Sharia alert from Saudi Arabia. If they hadn't confessed -- the circumstances of which I do not know, but probably the evidence was fairly conclusive -- they would have walked, and the victims would never have been able to establish their guilt in the absence of male witnesses. From AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
Two men were beheaded in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, yesterday after being convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman, the Interior Ministry said.The men, a Saudi and a Yemeni, were executed in a public square after confessing to their crimes, the ministry said in a statement.
The two men forced the victim into their car and sexually assaulted her before stealing her mobile phone and money and letter her go, the statement said. It was unclear when the crimes were committed.
The executions took the number of people beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year to at least 62. Last year, 35 people were executed in the kingdom and 52 in the year 2003.
Had a friend who was in Riyadh, said they were told not to go down town on the middle of the month. He did. Claims he saw several beheadings there in the town square, one a man who had sodomized two young boys. Looks like it's still business as usual. Why is anybody familiar with Sharia law at all surprised at this?
A friend of mine who lives in a Saudi city tells me that the ex-pats there are told not to venture downtown on Thursdays because that's execution day (presumably to deal with offenders before prayers on Friday). She tells me that she knows of women who have been executed by having concrete blocks dropped on their heads from a height. In that oppressive society it's hard to imagine any draped, escorted, intimidated female having the opportunity to commit any crime, but of course the crimes are probably "sexual" (we would call them "real life")in nature, e.g., adultery, for which the female there pays the heavier price.
The death penalty for any crime, the death penalty for rape, and beheading as a means of judicial killing are all barbaric. Saudi society is steeped in blood and injustice, but the Saudi princes continue their high-living life styles on the Riviera, the Saudi princesses continue to shop til they drop in London - and Bush continues to hold their hands. When will the West distance itself from this barbaric country?
I actually support the death penalty, State Execution - not in line with any religious law, & certainly not in public.
Some people are just plain bad & deserve death for their crimes - particularly against women & children.
I certainly & absolutely support the death penalty for the failed Londonistan bombers, Team Two - instead of the easy, pampered life they will receive for the next 20 years. (Yes folks, 20 years is the maximum time these monsters will face).
Hardly a deterent for the foot soldiers of an "evil idddddeology" that has been fighting this war for centuries.
They will not even be stripped of the Nationality they hoodwinked us into giving them, (which isn't difficult) let alone be deported back to whichever Islamic utopia they came from.
albion:
While I often agree with you, I have a different view of the death penalty. I believe there are too many weaknesses in the judicial system for me to be responsible for executing someone. See the attached articles about a case presently unfolding in Toronto.
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/toronto/story.html?id=55bd3855-53b9-4e80-b73a-f04f663c7b41
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1127339414500&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
The execution on September 14, 2005 in Texas brought the total number of executions in the US to 982, since the Supreme Court reinstated the DP. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
The US has rejected international calls to abandon its DP, yet, the state sponsored killings persist. The US government hasn't one ounce of leverage in asking other nations to stop executing its citizens.
albion: "Some people are just plain bad & deserve death for their crimes"
King: What a hypocrite!!!!!!!! You have the gall to bark about Islam and how evil its Sharia law is and yet you manage to pass judgement and justify executions, knowing fully well that the DP has been abolished in the UK! You've fallen out of the gutter and into the sewer on this one.
Johnb
Thanks for those. Certainly gives one pause for thought.
The Birmingham 4 & many other miscarriages by British Courts also gives my support of the death penalty a few sleepless nights.
In the UK, judiscial changes have happened & many new forensic techniques are now available - in the majority of cases proving the innocence or guilt of a defendent beyond any doubt.
& in my view the ultimate sanction would have to be backed up by the removal of all possible doubt as to an individuals guilt.
Times are scary. Deterents do work. The ultimate deterent, in my view must be available as a weapon of defence for civilised society.
If it convinces just one person to mod their behaviour & prevent a heinous crime against an innocent then just maybe....
but I do hear you M8.....
KT...I am scrolling on by....thought you had "moved on"? Obviously no problems lying to infidels...
I thought you get a
visa to Canada when you get raped plus extra cash!
Am I missing something?
The visa to Canada and the millions when you are raped?
Oh, that must be Mr. Musharraf, the man wildly applauded (several standing ovations) when he spoke recently to the heads of all sorts of Jewish groups, groups that think they speak and think for all sorts of people. But just like The New Duranty Times and the Bandar Beacon, or the Lawerence Lowenthal fellow whose world-views have been dissected (even more so since this chinovnik accidentally sent an email, as he thought, to a certain Jim Kaufman but instead to a certain Alex Koifman -- ooops, loose clicks sink --- you fill it in.
