Thursday, June 21, 2007
This is not my usual fair, but it's been bugging me since it was sent to me by Iranian activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi. This highly disturbing video of a woman being stomped and stoned to death was presented to me as having been taken in Khatoon-Abad, Iran [This is wrong. See Update and Comments.]. When I asked about the provenance of the video and what the woman had done, this is the answer I received: "It would have been either pre-marital sex or adultery. We don’t know. We don’t know her name, age or crime but it’s 99% sure that it’s got something to do with sex or THEIR labeling her with such a crime."
Let me be very clear, here. Do NOT watch this unless you have a strong stomach. Maybe not even then. Why am I even posting this? Because this is the reality of what goes on "over there." The culture that produces this isn't exorcised at the water's edge. This is why we have immigration laws. This is what others live a lot closer to. This is what others live with. We laugh at the silliness of things like this, but this sort of tribal justice is where things like that Saudi cleric's interpretation of womanhood come from, and where they lead.
Think about it as you watch (if you choose to watch) men jostle to get in a whack and a close-up on their cell phone cameras.
Think twice before hitting play and don't say you weren't warned. This is NOT safe for work.
Update: Correction, this video is from Iraq, not Iran. I remembered that video when I saw this one, but assumed this was video of an entirely different incident. This may actually be a different video from the one I saw originally, taken from a different cell phone and angle. Everything else in the post still stands, of course.
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Psychoanalysts tend to be naive and cynical in equal measures. We are naive in the sense that we always must greet each new patient and enter each new session without expectations. We follow our patient's associations without attempting to confine Read More
A couple was scheduled to be executed by stoning in Iran - today - but international protests have stayed the execution for now.
Their crime? Adultery.
They've already been in jail for 11 years.
Here's an article about this and Amnesty International's protest:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-20-2007/0004612463&EDATE=
This should be seen in relation to that travesty known as the UN Human Rights Commission, which has singled out Israel for permanent indictment. Only Canada voted against this. Members on the committee who voted for it include Britain, France and Germany.
Upon reflection, why am I surprised?
Sol,
I watched it- I feel the same way about it that I did the Daniel Pearl Video. If we do not witness we cannot speak up effectively. Here is something that I saw that I think has an even more deeply disturbing meaning than the central action of the clip. Has anyone else noticed that the unspeakable monsters that are doing this repeatedly cover up the pantie-clad buttocks of their victim? Anyone who could still hold out a hope that these are aberrational fiends who happened to assemble in a group large enough to outweigh a basically decent society with their murderous blood-lust must finally admit that his society is itself blood-fiendish. What form of propriety is it that blushes at the sight of a woman's buttocks but revels in beating and kicking her until she is insensible and then squashing her head? What are they doing? respecting her modesty as they drop a cinderblock on her head? Let a multiculturalist try to tell me that all cultures are special in their own way after seeing this! He who is kind to the cruel is cruel to the kind.
Just ate, so didn't watch the movie. (I doubt I'll do it tomorrow either--it'll ruin the Shabbat Reception.) But I can ponder:
Thinking about the situation in Iran is enough to fill one with hair-tearing grief. This was the land, the people, the culture that enjoyed life, cultivated gardens to an amazing degree ("Paradise" and Hebrew "pardes" both come from the same Persian source, the word for "garden"), praised wine, produced epics and philosophical treatises, and maintained empires that were tolerant, multicultural in the true sense of the word. Now they're subservient to that cube in the middle of the Arabian desert, and are known for such things as pioneering the devaluation of human life (the Basij used children to clear minefields in the Iran-Iraq War), exporting and financing Islamic terrorism worldwide, and putting the whole world under a threat worse than during the Cold War.
It doesn't move me so much to see these things coming from the Saudis--they're stuck in their desert with nothing else to do anyway. But the Iranians--the Iranians shouldn't be that way. They shouldn't be enemies of ours at all. Not in Queen Esther's day, and not now. The only reason they are is that they're subservient, culturally, to a force from outside. Iran being Muslim is one of the most tragic cases of cultural imperialism ever.
That actually happens not to be an islamic stoning; it's Du’a Khalil Aswad, the 17-year-old Kurdish Yazidi girl killed a couple of months ago in Iraq.
You're right. Note my update. I remembered that video I saw months ago, hence I didn't talk about Islam in the post. I thought it might be a different incident given how it was introduced to me, and the fact that this is from a different angle from the video I remember -- which it probably is. But seeing the stills from a few months back it's clear it's the same incident.
