Afghan Woman Farkhunda Lynched ‘For Speaking Out’ Against Superstitious Mullahs

An Afghan woman who was lynched after being falsely accused of burning the Koran was killed for tackling superstitious practices.  Farkhunda, who was beaten to death by a Kabul mob last week, had been arguing with a mullah about his practice of selling charms to women at a shrine. In the course of the argument she was accused of burning the Koran and a crowd overheard and beat her to death.

Hundreds of Afghans protested on Monday against the attack.

The event has raised new questions about the pace of reform in Afghanistan. And there has been no attempt in the government to deny the seriousness of what happened. A spokesman for the interior ministry, Sediq Sediqi, said the father was right to say that the police could have done more to save Farkhunda. “We will have to work on our measures, on our teaching and training for our police across the country, and this incident will bring a lot of changes within us,” he said.

Farkhunda, 28, was beaten, hit by bats, stamped on, driven over, and her body dragged by a car before being set on fire. A policeman who witnessed the incident on Thursday told AP news agency that Farkhunda was arguing with a local mullah. Her father said she had complained about women being encouraged to waste money on the amulets peddled by the mullahs at the shrine.The policeman who saw the incident, Sayed Habid Shah, said Farkhunda had denied setting the Koran on fire.

“She said I am a Muslim and Muslims do not burn the Koran,” he said. “As more people gathered, the police were trying to push them away, but it got out of control,” he added.

A band of 30 Afghan women carried the body of murdered student Farkhunda through the streets of Kabul yesterday, defying the girl’s murderers in order to give her a proper burial.

26 men have been arrested in connection to the homicide.

Three days later, more than 1,000 gathered for her funeral in the Afghan capital. The symbolic assertion of power and strength by the women, defying a puritanical ban against women at cemeteries, is a hopeful expression for women—and men—in traditional Muslim communities, rejecting antiquated interpretations of Islam that subordinate women, denying them fundamental human rights, such as the right to simply grieve at a gravesite. From Mumbai, India, to Hayward, Calif., mullahs, or religious clerics, ban women from burials, citing an interpretation of Islam, largely exported by the Saudi expression of Taliban Islam that denies women the right to drive cars, vote or run for political office.