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BarbarismThe news video showed the face of a pretty girl, dark haired, slender. Somebody’s cherished daughter – you can almost see the life in her eyes, the hope in her future. And then there are the grainy cell phone images, the guttural mutter of an enraged mob. A face beaten beyond recognition, a pool of blood. A sudden stillness. Duua Khalil Aswad was her name, 17 years old forever. A Yazidi from the Kurdish-majority north of Iraq. Fell in love with a local Sunni boy. Her parents grew alarmed because the Yazidi, as it turns out, are a clannish sect. Insular. They moved her out of her own house and into hiding. For her own protection. Reports say that her father’s brother – her own uncle – found out where she was hiding. Stripped her half-naked. Dragged her out of the house in a headlock, past local security forces, into a public square where a throng of men shouted at her, kicked her and stoned her to death with masonry blocks. Somebody covered up her legs part way through. They had her modesty to consider. It took about 30 minutes according to news reports. It’s hard to kill a teenaged girl using only stones. This was an act of barbarism, a ghastly crime, in consequence of which, gunmen – presumably from the Sunni Arab minority – dragged 23 almost certainly unrelated Yazidi workmen from a bus and murdered them execution style. Our imaginations rebel against these things. We recoil; ask ourselves “Who are these people?” We try to look away. We didn’t used to have to ask these kinds of questions. They were things that happened “over there,” in the world’s dark corners, in places we could pretend did not exist because we didn’t have to look at them. In places that didn’t make the tourist guidebooks. But now the planet has gotten smaller, now the world comes to us, it pushes in. For better and for worse. In graphic demonstration of the intersection of stone age mores and modern technology, the surrounding men who didn’t throw stones – and didn’t stop the others from doing so – instead video recorded the event on their cell phones, to put up on the internet. Cell phones, computers and networks are devices that a “shame and honor” culture – a culture that has relegated half of its own human capital to the status of chattel, of repositories for male honor, that has created out of their own children the vessels of familial shame – could never themselves have created. But they can still use them. Let no one tell you that other cultures cannot be judged. Let no one tell you that none of them are any better or any worse than any others. That is a foul lie, and demonstrably untrue. Duua Khalil Aswad is only the latest mute reminder. That hole in the New York City skyline is another. We have sold to people in the darkest corners of the world our technology – the advances we laboriously crafted from a culture that values faith and tradition, but also values reason, industry and science. That values people. We taught them how to use that technology and they have in turn used it to thrust their way into our consciousness. It’s time for us to push right back, far past time in fact. It’s time to shed the light of moral disapprobation upon barbarism. It’s time to judge them and if need be shame them. It is time for us to say, “Not one more. Not one more girl or woman should die for any man’s honor.” It is time to say that any man who murders one of his own family members for the sake of honor never had any to begin with. Not one more.
31 comments to Barbarism |
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I saw the video a couple of months ago, it was one of the worst things I had ever seen. If there had ever a good place for a suicide bomber, it would have been in the middle of that group of men. I didn’t blog about it because it left me too shaken. What kind of monsters do we have in our world?
Very well written piece Lex, and certainly thought-provoking.
I wonder what percentage of the perpetrators of this atrocity were true “believers” and what percentage were merely thugs engaged in barbarism and a mob mentality.
The western world cannot police the entire globe, but it can withold the tangibles such as foreign aid, and impose an embargo on the export of all sophisticated technolgy, including spare parts and support, to nations whose governments tolerate inhuman acts such as this.
Sometimes you have to play hardball, but then you have to care enough to get in the game.
We can. We could. But for the most part, we don’t.
Withold tangibles such as foreign aid or impose embargoes on the export of sophisticated technology.
Is it because we seem to think that the damage to our economies would be greater, more relevant than what happens to these woman?
You’re right, so much of the world use to be “over there” and it was easier to just chat for a few minutes about something else or flip the channel when such things were reported on the news. So I guess the world becoming a smaller place might be a good thing. The more uncomfortable we become as its shoved into our faces, the more likely we might be to get motivated to action. To do something, anything, to make it stop.
