and play off honour killings as some kind of routine spousal or child abuse. ”
Raph, with respect, this kind of foolish remark is the reason you are not taken seriously by most political bloggers. You persist in trying to shoehorn what smarter people than you have said into the tiny little stereotypes you’re comfortable with.
Stageleft never said this, or anything even approaching this. Read his words, then read your interpretation of what he said.
Please do us the courtesy of actually reading, thinking about and responding to what we say – not your extremely limited vision of what “lefties” must think. Otherwise, in all sincerity, I would recommend you stay home or post at Scenty’s. Stop embarassing yourself.
Are we actually contemplating a society where some reasons for premeditated murder are somehow less acceptable than others, and therefore deserve harsher penalties?
I believe we’re actually already past that point. There is already a class of crime, based entirely upon the reasons for committing the very same act as a different class of crime, were we determine the punishment should be worse based on that reason. I’ve previously noted that many conservatives dislike this class of crime, since they seem to feel it unfairly targets themselves, (which I think says something about them all its own), but hate crimes legislation exists despite that.
Now, I actually support the whole hate crimes idea, (though as with any such idea, it can be abused to some extent), and if we were to say something along the lines that all women were a targeted minority and any man that kills them deserves a harsher sentence rather than just Muslim men who do so, I might be convinced to support such an idea. Somehow, I doubt that’s what the Cons have in mind, though. They’d probably start feeling targeted again.
I’ve previously noted that many conservatives dislike this class of crime, since they seem to feel it unfairly targets themselves,
Well, sure. Me and my conservative buddies in the burbs are always talking about how unfair it is that we get dinged harder for our indictable offences. Comes up a lot.
I don’t think vendetta and jealous murder are unique to Christian societies, primitive or otherwise.
The oppression of women isn’t unique to Islam either, but we as Canadians should have zero tolerance for this particularly vile form of oppression and that was the message as I understood it.
“We as Canadians should have zero tolerance for this particularly vile form of oppression.”
Bravo. Now, you did notice that the folks accused of this have been charged and taken into custody. Am I correct about that?
So – how precisely does that indicate “tolerance”?
Nope. We’re not talking about killing a man for shagging your wife and neither is Van Loan. We’re talking about killing your wife because “fill in non-Muslim excuse here”, which is no different than killing your wife because “fill in Muslim excuse here”.
Balby,
Have you read Barbara Kay’s excellent piece on this subject? It rather saves me the trouble of having to bring my intellect up to a level which you would be comfortable with.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/29/barbara-kay-honour-killing-is-not-domestic-violence.aspx
So Mr Van Loan is merely stating the obvious and pandering to his base.
He has no responsibility to make clear that a relatively new, imported custom is not acceptable here.
Better to wait until it becomes a big problem?
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1244406,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3828675.stm
Thanks for that, Raph. However, since neither Stageleft nor I were arguing that honour killings should be treated as anything less than murder, it has absolutely no relevance to anything Stageleft or I said. Please see prior comment on addressing your remarks to points we were actually making. Thanks so much.
Talk about psychologically deranged. She really downplays the murder of Western women by Western men, eh? Off topic and not to make yet another thread about you (which you do so well yourself), but – are you Jonathan Kay writinng under a pseudonym?
Who, me? No.
Must interject here about this framing of “honour killings” as being somehow Islamic. It’s offensive, racist also very much untrue.
There were 20 women killed in Canada last year in what might be termed an “honour killing”, if such a term really existed in Canada. Only one of the 20 involved adherents of Islam.
btw – I’m totally with Stageleft here. White men murder wives, daughters, girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for a variety of reasons. Many appear to do so because their “honour” or “pride” has somehow been besmirched (i.e. the woman ‘cheated’; disobeyed; refused to acknowledge his superiority over her; talked back to him; was ‘uppity’). We don’t go shrieking that it’s an honour killing but it looks and sounds like the same duck.
Premeditated murder IS premeditated murder. Period. End of story.
When I was thinking about this post I wondered how long it would take someone to bring that up, and how I would respond when they did so — I wish you had given me a day or so.
Hate crime laws say that crimes committed against people because of their ethnicity or religion are more serious than were the very same crimes committed against others for different reasons.
Essentially, if doug newton hates me for shagging his wife and kills me, or harasses me, or vandalizes or destroys my property, because I shagged his wife he will not be prosecuted anywhere near as seriously as if he hated me because I was black, or Jewish, or Aboriginal, or gay, and did exactly the same things.
That raises the question of, are crimes against my life, or my family, or my safety, or my property, of greater or less significance because of why the crimes were committed?
And if the answer to that question is “yes”, which in Canada it is, one could reasonably ask, is one penalty for my being beaten and left for dead in a dark ally because someone wanted my money or my bike (ie. because of what I have) verses a greater penalty for my being beaten and left for dead in a dark ally because I belong to an identifiable ethnic group or because of my religion (ie. who I am), a fair application of the law?
law & order, special bigot’s unit, officer raphael simply can’t abide the damn swarthies and their uncouth homicides. so much nastier than the “routine” murder of women and children in polite society. requires a brand new law with extra racial and religious scolding. that’ll teach them not to have the right heritage.
