Korean Job Discussion Forums

[postfundie]

[cosmo]

Four arrested in Iraq 'honor killing'

POSTED: 12:18 p.m. EDT, May 19, 2007

� Four arrested in "honor killing" in northern Iraq
� Two suspects were members of girl's family
� The 17-year-old was dragged from home and stoned to death
� Cell phone video of killing broadcast worldwide

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (CNN) -- Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the "honor killing" last month of a Kurdish teen -- a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world.

The case portrays the tragedy and brutality of honor killings in the Muslim world. Honor killings take place when family members kill relatives, almost always female, because they feel the relatives' actions have shamed the family.

In this case, Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd in a headlock with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death last month.

(Watch the attack, and what authorities are doing about it )

Authorities believe she was killed for being seen with a Sunni Muslim man. She had not married him or converted, but her attackers believed she had, a top official in Nineveh province said. The Yazidis, who observe an ancient Middle Eastern religion, look down on mixing with people of another faith.

Each year, dozens of honor killings are reported in Iraq and thousands are reported worldwide, said the United Nations. The practice has been condemned around the world by governments and human rights groups. A yearly vigil protesting honor killings is held in London, England.

Two of the four arrested are members of the victim's family, police in Nineveh province said Thursday. Four others, including a cousin thought to have instigated the killing, are being sought.

The killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, a provincial official said.

The violence ratcheted up tensions between Yazids and Muslims in Bashiqa, the victim's hometown, a largely Yazidi city in Nineveh province.

Provincial officials don't think much could have been done to stop the honor killing, but at least three officers are being investigated and could be fired.

"The climate, the religious and social climate is such that people can do that in daylight and that authorities do not intervene," said the spokeswoman for the Organization of Womens' Freedom in Iraq, Houzan Mahmoud.

Also, the top police official in Bashiqa is being replaced.

From CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq and Brian Todd.

[thepeel]

[cosmo]

I could not provide a link to the CNN story "Four Arrested in Iraq Honor Killing." You can get it on CNN.

Within the story is a link to the video of the killing where you can see her being killed.

You can see people recording it on their phones and policemen standing by.

There is a photo of the seventeen year old victim.

[thepeel]

Cosmo,

I think that killing was actually done by non-muslims for the crime of dating a muslim.

No?

[cosmo]

Orville Jenkins has comprehensive info regarding YEZIDIs.
http://orvillejenkins.com/peoples/yazidi.html
Angelic Cults
The Yezidis are one sect of a group of religions called The Cult of the Angels, or Yazdani. The word Yezidi also appears as Yazidi and the religion is referred to as Yezidism. Yazidi is obviously one form of the name Yazdani. Yazdan is also the Yezidi name for the Supreme Being.

Alevi
There are two other major sects of the Yazdani. Most widely known is the Alevi or Alawi (from the name Ali), also called Nusayri (from the name Nazareth, related to Jesus as one of the avatars of the deity), or Qizilbash (meaning "Redheads," from a warrior group in medieval times so called because they wore red headdresses.

The Alevi are quite well known, because most of the Dimila (Dimili) Kurds are Alevi. The Arab Alawi in Syria are a branch of the same Alevism, Alawi being the Arabic form of the word and Alevi coming from the Turkish pronunciation.

The ethnicity and language of the Dimila and the religion of Alevism are associated with the group of over one million in Turkey, with perhaps that many more living in Germany. Some sources indicate a majority of the Kurds living in Germany are Dimila. Sources are uncertain of the total, but possibly 2.5 million total Dimli speakers in both countries.

Attempts to come to some clear standard for classification for academic purposes are complicated by factors such as the mix of languages, ethnicities, changing military and political alliances, sub-sects named after a certain avatar or ethnic leader at some point on history, and the rivalry between Kurdish clans. Often they have taken on another divine "avatar" (Bab) as an accomodation to the political pressures of another military or ethnic power.

Shia or Not?
Because they honor Ali as a deity or an avatar of the deity, some class these as sects of Islam, but they are eclectic traditional religions of the Kurds, which borrow freely from other religious motifs. Their relations with Shia, as well as Sunni, have more often been antagonistic. The various Cults of the Angels have been persecuted by both the Shia and Sunni through much of their history.

The root of all these Cults of the Angels is Zoroastrianism, and various ones have added influences from various regions over the centiuries. Some Kurds are still Zoroastrian also.