There is a verdict in the horrific case that we discussed earlier involving the mob beating and burning of a woman named Farkhunda, 27. A judge has sentenced four of those responsible to death in Kabul. Eight other suspects received 16-year sentences. Eighteen others were found not guilty.
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. The videotapes show men struggling to get at the victim to participate in her beating. Others are shown yelling at her or laughing or simply videotaping the horrific scene.
Islamic clerics have denounced the arrest of the men and warned against any punishment and denounced those who have protested the murder.
Farkhunda’s parents said the killing was instigated by a local mullah of the Shah-e-Do Shamshera Mosque in the city’s center, who she had accused of distributing false tawiz (pieces of paper containing verses of the Quran which are sometimes worn as pendants to ward off evil and bring the wearer good luck). The local mullah is viewed by many as having accused her to protect himself from accusation.
While the government has stressed that there is no evidence that Farkhunda tore up a Koran, that should not be the focus of the government. It should not be an excuse for murder in either case. Indeed, destroying a religious book should not be a crime, though Afghanistan like other Islamic countries continue to arrest people for blasphemy and apostasy.
Notably, the remaining defendants are 19 policemen, and simply watched as the mob beat the woman, dragged her body behind a car before setting her on fire.
The positive element of the story is the swift arrest and prosecution of these men by the government, even with local mullahs denouncing the prosecution.
If only he served his sentence.
Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. A day later, Nixon intervened and changed hard labor to house arrest. A few months later a general then changed life to twenty years. The Secretary of the Army then reduced twenty years to ten.
Following a federal court’s order for new trial (later overturned), Nixon again intervened and commuted Calley’s sentence to time served. He had served only three and a half years.
Three and a half years in the comfort of his own room for the mass murder of 22 people.
Issac – Lt. Calley was convicted, served time, and was ruined.
@Darren Smith
Thank you for the link! I have it running in another tab. Just FWIW, while I don’t think we ought to be actively teasing Muslims about Muhammad, they shouldn’t be trying to kill us here in our country. Because respect is a two-way street. Sooo, I did this cartoon the other night on another forum when the shooting happened:
https://birtherthinktank.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/mohammad.jpg
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I don’t understand the position of not charging them. Evidently there is extra money to be made in selling these little trinkets.
issac
Add: Kennedy, Obama, Clinton if you will.
It’s your argument, revealed as partisan hackery, not mine.
Nick and Rick
Add: Kennedy, Obama, Clinton if you will. But, they are pikers compared to Nixon, Kissinger, Cheney, Bush, etc. I would put Calley ahead of them all. It’s all pretty much the same, just different arguments, each with some god on its side.
Our host spoke on NPR today about free speech and the recent terrorist attack in Texas:
http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio/#/shows/2015-05-06/an-attack-thwarted-in-texas-claims-of-responsibility-by-isis-and-the-limits-of-free-speech/110107/@00:00
I just love Muslim clerics. Everything offends them except murder. And when they are offended you know what they do murder some more!
It doesn’t matter to them that this woman was innocent and that the allegations were knowingly false. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter that a person was killed over a BOOK! It didn’t bother them that people Re bing killed because they are Shia or Sunni. No nothing matters to them except their right to murder people if they are OFENDED.
Well, I’m really offended by them!
Reminds me of the movie “The Stoning of Soraya M”. If interested in such things I recommend it.
April in Paris? No? What about May in Kabul? I hear that the flights are dirt cheap. Don’t forget the burkah and the sunscreen. Oh yeah, don’t forget the mace, in case one encounters an angry mob.
There have been many accounts of this method of murder. Accuse your enemy, typically a woman, of desecrating the Koran, insulting the Prophet, etc and have a mob swiftly kill her.
It reminds me of the Hammer of Witches, by the homicidal maniac Heinrich Kramer in the late 1400s. At the time it was written, many people in the Church did not believe in witches at all. Kramer basically collected a bunch of fairytales and superstitions together with what must have been a fevered mind. The Malleus Maleficarum denounced a lack of belief in witches as heresy, falsely printed a Papal Bull that gave him permission to investigate crimes as a mandate for the book, and fabricated his endorsement. It being the 1400s, it became deeply entrenched in society, and later the Church itself. Just an accusation of witchcraft set wheels in motion where the woman’s torture and death was inevitable. And just like this story illustrates, such accusations were used by the populace as a murderous means to remove mostly female rivals, enemies, and anyone else in the way.
Human nature being what it is, any cultural or religious belief that leads to mob justice can and will be abused. Death for apostasy, insulting the Prophet, questioning how Islam is practiced, drawing cartoons – aside from being intolerant, it can and will be abused.
Learn from past history or repeat it.
issac
There are people who are next to impossible to prosecute and make pay for their sins: Nixon, Calley, Bush, Kissinger, Cheney, Westmoreland, etc., all responsible for the senseless murder of innocents yet?????
Revealingly omitted from the list: John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
America is accumulating an unfathomable amount of bad karma.
Isaac, What about Clinton killing innocents in Bosnia and launching cruise missiles to divert from a sex scandal and Barack “The Drone King” Obama killing many innocents, including US people? You are simply too transparent, dude.
We do have a right to tell them what to do, IF we are spending billions of dollars to rebuild their country, while our infrastructure is crumbling. Time to leave that stone age country and concentrate on our own problems.
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
“Indeed, destroying a religious book should not be a crime, though Afghanistan like other Islamic countries continue to arrest people for blasphemy and apostasy.”
That is just plain cultural bias. To us here in America, a book is just a book, religious or otherwise. But to these people, it is more than just a book. It is the word of the prophet of God. It is the basis for their way of life, and for who they are as people.
Sooo, I don’t believe the Koran, but who are we—a people who really don’t believe deeply in anything at all, unless it is the right to kill our babies, or sodomize each other—who are we to tell people in other countries what they should find important???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It has only cost America thousands of dead young men and $3 billion per week since 2008 to get Afghanistan to this point….cui bono? Maybe we’ll find out some day.
There are people who are next to impossible to prosecute and make pay for their sins: Nixon, Calley, Bush, Kissinger, Cheney, Westmoreland, etc., all responsible for the senseless murder of innocents yet?????
From every account I have read it seams the Mullah who instigated the outrage has so far gone uncharged. Farkhunda suffered an unimaginable and horrific death as a direct result of this man’s false accusations. If the Afghan Government sees fit to try police officers for standing down and watching this unfold how can they not bring this Mullah to the justice he deserves? From what I’ve read Farkhunda, a recent graduate of religious studies, was arguing with this Mullah for the selling of sham trinkets that he regularly hawks for personal profit on the steps of the mosque. An argument ensued and he became enraged and defensive and began loudly and falsely accusing her of destroying the Koran. Passersby began to gather and dragged her off to kill her. If anyone, this Mullah willingly caused her death.