Only Cowards Stone People To Death: An Islamic Religious Ritual
by Phyllis Chesler, PAJAMAS MEDIA
Yesterday, I appeared on FOX-TV’s “The Strategy Room” to discuss a recent stoning in Afghanistan and the issue of stoning in general. Kimberly Guilfoyle interviewed me both skillfully and graciously. The subject is a very distressing and somewhat mysterious one for most westerners.
What does it mean when a mob of men, numbering anywhere from 50 to 200, stone a female child to death—as happened in October of 2008 in Somalia? That poor soul was not only a 13 year-old child—she had also just been raped. Indeed, that was her sole “crime” and the reason for her torture-execution. She was forced into a hole and buried nearly up to her neck. She took a long time to die and kept crying out for her life. In addition to the 50 active stoners, 1000 more men cheered them on.
What does this tell us?
First, that barbarians are mainly cowards who do not view themselves as responsible for their actions. Everyone is the murderer and therefore, no one is the murderer. The group both absorbs and atones for any possible guilt or hesitation that even one individual might have felt. However, as we shall see, there is also another way of looking at this.
For a culture presumably so concerned with “honor,” so consumed with concepts of responsibility towards the family, clan, or “ummah” (Muslim people), those who stone a living being to death utterly shrink from any individual responsibility for carrying out their bloody deeds. Entire families become conspirators in an honor killing; village and religious councils collaborate to issue a death sentence; Muslim men sexually harass women in the streets (of Egypt)—and in large mosque-inflamed mobs (in Algeria).
In terms of stoning, which is primarily a contemporary Muslim-only custom—not only do cowardly men hide behind each other, clearly, they lack the ability to act as individuals. That power is reserved for one man, one leader, one ruling cabal only. In Afghanistan, the Taliban hooligans threw the first stones.
This tells us something else that is important. The need for a mob is, in a sense, proof that the individuals who compose it are all being held hostage to the will of the psychopathic criminals who rule them. Oppose them, and you yourself might be stoned to death. Hostage-mobs also share the “guilt,” or rather, their leaders’ point of view. The leaders cannot be held accountable for their actions either–everyone did it.
In addition, sharing a so-called Muslim sinner’s blood, especially female blood, is yet another way to forge a blood-brotherhood that is based on male supremacism.
Stoning is practiced in contemporary Afghanistan, Iran, Saudia Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria. In 2006, a poll conducted in “moderate” Indonesia found that 50% of Muslims there supported stoning in cases of adultery, however it is defined. Adultery might include: A married woman who is raped by a stranger, or a woman promised in marriage to one man but who chooses another. This is precisely what happened in the recent case in Afghanistan. CONTINUE
What age group? I dont know. Andy did not say. Do you want me to email the clip to you from 60 min?
What age group?
5-13 and 75-90
OK, I won’t
Nice try Yamit. You KNOW what can happen to women who assert themselves. Having said that I am fortunate to be alive. My father was a tyrant. Enough said. He died last year and please do not offer any condolences. Life goes on.
Calvary. lol Actually I am HAPPILY married. One of the fornunate few. The 80 per cent was a quote by Andy Rooney. So dont shoot the messeger.
Mir, how do you feel like you are enslaved by men?
What age group? Why then, do so many women marry? You sound like a spiritual person. Are you against the institution of marriage, which was given by God?
Well, Shy Guy didn’t give me a specific challenge that I can reply to. Other than I’m stupid, blind and dumb…I ignore things and fudge other things. And because he didn’t say, I don’t know what his point was about verses 32 and 33. I don’t ignore those verses at all. I particularly like this part: “for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will no longer remember.” Hallelujah!
The link he provided has a lot of stuff I could talk about. But, he really should summarize his point or points for us. Does he (or you) expect that I will write a 40 page novel to discuss everything there?
We could all point to some monster tome, written by someone else. But what’s more interesting is to hear what concerns him personally the most. To know what’s on his heart.
70 AD. That’s the year the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the 2nd Temple. Wouldn’t you think the Talmud would talk more about that than a mere sorcerer executed for blasphemy? You better check that date.
Crucifixion is death by hanging on a cross, or ‘tree’. It’s not hanging like in the Wild West, if that’s what you’re thinking. No gallows. The New Testament describes the crucifixion as hanging in multiple places. Acts 5:30 (“…hanging him on a tree”). Acts 10:39 (“They killed him by hanging him on a tree”). 1 Peter 2:24 (“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”).
I can buy into gender discrimination but much of that is due to the compliance of women and in not aggressively fighting for their own equality.
Yamit. It is not necessarily the husband wife relationship that enslaves women. It could be her father brother boss priest rabbi or leader of her country. It is a fact. It comes down to economics and gender control. Men typically also dont take too kindly to direction or correction from a woman.