But I am not sure what we will actually choose to “do” about it. Or for that matter, when you stop to think about it, how witholding things like foregin aid and sophisticated technology will serve to actually stop these atrocities.
islam delenda est.
Michelle,
The only clout the western world has, short of armed intervention, is economic santions. Those sanctions are most effective when they are imposed against a government that turns a blind eye toward atrocities. There are no other arrows in our quiver. All the educational, sociological or theological do-gooders in the world will not reverse centuries of barbarism. Reform will only occur internally, when the host government feels the pinch.
Tragically, this incident occurred in Iraq, where thousands of Americans are fighting to support the elected government, a government that has shown little inclination to eliminate tribal warfare or anything else for that matter.
The Left will hold their hands to their head and tremble with horror and shock at this atrocity and then insist that “something must be done!” Offering no suggestions for how to change a culture that venerates barbarism and brutality for “honor”, they will scream about their impotence until their lungs hurt only to turn their backs and go for another Latte.
Where did our administration ever get the idea that we could create some form of democracy from this kind of tribal/religious zealotry. Talk about not doing your homework….
Lex, here you describe an honor killing. This is most times done within the family compound. We need to remember this is the Sunni culture, the same as our friends, the Saudis. If there even the hint of a doubt, the girl is killed and the boy is bannished from the girl’s family compound. The girl would be taken into the compound, stripped naked and have her head and body hair shaved off, this is important, her hair is her glory. Then they might slit her throat or coat her with oil and set her on fire while alive. Lex, the more you know of this culture, the madder you wil get. I could get into more detail, but it serves no purpose.
Grumpy
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both been “pushing back” for several decades.
Astonishing human rights violations ?
fliterman,
Yeah, I couldn’t help noticing all the press articles in the MSM about “honour killings”. Perhaps they were overshadowed by the huge NOW march protesting American inaction in dealing with the mysoginistic attitude of the Middle East.
Oh yeah, that’s right… the press doesn’t have time for such reports. They’re still too busy rehashing Abu Ghraib, and trying to impeach the President.
Respects,
Animals.
Unbelievable animals.
This is not a “cultural difference” as some might say. This is animal behavior, pure and simple.
What can one say or do to change such minds?
Sadness.
Unbelievable sadness.
I subscribe to MEMRI. Throw them a fin and they will email you every article they print. Along with all the translations of “Hitler didn’t kill the Jews” come some fairly interesting transcripts of remarks by Middle East liberals.
Just today I read the english translation of an article by a liberal author. The punch line; “After the recent tsunami of Islamist Fundamentalism, the Middle East should be declared an “Intellectual Disaster Zone.”
He makes an interesting point. Rather than ask why the west hates us so much, the Arab world should ask, why do they like us as much as they do? After all, the west has shared their medical, science and technological achievements with the entire world, including the Islamic world.
He concludes by musing that if one were to try to sell “Pan-Arabist” culture to the bushmen in Africa or the cannibals in Borneo they would tell you to get lost…
Now who could have guessed that FDR and the anti-colonialists were wrong? My gag reflex kicks in whenever I hear what a great President FDR was. He was a strategic nincompoop, a blue-blood Jimmy Carter, except that Jimmy was a leadership nincompoop too.
To clarify an earlier comment, they Yazidi are not Muslims, nor even Arabs – they are of Kurdish stock, though their religion is pre-Islamic. But the larger issue of a culture which accepts that there is a right to murder its own children for honor offenses is not limited to the Yazidi.
I think that between recoiling in shock and economic embargoes there is a moral highground that ought to be seized. The president, speaker of the house and senate majority leader ought to stand shoulder to shoulder and declare that such acts are inexcusable. From there, the leadership of the civilized world should announce in no uncertain terms that cultures which accept these acts ought to be ashamed of themselves.
This will never happen of course, because we have lost the moral clarity of naming evil, of judging others. So instead we worry amongst ourselves about Guantanamo.
The next time someone waves the bloody sheet of Abu Ghraib in my face, I will ask him how many Iraqis died there, and who was more horrified at what had happened.
And if he knows the story of Duua Khalil Aswad.
Concur, Lex, about the leadership of this country standing shoulder-to-shoulder on this matter, among others.
