Sunday, May 06, 2007

Honor?



A seventeen-year old girl was stoned to death in Iraq. Her death was required by the family honor, because she had a boyfriend with a different religion:

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.

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.

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.

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 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 on Wednesday with the release of the Internet video. It is feared her death has 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.

Women's vaginas as the place where family honor is kept. This is an old concept around the Mediterranean region, probably older than the idea of stoning adulteresses in the Bible and the Koran.

I feel sick in the stomach. More death followed the killing for honor, too.

Twisty has more. I don't recommend watching the video.