Hmmm 70 AD , That really nails it? If Jesus was really hanged you should replace all your crosses with gallows? Announced 40 days before the hanging? Fits your narrative to a tee! I suppose Pharaohs magicians were also incarnations of jesus 🙂 get real you have so many inconsistencies and contradictions that Mormonism puts you all to shame. You have the chutzpa to denigrate the Muslims for their beliefs? 🙂
Respond first shy’s challenge to you with a more exact explanation than I could give.
Yes! Congratulations. You’ve found him! And those reasons given for his execution are consistent with what the New Testament reports. The Talmud, as per your quotation, affirms that he performed miracles. (It provides a nice confirmation actually – since we know, like you, the authors hated him.) But of course, they attribute the miracles to sorcery and demonic forces. There’s no pleasing everyone!
Now, if you want to paint the full picture, you could quote Isaiah 52:13-53:12 for the group (from a translation you trust). Or all of David’s Psalm 22.
In any case, do you now at least acknowledge that he existed?
Just keep on ignoring verses 32 and 33. Since when has context mattered to a christian? They have eyes and do not see; ears and do not hear.
More on the New Covenant over here. As always, believers of the pagan dead Jew man-god have to ignore scriptures and history in order to fudge the story in their favor. Now who was it that supposedly said “the truth will set you free”, my little hypocrite?
You should meet my ex wife she is proof, you don’t know what you are talking about. She a slave??? Shirley your joking.
I said “stupid statement”, not “stupid article.”
Same response to Bill Levinson in post #11.
Anyone here who knows my posts knows I have nothing good to say about the cancerous plague that is Islam. Keep that in mind for future discussions.
The Babylonian Talmud contains a reference to Jesus, they have put the following around 70AD:
On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald . . . cried, “He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy.”
Hmmm Hanged stoned sorcery enticement to apostasy?? Is this our boy Jesus?
Isn’t it a little early for our every-other-month spat? 🙂 Anyway, thanks for quoting Jeremiah. It’s good for everyone to see:
I don’t know how much more clear Jeremiah can make things. The Law of Moses within Judaism has an expiration date. Judaism will move past the Law and believing Jews will move with it.
Christianity and Messianic Judaism do not throw out the moral precepts of the Law. Homosexuality and adultery, for example, are still sins. But we don’t believe God wants us to stone people to death anymore. This is the grace side of the equation.
I’ve got to believe many Jews don’t want to return to the Law in earnest because they know in their hearts this is not right. Stoning people to death and animal sacrifice are not where God wants you right now. (Interestingly enough, Ezekiel does talk about the reinstatement of animal sacrifices during the Messianic era. But, we’re not there yet.)
If you really doubt this, you should read the non-censured Talmud. Ask your rabbi.
Wow! You guys are unreal. Perhaps missing the point. Andy Rooney did a clip on 60 minutes stating that 80 per cent of American women do not want to get married. I wonder why? For a child to be brutally raped and then stoned to death is an outrage. Rescue those who are UNJUSTLY sentenced to death. DO NOT stand by and them die for lord your G-d which is in heaven will see and will judge each one according to their deeds. paraphrased. Some of you sound like your hearts have turned hard. Someday there will be TRUE justice. All women are slaves per se and someday will be released from the bondage of man.
This is a messianic prophsey for the messianic era where none will need to learn the law as all will know it. A new covenant is meant for those times under those conditions. It has no relationship to a dead guy on a cross. Totally a Christian invention where you always try to paint your boy into Jewish scripture.
The law is nothing more than ethical codes from which Jews are required to live, accordingly. Not you gentiles who have the 7 laws of Noah. An appliance may have warning not to touch this or that wire or part and if we ignore the warnings and touch them we might get shocked but in the end it’s our choice. That’s the law a code for Jews to live by and if we do, we avoid many of life’s shocks but we don’t have to. Any Jew may leave Judaism and take his chances.
Enough with Jesus, he never existed and if he lived today I would volunteer to pound the first nail.
Any decent Muslim is more intellectually honest than you are. I can’t tell you what to believe but everything you believe revolving around your J guy is wrong and false.
Absolutely so. When Mohammad created his religion from the Old and New Testaments, he mostly used the Old. Lots of law, very little grace. He one-upped you on some counts – no alcohol! And then relaxed some things to suit his taste. I can have four wives! Yeah! (Well, he could have more, but he was a special case, of course.)
Yes, the Law did come from God at Sinai. No argument. Jeremiah 31:31 says it is not eternal though. So it has a definite purpose, but then God would have us move on at some point.
I look at the whole Bible – either from Genesis to Malachi for you or from Genesis to Revelation for me – as God spiritually teaching and maturing fallen mankind. He’s growing us, bringing us to a fuller understanding of Himself. Making us more like Him.
