Shot in the leg for not wearing a hijab
December 28th, 2007That is one case of many concerning women in Basra, Iraq.
“Despite what the military spokesmen say, Iraq’s second city is now a place where women live in fear of being murdered on the streets,” so says Maggie O’Kane at the Guardian’s Comment is Free.
Her latest article outlines a reality that not many people or journalists wish to highlight.
Here are some excerpts:
Yesterday [Dec. 16] the handover of Basra was handled through the prism of the British army military spokesmen. The journalists were mostly flown into the British base at the airport. They were all there mainly for a photocall and flown out again. One extraordinarily brave journalist, Marie Colvin, of the Sunday Times dressed in a black abaya and braved Basra to find out what was really happening. As a US citizen working for a British newspaper, she would almost certainly have been executed by the militia groups if she had been caught by any of the militia groups.
At the Guardian we did our best to find the women by phone. Mona Mahmoud, an Iraqi journalist, spent weeks and weeks working with the BBC World Service and GuardianFilms tracking down women who were prepared to speak about what their life is like now in Basra.
So here is what the women of Basra have to say about that “better place”.
“I know a college student who was shot in the leg for not wearing a hijab; a second girl was attacked in the Ashhar district in Basra and killed because she was not wearing a hijab.”
One woman who visited the grave of her son in the Shia cemetery in Najaf, the holiest of cities where many from Basra bury their dead told us by phone: “I was really shocked when I got to the cemetery. The shock was the number of women’s coffins that I saw arriving from Basra. The female coffins were identified with a black abaya which is draped over the coffin. This is a new thing. I never ever saw if before in the graveyard in all the times I visited my son in the cemetery. I don’t know who is killing those women but I never saw this before.”
Read more of the article here. Some of the aggressive comments there are hard to stomach.
Following this article, this is what Linda Heard had to say for Arab News:
Long cleansed of Sunnis and Christians, it’s now fertile soil for religious extremists, who believe they have the right, nay the duty, to murder women for what they call un-Islamic practices, such as walking in public without a head scarf. An Iraqi general says as many as 40 women have been killed in recent months; some together with their children.
(Link to full article.)
This is what Marie Colvin (whose activities was briefly described by O’Kane in the first article linked) had to say at Times Online:
There have been 48 women killed in six months for “un-Islamic behaviour”. The murders in the teeming southern port of Basra have highlighted the weakness of the security forces and the strength of Islamic militias as Britain prepares to hand over control to Iraqi officials today.
In another case, two teenagers saw a woman beaten to death by five or six men from the Mahdi Army, Basra’s most powerful militia. One picked up a rock and crushed her skull. The teenagers were told that their home and family would be destroyed if they betrayed the killers.
At France24’s ‘Observers’, part of the report is as follows:
These crimes have shocked Iraqi bloggers. Most of them condemn the events, but they’re divided over the reasons behind the atrocities. Opposed to the occupation, the blog of the Iraqi women’s association asserts that the U.S. and their allies are manipulating this affair so that they can depict Iraqis as an uncivilised and violent people. ‘Treasure of Baghdad’, an exiled Iraqi blogger, despairs to see Basra fall into the hands of a ‘new Taliban’. And American editor and journalist Robert Stein questions the responsibility of George Bush’s government in this chaos.
Sinan Salaheddin writes the following from Baghdad:
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the rise of Iraq’s Shia-dominated government, armed men have forced women to cover their heads or face punishment. In parts of the predominantly Shia south, even Christian women have been forced to wear headscarves. In some areas of Basra, graffiti warns women that forgoing the headscarf and wearing make-up “will bring you death.”
Juan Cole writes:
Iraq is increasingly a failed state, ruled locally by ethnic or sectarian militias…
And now to wrap this up, here’s a video from Al Jazeera International (h/t: Treasure of Baghdad) -
“British forces claim that the city of Basra in southern Iraq, is one of the ’success stories’ of the country. However, there has been a rise in violence against women.”
What a nightmare. God bless Iraq.
Thanks to Muneeb in Saudi for alerting me to this story.
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So it appears Shia extremism is on par with Taliban style extremism…(sigh)
Freedom Lost
Those bastards, how could they, how dare they?!!
the way hijab is being interpreted is one of the things why I don’t think I’ll ever want my wife to wear, that is if I ever get married! it’s disgusting
It is very sad to hear of this Esra’a.
I am coming to believe that many of us have filled our heads with B.S. in the name of religion. And we don’t hesitate to carry out evil, in God’s name no less. We act out, with respect to our religious beliefs, with no sense of proportion. Even if you believe that women should dress a certain way; how could such a belief justify the taking of a life, a life that brings life into the world, and that is the caretaker of life.
I hate to say it, but a lot of nonsense comes under the heading of religious belief. It is time, before time runs out, to rethink some of our deeply held beliefs, and to reconfigure those beliefs within the framework of what makes sense. That is the only way we can even hope to be able to hear the voice of God. Otherwise, we will not hear Him, but only our delusional interpretations of Him.
Nissim,
I hope this time we do evil we don’t do it in the holy name of G-d the almighty.
I guess women in Iraq will come to this conclusion that Saddam served them better, because women were not forced to veil, more women were working in Iraq, more in the universities, the devorce laws were not as gripping for women as they are today.
Saddam was scary, but if he believed in some thing and that we right, the laws could be inforced. Man what we need for this Middle East…
Elinor, I guess Saddam may have been right on some things, but he was so wrong on so many other things, that the good things were canceled out by the bad.
