UPDATE 5-18-07
I’m bumping this post up to the top (first posted 4-30-07) since there is new information that has come out. Check below.
END UPDATE
It’s disgusting that a culture permits, even encourages, the stoning of a woman because of…well choose your poison. In this latest example we have a 17 year old girl, Du’a Khalil Aswad, who was part of a Kurdish family in Northern Iraq which practiced a religion called Yezidi. She met and apparently fell in love with an Arab Muslim man after which she met secretly with him. At one point she ran away from her family to be with him but when the man cut the relationship off things turned quite badly for the woman. All because she fell in love with the wrong man:
Damned under the ‘honour’ code, for running away, for choosing outside her own community and for being ultimately rejected, Du’a had nowhere to go.
She stayed with a local Yezidi tribal leader for five days until she was convinced to return to her village on the understanding that she had been ‘forgiven.’ She was abducted and brutally murdered in front of hundreds of men by her relatives — who stripped her body, beat and kicked her, and killed her by crushing her body with rocks and concrete blocks. These brutal and inhuman acts were filmed by the participants on their mobile phones and many of them have been circulating on the internet and from phone to phone. They show the participation of the police in this disgusting communal murder and the murderous excitement of the crowd as the girl’s uncle, brother and cousin commit the grisly murder.
The video can be seen below. While it was difficult to decide whether showing this video was appropriate or not I came to the conclusion that the more people who see this thing, while sad and disgusting, the better. We need to understand what we are dealing with in our war against terror. This is what many of these fanatical Muslims of capable of. Yes, I know these people are not Muslim but our enemy, fanatical Islam, believe that stoning is just and right:
Stoning to death for adultery is part of the Shariah’s penal code, whether we like it or not ! Muslims should not be apologetic about any law of the Shariah as it is not the product of the human mind, but it is divinely revealed.
To them stoning a 17 year old to death for nothing more then falling in love with the wrong man is the right thing to do……disgusting:
Gateway Pundit tells us that there was a protest in Northern Iraq against this killing and ALL honor killings.
Today in Erbil… Capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq, women and men came together to protest the murder of Du’a Khalil Aswad. The demonstration was organised by 90 NGOs and attracted protestors from across the whole Kurdish region.
Meanwhile Gates of Vienna has an excellent post up about the Yezidi in which she cites Michael’s Yon’s trip to the village in 2005.
Be that it may, whether they be Muslim or Yezidi, ANY religion that condones this kind of behavior is barbaric.
UPDATE
There have been arrests made:
Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the "honor killing" last month of a Kurdish teen — a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world.
The case portrays the tragedy and brutality of honor killings in the Muslim world. Honor killings take place when family members kill relatives, almost always female, because they feel the relatives’ actions have shamed the family.
In this case, Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd in a headlock with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death last month. (Watch the attack, and what authorities are doing about it)
Authorities believe she was killed for being seen with a Sunni Muslim man. She had not married him or converted, but her attackers believed she had, a top official in Nineveh province said. The Yazidis, who observe an ancient Middle Eastern religion, look down on mixing with people of another faith.
Each year, dozens of honor killings are reported in Iraq and thousands are reported worldwide, said the United Nations. The practice has been condemned around the world by governments and human rights groups. A yearly vigil protesting honor killings is held in London, England.
Two of the four arrested are members of the victim’s family, police in Nineveh province said Thursday. Four others, including a cousin thought to have instigated the killing, are being sought.
The killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, a provincial official said.
The violence ratcheted up tensions between Yazids and Muslims in Bashiqa, the victim’s hometown, a largely Yazidi city in Nineveh province.
Provincial officials don’t think much could have been done to stop the honor killing, but at least three officers are being investigated and could be fired.
"The climate, the religious and social climate is such that people can do that in daylight and that authorities do not intervene," said the spokeswoman for the Organization of Womens’ Freedom in Iraq, Houzan Mahmoud.
Also, the top police official in Bashiqa is being replaced.
Hopefully justice will be done for this poor girl.
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on 4.3pg you see how she is murdered 🙁
http://www.ikwro.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=147&Itemid=2
on 4.3pg you see how she is murdered 🙁
http://www.ikwro.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=147&Itemid=2
Two weeks later, 23 Yazidi workers from the Mosul Textile Factory were murdered in a communal punishment ‘revenge attack’ as reported by news.com
“To them stoning a 17 year old to death for nothing more then falling in love with the wrong man is the right thing to do” but if the girl converted to Islam, she should be stoned to death by Muslims, otherwise relatives/community members of people involved should be murdered for attacking a muslim. 🙁
It’s dreadful. However, if the killers were Yezidi, why can you hear some in the crowd (in some of the on the internet floating records) yell ‘allah-u-aqbar’?
