Hundreds of rocks are thrown at her head
As the Afghan Government continues its wooing overtures to the Taliban, and Karzai whines about “foreign interference” in his latest meddling in Afghan parliamentary democracy, the Taliban execute a couple by stoning them to death in Kunduz province in front of a crowd of hundreds.
The crime? The couple fell in love and attempted to elope, beyond a community where relationships based on mutual love and attraction, and not on money and perversion, might have a chance of fulfillment.
The BBC has short clips of the horrific murders, noting that “most of the video is too graphic to be shown.” The event is described as follows:
The video begins with Siddqa, a 25-year-old woman, standing waist-deep in a hole in the ground.
She is entirely hidden in a blue burka. Hundreds of men from the village are gathered as two mullahs pass sentence. As Taliban fighters look on, the sentence is passed and she is found guilty of adultery.
The stoning lasts two minutes. Hundreds of rocks – some larger than a man’s fist – are thrown at her head and body. She tries to crawl out of the hole, but is beaten back by the stones. A boulder is then thrown at her head, her burka is soaked in blood, and she collapses inside the hole.
Incredibly Siddqa was still alive. The mullahs are heard saying she should be left alone. But a Taliban fighter steps forward with a rifle and she is shot three times.
Then her lover, Khayyam, is brought to the crowd. His hands are tied behind his back. Before he is blindfolded he looks into the mobile phone camera. He appears defiant.
The attack on him is even more ferocious. His body, lying face down, jerks as the rocks meet their target. He is heard to be crying, but is soon silent.
In between the murders, a man is showing clacking two large stones together, deliriously excited at the prospect of participating in what amounts to a viciously drawn out execution. It’s a sunny day and hundreds are gathered to witness this crime, all of them undeniably complicit in it. It’s an almost unbelievable communal deficit of conscience, were it not preserved on film proving this scene devoid of humanity really did take place, in all of its grisly actuality.
A Taliban spokesperson defends the stoning, quipping about the dangers of “foreign thinking” in Afghanistan (in reference to people who call stoning to death inhuman). A spectator had used a mobile phone, one product of demonic “foreign thinking” to record this atrocity, standing idly by, gleefully filming the scene as if it were an amusing event he happened to pass by.
It’s an indefensible abomination, and nothing should signal more clearly that the Taliban have not reformed, that they will never reform. ‘Taliban’ and ‘reform’ are opposing forces in the 21st century, and the longer the Afghan Government takes to realize this, the more destructive their pandering to these degenerates will be for the citizens of Afghanistan. To even suggest power sharing or deal-making with the death-cult psychopaths that are the Taliban is a searing insult to the people of Afghanistan, and a signed death warrant to all of the country’s free thinkers, democrats, intellectuals, feminists and idealists.
Today is the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, an occasion that should perhaps inspire a solemn reminder to confront atrocities and crimes against humanity. Nearly 70 years have passed since the Holocaust and the declaration of “never again”, which set the stage for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How is it that we continue to condone the barbaric treatment of human beings in other lands? How have we reached a point, in 2011, where we would contemplate allowing any place in the world for the ideology of the Taliban, and its ugly manifestations in the form of a bludgeoned young woman and her lover?
How very far we have yet to go.
About the Author
Lauryn Oates is a Canadian human rights activist, gender and education specialist who has been advocating for the rights of Afghan women since 1996. She is currently Projects Director for Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, as well as a founding member of the Canada Afghanistan Solidarity Committee.
This is terrible beyond words. We should all resolve ourselves to stop this from ever happening.
The whacko ‘judge’ in the Islamic court shown in the video says it all really.
This I think is a good illustration of the issue for which Sam Harris gets so much flack when he concludes that…
Harris is also right when he lays the responsibility for sustaining such beliefs at the door of religious moderates. As long as the very idea that there exists a God who has an interest in human affairs lunatics like this will be forever beyond the reach of reasonable persuasion.
Can the world hope for any help from moderates in changing the minds of whacko Taliban judges when they instead choose to spend their time defending their own reasons for belief in an unlikely deity and attacking gnu atheists for raising questions?
“To even suggest power sharing or deal-making with the death-cult psychopaths that are the Taliban is a searing insult to the people of Afghanistan, and a signed death warrant to all of the country’s free thinkers, democrats, intellectuals, feminists and idealists”.
And yet Karzai thinks he can do a deal with the Taliban. And yet the US & NATO think they can have a deal with the Taliban, which is rather an insult to the memory of the soldiers we have lost in nine years of fighting. And we hear there are “moderates” in the Taliban; that it’s just a hard core of extremists. Sounds to me like more than just a “hard core” caught on camera here. What hope is there – really? We don’t even seem to be prepared to defend our own societies at the moment.
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” How is it that we continue to condone the barbaric treatment of human beings in other lands?”
Because, for many, these perpetrators are not white South Africans or Israeli Jews or US military. They are third-world people of color or they are the enemy of the USA. They do not fit the appropriate political paradigm. And who are we to assign our Western establishmentarian admonishments anyway? What about our treament of…………?. You get the picture. It’s a bloody disgrace.
@Melk…wow…blaming the US for this? Really?
So, you’re saying the US military isn’t in place in Afghanistan right now trying to fight against Islamic extremism?
Your head is shoved so far up your ass, you can probably see your tonsils.
Today, the 22nd Australian soldier died in Afghanistan, from a roadside IED planted by these barbarians.
But it is the apologists who defend Islam from that religion’s proper share of blame for the behavior if it’s adherents who make me sick. Yes, one can accept that these hateful men are twisting and perverting the book, but the simple fact is that this is not a difficult thing to do. The same people who defend the book also maintain a divine provenance for the words contained in it, which is simple to disprove, by reference to the obvious ineptness of an author who writing in support of love and understanding can produce words capable of being used so forcefully to advocate what is shown in the video.
And yes, the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan (with Australia following so sycophantically close behind) is no better, whilst ever those countries allow their military to be infested with evangelical christian fanatics, going into battle with bible verses inscribed on their guns.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-military-weapons-inscribed-secret-jesus-bible-codes/story?id=9575794
Hearing the tiresome dreck from the tired old men of those other two monotheisms bleating about understanding and harmony between them, and how religion should not be tarred by the actions of a few maniacs is nauseating, and has the ring of of someone who says “nice doggy” whilst fumbling for a suitable rock. Yes, of course, religion is not the problem, now go away you pesky atheists with your simple solution, we want to appear rational for a minute so you let us go back to killing each other and dragging you back into the dark ages with us.
Allowances made for Catholics to exclude women from the priesthood, or to accommodate burqua wearing, or to allow disease ridden rabbis to bite the foreskins off defenceless children are all different heads of the same snake which allows these neanderthals to cast the stones.
To quote the great Lemmy Kilmister, let the shackles be undone.
Kevin: Reread my post. If you think I’m blaming the US, you don’t understand English. I’m blaming the apologists for the Taliban and suggesting that they side with the Taliban because the hated USA is fighting the Taliban. Got it?