They are still not line us: New stoning video cause to revisit past column

The appearance on the Internet this week of a video showing the stoning to death of a teenage Kirdish girl in Iraq underscores this writer’s long-held contention that “they are not like us.”

Here’s what happened as reported by London’s Daily Mail. Hardline relious leaders and male family members of Du’a Khalil Aswad condemned the 17-year-old girl to death by stoning because of her relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy. Aswad’s family belongs to Yezidi, a Kurdish religious group in Iraq. The religious leaders and family members claimed she dishonored the family by failing to return home one night. Other reports suggest the “honor killing” had a lot to do with her apparent conversion to Islam.

Regardless of the reason, on or about April 7 of this year, eight or nine men dragged the girl into the street and stoned her for half an hour until she died, as a large crowd stood around and watched in the predominately Kurdish town near Mosul.

Reports say the boyfriend is in hiding for fear he will meet the same cold, hard fate.

The British arm of Amnesty International condemned the murder and called for the arrest of those responsible (http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17351).

This is not the first time someone filmed or videotaped a stoning. Below is an excerpt from a column from this writer carried by various online sites in June of 2003.

The May 5 edition of New Zealand's Timaru Herald carried a story of the stoning to death of four ducks by four boys the previous weekend. The newspaper quoted an unidentified man who said that when he tried to stop the boys, one of them responded, “But we're only killing them with rocks.”

These boys are not like the boys I knew while growing up in a small Illinois town where the worst thing one did with stones was to toss them through greenhouse windows or at streetlights . . .

Nigeria is one of seven countries, all Muslim, that either engages in state-sponsored stoning or allows it as part of shariah law. The others include Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Sudan. As late as February of this year, a 13-year-old Pakistani girl was mutilated and stoned for dancing at a wedding (www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2003/Jan/03/11.html).

U.S. lawmakers agree that these people are not like us. The House of Representatives in March, by a 416-0 vote, passed a resolution sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn, that denounces stoning as a gross violation of human rights.

This issue is not new to Capitol Hill. On Feb. 25, 1998, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-NY, showed a smuggled video of a public stoning in Iran (www.house.gov/ackerman/press/iran2.html). A copy of the 15-minute tape is online at www.apostatesofislam.com/media/stoning.htm. It is a gruesome account, and should not be viewed by the merely curious or those easily sickened by terrifying images of torture.

About five minutes into the tape we see a group of men carrying an individual in a sheet to the center of the plaza, and we watch as they transform the sheet into a death shroud. They carefully place the mummy-like figure into a hole as if transplanting a tree in someone’s yard.

At about seven minutes into the tape, handlers place a second person into another hole. This raw video shows us the backs of people as the photographer walks around looking for a clear view of the gruesome scene of death. About 30 seconds later, hundreds of men, mostly members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, crowd into a circle around the condemned. Then the stoning begins, seemingly spontaneously.

We watch the eerie site of two white figures writhing as stones hit them. A man walks up to one shroud and pelts it with rocks. The camera zooms in on the bloodied lump surrounded by stones. The camera pans to the other individual. The cover is knocked off, he is face down, his head is bathed in blood.

The tape jumps to the scene of a third person brought in, shrouded. He stands stock still as ghastly gardeners plant him in the hole.

Dirt is shoveled into the hole around the fourth individual, who bends at the waist. Feet tamp the dirt around him, making sure all is snug.

The circle of death reforms as the man with the shovel makes his final tamps. The crowd chants in agitated anticipation.

The stoning begins with lusty yells. It is a frenzied scene devoid of humanity. Scores of stones fly quickly and strike horribly. The shroud around one head explodes into red. The two ghostly figures totter. One falls forward only to be pelted backward.

The camera zooms in. The man on the right writhes as his shroud comes loose. We see his bloody torso struck by stones. We see him struggle as the pile of stones grows around him. We see the circle contract slowly until fewer than five feet separate the murderous men from the objects of their execution.

Stone throwers stand close enough to caress their victims. But they do not. Instead, they pick up more stones and fling them with all their might.

The condemned continue to writhe, to fall over, to sit back up, to fall back over. One goes suddenly still. The other rises, almost defiantly in the face of hard death.