The visa to Canada and the millions when you are raped?
Oh, that must be Mr. Musharraf, the man wildly applauded (several standing ovations) when he spoke recently to the heads of all sorts of Jewish groups, groups that think they speak and think for all sorts of people. But just like The New Duranty Times and The Bandar Beacon, the often self-appointed, and very well-paid "Jewish leaders" of various groups speak for themselves, and less and less for those they claim, without any evidence, to speak for. Think of the Wall Street Journal story about one typical chinovnik, Lawerence Lowenthal, whose world-views and especially whose pious sentiments about Islam have been the subject of analysis ever since he berated Russsian Jews (what appeared in The Wall Street Journal did not contain the full, contemptuous and contemptible text) in an email, which his little finger thought it was sending to a fellow-chinovnik, one Jim Kaufman, and in fact was sent through the willing ether to Alex Koifman, who was not pleased to read the contemptuous dismissal of Russian Jews, "we never should have helped them" or words to that effect.
Loose clicks sink --- .
Please complete the line yourself; I blush to do so.
I was wondering if the women was stoned to death for adultery?
The death penalty is one issue here - and one not specific to Saudi Arabia. But there are other issues: the fact that the death penalty is used for a crimes other than murder (in this case, rape) and the fact that the penalty is carried out in a barbaric bloody manner.
Another issue here is the public nature of the executions. The authorities display state sanctioned bloody brutality in order to control the masses - crime deterrent is only a minor purpose of this spectacle. Public judicial brutality is a relic from medieval times which the modern world now considers anathema.
But beyond those issue, there is the mindset (inconceivable to a rational human being) of the individual spectator in the public square on execution day. As well there must be an obvious collective group-think in sway to attract and hold a crowd, to overcome disgust and fear (our interpretation) or to play into the fascination with blood and gore (which Islam seems to feed upon), to mesmerize in horror (the way we would think of it) or in appreciation (were there cheers when the heads hit the pavement?).
The sheep are herded together to watch the slaughter of one of their own - and they find some comfort in the fact that it is not they who are being sacrificed (this time). All their individual fears and hatreds are projected upon those who are to be executed and temporary relief comes when the heads fall.
Are there later celebrations with glasses of sweet hot tea where men sit around and discuss what they saw, while the women cower under their black shrouds and retreat to their houses to close their minds against the world?
Are there later celebrations with glasses of sweet hot tea where men sit around and discuss what they saw, while the women cower under their black shrouds and retreat to their houses to close their minds against the world?
And they hope and pray not to offend or anger their husbands or other male family members, it is not a hard thing to be convicted of adultery in SA.
This is good:
http://memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=843
sheik yer'mami:
"Organizer: As the Prophet Muhammad said, Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam. A person who cannot wage Jihad with his soul is required to wage Jihad with his money, his tongue, his thought, and with any means at his disposal. There is no doubt that our brothers in Palestine desperately need financial support, which goes directly to this cause, and helps them to carry out this mission."
......mmmm, sounds like a certain troll we have crossed swords with in the very recent past here at DW / JW
albion: "Obviously no problems lying to infidels."
King: Or catching them in hypocrisy.
Sheik Yerbooty: "We are at war with Islam. Internment, mass-deportations and summary executions of those fighting the Jihad against us, whether by sabotage, terrorism, treason or seditious activity, should be a normal course of action until the situation has been brought under control."
King: You've just described a Hitleresque agenda complete with the ethnic cleansing. You get zero points for originality. This being said, you sound like a perfect candidate to put on a helmet, grab a gun, and get your racist ass to the M.E. to fight for the cause you support. Anything less than this would be laughable at this point.
"get your racist ass to the M.E. to fight for the cause you support"
Confucius say "Better to be racist ass than to be cowardly Useful Idiot"
Cornelius deserves a gold medal for patience (particularly in the Cat Stevens thread) in dealing with the poster who believes, for example, that, in comparing
1) a punishment of 3 years of imprisonment and public flogging with a cane for the "crime" of a human being of one gender being in the company of a human being of another gender who is not a relative or a spouse (a recent punishment in Saudi Arabia)
2) the blithely universal insouciance in America and Western Europe for not only single men and women to be alone together, but to be engaging in anything from soft-petting to wild consensual sex,
to quote the King: "nobody is right or wrong here".
Cornelius wrote of KT: "The pathology in your thinking is that you accord them every right to reject our cultural values but castigate those of us who advocate the rejection of theirs."
