Iraq, et al.

I've decided to post a link to this story, which was run on the British Daily Mail newspaper's website today, detailing how an "honour killing" was carried out in Iraq last month. Like most inhumane, cruel, dumb, or just purely malicious acts performed in this day and age, someone was there to capture it on video, where it soon found its way on to the internet, and by extension, to international media sources. Essentially, what happened in this instance, was that a 17-year old Kurdish girl who lived near the northern Iraq town of Mosul fell in love with a Sunni Muslim boy, who was also a teen. For this "crime" of falling in love with someone of a different religious sect, she was stoned to death by a group of men, as Iraqi Security Forces looked on. As expected, Sunni militants retaliated quickly, forcing a group of 23 Kurds off of a nearby bus and gunning them all to death. So, counting the girl's death, 24 innocent Iraqis were murdered for the sole reason that some people in her village disapproved of whom she chose to consort.

By no means is this an isolated incident; the reporting of it in the major media is the only thing that's rare. Usually in smaller, traditional villages in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, this sort of "justice" is meted out quite regularly - whether it be a stoning, a sanctioned gang-rape, or acid thrown in the face of a female "offender." Although they condemn it publicly, the central governments of these countries are far too weak to really do anything about it, and so it continues.

In no way is this indicative of the Muslim faith. It is, instead, a strong symbol of the incredibly different cultural mores held by many rural (and some urban) Middle-Easterners. These people are literally stuck in the stone age (no pun intended) with a lot of their beliefs, and must be a horrifyingly frightening place for women to live.

Anyway, sorry for the downer post, just thought it was something worth pointing out. I promise I'll go back to talking about my terrible investments (major announcement coming soon), drunken hook-ups, and killer robots real soon.

-Disgruntled A