All right, we’ve all heard the gripes about how ‘things’ are distorted and what ‘gets reported’ is not always a factual, unbiased account of the events. But this, this has got to be some of the most bizzare collection of distortions I have seen so far.
Or, at least, that I am aware that I have seen…
As far as I can piece this together (and I am NOT certain of the complete facts), it would appear that 13-year-old girl-child, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow, was gang-raped. She went to register the crime with the courts, presumably expecting the police to find and arrest her rapists.
However, last August, Aisha’s home town of Kismayo – a port in Southern Somalia – had been taken over by Islamist forces and Sharia law had been imposed. When the child came to file her complaint with the police, she was asked ‘if she is sure this is what really happened’. Aisha confirmed that she had, in fact, been gang-raped and asked for justice.
This last bit came back to haunt her, her family, and anyone with a conscience! At this ‘admission of engaging in extramarital sexual intercourse’ and ‘demands to be punished’, the police officials had ‘no choice’ but to arrest her. The ‘Sharia Court’ (if you can call it a court) had heard the case and had ‘no choice’ but to sentence her to death by stoning. After all, she herself ‘freely admitted her guilt’ and ‘demanded justice to be done’!!!
Dressed in black, with a green veil (green – the colour of Islam and peace), she was brought into a large stadium filled with about 1000 people. Reporters, based on her ‘appearance’, guessed her age to be about 23 yearsof age, were forbidden to use their cameras, but radio broadcasts were permitted.
Here, the child was bound hand and foot and - while screaming and pleading for her life - Aisha was buried up to her neck in a hole in the ground.
It would appear that the crowd - or at least some of the people within the crowd - tried to intervene and save the unfortunate child. The ‘guards’ opened fire on the crowd, shooting a child dead.
50 men then started to throw stones at Aisha’s head (the only part of her above ground). When they thought she was dead, they dug her up – but a check showed she was still alive, so they burried her again and continued to throw stones at her. They had dug Aisha up 3 times to check if she is dead yet….and then burried her again to stone her some more…
Her family is distrought and angry. Her father confirmed her age to be 13 years.
This, in itself, is a horrible story. It is a nightmare!
I truly don’t know if there are words strong enough to express my anger and outrage!
But, it would appear, my reaction is not all that usual. At least, if one were to go by what is being said in the many ‘official’ reports of Aisha’s suffering and murder lawbreaking and execution.
Please, consider the following:
AFP (Agence France Presse), the oldest news agency in the world, carries this report:
MOGADISHU (AFP) — Thousands of people gathered Monday to witness 50 Somali men stone a woman to death after an Islamic court in the southern port of Kismayo found her guilty of adultery, witnesses said.
Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, who had been found guilty of extra-marital intercourse was buried in the ground up to her neck while the men pelted her head with rocks.
“Our sister Aisha asked the Islamic Sharia court in Kismayo to be charged and punished for the crime she committed,” local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah told the crowd.
“She admitted in front of the court to engaging in adulterous sexual intercourse,” he added.
“She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply.”
The execution was carried in one of the city’s main squares.
…
Did you notice the mention of the fact she was a rape victim? No, because this was not mentioned. But you might have noticed how her ‘demand for justice’ was explained by the local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah!!!
Good reporting, AFP, making sure we hear the ‘proper’ side of the story! Good reporting, AFP, for ‘digging for the details of what really happened there’! Bang-up job, you are doning! Truly!
But they are not the only ones reporting on this murder of Aisha along these lines…
Surely, that ‘most extreme-right-wing-media outlet’, Fox News, will have done a bit of digging around to find out what was happening, right? If so, it was not mentioned in their article, ‘Somali woman stoned to death for adultery’!
No verification with her family, or Amnesty International, which also seems to have had no trouble learning Aisha’s true age – 13, not the 23 admittedly arrived at by a reporter’s ‘guess’….
No explanation that the ‘adultery’ in question consisted of being gang-raped….
WHAT THE F$*&Q^#$*&!!!!!!
How about other sources?
The ‘neutral’ and award winning Sky News reported: ‘Cheating’ woman stoned to death. I suppose the ‘Cheating’ – being in quotation marks – constitutes ‘neutrality’ (also in quotation marks). And, they do report that while the officials explained she demanded this punishment herself (!), they do quote witnesses that heard her scream and saw her struggle….and they hint that only the guns of the guards – who killed a child in the process – kept the crowd from freeing poor Aisha. But, not the correct age, not a peep about the fact that she had been the victim of rape….except those quotation marks around ‘cheating’, that is…
Why is it that one has to go to blogs (A New Dark Age Is Dawning) and non-mainstream media like ‘Islam: the religion of peace’ to find out information, and only then can kernels of it be seen in the ‘respectable news-outlets’ reports?
