Stoning to death of girl provokes wave of killings

[RiverStone]

Source: The Independent

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 07 May 2007

The stoning to death of a teenage girl belonging to the Yazidi religious sect because she fell in love with a Muslim man has led to a spiral of violence in northern Iraq in which 23 elderly factory workers have been shot dead and 800 Yazidi students forced to flee their university in Mosul.

The killings began with an act of brutality horrific even by Iraqi standards.

A 17-year-old girl called Doaa Aswad Dekhil from the town of Bashika in the northern province of Nineveh converted to Islam. She belonged to the Yazidi religion, a mixture of Islam, Judaism and Christianity as well as Zoroastrian and Gnostic beliefs. The 350,000-strong Kurdish- speaking Yazidi community is centred in the north and east of Mosul and has often faced persecution in the past, being denounced as "devil worshippers".

On 7 April, Doaa returned home after she had converted to Islam in order to marry a Sunni Muslim who was also a Kurd. She had been told by a Sunni Muslim cleric that her family had forgiven her for her elopement and conversion. Instead she was met in Bashika by a large mob of 2,000 people led by members of her family.



Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2519070.ece

---

This horrific story happened in what has been advertised by BushCo in the relatively safe area of northern Iraq.

This is further tragic evidence of a situation that has deteriorated to utter chaos. Iraq is a country with a population of over 26,000,000 - one can only wonder in anger how anyone could possibly think the United States can restore any semblence of order? In particular, with the insane violence growing in parts of the country distant from Baghdad; it seems impossible!

Certainly, the fix is not a military one. When Shrub leaves office, so will his delusions of a military victory. Then and only then, will the world be able to step in and offer a humanitarian solution.

[aquart]

1. What happened to the damn fool "Sunni Muslim cleric"?

Her Friar Laurance?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jobycom]

3. Which ones? The Yazidi, who are our allies, actually, or all Iraqis?

Or only the people who participated in these horrific murders?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. It's only a few bad apples.

Oh wait, that's what we say when it's white christians doing it. Never mind, carry on.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

16. Wow, what a completely bigoted post.

So the actions of some determine the character of all?

[jobycom]

4. Sounds sadly like parts of American history.

This woman was murdered for trying to leave her group and join another one. White Americans used to murder African Americans (still do, but in lesser numbers) for trying to leave their group or interfering with white groups. Black men were lynched or stoned for saying hello to white women on the street. Black children were stoned to death for being in white neighborhoods after sunset. This was not just in the South, as the murder of Yusuf Hawkins in 1989 demonstrates.

Then there are the stories of what Americans did to the Native Americans, of inner city gang battles, of horrific domestic murder rates.

I guess I'm just trying to point out that we have our own nasty history, and without a strong government here, it would be even nastier. The murderers who committed these crimes should be condemned and punished strongly (and probably won't be, because there is not enough government in Iraq to condemn them), but we should be hesitant to condemn all of Iraq because of the horrific stories that come out of it. Out of 26 million people, without a government to enforce any real law, horrible people are bound to emerge to do horrible things.

We need to get out of Iraq, turn all peace-keeping operations to an international entity that has an actual desire to establish a real government in Iraq, and pay them lots of money, with no strings, to clean up the mess we made. Or some such comparable solution. We have no chance to make that part of the world better, and until we leave, stories like this will continue.

[Zodiak]

13. Yeah...Im reading Gangs of New York now

That was a paltry 160 years ago, and the level of violence was tremendous. Worse than even the fictitous movie portrayed.

This is horrific, and our soldiers shouldn't even be there.

[damntexdem]

5. What the MSM, and even the Dems, never seem to challenge is ...

the Bushista framing that American troops can somehow make things better in Iraq, rather than their presence continually making things worse. In this case, the issue is that by the original invasion, by releasing Iraq from totalitarian control (and even Kurdistan from the need to pull together to maintain some hard-fought buffering from Saddam's control), has allowed sectarian hates of all types to emerge violently into the open. But beyond that, the presence of American troops (and the inept "leadership" of American efforts in the country) has so destabilized the society, as well as any semblance of government, that such outrages can repeatedly and frequently occur (and it is repeatedly, because the stoning of one woman is repeatedly matched by the blowing up of scores and hundreds in mosques and market places). It's not a matter of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq to do our duty to a country we have invaded, it's that keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is actively making things worse.

The Pottery Barn rule is that one pays for what one has broken, not that one keeps trying to juggle fragile pottery.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. But it would make more sense for them to pay for what they've broken at home, in the US, first,

before engaging in messianic enterprises abroad.

[Trillo]

6. This sentence stood out for me

"she was met in Bashika by a large mob . . . led by members of her family"

So while some are claiming this is a sectarian problem, it also appears smaller, a family problem. It seems nobody can force family members to love each other. Perhaps this is humans' greatest failing as a species.

