You want a divorce? I'll behead you.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@tomndebb

The Flying Dutchman, and tagos, I’m not sure what you think you are establishing with tales of decapitation, generally associated with warfare: that Genghis Khan was Muslim, perhaps? At the times your stories occurred, decapitation was a common method of execution that really bore no religious significance. (The Jews executed for “conspiracy” were not tried under Shariah, but captured in a siege of warfare and condemned for “treachery.”)

Of course decapitation of the far past had very little to do with religion. But as a practice today it is revived and deliberately carried out under the auspices of the Koran by Islamic warriors who are in perpetual war with the rest of us in the name of Allah.

As for the beheaded Jews, who said they were executed under Shariah ? There was no such thing as Shariah back then.

[elfkin477]

@alterego

How on earth did he cut her head off at work? This is a quite difficult undertaking. It’s difficult to imagine being able to follow through with it, even in a rage.

If you can behead someone that you’ve never even met on a moving bus, I’m sure you could find a way to behead someone you know with what you’d find around the workplace.

[tagos]

@tomndebb

You should get a job writing fiction with that sort of overheated imagination.

If it is “Islamic,” you should be able to show a lot more incidences of it in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, and you should not be seeing it among Christians and Hindus.

There is a correspondence between honor killing and tribalism, but linking tribalism to Islam alone is silly. This anti-Islam site notes:

I have actually but thanks anyway.

It is ‘Islamic’ because Islamists explicitly do it on an Islamist basis, your ‘No True Scotsman’ arguments to the contrary. That Indonesia has preferred to carry out its genocidal murders by other more conventional means is neither here nor there but just because I read and remember stuff let’s revisit this:

Indonesian beheadings of Christians

On October 30, 2005, Theresia Morangke (15), Alfita Poliwo (17) and Yarni Sambue (17) were beheaded by militants in the Poso region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, an area plagued by sectarian violence since 2001.[1] The attackers planned the beheadings after a visit to the Philippines. In 2006/07, three men were arrested and convicted in relation to the attack, one being sentenced to 20 years in prison and the others to 14 years.

Five suspects, including a former military police officer, were arrested and later released for lack of evidence, although three were subsequently re-arrested. The trial of three men, Irwanto Irano, Lilik Purwanto and Hasanuddin began in November 2006.[8] In February 2007, prosecutors recommended 20-year jail sentences for all three defendants. The prosecutors said they were not seeking the death penalty because the defendants had shown remorse and been forgiven by the victims’ families.[9] The sentences were passed on 21 March 2007. Hasanuddin was given 20 years for planning the attack, while two accomplices were given 14 years. Hasanuddin had told the court he helped plan the attack, but he denied allegations he masterminded it.[10]

On going to jail, Hasanuddin said “It’s not a problem (if I am being sentenced to prison) because this is a part of our struggle.”[1] Hasanuddin was the leader of the regional Islamic terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) for the Poso district.[11]

It was in the news and everything.

Let the hand-waving begin in 3…2…1

[tagos]

And of course we remember the penchant of the Muslim Chechens for beheading Russian soldiers.

And we could read:

Terrorist Beheadings: Cultural and Strategic Implications by the Strategic Studies Institute.

In 1979, terrorism as a tactic used by religious groups re-emerged with the Islamic revolution in Iran. Other religious groups quickly followed suit. According to a 2002 National War College (NWC) report, a new trend within Islamic radicalism was the advent of the violent opposition of salafi extremists to
other sects of Islam, branding them as traitors to the pure and true faith. One example was the brutal campaign waged by the Pashtun Taliban against the Hazara Shiites in Afghanistan.9 The Taliban had differing rituals, traditions, and law, and were ethnically distinct from the Hazara.10 The Taliban did not
consider the Shiites to be true Muslims because of their distinctive doctrine of the imamate. The Shiite imam is more exalted than the Sunni imam, whose primary function is to lead prayer. The imamate refers to a group of male spiritual leaders regarded by the Shiites as descendents of Muhammad divinely appointed to guide humans.

And fresh from the deepest heart of tribal Arabia, or as we know it in the UK; Birmingham.

The Jihadi and the beheading plot

Khan was enraged with the idea of Muslims serving in the British army. He decided to try to kidnap a Gambian man serving in the army.

According to prosecutors, based on evidence gathered with an MI5 bug, the plan was to lure a soldier away with the help of drug dealers who would approach the man on a night out.

Once separated, he would be bundled into a car, taken to lock-up garage and beheaded on camera. The subsequent film would be circulated on extremist websites.

Or

Kidnapped editor beheaded in Sudan

The beheaded body of a Sudanese newspaper editor has been found on the outskirts of the capital, Khartoum.

