Well it seems Toutatis does indeed work in mysterious ways. After reading, and responding to a post which chastised this blog and Atheists in general, for concentrating on attacking Christianity, I stumbled upon an article in the Daily Mail which managed to shock even my jaded mindset.<\/p>\n

On the off chance some of you are faint hearted, I should warn you the original article has a some pictures which could be construed as quite shocking although given the subject matter they could be worse. If you visit the Mail article please be aware of this and don’t come crying to me afterwards.<\/p>\n

The Daily Mail carries an item<\/a> about a 17 year old girl who was beaten to death (in Northern Iraq) by her family, while “hundreds” [according to the Mail] of onlookers cheered and shouted support of the murderers. In typical Daily Mail writing style the article begins:<\/p>\n

A teenage girl lies dead on the ground in a pool of her own blood.<\/p>\n

Her once groomed hair is cast across her face like a rag doll’s, her skirt pulled up to complete her humiliation.<\/p>\n

In another image, she is seen lying on her side, her face battered and bloodied, barely recognisable.<\/p>\n

The concrete block used to smash in her face lies next to her.<\/p>\n

Du’a Khalil Aswad was beaten, kicked and stoned for 30 minutes at the hands of a lynch mob before one of her attackers launched a carefully aimed fatal blow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sort of barbarity almost defies belief, except sadly it is spurred on by belief in an imaginary being. Being beaten to death in an ordeal which lasted 30 minutes redefines inhumane. The fact that modern technology allowed someone to video it is just surreal.<\/p>\n

While the first reaction on learning this was in Northern Iraq is to blame the madness called Islam, it wasn’t really the causal agent this time. The poor girl came from a Yazidi<\/a> family, although she was killed for having a relationship with a Sunni<\/a> boy. Don’t you just love these medieval belief systems…? Even Islam thinks of the Yazidis as headcases and infers they are Devil worshippers, but to the adherents of Yazidi, they worship God. Who gets to decide if they are right or wrong? Yazdi’s are pretty much an Adam and Eve (Abrahamic?) religion – at least it has morphed enough now to be one, who knows what it was like 4000 years ago.<\/p>\n

While I am loathe to give Religion an easy ride, there is a reasonable chance that this honour killing was not wholly religious in it’s nature. The Yazidi’s are an insular Kurdish people so there is a good chance her relationship with a Sunni violated more secular “rules.” Either way, it is barbaric madness.<\/p>\n

Where religion can not escape the blame, is the tolerance of other’s faith issues. I have mentioned in the past the fallacy that we “should not restrict the expression of belief<\/em><\/a>” and this highlights a good example of why this can not be true. At the end of the day, these people were expressing their religious beliefs – it was even a belief, one assumes, shared by the dead girl.<\/p>\n

Sadly, this is not the only example of such things happening, and Yazidi is not the only religion where such behaviour is tolerated if not fully promoted. This poor girls brutal murder has become international news largely because one of the psychopaths in the crowd took digital images of the end of her life. There are lots more who die ignominiously, without the media furore (or the outraged comments<\/a> – well worth a read). You can not help but feel sorry for these poor girls, imagine what must be going through their minds as their life is beaten from them by their own family. People who they will have been talking to earlier that day, having friendly family get togethers and the like. Spending religious holidays together. And so on…<\/p>\n

It is a lasting tragedy that the unquestioning observance of religious doctrine allows families to do this to each other. In my recent theme of paraphrasing people who make better quotes than I do, with or without belief in God, good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things. It takes God to make good people do truly bad things.<\/p>\n

Sadly, given the “beliefs” of the occupying powers and the local police, nothing will happen to these murders. Isn’t God \/ Allah great, eh? (Thank Toutatis, I don’t believe in one of those stupid religions…)<\/p>\n

[tags]Religion, Islam,Atheism, Yazidi, Evil, Barbaric, Murder, Death, Toutatis, Kill, Brutal, Religious Intolerance, Religious Tolerance, Religious Delusions, God[\/tags]<\/p>\n

Share this:<\/h3>

• <\/span>Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• <\/span>Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• <\/li><\/ul>
  • <\/span>Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/span>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/li>
  • <\/span>Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Well it seems Toutatis does indeed work in mysterious ways. After reading, and responding to a post which chastised this blog and Atheists in general, for concentrating on attacking Christianity, I stumbled upon an article in the Daily Mail which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

    Share this:<\/h3>

    • <\/span>Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • <\/span>Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • <\/li><\/ul>
      • <\/span>Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/span>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/li>
      • <\/span>Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5,3,10],"tags":[4019,922,693,325,139,992,837,28,194,120,801],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnUcF-en","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}