Now the crowd stands within inches. Men pick up rocks as quickly as they can, in some macabre competition to see who will cast the last stone in the deliverance of Allah's justice.

Both figures are still. The crowd disperses. I recall the New Zealand boys who justified their actions by saying they only killed them with rocks. These Muslim men would appreciate the sentiments, because they are not like us.

John David Powell is an award-winning writer and Internet columnist, university lecturer, and contributor to the Christian History Project. His email address is johndavidpowell@yahoo.com.

Maybe more so than we would like to believe.

Teenage gang guilty of manslaughter after filming 'happy slapping' murder on their mobile telephones
Published on 15 December 2005 | Author MORRIS, Nick.

Four teenagers were cleared of murder after beating a man to the floor and kicking his head “like a football” until he died.They filmed their vicious attack on their mobile phones.

The killers, Darren Case, 18, Reece Sargeant, 21, and a 17-year-old boy and the 14-year-old girl, who cannot be named because of their age, were all from Kennington, South London. Sargeant is said to have been the ringleader of what he called the Sargeant Crew.

The group carried out a series of “happy slapping” attacks last October and David Morley, 37, who was a survivor of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing in 1999, died in intensive care after haemorrhaging from a ruptured spleen. They attacked him as he chatted to a friend on a bench on the South Bank of London.

Morley’s friend, Alastair Whiteside, who was also attacked that night on London’s South Bank, said that the girl approached them holding up her phone and exclaimed, “We’re doing a documentary on happy slapping. Pose for the camera”.

That cue began an assault so violent that Mr Morley was left with 44 impact injuries and a ruptured spleen. His friend, Alastair Whitehead, watched the girl land the final kicks to his head.

"She kicked him like you would kick a football or rugby ball, just swinging her right foot back and kicking him really hard in the head," he said. “She did that two or three times, maybe more. The image of it will stay with me for ever."

A post-mortem examination likened his injuries to those suffered by a car crash victim or someone who had fallen from a great height.

According to police reports, the gang regularly went on what they described as “all-nighters”, alcohol-fuelled rampages. That same night, six other people were also attacked, allegedly by the same gang.

Details of their violent lifestyle emerged in court. All were addicted to happy slapping, the growing youth cult of attacking passers by and filming the results on mobile phones.

Over several months last year they went on "all-nighters", feral sprees on Friday nights when the girl, daughter of a drug addict mother and an alcoholic father, was allowed out by her foster parents.

"It was because of her they did what they did," a 17-year-old member of the gang told the court. "Because she wanted to film it on the video phone - people being beaten up."

They all wore hooded tops, but marked out their individuality in different ways. Case, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, carried a pair of rice flails and always had the left arm of his hoodie rolled up. The girl wore large hoop earrings and carried the mobile phone.

Another girl associated with the gang told the court they would plot attacks at Case's home and would drink heavily before they went out.

"It was like a little cult thing when they were all gathered around a cauldron," she told police. "They would say, 'Who are we beating up tonight, are we beating up druggies, are we beating tramps or are we going out to beat up people in the street?"'

Mr Morley was haunted by nightmares about the nail bomb blast he survived six years earlier and had asked a friend to meet him on the night he was killed because he felt depressed.

Afterwards the teenagers joked and boasted about the attacks. One member kept 26 stolen mobile phones in his bedroom as trophies of the attacks. While awaiting trial, Case was said to have boasted: ‘I’m a murderer. David Morley, that dickhead, that’s the one I killed.’

On the same night, six other people were attacked in the space of 56 minutes. Sentencing will take place on January 23.

* "He who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." Ex. 21:17

* "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying... `He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.' But you say..." Mat. 15:3-4

Sorry, but perhaps people don't like it, but there is a penality in all cultures. But our society says it is barbaric to do such.. but Jesus condemend those that wanted to change THE LAW (given to us from Moses) for their own benefit. He called them harsh names.. and he refirmed this when others FALSELY said he did away with "The Law"...

God's commands to execute the one who strikes or curses a parent are the death penalty statutes that liberal Christians are the most embarrassed over. However, Christ was not at all embarrassed over His Fathers commands. Jesus repeated these commands without caveat or reservation.

* "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets... Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great..." Mat. 5:17-19

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