Pure as the driven snow
Speaking of Saudi Arabia…
“The essence of Wahhabism is purity,” says Lawrence Wright, author of a Pulitzer-prize-winning book about al-Qaeda. “They are only interested in purification – and that’s what makes them so repressive.”
So if you get a nineteen-year-old girl who gets herself raped fourteen times by seven men, that’s a lot of dirt that needs purifying. It takes 90 lashes, and if she yips about it, it takes 200.
I looked at the role of Wahhabi literature – used in Saudi schools and exported round the world – in promoting suspicion and hatred of non-believers. The Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Jubeir, assured me a series of steps had been taken to reform the country’s educational system to instil values of tolerance. Saudi educationalist Hassan al-Maliki remains to be convinced. “They are teaching the students,” he told me, “that whoever disagrees with Wahhabism is either an infidel or a deviant – and should repent or be killed.”
That’s purification for you. You have just two choices: agree with us (by agreeing with us in the first place or else by repenting and agreeing with us) or be killed. Thus pure societies come into existence: by killing everyone who refuses to agree with the locally-prevailing system of purity. Kind of makes you fond of dirt, doesn’t it.
You have just two choices: agree with us (by agreeing with us in the first place or else by repenting and agreeing with us) or be killed.
Pedantry: Two options; one choice.
OB & Ed,
So, we (in the Yoo-kay) can either sell them warplanes and other high-tech military kit, while paying members of their ruling elite vast illegal kickbacks to secure the contract; or we can refuse to trade in armaments with such an oppressive regime and suffer the resultant economic consequences for the defence industry.
Would that be another example of two options, one choice?
One choice indeed. And why is it that nations always seem to make the wrong one?
“The administrator of the punishment is supposed to hold a Koran under his arm so he cannot swing the whip too fiercely; lashes are not supposed to leave permanent scars. The sentence is frequently delivered in public, often at the entrance to a jail.”
What do you all reckon on that? Even the holy book has its usage in the floggings that are by the inhumane beasts inflicted on blameless victims. Religion is so dementedly malicious. The Sisters of Mercy also employed religious instruments such as crucifixes and substantial sized pairs of rosary beads when walloping little children. Respect for these holy objects when it suited them in this fashion, went out the so-called religious windows.
Tingey,
How about the early Northern colonies in America..? Puritanism taken to an extreme.
Now, if only the Saudis weren’t 400-odd years behind…
Holding the Koran under the whip-arm – I suppose that’s to show that Allah is merciful.
I would guess there would be by the whipping person a lot of concentration needed to keep the whip-arm, holy book, laden – very steady. Does the person lose count of the lashings because of it? I suppose that is on my part Wahhabi merciful dreaming!