Posted on 09/15/2014 7:42:54 AM PDT by SJackson
Four American noncombatants have been beheaded by Islamic fanatics, and the videos of their murders brazenly circulated over the internet for the world to witness. Another Westerner – David Cawthorne Haines, a security expert hired by international aid organizations – faces the same gruesome fate.
Why do they behead us?
The question goes to the method, not the motive, of the madness. Murderers’ motives don’t matter much in the Middle East. In local eyes, there are so many causes to kill for, and so many victims deserving death. But assuming one is inclined to butcher, why do so by the particularly peculiar method of beheading? Why not butcher by shooting, or by hanging, or by detonation?
This is, to put it mildly, a grim inquiry. But it is worth the trouble to explore. For the answer may tell us something about the nature of the evil we face.
Others have asked the same question and come up with their own theories. David Brooks of the New York Times believes Islamic fanatics choose beheading because the act represents a defilement of something sacred: the human body.
A beheading … is not just an injury or a crime. It is an indignity. A beheading is more like rape, castration or cannibalism. It is a defacement of something sacred that should be inviolable. ….We’re repulsed by a beheading because the body has a spiritual essence. The human head and body don’t just live and pass along genes. They paint, make ethical judgments, savor the beauty of a sunset and experience the transcendent. The body is material but surpasses the material. It’s spiritualized matter.
Brooks’ observations are eloquent, but they are not persuasive. The Islamic fanatics hold no monopoly on beheading. Until 1981, the sole method of execution allowed in France was the guillotine, which was viewed, at the time of its adoption during the Revolution, as “humane” (it was quick) and “democratic” (it was administered to aristocrats and peasants alike).
And contrary to Brooks, any method of execution – not just beheading – is an indignity and a defacement of the human body. For there is no way to snuff out a human life without doing grievous injury to the body. Hanging breaks the spinal cord. Shooting shreds vital organs. Even the supposedly “civilized” method of lethal injection defiles the body; it paralyzes the lungs and diaphragm, rendering the condemned unable to breathe.
Michael Rubin, writing in Commentary Magazine’s online blog, believes that the answer lies in the Qur’an. He cites sura (chapter) 47, containing this ayah (verse): “When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely; then bind the prisoners tightly.” He cites other scholars who have explained that the Qur’anic injunction to “strike at the necks” of non-Muslims means that no prisoners should be taken until the enemy has been completely crushed.
This theory too has some merit, but ultimately it does not fully answer the question. First, the Quar’anic passages cited by Rubin apply to enemies on the battlefield, not to civilians. Neither Pearl nor Berg nor Foley nor Sotloff was a combatant. Berg was a freelance radio tower repairman and the others were journalists. Second, the beheadings have not been limited to non-Muslims. Indeed, most victims have been Muslims. In Syria, ISIS murderers are beheading their co-religionists. On the other side, the Free Syrian Army, backed by the United States, has beheaded their fellow Muslim ISIS prisoners. So religious doctrine fails to provide a complete answer.
Explaining why Islamic fundamentalists behead us requires a deeper look into this dark subject. It requires examining the relationship between the executioner and the executed, and their strange and ancient mutual obligations.
An executioner – whether employed by a state, or a religious movement – must believe that he is not a common murderer. He must believe that his act of homicide deserves some kind of legal or moral sanction, and is not merely a callous act of violence. The best way to secure that sanction is to enlist the condemned in the process of his own death.
In many places, this involves allowing the condemned to have a say in the manner of his execution. In a number of American states, the law grants, or until recently, has granted, death row prisoners choices. Convicts in Alabama, Arkansas (convicted before 1988), Florida, Kentucky (1998), South Carolina, Tennessee (1998), and Virginia can choose between lethal injection and electrocution. Convicts in Arizona (convicted before 1992), California, Maryland (1994), and Missouri can choose between lethal injection and lethal gas. Convicts in Delaware (convicted before 1986) and Washington can choose between lethal injection and hanging. Convicts in Utah, until 2004, could choose between lethal injection and the firing squad.
Allowing choice is not an act of benevolence. Rather, it is an act of transformation. It elevates the process of execution above that of common murder. For a common murderer allows no such options to his victim.
Another obligation between executioner and condemned is the custom of granting the right to choose a last meal. This ritual finds its origin in the traditional code of conduct between guest and host. By accepting food from his host, the guest agrees to a state of peace. He agrees to forego violence or vengeance. Similarly, by choosing and accepting his last meal, the convict symbolically makes peace with his executioner, and forswears vengeance from beyond the grave.
The last meal tradition is widespread, provided even to the most odious criminals. The Israelis followed it before hanging Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi mass murderer. He declined the offer of a special meal, preferring instead a bottle of Carmel, a dry red Israeli wine. He drank about half of it.
It hardly needs saying that observance of these obligations does not placate the condemned. He may go to his death hating his executioner, and bitterly resenting his fate. He may fervently wish that he could turn the tables, and kill his killer. But even if he does not agree that his executioner is meting out justice, he must concede that his executioner thinks that he is meting out justice. Thus, even the condemned is unlikely to consider his executioner a mere murderer.
When officers of civilized states carry out a sentence of execution, the process is designed to convey this message to the world:
This condemned man deserves to die. His sentence has been delivered and is being implemented in accordance with a set of legal and moral principles. The condemned man may hate and curse us for executing him. But by witnessing and participating in the rituals surrounding his death, he has acknowledged that we, his executioners, are trying to do justice, at least by our lights. Therefore, even if we are wrong, we are not mere murderers.
