How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays The Observer, September 13th 2009

This article extracted from the Observer deals with the violence of Islamist militia inflicted on gay people in Iraq.

1 The reasons that lead Islamist militia
2. The solution they use to reduce homosexuality that is considered as a scourge

A. The reasons that lead Islamic being violent

1. Gay people are sinners
According to Abu Hamizi, a member of an Islamic group; homosexuals sully the Islamic religion, their image because they don’t follow what is said in the Islamic doctrine. The deputy leader of the group even compares gay people with animals. Gays are seen as a shame for extremists. These people are not worthy of their religion that’s the reason why they deserve to die.

2. The expansion of homophobic comportments since Saddam’s departure of the government
For some people, the expansion of homophobic comportments is due to the lake of importance of militia. In fact, with the new government in place, problems of security are now tackled by the police. So to keep a place in the society, militia and extremist groups have to find new issues so that Medias keep talking about them: in Iraq: homosexuality! The journalist uses the term of a new wave of violence in the text to describe those comportments. Indeed, under Saddam Hussein, homosexuality was tolerated. Now, it has become a source of violence.

3. Inconsistency of extremists
Those hardliners are educated people, in charge of structured groups with probably an hierarchy. But their targets seem disparate. In fact, some militia torture homosexual but also people wearing “western fashion”. This fact points out the inconsistency of extremists.

B. The solutions bring by Islamic to curb the number of Gay people

There are 3 solutions I’d like to focus on :

1. To spy / to infiltrate their networks
There are Islamists who spend hours searching for homosexual