Ah, OK; I started writing my comment before your update but then went off to look up what I thought I remembered.
Oops, Silly us, none of us remembered, In Iran they wrap them up in a sheet and bury them up to the waste before they murder them. http://www.amitiesquebec-israel.org/texts/stoning.htm Still, it was understandable. There are just so many, quaintly bloodthirsty local customs out there in the Islamic world- soemtimes it's hard to keep them all straight.
This is the behavior of animals.
Is an "Islamic stoning" a compassionate kind of execution for women? After all, how could we expect any less from a religion which "has surrounded the woman with a fence of compassion and mercy."? So says Abd Al-Aziz Al-Fawzan a few Solomonia posts earlier.
BTW, is death by stoning uniquely designed for women? Are men, too, executed by stoning?
There are just so many, quaintly bloodthirsty local customs out there in the Islamic world- soemtimes it's hard to keep them all straight.
Yazidis aren't Muslims.
Etaoin, no, I saw your comment and immediately did the correction.
BTW, Banafsheh stands by the original explanation and says it's a different incident than the Yazidi one, that the red shirt is just what they put on girls like this to hide the blood.
I believe now that they are the same incident. Here is a page with video of the Yazidi incident and you can be the judge if so inclined. In a way it's important, in a way it's not.
There are just so many, quaintly bloodthirsty local customs out there in the Islamic world- soemtimes it's hard to keep them all straight.
Yazidis aren't Muslims.
Strickly speaking, you are right - they are not Muslims but they are very much part of the Caliphate cult. One of their revered religious angels is Yazid bin Muawiyah (possibly the origin of the name Yazidi)an Umayyad Caliph, they are closely alllied with the Sufi cult and the mulsim influence is overpowering in the Kurdish culture.
The clips contained here are so disturbing, frightening, sickening....they are not fit for viewing BUT how else will anyone know that these unspeakable acts are happening in these times that we think are "civilized"?
"Yazidis aren't Muslims"
While true technically speaking from the viewpoint of a Shi'a mullah. The following is also true when speaking from the viewpoint of the Pope: "Mormons are not Christians, only a heretical sect."
With warning duly noted, I watched the tape....
May the Lord God Almighty help her soul. May God Almighty help us all if this draconian culture ever takes hold in North America.
These aren't human beings we're dealing with. You have to remember that, while it isn't all Muslims that behave this way, those that do are allowed to by those that don't. It seems to me that "moderate" Muslims are in a fight to the death, and need to be on the frontline, AGAINST extremists. The Planet is growing tired of the Muslim "conflict". It's a threat to every living thing on earth.
I'm moderate, and definitely not a "hawk" but when I see how these "people" treat one another (or anyone else who crosses there path and doesn't submit to that group's particulau version of "Allah's Will") I can't help but thinking that one way to solve the conflict with Muslim extremists is by picking out a nation, evaporating it in a mushroom cloud, and then pointing it out to the rest of the Muslim world. And then running down the list, one-by-one if necessary, until savage beasts aren't running that part of the world.
Evolve or become extinct.
These aren't human beings we're dealing with. You have to remember that, while it isn't all Muslims that behave this way, those that do are allowed to by those that don't. It seems to me that "moderate" Muslims are in a fight to the death, and need to be on the frontline, AGAINST extremists. The Planet is growing tired of the Muslim "conflict". It's a threat to every living thing on earth.
I'm moderate, and definitely not a "hawk" but when I see how these "people" treat one another (or anyone else who crosses there path and doesn't submit to that group's particulau version of "Allah's Will") I can't help but thinking that one way to solve the conflict with Muslim extremists is by picking out a nation, evaporating it in a mushroom cloud, and then pointing it out to the rest of the Muslim world. And then running down the list, one-by-one if necessary, until savage beasts aren't running that part of the world.
Evolve or become extinct.
Find the perpetrators. Try them. Inflict the severest punishment available under the law. Pursue "honour killings" all over the world with the strictest penalties. Make outlawing and severely punishing "honour killings" a top and non-negotiable priority for any countries receiving assistance from the West. THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO GO ON!
Why is men so afraid of womens sexuality that they have to make up laws to control it? Why are they so unsure of themselves that they have to use cruel punishments against a behavior that is natural to the most of us? why does men have to surpress women and control them? Why does some men always have to put their cowardness on display?
http://finnhjalmar.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/afraid-of-lustful-women/
http://finnhjalmar.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/the-weaker-sex/