i took this table from the recent pew survey of muslims…

…and made a couple of maps (adapted from this map).

the first one is a map of the differences between what percentage of muslims in each country responded that honor killing is never justifiable when a man commits an offense versus a woman committing an offense. a plus number (+) means more enthusiasm for honor killing women — a negative (-), men. here it is (click on image for LARGER view):

what i think we can see is that, the closer you get to the arab expansion epicenter (the arab peninsula), the greater the enthusiasm for honor killing women. so in jordan it’s +47, lebanon and egypt +10, iraq +11. but when you get out to the edges of the caliphate, the differences are not so great, or they are in fact reversed: morocco -1, turkey and afghanistan and tajikistan 0. even pakistan is only +3. when you get way out to uzbekistan and kyrgyzstan, then the numbers are reversed: -14 and -3.

(it should be noted that for some reason the question was worded differently in uzbekistan, afghanistan, and iraq. everyone else was asked specifically about premarital sex/adultery and family honor, while the uzbekis, afghanis, and iraqis were only asked about family honor. see questions 53 and 54 here [pdf].)

i think that perhaps this is a reflection of what korotayev noticed, i.e. that father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage is found in those places of the world that were a part of the eighth century muslim caliphate, because those populations wanted to emulate the arabs, and the arabs practiced fbd marriage. the reason that the populations on the edges of the caliphate are less enthusiastic about honor killing women is that they were arabized less and/or later than (dare i say it) the “core arabs” and so probably have been practicing fbd marriage for a shorter amount of time. (in fact, korotayev and other russian anthropologists suggest that fbd marriage started in the levant and moved southwards into the arab peninsula, so some of the jordanians and lebanese may have started practicing fbd marriage before the arabs down in the peninsula.)

i think, too, that there is a connection between fbd marriage and honor killings, because fbd marriage leads to greater inbreeding, and greater amounts of inbreeding may very probably lead to greater frequencies of “genes for altruism” — and honor killings can be viewed as a sort-of upside-down-and-backwards form of altruism (at least they seem that way to us).

and/or the arabs simply introduced some crazy “genes for upside-down-and-backwards altruism” to these various populations, and less so on the fringes presumably because not so many arabs actually made it that far. edit: also interesting to note is that in fbd societies, all of the men in extended families/clans share the same y-chromosome. if there is a connection between violence and some gene(s) on the y-chromosome (i thought greg cochran said something about this, but i can’t find it now), maybe this is exacerbated by fbd marriage.

here is the other map — the percentage of muslims in each country responding that it is rarely, sometimes, or often justified to honor kill women:

again, the numbers taper off on the edges of the extent of the caliphate.

previously: father’s brother’s daughter’s marriage and inclusive inclusive fitness and who wants sharia?

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