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Association: Name: American Studies Association URL: http://www.theasa.net
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p114456_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Maier, Sylvia. ""Honor Killings" and the Cultural Defense in Germany and the United States" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, <Not Available>. 2009-05-24 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p114456_index.html>

Maier, S. ""Honor Killings" and the Cultural Defense in Germany and the United States" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association <Not Available>. 2009-05-24 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p114456_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Abstract: This paper explores the use and acceptance of the cultural defense in German courts in cases involving so-called “honor killings.” Approximately sixty honor killings–homicides in which young women are killed by male members of their family for allegedly tainting the honor of the clan–are known to have occurred in Germany over the last twenty years. In almost all cases, the defendants–mostly Turkish, Kurdish, and Afghani Muslims–have offered a cultural defense, claiming that killing the woman who has dishonored the family was an obligation imposed by morality, culture and tradition. Surprisingly, German judges have accepted this cultural defense in numerous cases and imposed only reduced sentences, most often for manslaughter instead of premeditated murder. Such lenience is triply puzzling and disturbing. First, reduced sentences for German perpetrators of such violent crimes are virtually unheard of and raise troubling questions for the principle of the equal application of the law. Second, it sends the message that young male relatives have the right to monitor and punish –even by death—the conduct of their female relatives if they come from a conservative Muslim community. Third, this ostensible –but, as I shall argue, misguided–cultural tolerance is curiously at odds with Germany’s general approach to cultural minority rights. Germany privileges ethnic membership in the community and seeks to limit the legal, political and social accommodation of “non-Western” cultural-religious traditions as much as possible. A key aim of the paper, therefore, is to ascertain and explain the rationale behind this departure from standard legal and policy practice regarding the accommodation of cultural minority rights. Finally, I will offer a comparison between Germany’s policy towards honor killings and that of the United States, a country with a long tradition of legal pluralism, where several honor killings have occurred over the past years.

Culture, Islam and the Law: Honor Killings in Germany

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