Faddah Ahmad stoned to death

BEIRUT (AP) — A cleric read the verdict before the truck came and dumped a large pile of stones near the municipal garden. Jihadi fighters then brought in the woman, clad head to toe in black, and put her in a small hole in the ground. When residents gathered, the fighters told them to carry out the sentence: Stoning to death for the alleged adulteress.

None in the crowd stepped forward, said a witness to the event in a northern Syrian city. So the jihadi fighters, mostly foreign extremists, did it themselves, pelting Faddah Ahmad with stones until her body was dragged away.

"Even when she was hit with stones she did not scream or move," said an opposition activist who said he witnessed the stoning near the football stadium and the Bajaa garden in the city of Raqqa, the main Syrian stronghold of the Islamic State group.

The July 18 stoning was the second in a span of 24 hours. A day earlier, 26-year-old Shamseh Abdullah was killed in a similar way in the nearby town of Tabqa by Islamic State fighters. Both were accused of having sex outside marriage. [Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 10 Aug 2014, A10] 



It must have been far too easy

dying like this. Stone, hundreds
of those, cast onto all parts

of your body that has known

everything and love too. 

We have before you the warriors,

bearers of truth from stones, hard,

pelted to soften the hardened heart,

yours to accept an end you did not choose.

Did you hear the angels sing,

or your god coming for the rescue,

oh Faddah Ahmad, you who have held tight

your man in the evening hours of doubt,

erasing from your chest those alien thoughts, 

and whispering into your listening ears

the music of a song coming from breeze? 

And they are men too, Faddah Ahmad. 

Did they ever touch the hand of their women,

held tight the bosom of their lovers

or, in between their casting and the next,

remember the soft nipples of their

mother's breasts? What are these men

who can afford to hit your head with right

or their version of grief they offer

to their avenging god, his shadow that of a man,

his double that of an impostor who cannot dance

with a thousand suns. 

HI/10 Aug 2014