It was not until today, 5-or-so days after her murder execution, that there is even a peep about the true story…. CNN carried the little mention.
What are we doing? Are we ‘normalizing’ Islamist violence against women? Are we all headed for the burka?
Nike (among others!!!) is already working to normalize such attitudes!
November 2, 2008 at 06:41
[...] update the post to link Xantippa’s post on this. I understand perfectly well why she is sooo angry. The question is why there are so very few [...]
November 2, 2008 at 06:43
Have linked your post. It’s so outrageous, so wrong, I really get angry when I see Western behaviour towards these girls.
November 3, 2008 at 21:15
[...] How a 13-year-old rape victim’s execution is being reported [...]
November 19, 2008 at 13:23
[...] something wildly different – as happened in the case of the stoning of a 13-year-old-rape victim, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow…..reported by the mainstream media as ‘23-year-old woman stoned for [...]
June 20, 2009 at 04:23
Truly, upon hearing the news that a girl the same age as me living halfway across the side of the world, had been stoned to death for being raped made me cry. How truly despairing and dire this news is. How do they expect to have a peaceful country if their justice system condones rapists, and murders innocent children? If they only care about whether the men are satisfied in their pathetic Islam lives, and the dutiful f**king women are just accesories in their lives, for them to use and abuse? Some humans are not humans. They are worse than animals. They are worse than dog sh** on the side of the road. At least that can be cleaned up. You sick perverted men who caused the death of this beautiful life and many more like it, you will get your comeuppance. The day that you do will be one of joy for many people.
Xanthippa says:
Thank you for caring!!!
The story of Aisha has touched me, too – very, very deeply!
She no longer has a voice, nor do other girls who share her fate: she just happens to be the one we have heard about.
But – that IS the solution: we must make sure that everyone DOES hear about AISHA!!! We must scream at the top of our lungs about what happened to her, and we must not let ourselves be shut up!
Because if we don’t, many more girls – perhaps even our grand-daughters, WILL share her fate!
August 4, 2010 at 00:04
i want to ask here, how do u know that there are other girls that share her fate?
and maybe this is just another way to condemn Islam.. if we, humans keep on condemning other religion, where can we find peace?
and the video.. it is so wrong to have said that y nike must support hijab.. and also about the part where they said that hijab is a symbol of sexuality.. u guys are wrong.. try to learn more about Islam before u want to say anything.. don’t make such speculation..
u guys are just creating hatred among people.. i think this is so wrong..
Xanthippa says:
Dear Ann,
you suggest I learn more about Islam before I speak about it.
While learning ‘more’ about Islam is farz for Muslims and Muslimas, I have done some learning about it myself.
Had you (as I have) read the Hadith, you would know that the prophet Muhammad himself ordered stoning as a punishment for adultery. Though, ‘adultery’ is not an exact translation: the more accurate term is ‘sexual intercourse outside of marriage’ (zina). Therefore, this punishment necessarily includes all victims of non-marital rape – as all the leading Islamic scholars today openly agree.
And the evidence that many people (women and men of all ages) are facing stoning under Sharia after having been accused of adultery is not difficult to come by: just Google it!
To make it easier for you, here is a picture of one woman being burried in preparation for being stoned to death for adultery and, right beside it, of another woman who is dead from stoning. Beneath is an eye-witness account of a stoning of yet another woman.
And, here is a video of one such Sharia stoning – here, 4 men are stoned to death.
I believe the Islamic (sic) term is rajm.
If you would like to know more, perhaps you could learn about the case of Najat – a deaf girl who could not speak. One day, her brother was late picking her up from a shop and she had to wait out front for him. That was enough for the Saudi ‘morality squad’ to arrest her for ‘prostitution’. She was stoned to death.
Or, perhaps you ought to look up some information on Azar Bagheri. She was just 15 years old when she was accused of ‘zina‘ in Iran and put in jail. Because she is too young to be executed (under the laws of Iran), she has been kept in jail, awaiting her 19th birthday, so she may be stoned to death ‘legally’.
During these years of waiting for this horrible and gruesome punishment, Azar has been subjected to a number of ‘mock’ executions! They drag her out of her cell, tie her up, stick her in the hole in the ground and bury her up to her shoulders…..making her wait for the painful death.
But, go on! Look up more! There are many names people stoned to death under Sharia in the last few decades that only a few minutes of searching the internet will reveal – and there are many more whose names we will never know, whose tragic fate we will never learn.
Even more names of people who only escaped this cruel form of execution because of public outcry can be found in just minutes of searching…
And you say it is I – and others who speak our against such horrible torture – who are ‘spreading hatred’?!?!?
What is wrong with you?
April 11, 2010 at 23:09
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