We need to empower leaders who are just. Not perfect, but just. And we can’t give credence to anyone, whether a political or religious or intellectual leader, who is trying to convince us of ideas which defy our sense of right and wrong. Thankfully, we know right from wrong. We feel it in our gut. And we should not become intimidated by those who would have us distort our innate sense of how we should treat one another. If we are to have any future, it will be because we remain true to ourselves.
Interesting. Religion as a weapon that gives the green light to knuckle dragging thugs to kill and maim. Hitler did a simular thing. He called his neanderthals storm troopers or “brown shirts” and did it in the name of “nationalism”. I wonder if the sexual repression prevalent in the Middle East is linked with this behavior. What makes people think that they have the right to allow these things to happen? Is that what they do with serial killers and sociopaths…..give them a “behavior police” badge and turn them loose on the general population? How barbaric!
R E, one of the things that distinguishes us from the animal kingdom is our ability to reason. Animals, for the most part, are hardwired by instinct to follow a certain path of behavior. We, on the other hand, are able to wing it, by reasoning our way through a maze of uncertainties.
Many times, we reason our way toward ideas which make sense, and which take us to a place we want to be. But inherent in the ability to reason, is the ability to distort. The same skills that are used to formulate a logical argument, can also be used to manipulate facts and to come up with what seems to be logic, but which ends up in utter nonsense.
In other words, the ability to think necessarily implies the ability to think badly. And if you infuse that pocess with religious conviction, and with tenets which remain unquestioned because they represent the “word of God,” then so much the more reason that people go so far astray, and drift away from what makes sense. Today’s religious extremism is but one example. The 600 year Inquisition is another. And unfortunately, all religions suffer from scriptural passages which make no sense, and which are not palatable to the modern mind.
Nicely said, Nissim. Thank you.
Well this is shameful these men who are attacking women just because they want to earn some honest buck for their family!
Innocent Children born out of wedlock being killed for a crime that they had no say in it?? What kinda message does this send? how do they know tht they are outta wedlock? What if they are wrong?
Muneeb, to my mind, for what it’s worth, it doesn’t really matter if the kids are born out of wedlock. Kids are kids, and should not be made to suffer for the sins of their parents. But you know what, in the Torah it is written, something to the effect that, “The parents will eat sweets, and the teeth of their children will become rotten.” So maybe it is true that kids will suffer for the sins of their parents. But even if that’s the case, we feel it in our gut that it is wrong, and we are compelled, in any way we can, to protect the innocent, and to reject violence and injustice wherever we can. That is our challenge as the custodians of what is moral, and what is right.
This is why France outlawed the hijab in schools and public institutions. It is the mark of slavery and ignorance.
Elinor,
Saddam did what Saddam wanted. When America was founded, black people were slaves and women could not vote. America ended those two things in time. That’s what democracy gets you: slow, steady, progressive change. Saddam was getting old. Soon the reins of power would have been handed to Uday. Since Uday was the inventor of the rape room, my guess is that things would have gotten a lot worse for women under his adminstration.
Kafir,
I understand what you say, but maybe if Uday ruled the country would lash back, some times the democracies need to be established from within, to be stronger, more durable and more backed by people, but there is a haste in the course of events and some times a fast food makes one stop feeling hungry and no one thinks much of the resluts of devouring a fast food when hunger rages. did i make my point? I am not sure. By the way, America spent years of war before shaping its democracy into what is has in hand at the moment, lets see how long that would take for the whole Mideast, me likes hamburgers too, me likes being lean as well !!!!
Elinor,
Here’s the problem with the “from within” argument: Look at all the big democracies. Most gained their independence from an oppressor that was far away. The ragtag colonial forces in the US could not have defeated the British Empire if not for the fact that there was an ocean separating them. The same is true of the rest the British colonies. India got its independence in the aftermath of WWII when Britain was rebuilding after a devastating war. Russia was so weak economically by the late 1980’s, it could no longer keep the Warsaw pact countries in line, and eventually gave up on its own. France is really the only democracy that was established from within against a local oppressor. Had the King of France had the intelligence apparatus and weapons available to him that Uday would have had, chances are France would still be a monarchy. Iraq and Afghanistan are unique because they are the first countries to have democracy imposed on them by a foreign power. Only time will tell how all that will work out. The point is that, in a democracy, eventually everyone will get their rights. In a tyranny, getting your rights is like a crap shoot: if your rights coincide with what the tyrant wants, you get them. If not, you’re out of luck. You’re from Iran, you should know that. Ahmadinejad has jailed a lot of dissidents, most of whom probably thought they had the right to dissent.
Interesting comments. I must agree with Kafir that so long as democracy prevails, that the people of Iraq, including Basra, have the power to change their destiny regarding these evils. However, there is no reason to wait for the next elections for a new national parliament. In the name of true democracy, Maliki should order that elections for representative local and provincial governments are held immediately, and guarantee that they are fair. People will awaken when they see the power of their collective votes to bring real change. Until then, I will pray for the women of Basra.
hmmm maybe but killing is the extreme…
if some1 was to ask the kids… thye wouldnt wanna b born like tht
technically France is also doing the same thing : FORCING
its just forcing it off! so its guilty as too!
in Saddam’s time atleast they knew wht they would b killed for.. now adays you can b killed just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time
and Abt Uday… ppl change when they are actually given the reins with nothing to fall back on..
Japan…
South Korea, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Mexico…
Kafir,
Democracy being imosed..That sounds opressive in a way, though I do not deny what you say makes sense in a way.