In the framework of modern ethics and legal systems based on collective rationality, “murder” is defined as the most fundamental assault on human life and the violation of all social conventions; whether the victim is a young woman who is the victim of an honor killing on suspicion of wrongdoing in emotional and sexual relationships, or a doctor who, following the death of his patient, becomes the target of the wrath of the patient’s relatives and companions. Legal logic and civic ethics dictate that this criminal person should face punishment through a transparent process by the judicial system. However, when faced with bloody events in tribal, marginal, and traditional contexts, the sociologist is faced with a shocking and thought-provoking paradox: the moment when formal, legal, and religious punishment (such as retribution) not only fails to deter and calm the collective conscience of the tribe, but also becomes a factor in sanctifying and mythologizing the criminal. In the face of such events, the fundamental question is: What mechanisms operate in the underlying layers of the collective unconscious and cultural archetypes in which a person who sheds human blood (regardless of whether he is guilty or innocent) is elevated to the status of a hero in the ethnic and tribal perspective? Why does the internal logic of the clan evaluate the sister-killer (in honor killing) and the doctor-killer (in medical revenge) with a single logic and call both restorers of tarnished honor? Why does the “law of blood” still prevail over the “law of the book” in the modern era?

It is misleading to reduce this phenomenon to factors such as the incompetence of the judiciary or poverty; these factors may be part of the reality, but they do not represent the whole truth. We are faced with a situation here that represents a historical rupture and an epistemological gap. This situation is the point of contact between a long-standing traditional mentality and the modern realities of society; a clash that is sparked by violence. Here, we are faced with a rebellion of tradition against state bureaucracy, a rebellion that, in a particular context, causes a “crime” to change its nature into a “virtue.” To understand why a murderer is encouraged, one must look at the world through the eyes of a human being who is dependent on tribal laws. For believers in tribal laws, the concepts have a different semantic load. Here, the dominant factor is not the inefficiency of the government (which plays an aggravating role), but the imperatives of the survival of tribal culture and the preservation of tribal status take precedence. It’s a strange contradiction, but it’s not without root. To understand why a murderer becomes a hero in the eyes of the tribe, one must peel back the superficial layers of the news and consider the age-old logic of tribal neurosis, in which bloodshed restores honor to the tribe.

Many people think of “nervousness” simply as blind prejudice, but in sociological analysis, it is a defense mechanism and an unwritten social contract for survival in harsh environments lacking a supportive central government. Centuries ago, Ibn Khaldun defined nervousness not as blind prejudice but as a mechanism for survival; an unwritten pact according to which members of a tribe are obligated to repel any encroachment on the privacy of their relatives and to consider the injustice inflicted on one member as a disgrace to the entire tribe. (1) In honor killings or revenge killings against medical personnel, it is nervousness that pulls the trigger. When a girl violates the sexual norm, or a young patient dies in a hospital, the tribe does not see this as an individual event or a biological accident, but as a stain on the tribe and an attack on the integrity of its being. Aziz’s death in the hospital signifies the clan’s failure to protect its member. The killer here is not a criminal, but a soldier of nervousness whose mission is to restore balance and respect to the clan by shedding blood.

This view of neurosis confronts us with a tribal logic of punishment, where the goal of punishment is not to reform the offender but to “heal the conscience” and to quell the anger of the tribe. The crime here shocks the public conscience and punishment is the only way to soothe the wounded feelings of the group. (2) In Iran today, the fundamental problem arises when modern law (which is based on a rational examination of the crime) comes into play. For example, the court acquits a doctor because scientific negligence has not been proven, or the police intervene in matters of honor to prevent a murder. But the collective conscience of the tribe—operating at the level of tribal solidarity—is not convinced. They want to heal the conscience, and since the official law does not represent the anger of the tribe, they take action themselves to soothe the conscience of the tribe in this way. In a tribal context, a man’s most important asset is not money in his bank account, but his reputation and honor, which are expressed in words like “jealousy.” To preserve this capital, a tribal activist makes a bloody deal, the hidden logic behind this behavior being the same human desire to “maximize capital.” In the tribal arena, silence in the face of the suspicious death of a loved one means losing one’s reputation and being labeled as unjealous, a label that leads to social exclusion within the tribe. Pierre Bourdieu believes that symbolic capital is nothing more than economic or cultural capital, when it is recognized and recognized, and symbolic violence is a mechanism that naturalizes domination. (3) Thus, the murderer who kills the doctor is making an economic exchange in the symbolic market: he gives up his life and freedom (vital capital) to buy respect for himself and his clan (symbolic capital). The applause of the people at the execution or funeral is, in effect, a confirmation of this transaction and a recognition of his courage and the pride of the clan.