Mohammed Taha ran the al-Wifaq paper and was taken from his home on Tuesday night by an unknown group of armed men.

Last year, he was put on trial for blasphemy after his pro-government paper reprinted an article questioning the parentage of the prophet Muhammad.

The charges were later dropped but if convicted of blasphemy under Sharia law, he could have been put to death.

Or:

Two people found beheaded in Algeria

Algiers - Three people have been killed in attacks blamed on armed Islamic radicals in Algeria, reported the country’s newspapers on Saturday.

A customs official and a civilian were beheaded in Gouraya, in the Tipaza region, on Wednesday.

And our starter for 3:

From Birmingham to Indonesia, from Algeria to Pakistan. What is the common denominator?

[tagos]

@tagos

And of course we remember the penchant of the Muslim Chechens for beheading Russian soldiers.

And we could read:

Terrorist Beheadings: Cultural and Strategic Implications by the Strategic Studies Institute.

And fresh from the deepest heart of tribal Arabia, or as we know it in the UK; Birmingham.

The Jihadi and the beheading plot

Or

Kidnapped editor beheaded in Sudan

Or:

Two people found beheaded in Algeria

And our starter for 3:

From Birmingham to Indonesia, from Algeria to Pakistan. What is the common denominator?

And I readily concede beheadings is a popular tactic of religious lunatics everywhere. I have equal contempt for zealots of any ilk.

[Koxinga]

tagos, no matter how many examples you present from so many places all over the world, it proves absolutely nothing because everyone knows that Islam is a religion of peace. Such acts of horrific violence are the opposite of “peaceful”, wouldn’t you agree? Then obviously they have nothing to do with Islam.

[tagos]

@Koxinga

tagos, no matter how many examples you present from so many places all over the world, it proves absolutely nothing because everyone knows that Islam is a religion of peace. Such acts of horrific violence are the opposite of “peaceful”, wouldn’t you agree? Then obviously they have nothing to do with Islam.

Of course I agree. Wouldn’t want to be beheaded.

Meanwhile: from Thailand

A Muslim military informant was shot and crucified, while two Buddhist men were beheaded Wednesday by suspected Islamic separatists in Thailand’s restive south, police said.

The Muslim man, a 58-year-old who belonged to a government-backed militia, was shot and then stabbed so badly that he was nearly decapitated, police Lieutenant Khanchitthol Kreunor told AFP.

Suspected rebels then drove six-inch nails through his head, arms and legs to attach him to two pieces of wood, which were laid out like a cross in the middle of a road in Rueso district of Narathiwat province, near the southern border with Malaysia, he said.

Khanchitthol said police found a note written in Thai and left near the cross, reading: “This is what the infidels deserve. The soldier dogs must meet this end.”

“The victim was attacked and killed in such a grisly way because they knew he was a military informant. This is to terrify the people,” Khanchitthol said.

About two hours later, two Buddhist fishmongers aged 20 and 61 were shot and then beheaded in another district of Narathiwat, police said.

[Koxinga]

Well, there you go again dredging up more examples and making yourself look like a hater. I’m starting to suspect you’re guilty of religious intolerance.

[tagos]

@Koxinga

Well, there you go again dredging up more examples and making yourself look like a hater. I’m starting to suspect you’re guilty of religious intolerance.

I’m pretty much totally intolerant of religious intolerance. It’s a fair cop. I’m pretty fucking intolerant of having a Muslim friend living in hiding in my own damn country because their relatives will kill her and any man she’s found with.

I’m also pretty intolerant, but not right up to the chop-chop level, of people who hand-wave way anything bad about religion on any variant of the No True Scotsman fallacy.

It is abundantly clear that there is a long-standing and strong link between Islam and beheading. Mohammad himself was dead keen on the idea and Islam is no more a religion of peace than my ass is a delicious jam scone.

[Anne_Neville]

@Liberal

What problems do you see with Muslim societies? Muslim, not Arabic.

Indonesia had racial riots about ten years ago where more than 1000 people were killed. They also had an insurgency in Aceh until the tsunami a few years ago.

AIDS is certainly a problem in a lot of sub-Saharan African societies.

Note I didn’t say anything about whether or not these problems have anything to do with Islam.

@tagos

I readily concede beheadings is a popular tactic of religious lunatics everywhere.

OK, maybe it is. So what? People who are not religious lunatics also kill their spouses when the spouse asks for a divorce. Maybe if this guy came from a different religious and cultural background, he would have shot his wife to death instead of beheading her. This would be better how?

@tomndebb

Honor killing is a horrible vice

And it may or may not be what happened here. There are motives other than family honor for someone killing a wife who wants a divorce. Jealousy and financial motives are two of those possible other motives. Those don’t have anything to do with Islam or family honor.