Just like in human relationships, a legal arrangement has purposes for children. …You have to go to bed by 9:00. You can’t watch rated R movies. You can’t use the sharp knives. You can’t hit your sister…
But for mature human relationships – like between an husband and wife – a legal arrangement doesn’t make sense. There is a deeper relationship based on serving each other, meeting needs, supporting and loving each other. This mature love can not be implemented as a set of laws.
So the teaching of Jesus was that he was moving our relationship with God to this next level. He fulfilled the Law of Moses (the only Jew to ever do so), fulfilling its purpose. But would not have us continue in it. He moved us on to the New Covenant Jeremiah told us about.
Levinson what you describe is heartrending yet millions of Africans die every year from malnutrition preventable diseases and tribal conflicts, most are 13 years and younger. Since you seem to be only a bleeding heart when it comes to victims of Muslims, let me ask what have you done to save a life of any of the millions of victims to the causes I mentioned?
Have you seen any condemned prisoner electrocuted, gassed, drugged or shot as per the methods of execution in America? Where all of those executed guilty? Where any ever legally a minor? Spending 10-15-20 years or more on death row is in your opinion humane? The the lawful citizens of America must pay for the expensive incarceration of millions is a sane policy?
Honor Killing is not specifically a Muslim prevalent in all cultures in the ME predating Islam. Islam couldn’t eradicate this abominal practice so they incorporated into Islam so as to at least regulate them.
West and East in our Time:
http://rexcurry.net/socialism-red-flags-socialists1c.jpg
This is how we know Islam is false and don’t even feel the slightest desire to read the Koran. In contract, it’s interesting to me that many Muslims feel like they should read the Bible.
This is the problem with legalistic religions. There is no grace.
You would have a problem with that concept as it would prove Christianity to be the farce it is. When you reject the so called legalisms in Judaism you reject G-d as the law came from the lord at Sinai. Even Your phony man god dictated that all his followers should follow and not deviate from the Law (legalisms).
Jews and Muslims may be mortal adversaries but Islam is much closer to classical Judaism than is your Christianity. Even in Language most of Arabic is rooted in Hebrew.
Jews may have stopped invoking Jewish law but absent either autonomy or national sovereignty they couldn’t even if they wanted to. Jewish Law is superior in every aspect to all common western law as you know it and if you disagree it only means that you are ignorant of Jewish Law. When Jews did have autonomy in Europe, Rabbis did invoke capital punishments, mostly for Jewish traitors. The methods included stoning & strangulation
as prescribed and mandated in the Torah.
I will be happy to debate you if you call Torah and Torah law primitive and inferior to western legal cannon.
Maybe they are but I’ll bet they don’t have millions rotting away in prisons either and that most people would walk on hot coals before they break any laws involving the death penalty. Unlike the west were death penalties are long delayed or not enforced the penalty does not seem to have a deterrent effect.
That said whose society is free-er of crime theirs or ours?
Statistically America is the most violent and lawless country in the world. So then who is right?
Laura none of us commented on the merits of what is criminal in Muslim societies and what isn’t. We were responding to the method of execution of whom they deem criminal and warranting capital punishment. We /I was commenting on the methods most so called western societies deal with their criminals and and comparing our methods of meeting out punishment for capital offenses.
Stoning is not a Muslim precept per-se it is to be found in some form in almost all countries outside of specifically western influences.
It is one of the Biblical mandated methods of execution.
It is many things but not necessarily an act of cowardice.
Hey Northerner…You are absolutely right, stoning is mentioned in the Tanach. The difference between Judaism and Islam is Jews no longer act out ancient barbaric practices such as ritual animal sacrifices or harsh punishments such as stoning for adultery; amputations of limbs for stealing; killing apostates; persecution of homosexuals, misogyny, honor killings, and I’m sure many other 7th century ditties called for in the Qur’an, Sunnah, and the Hadith.
This is the problem with legalistic religions. There is no grace.
It’s a twofer for the ‘men’ who murdered the girl. First they (absurdly) can morally posture about how they are upholding the law. Secondly, they exercise their deep, dark bloodlust under cover of religious sanction.
Islam has a fundamental problem in that it sanctions several sins: 1) murder of the other – us 2) polygamy/fornication 3) stealing from those you kill (as modeled by their founder)
This is how we know Islam is false and don’t even feel the slightest desire to read the Koran. In contract, it’s interesting to me that many Muslims feel like they should read the Bible.
I would instead call them filthy degenerate cold hearted monsters whose way of thinking needs to be eradicated off the face of the earth.
Bill, I am with you (Go Nittany Lions). Listen when I read anything about these Arab bastards stoning woman and girls I get sick to my stomach.
I have a couple of granddaughters and I can’t imagine what goes through the minds of these Arabs who have daughters that could be subject to this inhumane treatment.