That is one glaring pathology in his "thinking". There are others, such as his refusal to judge that publically flogging (and then imprisoning for 3 years) a man for being in a hotel room with a woman is a morally wrong punishment. This pathology is further twisted into a new pretzel shape when KT obviously judges certain official policies as morally wrong (example, his little screed above against the death penalty in the USA). So KT will on the one hand wish to affect moral neutrality when presented with Muslim cultural immorality, then suddenly switch to affecting moral outrage when presented with American cultural immorality.
(I will post about comparing Saudi executions with American executions soon.)
Dr. Pepper:
I await your comments eagerly. If you haven't read Melanie Phillips's Sept. 20 diary post on the Church of England's announced intention to apologize for the invasion of Iraq because the government won't, you might find some inspiration there when it comes to slicing and dicing moral imbeciles. Double quotes = reportage in a UK newspaper. Single quotes = Melanie's analysis.
"The bishops cite as precedents the official statements by the Vatican expressing sorrow for the Christian persecution of the Jewish people throughout the ages, the repentance by the Anglican Church in Japan for its complicity in Japanese aggression during the Second World War and the regret expressed by leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa for their theological and political backing of apartheid."
'In other words they are comparing the removal of Saddam Hussein with the persecution of the Jews, the axis against democracy in World War Two and South African apartheid. But it was Saddam Hussein, the butcher of his own people and sponsor of terr*rist m*rder against Israel and America who was the brother in bl*od to the tyrants of history. To compare these evils with the attempt to remove a similar modern evil is a straightforward inversion of good and evil. One associates such anti-reasoning with moral imbeciles – but the church?'
Dr. Pepper: "Cornelius deserves a gold medal for patience (particularly in the Cat Stevens thread) in dealing with the poster..."
King: Either politely engage me in a debate or shut up. This is the fifth time you've mentioned me in the third person and advised people to "scroll by." You canot even take your own advice, how to take you seriously then? Cornelius got my time and effort because he deserves it. He is here to debate his position, not to simply fling bile he is not prepared to back up.
Dr. Pepper: "So KT will on the one hand wish to affect moral neutrality when presented with Muslim cultural immorality, then suddenly switch to affecting moral outrage when presented with American cultural immorality."
King: I am not a Muslim, nor do I live in a Muslim nation that follows Sharia law. Therefore, my opinion (and yours, too, by the way) of the morals of their punishments are irrelevant. I am equally offended by human rights policies within my own nation so I'd rather clean up my own yard before worrying about somebody elses.
Wm Crusader: "Confucius say "Better to be racist ass than to be cowardly Useful Idiot""
King: No surprise coming from you. Tell your friend the Sheik! He's the one sitting behind his PC monitor rather than taking his racist words to the battlefield where they belong. Alas, the cowards are obvious.
waterdragon, thanks for the quote. That moral inversion, or rather double-helix twist of perversion, evident in the Church of England's bishops' sentiments is a long-standing problem in the West; one good template for diagnosing it remains Orwell's (though I don't think he ever explained why it's there -- nobody really has done a thorough historical and philosophical analysis of this disease of the West that leads to these moral inversions/perversions; one complex feature of it is that this Western disease is intimately related to and symbiotically dependent upon Western health: liberalism is thus a paradox).
Re KT's moral indignation at the American death penalty injected into a discussion of the hideous depravity of a major Muslim country with the same style of reflexivity as is evidenced by a knee in an examination room when the doctor hits it with a rubber hammer:
"The execution on September 14, 2005 in Texas brought the total number of executions in the US to 982, since the Supreme Court reinstated the DP."
1) the proper comparison to be made is not between Saudi Arabia and the United States as a whole (however, as will be seen shortly, even that comparison shows the grotesque disparity between the two polities): a good and appropriate comparison on this issue would be between two polities who share roughly the same habitable landmass, and roughly the same population -- Saudi Arabia and Texas. (Furthermore, there are other features that make this comparison suitable -- a similarity in topography and climate, i.e., a lot of dry and desert climes (though SA has far more of this, rendering its larger physical size irrelevant without the qualifying factor noted above, how much of it is actually habitable and inhabited); a similarity in having a high population of foreign workers (though again, SA's statistics far outstrip those of Texas); and a similarity in the support for the death penalty and the alacrity to practice it (though again, SA is a far worse offender on all counts, from sheer numbers to the unfairness of the legal process, to the types of crimes being punished).
