The 1987 movie “The Untouchables” was based on 9 real life FBI agents who could not be bribed or corrupted by the mafia. They enforced the law and Al Capone was a major target for them.
Sean Connery plays a fictional Irish cop that delivers this memorable line.
“You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone.”
It’s an entertaining movie. I love seeing the good guys win over the bad guys.
It feels right.
However, what if I actually lived my life that way Sean Connery’s character suggests?
What if I responded to every insult by escalating my response?
I think that would be a major step backward that would eventually lead to “honor killing”.
Just 200 years ago in the United States, the Vice President of the USA, Aaron Burr dueled to the death with the secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton because they were each offended about what the other one had said.
I believe that if one of them had turned the other cheek early on in their conflict, both of them would have prospered and died of old age.
Honor killing is still practiced in parts of our world today. If a woman is raped, I see her as a victim of a crime. I believe that there is #NothingToForgive of her. I can understand that her family members might seek out the rapist and castrate him.
That is not how the family of “Rokstan M” saw it. Rokstan was gang raped in Syria and found asylum in Germany. Years laters, her father and 2 brothers are accused of killing her. They felt dishonored by her because she had been raped. It’s suspected that her mother was the instigator of Rokstan’s murder. The full story is at Gang raped by strangers, murdered by family Rokstan was one of the hundreds of women who were murdered by family in 2015 for nothing more than being the victim of a crime.
That is the lesson of “The Rake”.
Sometimes there is #NothingToForgive. Sadly, these families didn’t see it that way. In my opinion, when you kill for honour you lose your own honour.