I met Dr. Sureya Sayadi a couple of days ago at a restaurant in Fremont. We had quite a heated debate,I disagree with a lot of what she believes in, she did have some valid points though. Here is the video from her website. CNN couldn’t show more than two minutes of it, here you can see the whole 10 minutes.

Video of honor killing of Du’a Khalil in Iraq

Warning: This video contains extremely disturbing images.

If you thought there was a limit to the barbarism man is capable of, think again. A 17 year old Kurdish girl by the name of Du’a is stoned to death for allegedly having an affair with a sunni boy. She is dragged to the middle of a bazaar by her own cousin and then brutally stoned to death while a large crowd of men not only watch but actively participate in the act. It is important to note that despite the chants of Allah-O-Akbar in the movie, this murder has nothing to do with Islam. Also this was not done in the name of Islam. The Yezidi tribe that this poor girl belonged to is held captive by its savage traditions. Yezidis have been persecuted for centuries by many different civilizations. Even after many migrations and forced Islamization by the Ottomans, they have kept their traditions.

What drives an otherwise sane human being to ruthlessly kill another person and that too one of his own family? Is it honor? But what is honor anyway and why is it restored by taking a human life. Generally we like to shrug away such incidents as acts of savagery by the illiterate, the unenlightened among us. Depending on the flavor of stereotyping you subscribe to, you might be inclined to think that this was just another barbaric act by the savage Arabs. Such simple explanations, however, are constantly being challenged in the world we live in. We can’t explain it that easily, there probably isn’t one size that fits all. What drives a student in a prestigious institution such as Virginia Tech to systematically murder so many of his class mates is probably a very different emotion than the one that motivates a suicide bomber in Baghdad to take his life. or is it? Would a terrorist be able to do it if he didn’t have the comfort of a gun or a bomb to shield himself with, if instead all his victims were tied down and he had to stone and maim each one to death. Would he be able to bear the screams of innocent children. The men who participated in stoning this innocent girl or those that slaughtered Daniel Pearl are at some level more savage than the suicide bombers or the carpet bombers. They don’t have to visualize the consequence of their action, they can see it. They have to live it and live with it. And yet they do it.

This should remind us once again how fundamentalist beliefs in any ideology be it religious, tradition, nationalism or caste can drive men to commit unspeakable acts of horror. We witnessed that in Holocaust against the Jews, US plundering in Viet Nam, Pakistanis slaughtering Bengalis, genocide of Muslims in Bosnia and of Tutsis in Rawanda and last but not least the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Actors change yet the plot remains the same.

Is it really ideology though, I am not so sure. Would a suicide bomber still be impelled solely by his beliefs to take so many lives if he was *not* to become a hero in his own community. Is it his way of standing out, if not in life then in death. Is he thus at the core driven by the same emotion that drives a painter to paint a master piece? I don’t think it’s only the seventy virgins, they are the consequence not the cause. At the end of the day, it’s very selfish, very worldly. Religion, God, Tradition, etc. are all slogans, excuses used to pacify one’s own conscience. It’s not even revenge, revenge is futile unless it’s accompanied by glory. “Honor” needs an audience, it’s not won and lost in isolation.