They’ll Stone Ya Just Like They Said They Would

by Jim Washburn

I've written here about Middle Eastern beheadings before. Saudi Arabia is the head beheader, while Iran consistently comes in second, which must be a sad blow to the onetime empire.

One of Iran's problems is it diversifies, with hanging and stoning also being among the sanctioned forms of execution there. At this writing, a 43-year-old mother of two, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, awaits stoning after being convicted a second time of committing adultery in 2006. According to a human rights lawyer, Ashtiani had initially confessed to the crime while being given 99 lashes.

The more official sounding name for stoning is lapidation. Great term. That's according to an informative Wikipedia article--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning-which goes on to relate that stoning had been a popular form of execution under Hebraic law, though that was a long time ago, before they had bulldozers. According to the Mishnah, you could get yourself stoned for desecrating the Sabbath; for allowing an animal to have intercourse with you; for giving your seed to Moloch and sundry offenses.

Stoning is not a traditional punishment in Iran, but was adopted after Muslim extremists came to power in the 1980s and imposed sharia law. It dictates that those convicted of adultery-who always seem to be women-be buried up to their chest and have stones hurled at them of sufficient size to wound them but not to kill them immediately. And they say Allah is merciful.

Stoning is chiefly practiced in Saudi Arabia and Iran today, though 85% of Pakistanis are reportedly polled as thinking it's just ducky. In Somalia in 2009, a 13-year-old girl was stoned to death before an audience of 1,000 in a stadium, convicted of adultery after reportedly being gang-raped. That's women for you; even at 13 a little temptress, luring men from the path of righteousness.

I'm against most wars, but if you have to war with somebody, wouldn't you just as soon it was these scum? No nation has a monopoly on righteousness, and it is not so long in our past that we were incinerating women and babies in their teepees or giving electro shock treatments to homosexuals. Every people should be allowed to learn and grow in its own time and manner.

HOWEVER, sometimes human conduct is just so backward and wrong that it needs to be confronted when and however it appears, when you need to tell the evildoers, "Look please don't take offense in this, but in some significant respects we're a couple of hundred years ahead of your superstitious, woman-oppressing, unaware culture, and I can guarantee you that 200 years hence your progeny will look back on what you're doing now, and will think you're the sickest, cruelest, stupidest fuckers they'd ever heard of. Wake up, dummy, right now."

If you'd like to send a little message to the rulers in Iran, here's one of many sites that help you do that.

Here's the CNN report on Ashtiani.

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