Violations of 'Islamic teachings' take deadly toll on Iraqi women

[superconnected]

Source: CNN news

By Arwa Damon
CNN


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.


Police chief Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf holds a book cataloging the dead.

1 of 3 The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."

Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

One glance through the police file is enough to understand the consequences. Basra's police chief, Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf, flips through the file, pointing to one unsolved case after another.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/08/iraq.women/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

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Patriarchial societys make me sick.

[superconnected]

1. A few notes on this.

- It's against the law there but extreme men have taken the law into their own hands.

- It doesn't really have anything to do with religion, it has to do with control. They'll do it under any banner including security, so don't get stuck on the religion part.

- It all comes back to the social contract. We gave iraq a government that the citizens did not agree to. This kind of violence will continue until there is a social contract where all parties agree and then the laws will seem beneficial where iraqis will want to uphold them (even when many people lose what they want to see in some areas they accept it if it's beneficial enough in others). Only then will the violence be truly random - singular circumstantial and not deliberate acts of focing their will on others and against a system they don't accept. If they accepted the system they would try to change it by lobbying.

[maxsolomon]

2. admit all iraqi women as refugees.

clintbama will face massive pressure to relax our policy as soon as they'r in office.

[MasonJar]

3. Why are they unsolved? Many times it is the family members who

perform the so-called honor killings. The extremists need to be punished or this will never stop.

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. Someone say it, dammit - they were better off under Saddam than the USA "democracy"

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ahh, relax, settle down - "hon get me a beer while I watch Homer Simpson

This news is depressing me . ."

The American Way . . .