[Igel]

8. It was a family problem, with

sectarian overtones.

But now it's simply a sectarian problem. If you're one of the groups that has to submit to Muslims (I'm sorry, "Islam", as codified and represented by Allah's minions on earth), and fail to do so, it's bad. Even if it's just your group--as determined by Muslims--it's bad. So Xians have always suffered when the loathsome infidel dared to defeat the invincible, all-glorious, pious Muslim rapists and pillagers in Europe. Now they suffer because the US is perceived as Xian.

And the Yazidi dared to kill a Muslim. They *must* be taught a lesson about imperialism and religious supremacy. And so Muslims decided to kill a bunch of Yazidis. Thus verifying that while it may have started as a family dispute, at this point--as is everything else with the Sunnis in the area--xenophobic, paranoid, and suffering from delusions of grandeur *and* an inferiority complex.

[Trillo]

11. It seems it's the old canard

"divide and conquer" -- the family unit -- turn them against each other.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. No, the family were only at the head of a mob of 1000 other assailants.

It seems probable to me that such ugly manifestations are pre-eminently cultural, rather than religious. When minorities feel under siege, they are prone to take such extreme measures. Northern Ireland provided just a variant of that stoning on a number of occasions, and that by both sides.

They seem to see such intermarriages in their situation in much the same way as I would have seen the fraternisation of French women with the country's Nazi occupiers during WWII. In most cases, not a capital offence, but in the case of those who had the nous to know better, unforgivable.

Only God can make eschatalogical judgments of our behaviour, but we need to recognise who really are our country's enemies - ironically, all too often leaders, by hook or by crook, with the power to posture as their country's benefactors, rather as Christ commented concerning the "great men" among the gentiles. And like the some of the French collaborators, who immediately Paris was liberated, posed as freedom-fighters, often denouncing innocent people to substantiate their own mythical credentials.

[ClayZ]

9. K and R

[superconnected]

10. Only 17...

"What happened next was captured in a mobile phone video. It shows a dark-haired girl dressed in a red track suit top and black underwear with blood streaming from her face. As she tries to rise to her feet she is kicked and hit on the head with a concrete block.

Armed and uniformed police stand by watching her being killed over several minutes. Many in the crowd hold up their phone cameras to record the scene. Nobody tries to help her as she is battered to death."


Fuck. I know there are people in the US capable of this too. Just give that 34% their slack as compassionate christians. It's just that it's still too hard to believe humans do this crap to each other, even though it happens everyday in one form or other.

[piedmont]

12. Not "a mixture of Islam, Judaism and Christianity as well as Zoroastrian and Gnostic beliefs"...

according to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yezidi

[Zodiak]

15. here is another quote from the wiki article

It cites the New Republic's article as a source. Apparently, the Yezidi were particularly pro-American, pro-Isreali. I wonder if that fact ahs something to do with the execution of those 23 Yezidi.

"In an October 2006 article in The New Republic, Lawrence Kaplan echoes Williams's sentiments about the enthusiasm of the Yezidis for the American occupation of Iraq, in part because the Americans protect them from oppression by militant Muslims and the nearby Kurds. Kaplan notes that the peace and calm of Sinjar is virtually unique in Iraq: "Parents and children line the streets when U.S. patrols pass by, while Yezidi clerics pray for the welfare of U.S. forces."<6>"

[PurityOfEssence]

14. Religion's just so good

You'd never get such spectator sport without supernatural superstition and entrenched hierarchies.

Victims? Feh. It's all for the greater glory.

[ohio2007]

19. A case study in Darwinism nt

[MGD]

20. "she was met in Bashika by a large mob of 2,000 people led by members of her family."

medievil.

[newspeak]

21. I see we've really aided the Iraqis

pushing them into the twenty-first century:sarcasm: Once upon a time there were women doctors, engineers, professors in Iraq--women could wear Western dress in Iraq--say no more-see how we're "liberating all of those women in Iraq and Afghanistan--you know, Afghanistan had the highest female suicide rate before our invasion-can you imagine living in such darkness, such misery that you would want to end your life or end the life of your female children? So, I hear they have re-instituted Sharia Law in Afghanistan.

So what's changed for both countries? More deaths-infrastructures blown to smithereens-being bombed back to the dark ages--but, but we brought them democracy--that's working out so well.:eyes:

[MGD]

22. Sharia law is 100% incompatible with Democracy as it completely ignores the concept of human rights

Sharia law is the law of the beast or, if you prefer, the law of the jungle and you are right, it's presence in these supposed new democracies is a sure sign that we have brought Democracy to no one in the middle east. We have, at a cost of half a trillion dollars and 3,400 U.S. lives, brought them hell.