My secret dream is that the media will quit being so up-front about doing anything that they think will hurt Bush and co. Not that I’d wish them to just be sneakier, though. I’d really like if the media would drop the R or D after a politician’s name and then you couldn’t tell from the story what the party affiliation was. When they treat the similar antics of each party with the same contempt, then perhaps they can look at us within this country and those without and be as fair and condemning of actual wrongs, such as this example.
I would be thrilled if the media would worry less about how they are regarded outside the US than by the people and country they owe their allegiance. The lack of sense of history and actual common sense are what are turning them into mouthpieces without consciences. If the media would report on this as if someone they hated had done it, it would be front page news everywhere. But because it’s based on another culture, you know, it’s unimpeachable that it might actually be wrong to do in any culture.
Multicultural relativism has destroyed any sense of right and wrong as actual facts. Making allowances for a different culture is worse snobbery than expecting decent behavior regardless any culture.
Guess I’ll get off my rant now.
Have you read The Kite Runner? No, it is not the Kurds, but a cultural issue of which you speak. It is an excellent book, but there were parts of it that still haunt me. I wrote about it in a post once and a commenter said, “Its fiction, Bou”. Yes. But No. The things of which he writes, the attrocities, are based on reality, the public stonings, the abuse and torture.
On another note, what has been done is these people still stuck in the 18th century, have been handed the tools of OUR century and in my opinion, they had not grown into it. The society had not matured to be able to use it as they should.
And we will not stand up and fight for the women. These attrocities have been going on for decades with each administration’s full awareness… and we never stood before. We will not stand now.
“And we will not stand up and fight for the women. These attrocities have been going on for decades with each administration?
I was going to restate Lex said at #14, but I see he has already done it. And Napier of course was speaking to the Indian population. Which only shows that no culture holds a monopoly on barbarism.
I wept when I saw this last week; wanted to post something about it but found I was without the words necessary to even begin to make sense of something so senseless.
Thank you Lex, once again, for articulating what so many cannot. To all these comments I add only this – bring it. and bring it HARD.
And would that the world had people like Sir General Napier in our midst…a strength of conviction so strong that it doesn’t allow for barbarism such as “honor killings” – 2 words that just don’t belong together in any language.
I once heard an exceptionally-sharp university professor demolish the concept of cultural relativism. Most of the students appeared to be shocked–they had apparently learned that “all cultures are equally good and we must not judge” at their mothers’ knees and had never considered any alternative to this viewpoint.
This stuff is *very* pervasive in our society–30 years ago it may have been limited to the darker corners of academia, but it has spread like a disease.
I have a thought…
Let the United States proclaim that we shall accept all those females who have fallen afoul of their religions. Instead on murdering them, their families may banish them, abandoning them forever in the land of the Great Satan…
We shall take them, and then educate them in the ways of modern civilization, and when we are done, we shall send them back home –
-Preferably as young Lieutenants at the controls of F-22 Raptors…
If you really do want to see the video, go to the link on the wikipedia page Lex has posted and it’s on the first reference but I warn you against it. It really is unspeakable and Lex you are a braver and stronger man then me for posting this.
It’s not just “over there”, the evil came to St. Louis 18 years ago, a little before Duua Khalil Aswad was born. Tina Isa was 16, not 17, and it was her father with a butcher knife with her mother holding her down instead of a mob with stones. It was the same evil none the less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zein_Isa
Well done, Lex. Thanks for bringing it to the top.
Camera phones filming the stoning of a 17 year old girl. There is so much fundamentally wrong within that single sentence that I’m at a loss. Where to begin? Western culture cannot comprehend such behavior because it is so far removed from even the dark fringes of our world.
I do not think the technology is a problem, it just allows the rest of the world to see this culture for what it is. In parts of Africa where clitorectomies are common and women are raped as a cure for AIDS we would be equally apalled, but we never see those videos on YouTube. And the Habitat for Humanity tour doesn’t extend to these areas of the continent.
I find myself going back and forth about that line in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. Are they? I think they are, but not all cultures are equal and in fact some quite probably need to be eradicated. Wiped out. Like the Mayans who practiced human sacrifice, or the Mongol hordes who rode the steppes and laid waste to entire tribes, or my own ancestors who raided European coastal cities and sold the women and children as slaves to Byzantium if they had the cargo room. Such cultures will not be missed after they’re gone, for they are leeches upon a harmonious, productive society and like all parasites they only take and do not contribute.
