**WARNING: The following entry contains graphic descriptions and photos that many readers may find highly disturbing.**
Click for Du'aa (part one).
Her name was Du’aa Khalil Aswad. She was a seventeen year-old girl from a middle-class family in Northern Iraq and belonged to the Yazidi sect, a complex mix of Sufi Islam and ancient Persian religions.
The Yazidis and surrounding Sunni Muslims have an intense dislike of each other. They are not permitted to intermarry and often don’t even mix socially. Four months ago, a Sunni Muslim girl eloped with a Yazidi man. She, too, paid the ultimate price. A Muslim lynch mob hunted her down, set fire to the surrounding homes, and beheaded her.
Du’aa’s crime was that she fell in love with a Sunni Muslim boy, nineteen year-old Muhannad Ummayad. It’s a Romeo and Juliet scenario where secrecy and stolen moments defined their relationship. Knowing the condemnation they would receive from their respective communities, they planned to run away together and get married.
One evening, Du’aa took out the trash from the family home and just kept walking towards a new life.
The next morning, the phone ominously rang back at her home. An anonymous caller informed the family that Du’aa was with Muhannad. The caller said that he would kill Du’aa to "wash away her shame," but her father, Khalil, immediately enlisted the police for help in order to save his little girl from certain execution.
The young couple was subsequently found hiding in a grove of olive trees.
"I promise you I am still a virgin," Du’aa told her mother. "I did nothing wrong, Mama."
It probably didn’t matter. The perception and association alone would have been enough to eventually cause a death sentence to be issued.
Du’aa was taken to the home of Sheikh Sulaiman, the senior spiritual leader for their village. There, one of Du’aa’s uncles, along with the head of the tribe, demanded that she be killed to "cleanse the family honor."
Du’aa’s father vehemently protested and suggested that she instead be married to a cousin and exiled to Syria.
"She has committed a wrong for which she will be punished, but not through death," he firmly stated. "I refuse to have my daughter killed."
The uncle, however, as the family elder, said that he alone was the one with the authority to decide Du’aa’s fate.
It’s not clear whether the Sheikh handed Du’aa over to her uncle the next day, or whether the uncle forcibly removed her from the house. Regardless, she was dragged in a stranglehold to the village marketplace like an animal to slaughter. Painful wailing and screams accompanied her as she kicked and struggled for freedom, or to steal just a brief moment to be able explain her actions and attest of her virtue.
But she couldn’t break free of the razor claws upon her. There was no chance to utter voice to her innocence.
Her lot was sealed.
Her lower body was initially stripped to add to her humiliation and to symbolize the disgrace of her choice. She tried to roll and cover her extremities, but one man took the instant to kick her between her legs with such a violent force that one can imagine her pelvic bones shattering upon embedded impact. As the tremors of pain ripped through her frail body, Du’aa writhed and screamed in absolute agony. A similar incident would occur later also, after thirty minutes of savage stoning and kicking.
The killing resembled a sporting event with men whooping, hollering and cheering as the aggressors pummeled this poor girl’s slight body into the hard, unforgiving ground. The coliseum of men was set on only one possible outcome. There was no need for the thumbs up or down by the Emperor. The lions would have their fill this day.
Apparently, it’s shameful that Du’aa fell in love with a boy that was not of her tribe and sect. And it’s shameful for a woman to even show her bare legs in this part of the world. But evidently it’s not shameful to strip her, humiliate her, degrade her and sadistically murder her in full public view.
According to the Yazidi sect, it’s also shameful to even spit on the ground. But it’s seemingly not shameful to see that same ground soak up the hate-spilled blood of a seventeen year-old girl who had simply acted like many impetuous teenagers of her day. And it’s supposedly not shameful that such a thing is done by a girl’s very family - her uncle, brother and cousins – in the name of ‘honor.’
I have already written of the profoundly disturbing spectacle that occurred as this girl was slowly bludgeoned to death with course rocks and polished shoes as part of a ritualistic execution. It needs no further elaboration, other than to tell you that a cousin (maybe even the very one her father wished to marry her to) was the barbarian who ended the family ‘shame’ by bashing her skull with a cinderblock.
After the heinous act, two of her brothers had to dig Du’aa’s body out of a garbage pit in order to bury her in a simple unmarked grave. She was then interred with the bones of a dog in what was supposed to be the final act of humiliation.
But another affront was yet to come.
Du’a’s body was subsequently exhumed so that an autopsy could determine whether she had died as a virgin or not. Presumably, a verdict of defilement would exonerate the killers and give excuse to their actions. Such a finding would give further evidence of the necessity of an honor killing.
To us in the West, it’s inconceivable that a murder victim’s body would be assaulted one more time for such a purpose. It’s implausible that authorities would grant access for such an outcome to be determined.
However, the postmortem inquisition proved to not be the final insult.
Despite accusations to the contrary, Du’aa’s relationship was indeed one of purity.
She had never slept with Muhannad.
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill
Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand
- Excerpted from "Witch Hunt," by Rush
