One of the clerics at the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque in Afghanistan warned police not to punish anyone for the brutal murder of a woman by a mob after she was accused of burning a Koran (Quran). Despite the fact that the rumor that the woman burned the Koran appears false, even the local police chief appeared to defend the mob as just being good Muslims irate at an act of blasphemy. Police are accused of doing nothing during the attack.
More facts are coming in on the story that we discussed yesterday. It appears that the woman (above) named Farkhunda, 27, was actually a religious, veiled woman who had just finished a degree in religious studies and was preparing to take a teaching post. Moreover, she was set upon men who she accused of degrading Islam by selling amulets at Shah-Do Shamshera shrine. She reportedly told other women not to waste their money on such items and the sellers then started to shout that she was a non-Muslim and had burned a Koran.
She was beaten with a brick as a mob formed demanding her immediate death. Her body was set on fire and thrown on the bank of the Kabul river. Notably, two of the men arrested sold amulets.
Even before the claims were refuted, this should have been a murder that united all clerics, police, and citizens in disgust. If she had burned a Koran, it was no excuse for a murder by a mob. However, the local cleric used Friday’s prayers in an affluent area of Kabul to tell his congregation that the mob was right to do what they did. He added “I am warning the government not to arrest those who did this, because it will mean an uprising.”
His views were echoed by other Afghans, including one man who proudly discussed how he joined in on the murder. He went on Facebook to say that “pious people of Kabul, including myself, killed her and then burnt her. Her place is in hell.”
Even the spokesman for the Chief of Police of Kabul, Hashmat Stanekzai, explained why the mob acted in this way: “This (person) thought, like several other unbelievers, that this kind of action and insult will get them U.S. or European citizenship. But before reaching their target, lost their life.” This is one of the U.S. trained Afghan forces that is the result of our spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the country and losing thousands of American lives.
It is also notable that, while the mob action has been denounced by President Ashraf Ghani’s office, the death penalty for insulting Islam is still part of the country’s laws and traditions. Notably, after saying that the mob should not take such action, Ghani added that the government “also condemns in strong terms any action that causes disrespect to the Holy Koran and Islamic values”.
The problem, which is common to many Islamic nations, is that such mob action is fueled when the government itself executes people for insulting Islam or rejecting Islam. While Saudi Arabia denounced ISIS for cutting the heads off non-believers, it has routinely cut the heads off people who are exercising free speech as guilty of blasphemy or apostasy. As Associate Justice Louis Brandeis said in 1928:
“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”
Source: Fox
Woe. I was only trying to get some background information regarding this ugly incident. Seems some sort of litmus test is required to peruse these pages, so.
I support Social Security wholeheartedly and believe that Medicare should also be available to every citizen willing to pay in. I support aid programs such as food stamps and Head Start. Make no mistake, I must surely be Bleeding Heart Liberal of the ultra leftists kind.
What is really going on is that this so-called Conservatism is nothing more than a smoke and mirrors facade. A Pretense of policy solutions thought through by the real power holders, the one percent who own 90 percent of this nation’s wealth, for one purpose only. That is to hold onto more of that wealth by not having to pay for the system that allows them to have everything that this world can provide. Never mind the damage such policy may do to the Country or the environment, that, is to be left for those of us in the remaining 99 percent to flounder in.
Those who hold 90 percent of the nation’s wealth should pay 90 percent of the taxes required to fund that government.
Back to this incident for which the Koran was used as a smoke screen to put women in their place: How dare she speak up to men even if they are not keeping to Muslin standards. That such an ugly place can be had merely by invoking the Koran implies very serious corruption of this religion.
I am sure that there are valuable insights that can be gleamed from the Koran, why should there not be. However, please note that anyone who implies that the Koran, Old Testament, or Bible has unchallengeable certainty will have an ulterior motive, the extreme misogyny displayed there in Afghanistan as an example. Please note also that Jesus did not have any of his informative speeches written down during that short period he was living in.
He left that to his disciples and said so. He did not have time in his ministry for speechifying as he was busy teaching people how to live and not to be political in their Worship of God
You don’t need Brandeis and a government; They have religion itself to hang their many atrocities on.
“Even before the claims were refuted, this should have been a murder that united all clerics, police, and citizens in disgust.”
Of course it should.
But this is Orientalism at its best. This blog hardly shines light on it’s beloved country’s murders…
“If she had burned a Koran, it was no excuse for a murder by a mob.”
But in our country, extrajudicial execution is okay for robbery committed by a young black male.
Thanks Louis Brandeis for that quote.
