Friday - August 17, 2007

Another Sect Radical Islam Doesn't Like

Tolerance for other religions is one of Islam's strongest points. 

Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect of several hundred thousand in northern Iraq and Syria who say they are persecuted for their beliefs.

In April, gunmen killed 23 Yazidi factory workers in Mosul in apparent retaliation for the stoning several weeks earlier of a teenaged Yazidi girl who police said had fallen in love with a Sunni Arab man and converted to Islam.

Angry members of a minority sect in Iraq said on Thursday they feared annihilation after scores were killed in possibly the worst suicide bomb attack of the four-year conflict.

Frail clay houses in the centre of Kahtaniya, one of two villages targeted on Tuesday by garbage trucks packed with explosives, were flattened for several blocks.

Chunks of concrete and twisted aluminum lay in the street beside the destroyed homes of hundreds of Yazidis, a minority sect regarded by Sunni militants as infidels.

Estimates of the death toll varied from 175 to 500.

"Al Qaeda wants to kill all the Yazidis," said another Kahtaniya villager, who gave his name only as Hossein. "Another bomb like this and there will be no more Yazidis left."  Read more...

Author: The Machiavellian
Technorati Tags: Islam
Technorati Cosmos:
Technorati Watchlist:
Add this entry to: