Ah, yes, the old “but if they did something weally weally bad, don’t they deserve to be drawn and quartered a little, before they’re burned alive and fed to wild dogs ?” argument.
Sorry, still doesn’t work. The death penalty is barbaric, even in the case of bathe-in-their-eyeballs child murderers.
Considering what fundamentalist religious nuts say about homosexuality and adultery, I would not want to employ this argument.
A dead body is just a sack of bones and tissue. It isn’t a human being, and so the crucifixion part of the sentence really isn’t a “sentence” at all. You sentence a person, not a thing, and once the guy’s head is off his shoulders what’s left is just a thing.
It’s gross, but that’s all it is.
Beheading is no more barbaric than most forms of capital punishment. I personally oppose capital punishment but this isn’t any worse than lethal injection.
Ummm, everyone in Saudi Arabia knows the penalty for rape is beheading and this guy raped five children?
Nah, couldn’t be that obvious.
CMC fnord!
So there is no possibility that they guy did not do the acts he is accused of? None at all? In my experience looking into death penalty cases in Illinois, they are wrong half the time. That statistic is enough to make me against the death penalty. That and it is immoral for government to deliberately take lives.
Win.
He’s a rapist. Unless there is a significant risk they got the wrong man, I’m all for it.
Beheading is a fine punishment. Do whatever they want with the corpse, it means nothing
Maybe the defilement of the corpse is supposed to be a way of heaping indignity on the culprit’s family, considering the cultural concern with honor? So the “logic” would be making the criminal think “man, not only will I get killed ugly, my family will be disgraced”?
And regarding deterrence, I suspect the individual was at least generally aware of the punishments that Sharia prescribes for such crimes; deterrence only works for people who fear getting caught.
I don’t care what happens to the corpse. I don’t even care what happens to MY corpse. It’s just meat. Who cares what happens to meat? The punishment is a beheading. I don’t see how that’s any worse than the gas chamber or a lethal injection. If he’s guilty of raping these children, he deserves worse.
This raises an interesting question - how do police in authoritarian states like Iran investigate non-religious, non-political crimes? Do their techniques more-or-less mirror our own, or is there a whole lot more “confess or we’ll beat you, and then ask you to confess again” stuff?
Having grown up in one of those countries and being in jail twice before the age of 18 (I was a goody two shoes) I can attest that there is a whole lot of “confess or we’ll beat you.” and this is followed by a beating, even after the confession. On the other hand, at least in Pakistan (a religious totalitarian state at the time) the courts put very little faith in confessions. Basically I was arrested once after a car accident, and once seemingly at random. Both times my parents had to cough up some serious dough to get me sprung.
The jails were seriously scary places. One cell was a 20 X 20 room with a steel door and one tiny window about 20 feel high. Hot as hell, and almost pitch dark even in the day time. I am very glad my parents didn’t waste time bargaining over the price, and I never had to spend any time there at night.
At least in Pakistan, during the 1980s there was a huge overlap between religious nuts, sadists, criminal gangsters and ethnic (Pashtun) nationalists. At the time the army used these guys to do their dirty work. Considering the awful things the army was prepared to do on its own remit, that is saying something.
Firstly, I distrust the Saudi judicial system, and so I’m reluctant to just assume the guy is guilty.
Secondly, I think beheading is actually a humane method of execution, although it’s probably tough to watch.
Thirdly, I think desecrating a corpse is barbaric, and although many of us think of our bodies as just “meat”, most Muslims in S.A. probably don’t, and punishing the family in this way is disgusting. Is Islam a religion that does not believe in redemption or in God forgiving even the most evil act?
If it deters crime than I would say YES!!! x1,000,000,0000 However I don’t think it deters crime and a plain old hanging or firing squad is far better and cheaper and also morally superior. Also while I don’t think the criminal should be punished this way he needs to be put to death and if I had to choose between carrying out this punishment or setting the man free I would also while being upset immediatly choose the former option.
Right, but I get queasy just walking into a butchers. This crucifixion is supposed to be a public display. I think it does strike as barbarism to have dead people hanging around the place, bodies should be disposed of properly. Whatever floats their boat I guess, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to come across something like that.
I get the first two, but not the third. How is a firing squad morally superior to a guillotine?
The best laugh I have had today—Thank you!!!
I was not aware shari’a law sanctioned crucifixion in any circumstances, even post-mortem.
Ha! I just snorted in a very unattractive manner.
Personally I would prefer guillotine – in a public square, with a nice kewl dramatic drumroll and the executioner brandishing my bleeding head to the crowd – but the general Western view nowadays is that decapitation is more horrible because it’s obscene, because it’s all bloody and it mutilates the corpse.