Consequences of Religious Extremism

There have been many posts here on the dangers of the religious right’s influence on public policy. Two news items today demonstrate the consequences when religious freedom and separation of church and state is not respected.

In Malaysia, a marriage of 21 years was broken up under religious law:

A Muslim woman forcibly separated from her Hindu husband by Malaysia’s Islamic authorities after 21 years of happy marriage wept inconsolably yesterday after a judge endorsed her decision to hand custody of six of her seven children to her former spouse.

In an unprecedented move for Malaysia – where Islamic religious laws are strictly enforced – the children, aged four to 14, will be raised as Hindus despite being born to a Muslim mother. Last month Selangor state’s Islamic authorities took Raimah Bibi Noordin, 39, and her children away for “rehabilitation” and religious counselling after belatedly declaring that her marriage was illegal.

The second story is especially sad as this violence in Iraq is related to the actions of the United States in destabilizing the country. A 17 year old girl was killed in an “honor killing” while government security forces allowed it to occur:

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as “an abhorrent murder” and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.

Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an “honour killing” by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.

They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.

10 Comments

  1. 2
    sad says:

    these criminal activity against children and women does not have any relation by anyway to the muslims and islam religion
    and what we have seen here is a group of killers ,yes in islam the married women or man only who thrown by stone if he or she betrayed her husband ,not as we seen here ateenager for god sake she is small child
    those people who murder that girl had done a huge mistake
    they will take thier punshiment by the god

  2. 3
    hidayat says:

    it’s very sad to see this…
    Islam is not related of any as shown….

  3. 4
    Marcos says:

    Fuck the correctness of trying to verbally express myself. I must say this: “give me a adifferent gun everyday and I will kill every single motherfucker on this video one by one”.

  4. 5
    SgtMaj says:

    Fuck them all!! any person who kills a 17yo girl for loving a boy from a diferent religion takes her rights away… witch the ppl who did this should die for… ppls rights is something you canot take away!! dam the ppl who did this to hell and may god punish them…

  5. 6
    Hassan says:

    This is NOT ISLAM .
    the real terrible video is in Abu ghrib Iraqi prison, naked 12 year old girl and rape women AVERY DAY .

  6. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    Abu ghab and such “honor killings” are both examples of terrible things to view.

  7. 8
    dan says:

    Hassan says:

    August 25th 2009 at 5:53 pm
    This is NOT ISLAM .
    the real terrible video is in Abu ghrib Iraqi prison, naked 12 year old girl and rape women AVERY DAY .

    Hassan, I agree with you that this is not Islam. But you can not compare this crime to those commited at Abu ghrib prison. There are no accounts of women being raped, there was one account of rape of a teenage boy. The crimes commited at that prison were disgusting and those people will be judged by God but stoning a innocent young women to death for loving a man of another religion is the REAL terrible act. If you want to portray the Islam you believe is good, fight the extremist that do these terrible things.

  8. 9
    JohnnyPham says:

    Holly Shit! So crue and violent. The people who threw the stone to her were not the human beings. So they are worth to go to hell and reieve the worst punisment for what they did.
    Why don’t the moderlize countries or people kill them all to take an equal to the pityful girl.

  9. 10
    Ron Chusid says:

    More violence, especially if coming from foreign countries, is no solution to the problem.

2 Trackbacks

Leave a comment