Stoning of a 17-year-old girl in Iraq

[Black Sheep]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452288/The-moment-teenage-girl-stoned-death-loving-wrong-boy.html




A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.
As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du?a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.
Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.
Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an "honour killing" by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.
The teenager was dragged outside by 8 or 9 men and stoned for half an hour until she died. Her boyfriend is now in hiding in fear for his life
They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.
Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.
A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.
The stoning happened last month, but only came to light yesterday with the release of the Internet video.
It is feared her death has already triggered a retaliatory attack. Last week 23 Yezidi workmen were forced off a bus travelling from Mosulto Bashika by a group of Sunni gunmen and summarily shot dead.
An Amnesty International spokesman in London said they receive frequent reports of honour crimes from Iraq ? particularly in the predominantly Kurdish north.
Most victims are women and girls who are considered by male relatives to have shamed their families by immoral behaviour.
Kurdish authorities have introduced reforms outlawing honour killings, but have failed to investigate them or prosecute suspects, added the Amnesty spokesman.
Kate Allen, the organisation?s UK director, said: "This young girl?s murder is truly abhorrent and her killers must be brought to justice.
"Unless the authorities respond vigorously to this and any other reports of crimes in the name of 'honour', we must fear for the future of women in Iraq."

[Dimentio]

Guess we won't see any campaigns against this. Shame she wasn't born in Iran, then the European governments certainly would have reacted...

[khad]

A note, the Yezidis are one of the hardcore pro-American groups. Even among Kurds they're exceptional in that regard.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

That makes sense, seeing as they're minorities they no doubt have more to gain by supporting occupying forces.

[Dimentio]

They should have some cred for worshipping Satan anyway. :lol:

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Uh, what? I thought the yezidis were the group who held very strange beliefs but not worshipping satan.

Here,

Their religion, Yazidism, is a branch of Yazdânism (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Yazd%C3%A2nism), and is seen as a highly syncretic (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Syncretism) complex of local Kurdish beliefs and Islamic (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Islam) Sufi (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Sufi) doctrine introduced to the area by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Sheikh_Adi_ibn_Musafir) in the 12th century. The Yazidi believe in God (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/God) as creator of the world, which he placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Angel), the chief of whom is Melek Taus (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Melek_Taus), the Peacock Angel.

from wiki

[khad]

Melek Taus is Lucifer, who was redeemed after having fallen.

[Red Commissar]

Guess we won't see any campaigns against this. Shame she wasn't born in Iran, then the European governments certainly would have reacted...

When this event occured in 2007 I remember seeing it on a lot of channels including CNN, along with the cell phone video that was uploaded to the internet. We won't see any thing against it now because it's nearing 4 years since it happened. It brought attention to the "honor killing" issue during the time they covered it.

As for Yezidis, the issue comes from Malak Taus being tied to Satan due to similarities in name and the back story being very similar to Lucifer. So this created the tensions between the Muslim Kurds and the Yezidi Kurds in particular historically. The Yezidi community in Iraq nowadays is firmly connected to the Kurdish authorities now, though lot of this tension and mistrust is still there. However ask a typical Muslim who lives near them they'll just flat out say they're satanists- this was mostly used as a means to have local tribal groups "police" Yezidi regions without the government itself doing anything.

Yezidis are very firm in their religious "purity". I don't know much about them beyond I've been told but it appears that you can't convert into their religion (and if there is a way to do so, it's probably ridiculously difficult)- only be born into it. So some of the Yezidi populations, particularly those that are dying off, get very controlling over their women because it holds the key to their population. Killings like this will create the fear in the women and keep them from marrying outside the religion. There's also a lot of resentment because historically a lot of Yezdi women had been taken by the surrounding Muslim communities, so this tends to open old wounds for them.

Combine this with the regional issues of honor killing and it can turn nasty.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Thank you khad, I had no idea what he was talking about. It now makes sense, I needed to dig a little deeper.

[Devrim]

To me there always seemed something suspicious about this whole affair. It is not something that really fits into Yazidi culture. Regardless, it was certainly used to justify sectarian massacres against Yazidis in the following weeks.

Devrim

[Ocean Seal]

So Mission Accomplished? Well President Bush you got rid of that Saddam guy, is this democracy? Generally all imperialist wars are wrong, but there is something especially wrong with the War in Iraq, in part because it went from being a so-so dictatorship to a horrible disarray with rampant sectarianism and hatred, and America of course seeing that they laid ruin to the country just bolted, after installing some puppet leaders. I hear that they even renamed Iraq Egypt.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I thought i recognized this story from the mention of retaliatory killings-it actually happened almost 4 years ago. There was also a suicide bombing by Sunnis which killed 200 in a rural village (you can imagine what kind of bomb would be needed to kill 200 people in a thinly populated rural area)

Anyhow, the Yazidis are victims of their own tiny demographics. There's less than a million in Iraq, where there are millions of Sunnis. I don't think they're actually Satan-worshippers, I think that aspect gets over-sold by the critics of Yazidism to demonize them. They do seem to have some weird mythology of a redeemed being who stands in for God, Melek Taus, but I think they're a highly esoteric order meaning outsiders probably don't know much about what goes on. This certainly makes sense, especially if they incorporate "pagan" elements from pre-Islamic Zoroastrian and Gnostic religions from the area.

I remember an interesting article about a man who interviewed a Yazidi fortune teller who was a member of the Communist Party and was patronized by the Kurdish tribal princes. They're a cool group, and they have an interesting religion, its too bad though that fundamentalists within it see it as a motive to kill young women.

[Viet Minh]

I don't think this is a Yezidi issue as such, I can't find any reference to honour killings specific to them anyway.

Biji Kurdistan!! :star2:

[The Red Next Door]

This is thanks to a guy who told the US intelligence, a big lie about nuclear weapons and this is what America created in Iraq.

I hope this does not turn into Islam is evil thread.

[danyboy27]

This is thanks to a guy who told the US intelligence, a big lie about nuclear weapons and this is what America created in Iraq.

I hope this does not turn into Islam is evil thread.

islam is evil.

[The Red Next Door]

islam is evil.

:rolleyes: It have nothing to do with Islam, what they people did is against the teaching of any religion, especially Humanism.

[khad]

islam is evil.
This is a verbal warning to shut up and quit trolling in a serious thread.

[Viet Minh]

This is thanks to a guy who told the US intelligence, a big lie about nuclear weapons and this is what America created in Iraq.

I hope this does not turn into Islam is evil thread.

Don't forget that the USA bombed Iraqi cities and villages for years before the invasion of Iraq. There were mosques and schools where the remains of children were literally imprinted, burnt onto the stone. Even if that guys statement is genuine, and not some revisionist US propaganda to create a scapegoat, it does not justify the invasion of Iraq. I would argue the gassing of the Kurds, the attack on Iran, or the invasion of Kuwait did justify it to some extent, but not by the USA, perhaps by the UN or even NATO, but not with the US's history in the region..