[sqweels]

Honor killing is currently virtually unknown in Muslim sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh and Indonesia. It is most commonly practiced by Muslim Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Afghans and Pakistanis and their immigrant populations abroad.

Do Christians in these countries commit honor killings at roughly the same rate as the Muslims?

[tomndebb]

@Koxinga

tagos, no matter how many examples you present from so many places all over the world, it proves absolutely nothing because everyone knows that Islam is a religion of peace. Such acts of horrific violence are the opposite of “peaceful”, wouldn’t you agree? Then obviously they have nothing to do with Islam.

I suppose that if I had ever made any silly comment that Islam is a “religion of peace” your failed attempt at irony might have had a point.
I have made no claim that Islam is a “religion of peace.” I have simply noted that the cherry-picking in which tagos engages for the purpose of spouting calumny against Islam fails to demonstrate his claims.

There are a number of groups in the Middle East for whom beheading is an act that is employed to demonstrate contempt for its victims. There is a separate activity, that of honor killings, that is employed by a wide variety of tribal groups across the world–many of whom have no contact with Islam.

In his desperate need to demonize Islam as Islam, tagos has pretended that honor killings are related directly to Islam, itself, depsite the fact that, (even according to a site that displays a great hatred for Islam), it is practically unknown in the two largest Muslim lands in the world or any of the Muslim lands away from the specific cultures where it is endemic, while he ignores that it is a feature of a number of other tribal cultures. In other words, honor killings tend to be tribal, not Muslim, but tagos wants to conflate the issues in order to rationalize his hatred for all things Muslim.
The issue of beheadings is a separate one that has a political motivation. The more extreme Islamist Fundamentalists have begun to employ both beheading and suicide bombings in their repertoire of vile acts. While there is a “Muslim” association based on the small number of hate groups that employ them, (just as there is a “Christian” association with carpet bombing and remote misslile strikes), they are tactics of a particular group in a particular series of acts of warfare and are not really “Muslim” in nature. (In fact, they have each been condemned by non-Fundamentalist Muslim clerics.) By trying to drag one set of terrorist acts in Indonesia into a separate discussion of the absence of a completely different barbaric practice that does not occur in Indonesia, despite that country’s huge Muslim population, tagos is obviously trying to conflate the issues and score hate points rather than actually addressing the issues under discussion.
One need not embrace Islam or make silly claims about the “religion of peace” simply to note that he distorts many facts and ignores many facts with the intention of making his point.

@Koxinga

Well, there you go again dredging up more examples and making yourself look like a hater. I’m starting to suspect you’re guilty of religious intolerance.

You need not “suspect” anything as he is quite vocal on the point.

[Koxinga]

@tomndebb

(just as there is a “Christian” association with carpet bombing and remote misslile strikes)

News to me. I’m trying to picture what a Vatican aircraft carrier looks like.

[tomndebb]

On oversized breviary with a mitre on the starboard side.

[Scissorjack]

@Koxinga

News to me. I’m trying to picture what a Vatican aircraft carrier looks like.

I dunno, but the RCS Infallible would be a really great name for a ship.

[tagos]

@tomndebb

Excised the usual apologetics

So - I demonstrate Muslims beheading all over the world, including the areas you previously claimed as beheading free and challenged me to find.

I provide cites showing that there is theological justification.

We both know that the distinction between Islam and culture is totally meaningless as both have been intertwined since Islam first took hold.

We both know that Sharia Law codifies the oppression of women.

All over the world Islamic terrorists are using beheading as a terror tactic.

And both of us SHOULD know that your crack about Christians and carpet bombing brings new nuances to the term asinine. Unless you have a biblical quote showing Jesus in favour of carpet bombing. And no - the Erich Von Danaiken translation of the Bible is not a reliable source to cite.

Why do you want to exculpate Islam. Are you so defensive of your own superstition that you have to defend every other manifestation of the same lunacy?

Muslims are using their religion to justify their actions. In Sharia Law they have a 1500 year old tradition codifying female oppression. The distinction you attempt to make between culture and Islam is non-existent No True Scotsman nonsense.

That simply is what Islam is in vast tracts of the world. Parsing the mumbo-jumbo to say that this isn’t what this or that particular passage means is irrelevant. All that matters is what the religious say their religion is. Just like Christianity was a crusader religion back in the day regardless of modern liberal interpretations of the Bible.

Islam gives terrorists their cause and theological justification. And when christians are inflicting terror on the world using the Bible as their justification then christianity will also be a religion of terror.

But for the time being it is not, in any serious sense. Christians are not fighting for the Kingdom of God equivalent of the Caliphinate. Christians are not pointing at passages in the Bible and building legal systems that weigh the word of a woman less and punishing raped women. They are not beheading people world-wide because Jesus said he was cool with it.

