I don't think I'm ever going to understand Islam

Great Debates
21

Readers of this thread will be disappointed to learn that Andorra is no longer a theocracy:

From the CIA Factbook:
"Country name: conventional long form: Principality of Andorra
conventional short form: Andorra

Government type: parliamentary democracy (since March 1993) that retains as its heads of state a coprincipality; the two princes are the president of France and bishop of Seo de Urgel, Spain, who are represented locally by coprinces’ representatives
Capital: Andorra la Vella
Independence: 1278 (was formed under the joint suzerainty of France and Spain)
Constitution: Andorra’s first written constitution was drafted in 1991; approved by referendum 14 March 1993; came into force 4 May 1993
elections: Executive Council president elected by the General Council and formally appointed by the coprinces for a four-year term; election last held 16 February 1997 (next to be held NA 2001) "

Ah, for the glorious days before May 1993! At least they haven’t deposed our beloved Prince/Bishop.

22

Always happy to oblige with the grisly. For instance the Prince-Bishops of Treves, Strasbourg, Breslau, Fulda, Wurzberg, and Bamberg all had particularly bad reputations during the Thirty Years War.

The latter two were ruled by cousins, Prince-Bishop Adolf von Ehrenberg ( r.1623-1631 ) and Gottfried Johann Georg II Fuchs von Dornheim. The first was responsiblee for roughly 900 witch burnings, the second at least 600. Those who spoke up against this barbarity were often branded as ‘witch-lovers’ and met nasty fates themselves. So with the Vice-Chancellor of Bamberg, Dr. Georg Haan whose attempt to moderate these purges resulted in him being burned with his wife and daughter in 1628, despite an Imperial order for his release ( the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg was not on good terms with the Emperor ).

One big motivator for persecuting “witches” in this period ( more often than not, these weren’t even the stereotypical ‘wise women’, but simply common citizens that ran afoul of someone ), was monetary. In April, 1631 alone, when things were starting to run down a bit in this area, there were 22 prisoners in the “witch prison” in Bamberg, including the the Bishop’s treasurer ( ! ), with a combined confiscated property of 220,000 florins. Plus the prisoners and their families were required to pay all the expenses of their trials and executions.

A typical trial went like this ( Frau Anna Hansen, 1629 ):
June 17 - Imprisoned on suspicison of witchcraft.
June 18 - Refused to confess; scourged.
June 20 - Tortured with thumb screws; confessed
June 30 - Voluntarily confirmed her confession; sentenced
July 4 - Informed of the date of her execution.
July 7 - Beheaded and burned.

Some common tortures ( by no means all of them, there were many local variations ):
1.) Thumbscrews
2.) Leg vises
3.) Scourging ( on a rack or while hanging )
4.) The stocks
5.) Strappado ( victim hung by arms and weights attached to legs )
6.) Friction ropes, cutting to the bone
7.)Cold water baths
8.)Burning feathers held under the arm or groin, often dipped in burning sulfur
9.)Prayer stool ( kneeling baord with sharp wooden pegs )
10.) Forcible feeding of salted herring ( I’d confess in seconds - ugh )and denial of water
11.) Scalding water baths with lime added ( this occasionally killed people right then and there ).

The above all taken ( at times near verbatim ) from the Bamberg entry of the big The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Demonology by Rossell Hope Robbins ( 1959, Crown Publishing ), which I keep around for whenever the need to freak/gross somebody out arises.

  • Tamerlane
23

Oh and as a slight correction, Baghdad was not built until the reign of the Abbasid dynasty, over a century after the rule of the Rashidun ( the first Four Caliphs ). The capital of the Rashidun was Mecca. Personally I’d be inclined to label at least the early Abbasid Caliphate as a theocracy as well, though it certainly gets complicated trying to nail some of these terms down.

  • Tamerlane
24

Gulf News
Khaleej Times

Two daily United Arab Emirates-based newspapers.

FYI the Gulf News published the Saudi fire story in full as early as 13 March.

Also try http://www.zawya.com - it’s primarily a business site, but they link to and syndicate pan-regional Arab publications. Newspapers in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon regularly publish quite strong critiques (by western standards) of extremist Islam.

Please note that this report about the fire did contain:

This might sound weak to us in the West, used to a “free” media. But things here are done very differently. Disapproval from enough, high-up, important people is likely to carry far more weight in certain areas than a load of angry newsprint.

Collounsbury probably has much more background on this than I do, but the impression I get is that the media here does not yet effect change in the same way that it does in the West. Cultural change is taking place, quite rapidly in some regards (Bahrain just became a democracy AND gave women suffrage) but certain things will take much longer. And only time and the gradual rollover of the generations will change things, not sudden, angry rhetoric.

25

Istara
The lack of public criticism in Gulf, and especially Saudi, society isn’t really a cultural problem. It’s a political one. Lots of cultures that dislike criticism and confrontation have “free” media that encourage public discussion and debate, Japan being a case in point.

The West needs to be tolerant of and sensitive to other cultural perspectives. However, the West need not, and, in most cases, should not, be “sensitive” to simple political repression. The Saudi ruling class is a “friend” of the West. The Saudi society they have allowed the religious establishment to create is not. I’m not advocating that the West should do anything in particular about this disjunct. However, we’d be bloody fools to pretend it doesn’t exist. As staunch an ally as the Saudis have been lately, the country could go from staunch ally to bitter enemy at the drop of a coup. The more xenophobic and repressive the Saudi culture gets, the more likely it is to blow up in our faces. It might well be too late now for the ruling elite to reverse this trend and create a more open and modern society without triggering the very events it seeks to prevent.

26

BTW, did anyone else read the title and think of See Threepio saying, “I don’t think I’m ever going to understand human behavior, Artoo!”

Sorry, carry on.