But, Raphael, with this focus, you are implying that the case of a father killing his daughter over who she dates is somehow worse than a husband killing his wife for planning to leave him. It is a perfect example of the hysteria that’s surrounding these serious but rare acts.
Balbulican is right: murder is murder. If you think 25 years without parole is insufficient, we can talk about increasing the penalty, but that increase has to apply to both cases, here, or else you are condemning an already heinous act to a higher degree, simply because of the ethnicity or religion of the individual who happens to engage in said act. That’s not what I think you want to do.
Lindsay,
Give it up. You can’t convince anyone I’m a racist who doesn’t already believe all conservatives are racists anyway. I actually think you pretend to be interested in these issues so you can get away with using darkie, swarthie, and all sorts of other interesting racial epithets you couldn’t ordinarily use unless you were misattributing them to others in your special brand of dishonesty [that you curiously share with your partner in crime, Robert Day.
Fascinating that you consider honour killings a part of their “heritage” though. It really opens up the curtains into the dementia of the leftwing mindset.
Geez, people, get a grip. In one sense, Van Loan was simply channeling the heightened revulsion and outrage (and atavistic fear) we feel when a parent kills or harms a dependant child. Remember that mother from South Carolina who drowned her two little tots? These cases challenge the most vociferous opponents of capital punishment. If reserving a special opprobrium and desire for punishment for people who do this is a conservative value, then long live conservative values.
But what was highly offensive was Van Loan’s description of honour killings as a “norm or value” that Muslim immigrants presumably need to leave at the airport on arrival or, even worse, be taught (I shudder to think of the PowerPoint presentation) we have a zero tolerance policy against. balb is right, if anything, this kind of outrage is a feature of marginalized poor societies and religion is almost always a check on it rather than an enabler. You know who really should be outraged by this? The many brave, faithfully Muslim women struggling for reform in Muslimland.
If there is a value at play here, it is the freedom of young women to choose their partners and set their own courses in life. To pretend that there is no reason to think that is any more a problem for young Muslim immigrants than “5th generation Canadians”, or that much the same problem is faced by native-born Christian girls is just silly and ends up shopping those most at risk. But they wouldn’t be the first class of immigrants to face such a challenge and despite the warnings of the Raphaels of this world that they are “incompatible” with Canadian values and way of life, it always resolves itself in little more than a generation without the need for ministerial interventions or changes to the Criminal Code. Give this one thirty years and some Muslim-Canadian girl will probably make a hilarious film about it called “My Big Fat Muslim Wedding”. But in the meantime, let’s get real and make sure these young immigrant girls are protected, as anyone in the police or Family Services will tell you many of them need be. We aren’t going to do that by sanctimonious, politically-correct declarations that the problem is just as bad in mainstream society or, even worse, that it’s all the fault of big, bad monotheism. Are you under the impression that secular, progressive men nursing a huge sense of betrayal all just gravitate naturally to expedited mediation and an early separation agreement so everybody can heal quickly and get on with their lives?
Those aren’t values. They’re reactions.
you are so precious raphael! you and you alone are the one that has given more than a few folks cause to consider you a racist, a sexist and a homophobe. i said nothing whatsoever about conservatives in a broad brush manner. i’m suggesting that you are a bigot based on the content of your own writings and commentary. you like to portray the civil gent but it is an act, a sham and you just don’t like being called on it. but please do educate on that “special form of dishonesty” that is my apparent speciality. i’d be delighted if you’d provide an example or two of my lies. as for your dishonesty, well it is subtle. here’s a classic case of misattribution of meaning.
i said, “that’ll teach them not to have the right heritage.” clearly meaning that will teach them not to be of white, western european stock. which prompts you to ditch context and miscast my meaning and intent as…
“Fascinating that you consider honour killings a part of their “heritage” though. It really opens up the curtains into the dementia of the leftwing mindset.”
not only do you misconstrue my words but you use them to make a blanket condemnation of the left, as though i am somehow representative of that broad range of persons and opinions. i’d suggest that your baseless imprecations fall flat. i won’t even begin to suggest that your easy acceptance of domestic violence is indicative of the broader right wing mind set…
“Don’t try and play off honour killings as some kind of routine spousal or child abuse.” (emphasis mine)
because it appears that slapping the wife and kids around is just another one of life’s little things in your own twisted world view.
You can’t convince anyone I’m a racist who doesn’t already believe all conservatives are racists anyway.
Yeah, with you, I settle on “dumb.” Er…unteachable.
The precident for adding additional penalties based on the motives of the offender are already exist. Hate crimes? Killing a police officer? Canadian law has already deemed some crimes with certain extenuating circumstances as being worse than others.
one could reasonably ask, is one penalty for my being beaten and left for dead in a dark ally because someone wanted my money or my bike (ie. because of what I have) verses a greater penalty for my being beaten and left for dead in a dark ally because I belong to an identifiable ethnic group or because of my religion (ie. who I am), a fair application of the law?
