Did we mention the stonings?
by Tom Sullivan
On a local Facebook political page the other day, a resident conservative was fear mongering about Islam and posted the address of the local Islamic Center as evidence of something somehow threatening. It's next door to an office where I spend a lot of time. Nice people, I replied, you should drop by sometime. And they are.
Sadly, given the Charlie Hebdo attacks and other recent events, Islam's fundamentalists are much higher profile. I feel for myth neighbors. It's like mentioning America and every time having someone bring up Timothy McVeigh or the Westboro Baptist Church. Having lived and worked within a few miles of Bob Jones University in South Carolina, religious fundamentalism is a topic of some interest to explore in detail when there is more time. But right now, Christian fundamentalists are not what's news. This is:
Al-Qaeda-linked militants have publicly executed a woman accused of adultery in northwestern Syria, a monitoring group said Wednesday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that in total 14 people had been executed for alleged adultery or homosexuality in the war-torn country since July, half of them women.
It released a video showing fighters from Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, tying up a woman and shooting her in a square in the town of Maaret Masirin in the province of Idlib.
Stonings. Did we mention the stonings? And it's not just Syria:
Raif Badawi, the Saudi liberal convicted of publishing a blog, has been told he will again be flogged 50 times on Friday – the second part of his 1,000-lash sentence which also includes a 10-year jail term.
The US, Britain and other western governments had all called for the punishment to be dropped but there has been no sign of any diplomatic action against Riyadh. Amnesty International on Wednesday urged the UK government to challenge Saudi Arabia, which has ignored all protests over the case.
Badawi will be given 50 more lashes outside a mosque in his home city of Jeddah unless a Saudi prison doctor determines he is not yet fit to face the punishment owing to injuries sustained last Friday. If nothing changes, he will be flogged every Friday for the next 19 weeks.
Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, wonders why British authorities are so vocal about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, yet "tone everything down" when it comes to the Saudis. U.S. authorities, too, we might add.
Why is it that people who talk about faith the most seem to understand it the least?