Saudi Arabia Beheaded 59 People So Far This Year – But Hardly Anyone is Talking About It
October 16th, 2014Via: Vice:
The string of beheadings of American and British hostages at the hands of the Islamic State has drawn horror and intense media scrutiny the world over, redoubling international determination to defeat the extremist group.
But with IS dominating headlines, it is easy to forget that Saudi Arabia, a member of the UN’s Human Rights Council and a close ally of America in the war against the Islamist fighters, is itself routinely carrying out the practice of beheading.
Since January of this year, 59 people have been beheaded in Saudi Arabia under the country’s antiquated legal system based primarily around sharia law.
Last month saw Saudi Arabia behead at least 8 people — twice the number of Western hostages who have so far featured in IS’s barbaric execution videos. In August those executed by Riyadh were sentenced to death for crimes such as apostasy, adultery and “sorcery.” In one case, four members of the same family were executed for “receiving large quantities of hashish,” a sentence imposed, according to Amnesty International, on the basis of “forced confessions extracted through torture.”
It’s sheer bigotry to conflate state sanctioned executions in a country which has the death penalty with the barbarity of some Isis miscreants. We’re not talking about hacking some innocent’s head off with a blunt knife. Properly done (as with a guillotine, for ex), beheading is a quick, painless and humane method of execution, but for some reason we have qualms about it, as if dangling someone from a rope or leaving them to writhe in agony after injecting them with some chemical concoction is somehow more “civilized”. More apt would be a comparison of these Isis goons’ methods and the utterly depraved, horrific, and medieval electric chair used here. Oh, and we send the mentally deficient to their deaths in them too.
Though I agree with most of what you say (I’d probably choose beheading over lethal injection or e-chair or hanging), I don’t think the comparison between ISIS and SA is simple bigotry as the inspiration for both comes from the Quran’s prescription of beheading as a form of capital punishment and a means of dispensing with enemies of Islam and unbelievers. Thank Allah, the majority of Muslims are as repulsed by the thought of capital punishment as the majority of the rest of the planet.
Of course, unjust punishment is not a SA exclusive, but I’d prefer to be unjustly jailed than unjustly put to death.