Author: Ophelia Benson

Ron Aronson recently pointed out what secularists have to get used to.

In the vast heartland of suburban and semirural America, they grow accustomed to new acquaintances greeting them by asking what church they go to. At work, they get used to God-talk as an unstated norm…In the news media, they get used to reading or hearing that the appropriate response to stressful situations is to turn to God. They also grow accustomed to putting up with offhand insults,…would-be presidents criticizing them for trying to keep religion out of public places…When will they demand that the spirit of multiculturalism be extended to those who do not pray, instead of the widespread assumption that religious values, norms and practices apply to everyone?

Not very soon, it would seem. Elizabeth Dole’s tv ad calling her rival ‘godless’ and the rival’s response that she is not either godless is depressing evidence for that suggestion. Hagan points out that she taught Sunday school and takes umbrage at this attack on her ‘faith’ – and not enough people point out that being ‘godless’ is not actually a crime, much less that being godfull is not necessarily a virtue.

Bastards bastards bastards.

It can tip you right over the edge sometimes, contemplating how unfathomably foul people can be.

A girl stoned to death in Somalia this week was 13 years old, not 23, contrary to earlier news reports. She had been accused of adultery in breach of Islamic law. Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was killed on Monday 27 October, by a group of 50 men in a stadium in the southern port of Kismayu, in front of around 1,000 spectators…Inside the stadium, militia members opened fire when some of the witnesses to the killing attempted to save her life, and shot dead a boy who was a bystander…[N]urses were instructed to check whether Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was still alive when buried in the ground. They removed her from the ground, declared that she was, and she was replaced in the hole where she had been buried for the stoning to continue.

In sane places, a child of 13 can’t commit ‘adultery’ even if she tries to. But Duhulow didn’t commit ‘adultery’ anyway…

An Islamist rebel administration in Somalia had a 13-year-old girl stoned to death for adultery after the child’s father reported that three men had raped her…A lorryload of stones was brought to the stadium for the killing. Amnesty said that Duhulow struggled with her captors and had to be forcibly carried into the stadium…Duhulow’s father told Amnesty that when they tried to report her rape to the militia, the child was accused of adultery and detained. None of the men Duhulow accused was arrested.

So. A child of 13 and her father try to tell the authorities that she was raped by three men, and the authorities in response arrest her, order up a truckload of stones, bury her in the ground up to her neck, gather a crowd of a thousand people, and throw the truckload of stones at her head.

It’s hard to figure out what’s going on in the heads of people like that. It’s not just violent lashing out – it’s religious legal official punishment – carried out in cold blood and the pure odor of sanctity. It’s hard to figure that out. What kind of monster do they think they worship, that wants children smashed to death with rocks for being raped? What kind of hideous loathsome savage bloodthirsty tyrannical cruel monster do they imagine wants them to act like that? What kind of nightmare world do they live in? How do they look on their work and approve it?