2) KT cites the number 982 for executions in the USA, which sounds like a lot. However, the number 982 is the total number for executions in 39 states over a period of just over 30 years, from 1974 through the present. We don't have full statistics of Saudi Arabia for the same entire period, however, if we extrapolate from the fact that during a single 10-year period (1993-2003), 939 people were executed in Saudi Arabia -- a polity by population and size comparable only to Texas and not the entirety of the 39 states which practice death penalty -- we would reasonably conclude that the same 30-year period under comparison (1974-present) would yield Saudi Arabian execution numbers at roughly 3 times the number of the entirety of USA executions (982) which KT interjected his reflex spasm of moral outrage into this discussion. The total executions over that 30-year period in Texas was (actually, Texas did not execute its first prisoner until 1982, even though by law the death penalty was reinstated in 1974) under 350.
Thus, if we make the appropriate comparison between the two polities of Saudi Arabia and Texas, we have a comparison (just on numbers alone, not counting the egregious disparities in legal process, types of punishable offenses, and grotesqueness of style of execution) of:
Texas -- 350 executed in 30 years
SA -- 2,946 executed in 30 years (by the projection rationale explained above).
The comparison (whether the more appropriate comparison between SA and TX, or even between SA and 39 USA states), even for the death penalty opponent, can and should arouse the following sentiment: The American death penalty policy is bad and reflects poorly on our sociopolitical culture, but the Saudi Arabian death penalty policy is far, far worse because of the factors noted above of
a) sheer numbers
b) much higher degree of unfairness of the legal process,
c) types of crimes being punishable and punished
d) type of punishments
-- and we should not compare the two either as equivalent nor as showing that America is, somehow, worse.
http://www.newsaic.com/f911chap3-4.html
Re: Two men were beheaded in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, yesterday after being convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman.
Good.
Prison sentences for rape are not uniformly long or severe. A study by a statistician from the U.S. Department of Justice, involving about 80 percent of the prison population, found that based on prison releases in 1992, the average sentence for convicted rapists was 9.8 years, while the actual time served was 5.4 years. This follows the typical pattern for violent crimes in the US, where those convicted typically serve no more than half of their sentence.
The "KIng":
Your hysterics give you away.
Your limited ability to debate issues give you away.
Your pitiful attempt at kitman/taqiyya gives you away.
You make no point. Race is no issue here. Ideology is the issue and how to combat the enemy.
You are repeating the same lines (and lies) too often not to be a Mohammedan.
Your "tolerance" is by far too selective for you not to be a Mohammedan.
The Mohammedan poser, "King:"
"You've just described a Hitleresque agenda complete with the ethnic cleansing. You get zero points for originality. This being said, you sound like a perfect candidate to put on a helmet, grab a gun, and get your racist ass to the M.E. to fight for the cause you support"...
Sure.
Bush is Hitler, Sharon is Hitler, we are all "racist" because we see the Islamic Jihad as a strategy of war which is a clear and present danger to all of us.
NOT to surrender and to "accept Islam" cannot be anything but "Hitleresque agenda, and "racist", which should be enough to shut us up, in the world of 'Kinkology'...
We are at war with Islamic Jihad. We didn't declare war on them, they are waging war against us. To defend against the enemy, to identify the enemy and to win this, we need a strategy.
To intern the enemy, to shut the infil-traitors centers of operation down, (mosques, madrassahs, Al-Jizzeera etc.) mass-deportations and summary executions of militants is a strategy that works against violent Jihad.
This is not genocide and not ethnic cleansing. Its a very workable and proper defense strategy that works.
It is not too late for that.
We don't need to fight them in Iraq.
To fight them on the home-front would be much more effective then to try to take 'democracy' to these zombies, or try to win "the Arabs hearts and minds", or "Nation-building" which appears to be the ultimate folly.
Good golly! The secret anointed one has returned! Be afraid of his wrath!
Sayeth Ted Turner: "The US government hasn't one ounce of leverage in asking other nations to stop executing its citizens...You have the gall to bark about Islam and how evil its Sharia law is and yet you manage to pass judgement and justify executions, knowing fully well that the DP has been abolished in the UK!"
The question, of course, is what they get executed FOR. Adultery? Too much in anyone's mind, save a nutbar. Murder? More comparable, certainly. I might also point out that the penalty for murder in several islamic countries is not death, but "weregild" to use the old Danish. "Blood money". A bit of a flip. The law is an ass, but in islam, it has three cheeks.
See also Dr. Pepper in response: publically flogging (and then imprisoning for 3 years) a man for being in a hotel room with a woman is a morally wrong punishment.
