Last week LGF featured Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, with a link to a FrontPage magazine article about the event. In the post I included a small image of the event flyer, also from the FrontPage article:

FrontPage’s description of the image:

The photo accompanying this article, which shows a teenage girl buried before being stoned to death for alleged sexual offenses, will serve as the poster for the protest Week.

Today some new information has come to light about this image; Confederate Yankee has a good post about the controversy, which was started by left wing site SadlyNo, who included a screenshot of the LGF post in their piece.

Apparently, even though the picture has appeared at many sites as an authentic photograph of a stoning in Iran, it is actually a still picture from a Dutch short film called “De Steen,” made in 1994 by director Mahnaz Tamizi.

To be clear, although SadlyNo tried to imply it, when I posted the image I wasn’t making any assertion about its authenticity—it’s there because it was the flyer for the event.

Nonetheless, in the interest of accuracy, and with lots of assistance from the lizard army and zombie’s terrifying Google Fu, we’ve tracked down enough correspondences to say that it’s highly probable the photo is from the film, and not a genuine photo of a real stoning.

(According to LGF reader “bluemerle,” another story is floating around on the web about the image: that it is a still photo used in the movie, given to the director by the photographer, showing a real female being prepared for a real stoning in the city of Arok. But since the woman in the photo bears a close resemblance to the actress in the film, Smadar Monsinos, this seems unlikely.)

FrontPage Magazine has removed the image now, leaving a broken image link and no explanation for the disappearance—which isn’t very cool. I wouldn’t cut any slack for a lefty blog that did something like that, and FrontPage ought to be held to the same standard.

Regardless of the authenticity of this one photo, however, there’s no doubt whatsoever that the barbaric practice of stoning, mandated by shari’a law as a punishment for adultery and other “crimes,” is common in Iran and other Islamic nations; here’s a description of a stoning carried out earlier this year, at Kamangir.

UPDATE at 9/28/07 3:03:50 pm:

Here’s video of a stoning, at YouTube. (Warning: it’s very low quality, but still extremely disturbing.)

UPDATE at 9/28/07 4:25:54 pm:

Just today in Iran, a mother of three was sentenced to be stoned to death.

Tehran, 28 Sept.(AKI) - A court in the Iran’s second largest city, Mashad, has sentenced to death by stoning a mother-of-three for having an extra-marital affair, an Iranian newspaper reported Friday.

The daily Quds said the married woman’s lover had confessed to having had sex with her and that the court sentenced him to 100 lashes.

There are currently eight women in Iranian prisons waiting to be executed by stoning, a practice usually reserved for those found guilty of adultery according to the Islamic republic’s laws.