I don’t think finding a connection between this and the Iraq war makes much sense. What you see here is a glimpse of the other side of the cultural abyss, in which the control of women – their bodies and their souls – by brutal patriarchal fundamentalists is the norm. It’s evil. ~Andrew Sullivan
I think what is most amazing to me is that this doesn’t take place in some tent in the middle of the desert or a stone hut [bold mine-DL]. These people are not dressed in tribal garb — they are wearing jeans and t-shirts and the whole thing takes place in a street in what appears to be a modern town. It isn’t the Moqtada al Sadr brigade or Al Qaeda extremists —it’s not part of the civil war although according to the article, many Iraqis are trying to rationalize it as such. This is nothing but barbaric patriarchal violence perpetrated by our alleged allies, the Kurds, toward a teen-age girl…~Digby
What is lacking in both of these responses is any sense of just how crazy it always was to think that Iraq was well-suited for anything like modern democratic government, when this takes place in Kurdistan, alleged bastion of enlightenment (at least according to the pro-Kurdish pundits in the West). Leave aside for a moment the incompatibility with an Islamic society–what of the incompatibility with a tribal one, such as that of Kurdish Yezidis, who are not even Muslim? Of course, there’s nothing surprising that the Yezidis are wearing modern clothing. It is a quaint, silly idea that cultural habits and mentalities are somehow required to be linked to this or that economic or material condition.
To offer a slightly different perspective, let me ask this question: what part of this episode do Westerners find more troubling? Is it the stoning, the brutal killing of the girl, or is it the idea that there should be social control over interpersonal relationships and sharp social separation between religious groups? Some might say that the two are bound up with each other and would argue that the stoning is simply a product of the latter. That’s reasonable. Yet if the punishment for this transgression was not execution, but was one of ostracism or some other means of shaming, what is the outsider’s real, principled objection to it? That people should be allowed to love and marry whomever they like? To the mind of anyone in a traditional society, this is insane and a recipe for the annihilation of small groups. Indeed, all things considered, it is a fairly strange idea. In any case, it is the Yezidis’ marginal, minority status in an Islamic sea that helps explain why they are so ferocious and brutal in their insistence on maintaining the boundaries of their group. This is part of the more general collapse of security to the extent that this and things like this will happen more and more as different sects are forced to turn to self-help and customary law to govern their part of the country. It is part of the war to the extent that the war was the cause for unleashing the revival of sectarian identity as a particularly important element in everyday life.
razib 
empiricus 
danielhaar 
i helps to know what to look for….
Thanks for the posting: it made me think, as all your better efforts do. To answer your question (second paragraph beginning).
1) Yes, I take a dim view of killing people to maintain group boundaries (I suppose I need to work harder on my cultural relativism), and yes, ostracism as punishment for the same transgression would be an entirely different thing. I recognize that I can’t really imagine the experience of being Yezidi and the pressure their society has been under, but I still say it’s no excuse. Like I said, gotta work on that cultural relativism.
2) While the brutality is indeed stomach-turning for me, the morality of the situation wouldn’t be all that different if the chosen form of lynching were a gunshot to the head or a syringe of KaCl to the heart. I suspect that the particular form of mob justice is at least traditional (for Zezidis; it certainly is traditional in e.g. several Islamic societies), and is perhaps specifically enjoined by the Yezidis’ scriptures or hadith-analogs.
3) The fact, if it is a fact, that the consequences are rather less when the transgressor is male also infuriates me.
4) There’s also something in the mob mentality displayed that throws some sort of switch in me and makes me quite irrational; I want to individually lower the perpetrators into a vat of nitric acid, in reverse order of their centrality to the lynching of course so the ringleaders have the maximum time to anticipate their personal trip. I’d prefer to think of it as avenging the [comparatively] innocent but I recognize full well that it’s the barbarian/animal in them bringing out the barbarian/animal in me. Their fallenness calling out to mine if you prefer.
5) Here I show my lack of knowledge in cultural anthropology: are there any non-Muslim civilization societies (by Muslim civilization societies, I mean societies that have existed within the Muslim cultural orbit for at least a few centuries, so including Yezidis, Alevis, Druze, Mandaeans, etc.) that still practice “honor killings”? I can’t think of any, but it wouldn’t particularly surprise me to find something similar in say New Guinea.