Why We Fight in Iraq: Muslims in the News

"Women Are Being Beheaded for Taking Their Veil
Off": Honor Killings On Rise in Iraq

By Terri Judd, Independent UK

In Basra
alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching
Islamic dress codes. Others say the number is higher.
At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her
pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the
awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror
of the scene.
The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own
in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her
crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her "honor
killing" is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where
activists speak of a "genocide" against women in the name of
religion.
In the latest such case, it was reported yesterday that a 17-year-old girl,
Rand Abdel-Qader, was stabbed to death last month by her father for becoming
infatuated with a British soldier serving in southern Iraq.
In Basra
alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching
Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure.
Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the
militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation,
genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of
girls as young as nine are all on the increase.

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