If we step away from theories and come to the street, we see that the murder of a doctor and the murder of honor are surprisingly related. It is as if both crimes follow a single cultural framework and a common mental watershed. This structural similarity is reproduced in a tragic scenario. Everything begins from the moment when the mental norm of the person (the potential murderer) collapses with a piece of news. In honor killings, the news arrives that the daughter of the family has had an affair outside the norm; this news destroys the symbolic order of the family. In the case of medicine, the news arrives that the young patient has died during surgery. In both cases, the tribal mentality – which interprets the world according to this mentality – looks for an external culprit. In the tribal belief, death or dishonor cannot be accidental in this worldview. In the case of medicine, cardiac arrest, drug side effects, etc., are absurd and meaningless to a family that does not believe in death and sees it as a defeat for the authority of the tribe. They are looking for a narrative that is consistent with the worldview of the tribe or clan, so the easiest thing to do is to create a narrative of the incident themselves: “The doctor failed.” This sense of victimhood sows the initial seeds of violence. But the story does not end there, as soon as the law comes into play, the family complains or, in cases of honor, the police intervene. A case is filed. The medical commission rules: the doctor is innocent, death was a natural consequence of the disease. This ruling fuels the fire of tribal anger. Why? Because in the suspicious mentality of Iranian society (which also has political roots and is usually correct), the language of the law is ineffective for this class. They do not understand the technical language of the medical commission and interpret it as a conspiracy against the clan. This is the gap that many political thinkers call the historical rupture between the state and the nation, a valley where the language of power is not understandable to ordinary people, at this point, the individual feels that the law is the refuge of the powerful and he (the clan) is left defenseless, so he decides to take refuge in his ancestral law: the “law of blood”. At this boiling point, the stage is set for the main actor to enter, he is usually the brother, father or eldest son; the one who carries the heavy burden of clan honor on his shoulders. The key point in the phenomenology of this violence is its theatricality and its public nature. In honor killings, the father or brother not only does not run away after killing the daughter, but also proudly presents himself to the police station or exposes the body. In the doctor’s murder, the killer walks around the city in the victim’s clothes, or boasts about it in cyberspace with a gun and knife before committing the crime. Because his goal is not simply to physically eliminate the doctor or the daughter, but to restore the damaged authority in public. He wants to prove to all onlookers that we will not allow ourselves to be humiliated. In fact, by doing so, he violently reclaims the lost symbolic capital.

And finally, the most shocking image is formed when the murderer is arrested and sentenced to death. But on the day of the execution and the execution squad, he does not tremble, does not ask for forgiveness, but kisses the gallows. This behavior is a political-cultural act. By doing so, he denies the legitimacy of the punisher. The crowd present at the scene and those who see the clips do not see him as a criminal, but as a social outlaw who stands up to an unjust system. The cleric or tribal elder speaks of fanaticism and zeal at his funeral, and in this way, the cycle of violence is guaranteed for the next generation.

The other side of this issue is rooted in macro structures. In this context, the question is why the rational structure of the nation-state has not been able to replace the emotional structure of the tribe? The short answer is that in the lived experience of Iranian people over the past few decades, especially in marginal areas, law has not always been synonymous with “justice.”

According to Max Weber, the foundation of the modern state is based on the “rule of impersonal law,” but the reality of the Iranian administrative and judicial system shows the dominance of personal relationships over rules. In his analysis of the structure of the state in Iran, Hossein Bashirieh points to the concept of patrimonialism (sultanism or traditional authority) that has been reproduced in a modern shell. Bashirieh believes: “In the patrimonial structure, the bureaucracy and administrative system are organized not on the basis of merit and common law, but on the basis of loyalty and personal relationships. This causes ordinary citizens to perceive the judicial and administrative apparatus not as an impartial refuge, but as a tool in the hands of the powerful and influential.” (4) When the medical commission votes to acquit the doctor, the Iranian person, whose mentality is imbued with this historical distrust, says to himself: “Doctors stand together.” This assumption causes scientific truth to be slaughtered in the slaughterhouse of social distrust and provides the grounds for the individual to resort to force of his arm to achieve his rights.

