Appiah By Appiah Summary

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In this chapter, Appiah begins by using a Western example of a satirical comedy in order to prime the reader for dialogue about the notion of honor as it relates to marriage and specifically women in South Asia and the Middle East. He uses the example of penal codes in Italy which placed worth on chastity and disproportionately punished women for crimes that weren’t their fault and allowed marriage to invalidate any previous crimes committed. This social and legal code is also exemplified by the story he tells of a real woman who rebelled against honor convention, to great personal threat. By using both a satirical example and a true story of defiance to show the decline of the absurd Sicilian honor system, he seems to attempt to set the practice we would …show more content…

The Pashtuns have a community structure founded on tribalism, or the idea that one chooses whose “side” they’re on based solely on the closeness of a blood relationship and their shared group identity. This tribalistic culture contains the seeds of the anti-Imperialist feelings in that constitute the backlash against Western or other perceived interferences with long held cultural practices. These cultural practices resulted in the conception of a similar unique moral code known as the “Pushtunwali;” key tenants include “maintaining one’s honor by loyalty to one’s kin, bravery in battle, hospitality to guests, retaliation for insults, and revenge against injury, weather against one’s family or their tribe. Pakistan is still an Islamic nation, so many Pashtuns consider Pashtunwali and Islam to be completely congruent, though the actual teachings of Islam forbid these kinds of honor killing. As Apiah notes, when pushed, many feel that Pushtunwali, the cultural and community principles, supersede even their religious

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