A teenage Muslim girl was stoned to death under “Sharia law” after taking part in a beauty contest in Ukraine. Katya Koren, 19, was found dead in a village in the Crimea region near her home. Friends said she liked wearing fashionable clothes and had come seventh in a beauty contest.
Her battered body was buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared. Police have opened a murder investigation and are looking into claims that three Muslim youths killed her, claiming her death was justified under Islam.
One of the three – named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev – is under arrest and told police that Katya had “violated the laws of Sharia”. Gaziev has said he has no regrets about her death.
Of course the article was immediately seized on by the English Defence League:
If you can stomach it, you can read the comments by EDL supporters here.
And the article provoked the usual succession of bigots into posting anti-Muslim comments on the Mail‘s own website:
“Would be nice to see some supporters of this faith speaking out against this all too common occurance.”
“In a recent demonstration by Muslims against the English, did I not see banners proclaiming ‘Sharia for Britain’.”
“How long before some idiot starts bleating about ‘Islamaphobia’ with reference to this news story? Im suffering from Islamaphobia myself I have a distinct aversion to young girls being brutaly murdered in the name of religion by cowards!”
“I wish apologists for the misogyny of ‘Islam’ would see how despicable their Sharia law is.”
“Another victim of the mysoginistic murder cult that is sharia law.”
“Where are the voices of ‘moderate’ Islam now? I can’t hear them, can you? Can anyone?”
“what a lovely religion NOT”
“Absolutely hideous! I am appalled that such behaviour is deemed justifiable under a law written over a 1000 years ago by uneducated warring idiots!”
“I hope the Archbishop of Canterbury is reading this he is rather a fan of sharia law as I recall, just shows how out of touch he is.”
However, there are several rather more informed comments that suggest the Mail‘s story of Sharia-inspired stoning is completely fabricated. For example:
“Daily Mail, stop lying and instigating hatred for Muslims! The original Russian article from Komsomolskaya Pravda of 28/05 does not mention any religious motives in this murder (I can provide the link to the original story). Katya wasn’t a Muslim. Katya Koren is not a Muslim name. There was no ‘three Muslim teenagers’ who ‘stones Katya’. there was just one mentally distrurbed boy of Muslim origin who hit her on the head once. He doesn’t know himself why he did it. People suspect because Katya rejected him. This has absolutely nothing to do with sharia, Muslims, religion etc. Who is making up such stories? You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
And: “The story is completely inacurrate. Katya Koren was a Ukrainian girl and she was an Orthdox Christian. That was not a stoning, but a cold-blooded murder by a psycho who happened to be from a mixed Ukranian-Tatar family. I am amazed, how things can be distorted.”
And: “This news, made by Russian propaganda apparatus, is provocation. Because the killer even has no any attitude to Islam. Katya is Russian, not Muslim. Boy is Slavic, but is adopted by Muslims. Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry Crimean Branch Press Chairperson Olga Bogoslavskaya said that murder is not motivated by religious belief. All world copied your news! Who will excuse?”
Also: “THE KEY FACTS: 1. Katya is an Orthodox Christian. 2. Bilyal is formally Muslim, just adopted by Muslim man 3. Bilyal is not religious, like his father, even didn’t go to mosque. 4. Murder is not done by stoning. 5. Internal Affairs Dep. announced that murder has no religious roots. 6. Such a news first appeared in pro-Russian media.”
See also “Katya Koren: Ukrainian beauty queen killed by disturbed classmate not Sharia law”, LoonWatch, 31 May 2011
Update: The Mail has an new article on the case headlined “Was Muslim girl ‘stoned to death for taking part in beauty pageant’ actually murdered by a stalker?” Perhaps that’s a question the Mailshould have asked before it published the original inflammatory article. And the paper is still banging on about how “Sharia law prohibits women from taking part in beauty contests” – which, even if it were true, would hardly apply to Katya Koren, who wasn’t a Muslim.