But why do people not trust judicial rulings and are always in “self-defense”? In his theory of “short-term society,” Mohammad Ali Katouzian sees the root of this crisis in the lack of long-term security and the historical lack of independence of the law in Iran. He sees the root of this crisis in the “short-term” nature of society, where the law has never had inherent sanctity and, since it has always been subject to the will of the ruler, people also view it with suspicion. (5) The heavy shadow of this historical insecurity has caused Iranians to always live in a state of “preparation.” It is as if it is engraved in our collective unconscious that in the absence of legal guarantees, resorting to force is not a choice, but a necessity for continued survival. The murderer who kills the doctor is actually filling a void created by the legal system, and this legal system, unfortunately, usually resorts to its most violent tool to counter it: “public execution.” But global experience has shown that these executions never have a deterrent effect. Michel Foucault believes that in the modern era, the spectacle of executions can have the opposite effect. He has a precise warning in this regard: “Theatrical executions can have the opposite effect. If the audience feels that the punishment is unjust, the execution scene becomes a scene of resistance instead of a lesson, and sympathies turn to the condemned.” (6) When the doctor’s murderer is executed only a few months after the murder, while the cases of massive financial corruption and rent-seeking by the regime’s associates remain unanswered for years, people attribute this speed of action not to justice, but to the system’s revenge on the weak. This is how, in such scenes, people protest against the “judge” by glorifying the “outlaw.”

Thus, we are faced with a vicious and dangerous cycle: the judicial system has lost trust, people turn to tribal cultural models, and execution only fuels the fire of heroism. To break out of this vicious cycle, the judicial system must first change its approach from “criminal justice” to “restorative justice.” The current Iranian judicial system is based on “retributive justice,” which means focusing on the criminal and ultimately punishing him. However, in tribal contexts where interpersonal relationships are intertwined, executing the murderer does not close the case, but institutionalizes resentment. Ali-Hossein Najafi Abrandabadi believes that in traditional contexts, the solution lies not in retributive justice, but in restorative justice. He explains that restorative justice focuses on the harm done to the victim and society rather than on the violation of an abstract law by the state. The goal is to bring the parties together for dialogue, apology, and reparation, not just coercive punishment. In this author’s view, repressive politics alone cannot resolve cultural conflicts. An effective solution is to use indigenous and elder capacities to move toward restorative justice, where the goal is not physical removal but rather reparation and the rebuilding of relationships. (7) However, changing judicial procedures alone is not enough. Society needs to revive civil institutions in order to breathe. The warning of modern sociology and the experience of the free world is stark: when social capital and trust collapse, society is fragmented and the ground is prepared for violence. The system of governance must accept that without independent intermediary institutions, it cannot overcome the crisis of mistrust. Transparency in handling medical cases and dealing with large numbers of people can also restore lost trust. If society sees that the law treats everyone equally, the magic of “making a hero out of a rebel” will be nullified.

Recent cases, including the brutal murder of a specialist doctor in Yasuj or honor killings, are not just criminal incidents, they are symptoms of a deep cultural disease. This disease is the breakdown of the social contract against tribal morality. When a murderer who takes a human life is encouraged by a part of society, it means that the moral immune system of society has failed. The reality is that the root of this confusion lies not simply in the violent nature of individuals, but in the dialectic between suppressed tribal culture and an ineffective modern structure. The dominance of relationships over norms, the weakness of the law and the lack of judicial independence legitimize personal revenge, and the display of violence (execution) without restorative justice has shed the ugliness of death and turned the criminal into a saint. Undoubtedly, the way back does not lie through the path of gallows and policing the social space, but through the path of rebuilding trust. Until the law of sanctuary is abolished and the concept of “honor” is defined in taking life, not in restoring it, the ominous shadow of the law of the jungle will hang heavy over the city; an alarm that is heard with a deafening voice today in hospital corridors and in the likes of murderers on social media.

Footnotes:

1- Ibn Khaldun, Abdolrahman, Introduction to Ibn Khaldun, Vol. 1, translated by Mohammad Parvin Gonabadi, Tehran: Scientific and Cultural Publications, 1997.

2- Durkheim, Emile, The Social Division of Labor, translated by Baqer Parham, Tehran: Markaz Publishing House, 1980.

3- Bourdieu, Pierre, Theory of Action, translated by Morteza Mardiha, Tehran: Naqsh-e-Negar, 2001.

4- Bashirieh, Hossein, Political Sociology: The Role of Social Forces in Political Life, Tehran: Nay Publishing, 1995.

5- Katouzian, Mohammad Ali, Iran, Short-Term Society, translated by Abdollah Kowsari, Tehran: Nay Publishing House, 2011.

6- Foucault, Michel, Care and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Niko Sarkhosh and Afshin Jahandideh, Tehran: Nay Publishing House, 1999.

7- Najafi Abrandabadi, Ali Hossein, Topics in Criminal Sciences, Tehran: Samt, 2019.