No, there’s footage later (after they removed her skirt) where she’s still alive. So, unfortunately, she’s still suffering at this point.
Poor child.
Can we call them savages now?
oh my god, I realy dont know what to say, This is first time ever im writing in forum and im writing now to express my felling, This is so hard to watch, I read somewhere that almost 2000 men was at the place when this excusion took place, I would pay or i dont know,,do everthing so in some way this men understand what they have done,
If it was up too me i would excute each and everyone of this men, speacialy her brothers,
I hope this girl have a good place now in the heaven,
God bless her,,
17 year old girl was stoned to death on the streets (that was really painful(i must say more than pain), this is open murder in the day (even the law of the country could not stop that)?, she dont deserve that, i think human rights groups have to wake up. the girl is gone. but her death should not be wasted. i dont know what to say but that was really extreme painful act.
God Bless Her Soul
After the first Gulf War I was part of the kurdish relief effort, feeding and providing protection from the Iraqi military. This makes me wonder why.
Religion of Peace
Curt – One quibble. We are not fighting “radical Islam”. Islamic sharia law is not “radical”, it *is* Islam. Current Islam is not radical, it is what it is. What we need to do is change normal Islam, which includes practicing sharia law, to liberal Islam, which stops Muslims from practicing sharia law.
In the meantime though, we need to stop being so PC and stop calling normal Islam “radical Islam”. Sharia law is only “radical” when compared to what we are used to in Western civilization. But sharia law is not “radical” for Islam, it is normal.
That is what needs to change through reform of Islam, but it won’t be if we keep referring to what is normal in Islam as “radical”.
Otherwise, great post. I believe it is the right thing to do to keep putting this stuff out there to shine the light on the true Islam and Islamic sharia law. It is the only way people will understand the truth about Islam and force Muslims to reform Islam.
Sorry, you did not say “radical” Islam, you said “fanatical”. Still, that is wrong as well. It is only “fanatical” when compared to Western civilization. (Granted, who are we to judge when we consider killing the unborn for the sake of “inconvenience” to be just and right… but I digress…)
We need to stop saying “fanatical” and “radical” and call this what it is: Islamic sharia law. And it needs to be reformed.
for ur kind information islamic punishments are not like this…
Reading a lot of your comments above has left me seething in frustration!!!
For starters the animals who killed that girl were not muslim….Islam does not permit honour killings…Stoning of an individual (as the blog guy pointed out) is NOT common practice. According to Islamic Law it is supposed to be carried out if an individual (male or female) commits adultery (i.e. has sex with someone else when married) HOWEVER the conditions in order for this punishment to be carried out are VERY strict. Four witnesses must have seen the event and must be willing to testify…It doesn’t take three brain cells to figure out that people don’t engage in consensual sex in a public place ESPECIALLY if sex before marriage is frowned upon.. MEANING this is rarely carried out!!!
and before you go there, rape victims are NOT accountable and islamically speaking it is the perpetrator that should be punished.
MANY (almost all) of you have VERY VERY limited knowledge of Islam and it makes me sick that you can throw out statements that you have no/very little understanding of.
I am a proud muslim girl who is 19 – I hate male pigs who deem themselves to be superior and I KNOW that Islam does not condone such acts. Islam does not need to reform – it is the fastest growing religion in the WORLD and NOT because it is ‘barbaric’ and all the rest of that rubbish!!
Those of you who are both ignorant and bigoted need to get a grip, get smarter and learn that its not a good idea to talk about something you don’t know much about!!!!
Tell me where are honor killings and stoning done then? Not in London where you sit behind a desk but most definitely they occur in Muslim countries where people twist Islam to permit it.
In Iran there is even the Islamic Penal Code that spells out the rules:
But it’s because of people such as yourself, moderate Muslims, who do not stand up against radical Islam that cause the rest of the world to see this religion as evil.
If the moderate Muslims do nothing, then the War on Terror will take care of it.
These people are barbaric, if it is their culture, it is barbaric and inferior…
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
fathers may kill their daughters
if they feel dishonored
like when she dates the wrong boy
.