Those who decapitated Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, James Foley, and Steven Sotloff, on the other hand, had no interest in observing any mutual obligations between themselves and the condemned. They allowed them no say in the manner of their execution. On the contrary, they selected a method as alien as possible, because, for these butchers, there was no need to persuade the world of anything, not even that that their victims deserved to die. Note that in the speeches written by the executioners and recited by their victims under duress shortly before their deaths, there were no arguments to show that the men were guilty or that they deserved their fate.
When Islamic fundamentalists behead Western civilians, and publicize their grisly acts to the world, their process is designed to convey this message to the world:
These condemned men do not deserve to die. They have done nothing wrong. Yet we kill them anyway, and we do so in our own way, without any pretense of any relationship between us. We do not recognize any mutual obligations between us and our victims. We do not seek their sanction, nor do we seek the world’s. We do not pretend to care about justice. We kill because we can.
Theirs is a message intended not to pacify, but to terrify. It is highly doubtful any of these murderers ever read Percy Bysshe Shelley, but if they did, they might be tempted to paraphrase his poem Ozymandias, set, like the executions, in the desert, and to point to the severed heads and tell us: “Look on my works, oh ye moral, and despair!”
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because they’re atavistic monsters with a voodoo religion.
all I need to know.
Because their “holy” book tells them to.
It is more simple than that. It is to create hate in your heart. That is when you are the weakest.
Have they also beheaded our political and media elites? It seems that way. Without a HEAD they cannot THINK. They do not HEAR what the Islamics themselves are saying. They do not SEE that this is happening worldwide. They do not SPEAK the truth when they say this is a “religion” and a “religion of peace.”
Still, can’t we prosecute Israel at the International Court of Justice?
They behead us because Islam demands it. We allow it because we refuse to believe it.
they use beheading for a couple of reasons....it is called for in the Koran; it terrifies those who see it; they live in the 600s BC
In a political sense, this is exactly the same message that the democRATs have been using, aided by the DNC-run media.
"Moderate" Muslims do not exist.
I’ll take, “Because they worship Death” for $1,000, Alex.
"Moderate" Muslims do not exist.
Let’s put this in perspective.
Muslims have beheaded (and buried alive) many times more Muslims than non-Muslims.
It’s what they do. It’s who they are. It’s part of their identity.
Maybe it’s time we do a few beheadings to these sub-humans.
See how they like that sh!t.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Exodus 21:24
Shoot them with bullets dipped in pig grease, bury them upside in pig manure and not facing Mecca. Captain John J. Pershing
Decimation Roman Army
Impalement Vlad Dracula
Buried in an anthill, up to the neck and hands tied behind the back, then sugar smeared on the face. Apache Justice
I could go on and on. 21st Century minds are more ingenious than 7th century minds.
They love death and worship their father devil who is but a grand liar and murderer. Such deception and a rude awakening in eternal hell. Islam is spiritual slavery and a religion of pox.
BEHEADING IS THE TRADTIONAL M.O. OF MUSLIMS
THE CONQUEST OF CYPRUS AND THE HEROES AND MARTYRS OF FAMAGUSTA
The Turks came on with 70,000 men, including their shock troops, the praetorian guard of the sultan, the Janissaries — Christian youths taken as taxation from their families, trained up in the art of war, converted to Islam, and given the power of the sword and the possibility of advancement.
The Catholic defenders of Cyprus were frightfully outnumbered — by about 7 to 1 — but then again, the Knights of Malta had faced even stiffer odds. The two key points in Cyprus were Nicosia and Famagusta. The city of Nicosia held out for nearly seven weeks. Finally, reduced to 500 soldiers, it surrendered, expecting the civilians to be spared, even as the Christian troops were enslaved.
Instead, the Muslim attackers butchered every Christian they could find — 20,000 victims, murdered regardless of rank, sex, or age, save perhaps for 1,000 women and children who would be sold as slaves. The Muslims knew something about commerce, too, and those with an eye for harem-flesh tried to spare the most valuable Europeans.
That left the former Crusader fortress of Famagusta as the only defensible point on the island. Inspired by the Turks’ display of severed Venetian heads from Nicosia, the Christian soldiers put up a stiff defense and were at one point resupplied by gallant Venetian sailors.
The Muslim Ottomans have conquered Cyprus, an Island that belonged to the Republic of Venice, but the second most important city, Famagusta, resisted the brutal siege by the Turks. Men, women and children fought valiantly.
In August 1571, after ten months of resistance, the Venetian commander Marco Antonio Bragadino, forced by hunger, enter negotiations with the Turks. Terms were agreed: The garrison would be exiled, the people spared. The troops were disarmed and boarded transports — and then they and their commanders were slaughtered. But for Marco Antonio, the Mohammedans reserved a special torture. He was not killed immediately. Instead, his nose and ears were severed, and, as T. C. F. Hopkins has it in Confrontation at Lepanto:
He was pilloried in Famagusta and dragged around the Ottoman camp in nothing but a loincloth and a donkey’s saddle and made to kiss the ground in front of Lala Mustapha’s tent. The Ottoman soldiers were encouraged to throw garbage and excrement on him, and to mock his misery, and to pull hairs from his beard . . . Lala Mustapha himself came out to spit on the Venetian and to empty his chamber pot over the old man’s head . . .
And even that was not the end of it. Marco Antonio — still, for the moment, alive — was flayed, skinned like a trophy, and then his corpse was stuffed and sent to the sultan, who had the prize stored in a warehouse of other human trophies — a slave prison.
for what?
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