The hate crimes idea is a tricky one, for certain. The idea is that somebody putting up a burning cross on the lawn of Black family’s yard is doing more than simple arson, or the guy painting a swastika on the Jewish centre is doing more than simple graffiti, (or, you know, creating an entirely new class of crime that only Muslims could ever be found guilty of).
For your examples, the first case is one where you are being targeted as an individual. The second is presumably targeting your identifiable group, to serve as a warning or intimidation to others over and above yourself being beaten. Because the targets, and quite possibly the effects, are larger in the second case, it does seem a fair application of the law to consider the crime worse, at least in my opinion.
And to some degree, I have to admit that that logic does mean that certain cases of violence against women would qualify for such treatment, with “honour killings”, defined not as “any domestic violence involving Muslims” as some would have it, but as violence committed by anyone looking to enforce a certain type of behaviour on women, being a part of that.
Which is what femicide usually is, “she wasn’t doing what I wanted her to do, so I killed her”.
Because the targets, and quite possibly the effects, are larger in the second case, it does seem a fair application of the law to consider the crime worse, at least in my opinion.
It’s not just your opinion. It’s how stiffer penalties for hate crimes are justified in the body of jurisprudence. Crimes motivated by hate exact a greater social cost than crimes for more mundane reasons, like robbery.
That, of course, is an opinion.
Actually, it’s more than that, it’s accepted LEGAL opinion. Now if Van Loan wants to make femicide a hate crime then, by all means. Although, traditionally in this Western society of ours, the murders of women by their partners has been termed “domestic”, as if somehow the female victims must have had some part in their murders. It was only in 1983, afterall, that the rape of a woman by her husband was even considered a crime. Wifely duty and all that, I guess.
Yeah, I remember it. What I don’t seem to recall is prominent America politicians going public with speculation that America might want to consider a special law to deal with mothers who drown their kids.
That, of course, is an opinion.
Disproportionate Harm: Hate Crime in Canada
The second reason noted by these authors for paying special attention to hate crimes is the impact that they have on whole communities. Hate crimes increase the level of fear, and can only heighten tension between different racial and ethnic groups. This observation has been made by many writers. Sanderson (1991: 43) for example, notes that, “…a hate crime resembles no other crime. The effects of hate crime reach beyond the immediate victim or institution and can damage society and fragment communities”. This constitutes an additional element of harm, which accordingly should be recognized by the criminal law.
As they say, read the whole thing. It’s chock full of opinion.
Ti-Guy, I’m sure you know what I would say in reply. With all due respect to your noble social scientists, that kind of analysis and conclusion is not conducive to objective, emprical testing and proof via the scientific method. If you are talking about a lynching or church burning in a rural black community in the south, obviously yes and we don’t need a sociologist to tell us that, but if you are comparing one skinhead in Toronto desecrating a graveyard with equal-opportunity Hell’s Angels terrorizing a whole community, no.
It was only in 1983, afterall, that the rape of a woman by her husband was even considered a crime.
Not at all true. Before 1983, the crime of rape was defined to exclude wives, but assault, aggravated assault, assault causing bodily harm and assault with intent to injure were not. The exception related to presumed psychological damage for near-mystical reasons and had little to do with violence. Enforcement of spousal assault was a whole different matter, but that was not for lack of legal sanctions.
Okay, Peter. You win.
Sorry, sooey, I should remember not to challenge other peoples’ religions.
If you are talking about a lynching or church burning in a rural black community in the south, obviously yes and we don’t need a sociologist to tell us that, but if you are comparing one skinhead in Toronto desecrating a graveyard with equal-opportunity Hell’s Angels terrorizing a whole community, no.
This is just opinion..
[...] [More] Notes: [...]
If we’re going to justify stiffer sentances based on the effect that the crime in question has on society (and/or particular groups thereof) – much like we do with hate crimes, as indicated in the link that TiGuy posted – then yes, you could make the argument that “honour killings”, which (as best as I’m aware) are mostly if not entirely directed towards a readily identifiable group, should attract increased legal sanction.
That, I think, is one reason why killing a peace officer is treated more seriously than killing anyone else in some jurisdictions: killing someone who’s job it is to uphold the law & protect society is seen as having a greater impact on society at large.
It’s a debatable point, whether you apply it to hate crimes generally, honour killings, police killings, or whatver, but I can certainly see the justification for it.
Where I don’t think we should go is, increasing the penalty based on one’s motive. If a Muslim woman, or a gay man, or whomever, is assaulted, the reason *why* the criminal chose to commit that assualt shouldn’t be a factor.
In other words, you can make the case for stiffer sentences based on the effect a given crime may have on the community (at large, or to particular groups of that community), but I’m less convinced that whatever was in the mind of the criminal vis a vis motive should make a difference.
My $0.02 only, of course.