Horrific video footage (the video is at the link but the violence is edited out) has emerged of Taliban insurgents stoning a couple to death for alleged adultery in northern Afghanistan.Heaven forbid that anyone should bring foreign thinking to Afghanistan. If they did the place might progress all the way to the 10th century.
Hundreds of villagers can be seen on the video standing around as the woman, Siddqa, is buried up to her waist in a four foot hole in the ground.
Two mullahs pass sentence before the crowd begins to throw rocks at her head and body as she desperately tries to crawl free.
But the 19-year-old collapses to the ground, covered in blood - but miraculously still alive.
At this point a Taliban fighter shoots her three times in the head with an AK-47. The crowd can be heard shouting allahu akbar as she is killed.
Her lover, Khayyam, is then marched in front of the crowd with his hands tied behind his back. He is blindfolded with his own tunic and crouches down close to the ground as he tried to protect his body from the stones.
But he is battered to the floor by a barrage of rocks. He can be heard sobbing before eventually falling silent.
The stoning - the first to be documented on film since the Taliban were ousted from power - took place in the district of Dashte Archi, in Kunduz, last August.
Officials said that Siddqa had run away after being sold into an arranged marriage for $9,000 against her will.
She ran away to be with Khayyam, who was already married and had two children, and the pair eloped to Pakistan.
But it is understood that they returned to their home village after being reassured by leaders that they would be unharmed.
It was a terrible mistake. They were dragged from their families' homes at 2 am by Taliban fighters and then put before a kangaroo court before being executed.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid defended the stoning.
He told the BBC: "Anyone who knows about Islam knows that stoning is in the Koran, and that it is Islamic law. There are people who call it inhuman - but in doing so they insult the Prophet. They want to bring foreign thinking to this country."
Anyway, as you contemplate this horrifying execution of a 19 year-old girl think of Jesus' words to those who were about to stone a woman under very similar circumstances: "The one among you who is without sin should throw the first stone".
Adultery is a very serious matter, to be sure, but the Taliban spokesman is right. To execute people for it, and in such a cruel and savage manner, is indeed inhuman.
Elsewhere, Iran has hanged a Dutch-Iranian woman arrested for participating in the protests that followed in the wake of their phony election in the summer of 2009. If the demonstrations in Egypt inspire anyone else in the Mid-East let's hope they inspire the Iranians to try once again to rid themselves of a regime that's at least as bad as, and probably much worse than, that of Hosni Mubarak.