I remember pondering the Persian and Arab culture nearly five years ago, my being no great expert but with some experience in the area and a number of friends with that background. I remember thinking that a tribal society is led by a patriarch, like Abraham in the Bible, or a King in more recent times. The social structure is one of family, tribe, then allegiance. A democracy might not go over well with people who are enamored of authority and who can’t seem to even get a cup of coffee without adding that “god willing” qualifier, as if Allah or Jehova or whatever name you might call him is responsible for the successful accomplishment of such a trivial and personally-initiated act.
But these are also the cultures that give the term “Yankee Trader” a serious run for its money. They’ve been bartering, dealing, being the merchants and traders for the busiest crossroads in human history for thousands of years. That requires law, it requires social order, perhaps not to the extent of the US Code but this is where the laws of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments originated.
That gives me hope, for Western civilization isn’t based upon being a democracy or a republic, it’s based upon being a nation of laws, not men. The Arab and Persian cultures understand that — it’s just the enforcement that’s different.
Perhaps what they need isn’t a democracy, but a constitutional monarchy. A king, to lead them. A parliament made up of representatives of the different tribes and capable of appointing a new king if the old one gets stale. And regional government that answers to the representative.
It really wouldn’t be that different from the feudal system that brought us the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, or for that matter the glory that was Rome.
And, you know, that wouldn’t be so bad. It would sure beat a system where women and children are killed because of honor, and once everybody started going after the almighty buck and that new Mercedes maybe family “honor” wouldn’t be so important that you’d kill your own child over it.
At least, not if she was, you know, useful and able to keep the books or something as opposed to hiring staff (and think of the added costs of benefits in addition to salary!). I mean, those sorts of things add up!
Yeah, I think I could live with something like that. Of course, there’s also a reason I’m typing at 12:15am and not, say, yakking with the Iraqui President — what the heck do I know?
– Max
Lex, I’m glad you brought up that the Yazdi are a non-Islamic sect. IIRC, the justification the Yazdis had for murdering her was that she had dishonored them (either by having a boyfriend or converting to Islam), and the justification the local Sunnis had for murdering 23 Yazdi was that she must have converted to Islam for her boyfriend, therefore the Yazdis killed a Muslim and the Sunnis had to exact revenge. The boyfriend, AFAIK, got off scot free. Fine bunch of folks, all around.
Web Reconnaissance for 05/23/2007…
A short recon of what?ǂ
This is a terrible tragedy, but I’m confused, what exactly are we supposed to do short of going in an killing them all? By all accounts Kurdistan is a autonomous region within Iraq, with its own police and government. A government we sponsored and invaded the nation for. Pull our troops out? Stop aid? Let the Turks invade them and kick some ass and put the Kurds back in their box? ( I vote for option C)
Seems to me our options are limited short of showing our moral outrage and not giving them any more support.
What can we do that we are not already doing? US troops were obviously not anywhere near there because they never would have allowed such a thing to happen. So if the Kurds don’t act, how do we force them to do what they should do?
I think the answer is that we do the best that we can. We make sure our own house is order and lecture away.
But these people are not listening and never will.
What a precisely packaged bit of wisdom. I agree.
But, I would add it isn’t helping that the MSM and many other well-publicized outlets from within are making a point to tell people we aren’t worth listening to because we are
I think the answer is that we do the best that we can. We make sure our own house is order and lecture away.
It matters not if the house is in order, so long as the loud, massive market voices pick anything and everything apart, because their “guy(s)” is not in power. In other words, the Administration need only come into line with what DailyKos and the MSM want, as provided to those places by George Soros?
It’s a tough battle, the hearts and minds…of our own, let alone the rest of the world’s….
One comment is affected by the other…
Missing in above:
“…because we are: Imperialistic, racist, bigoted, greedy, stupid, mean-spirited, not really here to help, etc….the list goes on.”
Pick up up with
Sorry…must had bad mouse maneuvers…