Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Defenders of religion as a positive force for humanity need to consider the stoning death of a teenage girl who was stoned to death in the supposedly “liberated” Iraqi Kurdistan. Amnesty International reports that she was struck by relatives with stones until dead as punishment for staying out the night with a Muslim boyfriend.

Girl was not Muslim, exactly, but from a Yezidi family. The Yezidi have a system of religious belief that is influenced by Islam, but is not strictly Islamic.

Want to find out more about this religion? Go ahead and Google “Yezidi”. You’ll find some information about the Yezidi religious practice in the abstract, but two of the ten links on the first page of the search results are about the stoning.

Certainly, for myself, the story of the Yezidi stoning dominates my thinking about this cultural group. I’m curious about their beliefs and practices, but first and foremost, the though comes into my mind that, gosh, the Yezidi may be interesting and unique, but they stone teenage girls to death.

That’s a big lesson for cultures, as they seek to present themselves in the world. All the highfalutin ideas about the creation of the Universe and the meaning of life are great, but when you engage in barbaric practices, that’s all that will matter to most people.