T Justice
How much more of a light do you want. Every time there is a police brutality, it is on here. Every Single Time.
You can’t possibly draw a parallel between what happened there and what happens here. This is not Slave Days and after the first Jim Crow Laws there was a great deal of progress made no matter what President Obama and Justice Holder and Al Sharpton say.
I don’t get it. Really. I am a woman and it’s not perfect for me either but it’s better than it was 100 years ago you know and I sure as hell don’t want to be over in Iran.
Ever notice that the progressive type male Liberals are absent on these posts and these are the ones that have the greatest atrocities to women that there are. Such hypocrisy is truly beyond the pale.
I agree with TinEar in his comment above at 12:35. Look what happened to the Native American Indians after the white influx of migrants into North America. Pretty soon the so called English people in Britain will be living on Reservations and the Muslims will run the place.
I’m so glad we brought “democracy” to this country. And our “democracy” in Iraq is also working so well. Heck, may as well add Syria, Libya, and Yemen to the list. It was absolutely worth 4000 U.S. service men’s lives to they can kill a women because she rebuked some men. Makes me proud.
This brings to mind my dilemma about the theocracy of Israel. In general, I oppose theocracies and support democracy. However, Israel is a kind of hybrid between a theocracy and a democracy. Lost the motivation to keep Israel a Jewish State, impose open immigration, and it would be overrun with Muslim extremists and be just like every single other country in the Middle East, and a hotbed for ISIS, and other terrorist organizations. Honestly, the violence, intolerance, and fanaticism is out of control in the entire region. It’s easy for me to say that moderates should clean up Islam, but frankly if I was over there with my family, I would just want out. Who wants to call for reform if you’ll be burned to death over religious offenses? So, what is there to do? How do we keep them from doing more carnage outside their boundaries?
And here is a thought I just had. I wonder what the victim’s own opinion was on what the punishment should be, if any, for crimes against Islam, since her degree was in religious studies. If she had heard that someone had burned a Koran (true or not), would she have called for their immediate death? Whether she was extremist or moderate, her murder was reprehensible and a tragedy. I merely cannot help but wonder if there was irony to it, or if she was just another moderate woman speaking her mind who was murdered by a mob.
THIS is why I have stated that extremist Islam needs to be reformed from within by moderates.
This is becoming a really widespread problem as the Middle East stubbornly devolves back to the Middle Ages.
And this is also becoming a trend where people use rumors of crimes against Islam to kill people they dislike. As well, it shines a light on the plight of women in the Middle East. So sad, the poor lady.
Bruce: the situation in London is the result of immigration. The British government allowed Muslims to into the country, so they have no one to blame but themselves. Same is true of all European countries that are experiencing terrorist attacks. If you invite a wolf into your home, thinking if you feed it and give it a warm place to sleep it will turn into a nice doggie, don’t be surprised when it kills your baby. The 9/11 terrorists were all legal immigrants into the U.S. So we can piss away billions of tax dollars and thousands of young American lives trying to change those countries, or we can just close our borders to them. You can’t force civilization on people who don’t want it and haven’t evolved to the point that they’re ready for it.
If we in the West could create some airdropped sterilization gas which could be fogged over the entire middle east we could sterilize the Muslim population and end generations of idiocy. Otherwise, it is a pirate territory and fly over and flush. Do not let any of them migrate to the U.S. Do not do business with them. Pump our own oil and shut out Saudi oil and gas.
Open laws made by the people of the land, evolving with society; if there is a god then that is its greatest creation. The minute a law is attributed to a supernatural power, the easier it is to pervert. “I just talked to him and he said….” The place in human history for the West is to filter out all this religious mumbo jumbo.
Holmes; When do you want to stop them, when they’re at your front door? Do you see what’s happing in London?
We need to extricate ourselves from this region. I am sick of my tax dollars being poured into countries like this while our roads and bridges disintegrate.
Inga – as Chuck would tell you there is a big difference between ignorance and mob psychology. Personally, I think those that were involved in the burning should be flogged. 1000 lashes should just about do it.
Complete ignorance.
How not surprising.
The average number of children Afghan women have fell from 8 in the 1990s to 6.3 in the mid-2000s to 5.1 in 2012.
The best way to reduce this behavior is to educate women.
This results in a precipitous fall in fertility.
Fewer babies results in fewer murderous adults.
Introduce abortion, and they’ll disappear entirely.
JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT
THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
Vol. CXVI Issue 2 May 2001
“It was a mistaken lynching, your honor. We really thought the one we lynched was guilty.”
“Okay, but make sure of yourself next time.”
Yep, moderate Muslims.
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.