Hey Joe
January 8, 2008
In the expanding stable of mediocrities who serve as columnists for the Guardian, Brian Whitaker is certainly not the worst. Six years back, he did write one decent article. His subject at the time were the Neocons and the various Israel lobby institutions. As any careerist hack would know, this doesn’t do one’s career much good. As a consequence, Whitaker has turned to a subject that guarantees popularity with the powers that be: bashing Islam. These days his average article is a collection of trite quotes gleaned from random blogs which then serve as evidence of whichever prevailing prejudice he has chosen to recycle in the article.
As a born again Orientalist, Whitaker’s new shtick is the argument that the West needs to civilize the Islamic world (how original!). In his present one he is speaking about ‘honour killings’. According to him, this practice is exclusive to the Muslim world. I had to shake my head as only recently I had discovered that the primary cause of death for women under 35 in UK is domestic violence. Whitaker does quote Joseph Massad pointing out that one third of all women killed in the US are at the hands of boyfriends and husbands, but he says this is a false comparison as this is not condoned in the West. Presumably it is condoned in the East? Perhaps Whitaker knows something about the place that I missed growing up in, of all places, Peshawar. But even in Peshawar I couldn’t miss one of Jimi Hendrix’s more famous songs, Hey Joe. Subject of the song? Honour killing.
Hey Joe – by Jimmy Hendrix
Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand
Hey Joe, I said where you goin’ with that gun in your handI’m going down to shoot my old lady
You know, I’ve caught her messin’ around with another man
I’m going down to shoot my old lady
You know, I’ve caught her messin’ around with another man
And that ain’t too coolHey Joe, I’ve heard you shot your woman down,
shot her down, now
I said I’ve heard you shot your old lady down,
You shot her down to the groundYes I did, I shot her
You know, I caught her messin’ round, messin’ round town
Yes I did, I shot her
You know, I caught my old lady messin’ around town
And I gave her the gun
I SHOT HER!Hey Joe, alright
Shoot her one more time, babyHey Joe, said now
Where you gonna run to now?
Where you gonna run to?
Hey Joe, I said where you gonna run to now?
Where you, where you gonna go?
Well, dig itI’m goin’ way down south,
Way down to Mexico way
Alright!
I’m goin’ way down south,
Way down where I can be free
Ain’t no one gonna find meAin’t no hangman gonna,
He ain’t gonna put a rope around me
You better believe it right now
I gotta go now
Hey Joe, you better run on down
Good by everybody
Hey Joe, uhh
Run on down
February 10, 2008 at 5:08 pm
[...] “honour killings” are a Muslim problem I’ll just dedicate the following song (h/t Fanonite). Lyrics after the [...]
February 11, 2008 at 12:19 am
[...] a good post on the nasty sensationalism on the cover of Independent on Sunday. A short while back I had written about Britain’s new fixation: ‘honour killings’. For a country where the primary cause of death amongst women under [...]
February 11, 2008 at 12:37 am
Is this article really acceptable?
You say it’s ok to criticise Christians (Neocon) and Jews (Israel) but not ok to criticise Islam.
You then say Honour killings are somewhat excusable because of the existence of domestic violence.
This is a thinly disguised apologetic for Islam, is it not?
February 11, 2008 at 12:52 am
Ah, but that’s not what the article says, is it Al? Plus I can think of a few Christians and Jews who would be quite offended at how you lumped them in with the neocons and the zionists.
M.Idrees, what’s your source for domestic violence being the number one cause of death? I didn’t realise it was that high, that’s really grim.
February 11, 2008 at 1:31 am
Dave
follow this link to know more
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10309
April 15, 2008 at 2:35 am
I think the point is that this obsession with ‘rescuing’ subjugated [fill in the blank: Muslim/brown/Arab/desi/'other'] women from their backward, misogynistic, bloodthirsty, uncivilized menfolk makes it very easy for people in a country like the UK to forget that patriarchy and misogyny and violence against women are not, in fact, peculiar monopolies of ‘Muslim/brown/Arab/…’ men.
As Albert Memi put it, the ‘colonized other’ was ‘branded with the mark of the plural’ by his/er colonial master. It’s the same then as now. A white anglo-saxon man who beats his wife is an individual with a problem. A Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/brown man who beats his wife represents his entire race or religion.
April 15, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Prospero, you are the master of illusion.
Lying is your trademark.
And you have lied so much to me
(lied about the world, lied about me)
that you have ended by imposing on me
an image of myself.
underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior,
That ís the way you have forced me to see myself
I detest that image! What’s more, it’s a lie!
But now I know you, you old cancer,
and I know myself as well.
- Caliban, in Aime Cesaire’s “The Tempest”