When anyone approaches me about Israel I remind them Israelis don’t commit atrocities against anyone and they better take a good hard look at Israel’s neighbors all of which have the worlds worst human right violations. They treat they citizen, especially women like crap. They are not civilized, if it wasn’t for oil these bastards would still be riding around the desert looking for an oasis. And don’t get me started on those fat asses in Saudi Arabia, those that wear sunglasses and towels on their heads. Tell me what contributions have they made for mankind, nothing.
We need to get off the oil dependency and tell these Arabs to shove the oil up their keisters.
Then we have this obama the community organizing pamphlet distributor and anti-Semite who caters to the Muslim world and is allowing Iran to develop the nuclear nightmare. He has yet to visit Israel, you can guess why. In fact I hope he doesn’t visit Israel, this is the Holy Land and I am sure G-d doesn’t wants the property contaminated.
I guess I am pissed off.
I agree with Felix; you guys are beginning to sound like lawyers!!! They should be killed quickly; nope they should be killed slowly with maximum pain and suffering… How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?…
The point is not what to do with murderers and cutthroats; the point is that women – children actually – are being killed mercilessly by communal sadists, for the crime of… what exactly?
Is this point too difficult to grasp?
And as for this:
What else would you call those who kill ANYONE with joy and glee, let alone people who have apparently insulted the “honour” of Muslims?
There’s a difference between punishing someone for committing a crime, and punishing someone for being the victim of a crime.
Punishing female victims as criminals is what really causes me to be angry with those who side with the muslim world.
Shy guy, Northerner and Yamit, did you actually bother to click the link and read the entire article. Phyllis also discusses the stoning to death of a 13 year old girl for being a gang rape victim in Somalia.
I can’t believe you people are criticizing Phyllis Chesler and defending islamic barbarism. It isn’t just real crimes where this punishment is used, assuming that in these islamic “justice” systems, that the accused is actually guilty, but this is done to women who dress un-islamic or who commit “adultery”, which includes being a rape VICTIM. What the hell is wrong with you people?
How would you Felix execute your comrades for crimes that carry a death penalty like calling Trotsky a nebbish. Or yelling in public Capitalism will bury communism? How would you off them? Work em to death in a Gulag?
Shy Guy & Northerner miss the point. None of the approved methods of execution in Western nations, involve tortuously prolonging the passage to death.
Yamit may have a point, but does it take the tortuous brutality of community members carrying out such executions to achieve that or could it be as easily achieved as authorities ensuring large numbers of citizens witness the swift exectution of the convicted?
Northerner mentioning that stoning was a prescribed sentence in the Tanakh does not shed any light on the issue of stoning today. Jews have not practiced stoning for millenia.
Islam for a very great many Muslims has not evolved from the days it was first created as a complete religous, political, societal and legal structure with all cultural and societal aspects of Islam being subordinate to and guided by the religion of Islam.
I would disagree with Chesler only in her characterization of stoning as religiously inspired cowardice. It is not a matter of Muslim cowardice that moves Muslims to practice stoning, honor murders, discrimination against women and people of other faiths and cultures.
Rather it is Islam itself held to this day as doctrinal literal truth and unalterable commandments that must be obeyed and carried out by those Muslim nations that practice Sharia to the literal letter of that law. The same holds true for those Muslim nations that following Sharia and the literal dictates of Islam that discriminate against women and against non-Muslims. It is these same literal interpretations of Islam that many Muslims justify their committing honor murders of their daughters.
These are not acts of cowardice. Measured against modern Western norms, values, standards and in a word culture, these actions such as Shariah prescribed stoning and discrimination against women and non-Muslims by at least some Muslim nations and honor murders of their daughters carried out by some Muslim people inspired by Islam, are simply unconscionable and evil.
There must be no tolerance and understanding shown by Westerners for these Muslim nations and people engaged in such conduct inspired by their intractable literal belief in the foundational writings of Islam.
The three of you abnove…total and utter bullshit!
You are all so bloody clever the 3 of you so why don´t you just go an **** yourselves.
You can talk about all kinds of barbarities. What Chesler is talking about here is the stoning of people to death, and in this the dice is firmly loaded against women
You seem to be all so wrapped up in your own dogma that you cannot actually grasp the reality of the stoning phenomenon.
I would not like the future of Israel, of Jews, or of Judaism, to be dependent on you lot!
suicude and attempted suicide in American prisons is very high. That means that for many if not most long incarceration is not preferable to death. Somebodies moral compass needs to be calibrated. In societies where crimes are executed immediately and executed by the citizenry I will bet that the crime rates are negligible.
I agree with Shy Guy. Branding people as cowards for various things like the above, for instance, seems a weak criticism.
Also, stoning was a prescribed punishment in the Tanach.
What about firing squad members, electric chair switch flippers, poison injectors, etc., in the US, for capital punishment cases?
Stupid statement.