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Religious insanity: Taleban murders mixed-sect couple for trying to elope

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Wednesday April 15, 2009

Eloping mixed-sect couple executed by firing squad in remote Afghanistan area

A young couple have been executed for trying to elope, by being shot with AK-47s by a Taleban firing squad in front of a crowd, it emerged yesterday.
The woman, Gul Pecha, 19, and the man, Abdul Aziz, 21, had been accused by the militants in south-western Afghanistan of immoral acts, and a council of conservative clerics decided they should be killed on Monday, officials said.
The two had hoped to travel to Iran, which borders their home province of Nimroz, but their parents sent villagers to bring them home, said provincial council chief Sadiq Chakhansori.
Miss Pecha was said to be an ethnic Pashtun and a member of the Sunni sect of Islam, while Mr Aziz was from the Shia sect.
[...]

- Source / Full Story: Eloping mixed-sect couple executed by firing squad in remote Afghanistan area, Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez, AP via The Scotsman, Scotland, UK, Apr. 15, 2009 — Summarized by Religion News Blog

Nimroz lies largely outside government control, and officials offered limited and sometimes varying details of the couple’s last hours.
[...]
Sadiq Chakhansori, the chief of Nimroz’s provincial council, said that the pair attempted to flee to Iran, where several million Afghan refugees take up low-paid jobs.
However, their families were reported to have dispatched gunmen to pursue them, said Mr Chakhansori, and they were caught. Reports differ over whether the families turned them over to local Taleban voluntarily or the Taleban took them by force.
“Three Taleban mullahs brought them to the local mosque and they passed a fatwa that they must be killed. They were shot and killed in front of the mosque in public,” the governor said.
[...]
Elopements are regarded as deeply damaging to family honour across Afghan society and murders of women by male relatives are frequently reported. In this instance it is not clear whether the families were complicit in the murders.
Even in government-held areas killings in which there is a clear honour motive are rarely investigated.

- Source / Full Story: Taleban ‘shoot eloping couple dead’ outside mosque in Afghanistan, Tom Coghlan, The Times, Apr. 14, 2009 — Summarized by Religion News Blog

The Taleban adhere to Wahhabism, an extreme interpretation of Islam. Adherents consider it to be the purest form of Islam, but most Muslims reject it.

‘Honour’ killings are a form of barbarism based on Wahhabism. In recent years incidences of ‘honor killings‘ committed by Muslims have risen in the civilized world.