King: "I am not a Muslim, nor do I live in a Muslim nation that follows Sharia law. Therefore, my opinion (and yours, too, by the way) of the morals of their punishments are irrelevant. I am equally offended by human rights policies within my own nation so I'd rather clean up my own yard before worrying about somebody elses."
Ah. So you cannot comment - indeed, one ought NOT comment - on the legal rights or wrongs of other nations, because you do not live in them? So, using a bit of reductio, if Jews were being gassed to death in Auschwitz, ought we just say "tsk tsk - silly buggers shouldn't have been born Jewish"? We should then avoid social redress for Native Americans because, well, THOSE laws back THEN aren't ones we use NOW, of course? When Christians are systematically murdered in the Sudan - or Pakistan, or Turkey - we ought, instead of even commenting negatively on a legal system that allows such horror, such outrage (KT, are you there?), just sit by and twiddle our thumbs because America also has skeletons in its closet? (Sidenote: Surely KT is not comparing inequity here with the kind of inequity that gets you killed under sharia?)
This reminds me of a skit on the Kids in the Hall, that wonderfully comic troupe of Toronto, as I recall (nod to Water). The skit goes: a wife and mother gets a bit of turkey skin caught in their throat and begins choking to death. The family, panicked, begins frantically exploring suitable medical options: should we pound on her back? No! one of them shouts, Don't do anything until a trained medical professional arrives! Should we give her the Heimlich maneuver? No! Don't do anything until a trained medical professional arrives! Should we call a trained medical professional? NO! Don't do anything until a trained medical professional arrives!
That being, of course, the punchline, and, essentially, the position KT is arguing. Don't do anything until everything is perfect here! What, exactly, is this formula of the damned founded on, philosophically? The Kids in the Hall? Western guilt? Taqquiya? Hard to say, but KT's comment about "barking" above smacks of an old islamic rub I used to hear about caravans and dogs, but anyway. Should we also refuse to provide aid to developing nations "until everything is perfect here"? Or is this guilt everlasting? Can America (or the West, or any country therein) never help any other on the surface of the world ever again?
Well, suits me, some days. My most uncharitable ones, that is.
Prophet Geoff
Vittorio Feltri was right when he wrote at “Libero” that the decadence of Westerners is to be identified with their illusion of being able to deal amiably with the Enemy, and even less with their fear. A fear that induces them to meekly host the enemy, to attempt to conquer him with sympathy, hoping that he will allow himself to be absorbed; while [the enemy] is the one who wants to absorb.
..`Like I said in “The Apocalypse,“ [it’s] the general attitude of resignation. Resignation generates apathy. Apathy generates inertia. Inertia generates indifference and, besides impeding moral judgment, indifference suffocates the of self-defense; that is, the instinct to fight back.`
http://mysteryachievement.blogspot.com/2005/07/enemy-we-treat-like-friend-part-ii.html
Hey, if those men really raped women, they deserved this punishment and worse. On the one hand it's bad---the punishment is barbaric. On the other hand, it could be considered good---instead of killing the raped women to preserve the family "honor", it is the rapists that were punished. So I guess it's half-n'-half.
US infidel -- think of the Leftist critique of American death penalty laws: they argue that too many of those who end up on death row and executed are marginal types of society, too many minorities, etc., people who don't have the money for good defense, etc.
Take those problems with a system of capital punishment in the best society on the planet, the USA, and multiply them by 1000 -- which is probably the case in Saudi Arabia. The corruption and pathology of the government there, intermixed with their religious fanaticism and persecution of non-Muslims and Shiite Muslims, and you likely get way more cases of innocents and marginal types being executed where people with more clout get off scot-free (I wonder how many Saudi royalty have been beheaded for raping their Filipina maids?).
Yes, Geoff, the moral equivalencies are so obviously off that it boggles the mind that they are even uttered, but uttered they are.
And thanks for the trip down Memory Lane vis Kids in the Hall.
The death penalty is the apex of Saudi 'justice', but below that are layers of routine brutalities. Sometime about the 1st Persion Gulf war, the Saudi's had an American in prison. He was employed by an American contracting firm doing business there. He was arrested for possession of 'pornography', he had been held eighteen months, and had his feet beaten with a bamboo cane every other day. The pornography in question was a video tape of the old TV program, "The Love Boat'. Too many bikini clad women on the Lido deck for the Saudi authorities. When Bush Sr was there to visit his buddies , the Saudi Royalty, Bush was asked to interviene in this prisoners behalf. Bush declined to bring up the subject.
KT, Islam declared war on the world around 1400 years ago. Islam still divides the world into the House of Submission and the House of War. Not our words, theirs.