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I overheard on RightWing Talk Radio that the Russians have an effective way to deal with muslim suicide bombers and dead muslim terrorists (usually Chechen, I guess). Evidently they wrap the body in pork skin before burial. This is seen as an affront to the muslims, who consider the pig unclean.
Is there any truth to this rumor, or is this just AM radio bullshit?
I’d say it’s an affront to the pig.
Sounds like high-distortion of something that may have happened.
Firstly, with suicide bombers, there’s rarely a body left to wrap.
Secondly, if it was a way of tormenting Chechens during the civil war there, the Russian soldiers were often so desperate for supplies that there’s no way they’d have wasted good meat.
Thirdly, how does it effectively deal with Muslim fundamentalism? All it could do would be to further antagonise until-then moderate Muslims.
(Of course, there are isolated cases of Muslim corpses being treated in such ways - there was a case a year or two ago in Britain where a corpse in a hospital morgue was found with bacon stapled to the flesh. AFAIK, nobody’s ever been arrested for it.)
The popular urban legend goes that if a Muslim is buried with a pig, he cannot receive Allah’s blessing in the afterlife.
It dates back, to my knowledge, to the Philippines insurrection the United States dealt with during the early 20th century.
Rumor has it Blackjack Pershing would wrap muslim revolutionaries in pigskin when they died.
However that, and more than likely this, proved to be an urban legend of no real veracity.
We were told in Vietnam that the Turks and the ROK Marines would eviscerate and behead any VC/NVA that was captured in order to discourage ambush by their brethren (more of those lies that everyone accuses Kerry of). Never saw it myself, but it would be effective, given the religious beliefs in that neck o’ the woods.
Given what has been happening in Chechnia for many years, I hope you meant that the affront to the pig would be being handled by the russians (or alternatively that you’re really poorly informed about what’s going on there)
Note that neither was the Soviet offensive in Afghanistan successful nor has the Chechen insurrection ended based on this alleged practice. Referring back to Pershing: his story was supposed to have occurred in 1911, but the insurrection continued for several years following that undocumented incident.
Even if some angry soldier has actually attempted to scandalize his Muslim opponents, this does not seem to be an effective way to accomplish the goal.
Bill Mahr suggested burying the bodies of Muslim terrorists “wrong”, though his version involved a hooker and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Weren’t the Israelis putting pigs or pig carcasses on buses to discourage suicide bombers? I guess the idea is that if the s.b. got blown to bits, and some of those bits touched the pig, the unfortunate martyr got Satan’s cooties or whatever.
…great idea, 'cause Jews just love their bacon :rolleyes:
Have you a non-registration cite?
http://www.businesstodayegypt.com/0403/AZ1.asp
I got some of the details wrong (as you would have seen in the last link as well):
It’s pig fat, not a whole pig.
One Rabbi has suggested it as a possible tactic. Nothing more.
And it shows his ignorance of Islamist fundamentalism, if he thinks they won’t create a Koranic loophole for themselves to get around this new ‘problem’.
Well, I never commented on its effectiveness, I just mentioned pig matter of one form or another appears to be a veritable candidate deterrent, and the idea isn’t pure Urban Legend.
Ah SDMB, an endless supply of punk band names.
One historical example of a similar practice can be found in the retribution exacted by the British after the Sepoy Mutiny (or the “First War of Indian Independence”, if you prefer) in 1857.
In Andrew Ward’s book Our Bones Are Scattered (Henry Holt, New York, 1996), the author discusses the application General James Neill’s infamous “Lick Law” in which mutineers were forced to clean the blood at a massacre site by licking a patch of the floor before they were executed.
This wasn’t the only degradation mutineers were forced to endure.
There must be some provision in Islam to protect the souls of those whose bodies are violated with pork. Any ideas?
Man, you beat me to it.