When in doubt, kill the woman. Brace yourself: Emma Batha’s special report in the Independent begins with a horror.
Two months ago, a young mother of two was stoned to death by her relatives on the order of a tribal court in Pakistan. Her crime: possession of a mobile phone.
Arifa Bibi’s uncle, cousins and others hurled stones and bricks at her until she died, according to media reports. She was buried in a desert far from her village. It’s unlikely anyone was arrested. Her case is not unique. Stoning is legal or practised in at least 15 countries or regions. And campaigners fear this barbaric form of execution may be on the rise, particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Possession of a phone – well it makes perfect sense. She could use the phone to call men up and ask them to come over and fuck her. She not only could, she would, because that’s how women are, the filthy sluts.
At least that must be the chain of reasoning [hollow laughter], because why the hell else would you torture someone to death for having a phone?
Stoning is not legal in most Muslim countries and there is no mention of it in the Koran. But supporters argue that it is legitimised by the Hadith – the acts and sayings of the Prophet Mohamed. Stoning is set out as a specific punishment for adultery under several interpretations of sharia or Islamic law. In some instances, even a woman saying she has been raped can be considered an admission to the crime of zina (sex outside marriage).
In one case cited by Shameem, a 13-year-old Somali girl, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was buried up to her neck and stoned by 50 men in front of 1,000 people at a stadium in Kismayu in 2008. Her father told Amnesty International she had been raped by three men but was accused of adultery when she tried to report the rape to the al-Shabaab militia in control of the city.
We ended Does God Hate Women? with Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. They had to drag her into the stadium; she was crying and begging them not to kill her. 13 years old.
Stoning is a legal punishment for adultery in Iran, Mauritania, a third of Nigeria’s 36 states, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. It’s not legal in Iraq or Afghanistan but murderous bastards do it anyway.
Activists are campaigning to stop the practice, including by putting pressure on Ban Ki-moon.