The reason you can’t see this is you think religion is somehow real. You think the words are something more than just an ideology that changes with the time. You think it is somehow meaningful to say ‘culture’ bad, ‘religion’ good when the two have been inseperable, so interwined since the time of Mohammed that there is no distinction. It is just what Islam is in those parts of the world.

The fact that beheading surfaces in Muslim Asian cultures with no tradition of brutal tribal patriarchy just reinforces my point. And in the UK and Western Europe. And in the broken fragments of the former Russian Empire. Everywhere Muslims are beheading in particular and inflicting terror in general in defence of Islam using an ideology derived from their religion.

And the point remains that the Koran is interpreted through the life of the Prophet via the Hadiths. That makes it very easy for violent ideologies to be built around Islam because Islam was always a spread by the sword religion and Mohammed himself willing and able to take the most savage and brutal steps to get his way. Steps that often included mass beheadings. It takes no effort at all to conjure a terrorist ideology from Islam.

It is simply a fact, by any reasonable look at the facts, that Islam is currently not a religion of peace, your attempts to conjure some sort of Platonic ponies and kittens for all ideal type version by designating all the bad stuff as ‘culture’ notwithstanding if only for its position regarding women regardless of all the rest.

And half of Indonesia’s provinces have laws influenced by Sharia

Sixteen of 32 provinces have passed laws influenced by sharia. These laws vary widely in form. In Padang, both Muslim and non-Muslim women are required to wear headscarves, while a law in Tangerang allows women found “loitering” alone on the street after 10.00 pm to be arrested and charged with prostitution. Other laws include stipulate Quran literacy among schoolchildren and severe punishment for adultery, alcoholism and gambling.

Indonesia is not a tolerant Muslim paradise - it is a battleground being ideologically fought over at the moment.

Damn right I am intolerant of religion in general and Islam in particular. Anyone not blinded by false equivalency needs to protect their own superstition should be too.

[tomndebb]

@tagos

So - I demonstrate Muslims beheading all over the world, including the areas you previously claimed as beheading free and challenged me to find.

No. You changed the debate.
We were discussing honor killings that you claimed were integral to Islam.
I demonstrated, using one of your own sort of hate sites, that honor killings were limited to the cultures of a single region among Muslims while noting that they are also prevalent in non-Muslim societies.
You then switched to beheadings, which are employed, (far less frequently), by one specific group of terrorists. You will simply keep switching the terms and moving the goalposts while you attempt to keep your hatred in the forefront.

All you are doing is demonstrating your unreasoning hatred.

[tagos]

@tomndebb

No. You changed the debate.
We were discussing honor killings that you claimed were integral to Islam.
I demonstrated, using one of your own sort of hate sites, that honor killings were limited to the cultures of a single region among Muslims while noting that they are also prevalent in non-Muslim societies.
You then switched to beheadings, which are employed, (far less frequently), by one specific group of terrorists. You will simply keep switching the terms and moving the goalposts while you attempt to keep your hatred in the forefront.

All you are doing is demonstrating your unreasoning hatred.

Honour killings are not limited to cultures of a single region. I know this isn’t GD but you should not post known falsehoods. Unless of course you are designating the UK, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, The Middle East, Pakistan and India a single region.

I’m sure the Middle East Quarterly, The Institute of Strategic Studies, Christianity Today, AFP, the BBC, Wikipedia and News 24 would be crushed by your defintion of them as ‘hate sites’.

With that totally pathetic smear attempt you make it abundantly clear that you are just an apologist clown impervious to any form of logic willing to spout any lie. You should be ashamed but i’m going to go out on a limb and guess you are not.

I’m out of here. Enjoy your triumph. Wear those laurels with pride.

[Evil_Captor]

@tomndebb

All you are doing is demonstrating your unreasoning hatred.

Actually, his hatred seems quite well reasoned out. I mean, Islam is completely full of shit and it’s not hard to prove it. Sure, it’s linked to tribalism here, religious conservatism there, but wherever it goes, social suckitude follows. It is a religion the world would be better off without.

Like Catholicism, only much, much, much more so.

[tomndebb]

@tagos

Honour killings are not limited to cultures of a single region. I know this isn’t GD but you should not post known falsehoods. Unless of course you are designating the UK, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, The Middle East, Pakistan and India a single region.

The honor killings perpetrated in Europe by Muslims are by Muslims with close cultural ties to the Middle East. That is why I noted that they were tied to cultures from a particular region rather than to the geography of a particular region.
They are not committed by European converts to Islam or by fifth generation immigrants to the UK; they are committed by first and second generation immigrants who are defending a notion of honor that is firmly established in the cultures of the MENA region. You can throw around insults and make all the broad brush claims you wish, but your claims are not supported by the facts.