Comments on: Mutilation of victims and Muslim law

Mutilation of victims and Muslim law

swerdloff — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:27:37 -0800

Mutilation of victims and Muslim law The ruling by Sheik Omar Abdullah Hassan al-Shehabi specifies two circumstances in which the desecration of an infidel -- a non-Muslim -- is permitted. One is retaliation "when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses or when it otherwise serves the Islamic nation." The other is when mutilation will "terrorize the enemy" or "gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior."

By: swerdloff

swerdloff — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:28:08 -0800

Comments about the propriety of this in the face of the Geneva Convention? Metatalk comments as to whether this is an appropriate thread, and if not, why is this one?

By: reklaw

reklaw — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:36:45 -0800

Neither thread is appropriate, you enormous fool. Posting to make a point about another thread is just silly.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:37:23 -0800

They were both fairly senseless posts. But at least you're not alone in your bad taste, so it's really ok.

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:38:26 -0800

David Dark, is that you?

By: Flat Feet Pete

Flat Feet Pete — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:40:44 -0800

I think someone needs to make www.howbatshitmentalisthiscleric.com I could do with an easy reference when I see things like this, mainly to give some idea if its an already uber radical cleric giving an average sermon, or if its a more moderate member of clericdom swinging right.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:40:44 -0800

these muslim types sound pretty bad. can we not take over their country or something?

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:55:24 -0800

Did I mention that WKKT-FM radio talk-show host Jay Severin (reaching a population of several million in the Boston Metro area) has called for the destruction of Fallujah - and everyone in it - by nuclear weapons ? He's like a really, really radical Muslim cleric, with a very, very tall minaret, who doesn't even make those sorts of discriminations. He just wants to kill everybody. Carry on.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:56:14 -0800

I guess it's an Old Testament thing.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 10:08:58 -0800

Just because most muslims are not murderers, doesn't mean that 1% of 1 billion can't inflict a lot of damage. Just because they're language is Arabic, doesn't mean they're preaching the Religion of Peace. Just because I'm a western liberal doesn't mean they're not out to get me. Just because there are nutty shockjocks in America doesn't mean they're not out to get yanks. Just because swerdloff gets his retaliation in first, doesn't mean his point is invalid. Just because Mohammed says that the infidel must be slaughtered wherever he is found, religious maniacs will commit atrocities. Just because.

By: LittleMissCranky

LittleMissCranky — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 10:18:29 -0800

Did you miss the bitching about that thread? Were you just trying to get some bitching of your very own?

By: Mossy

Mossy — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 10:21:17 -0800

I'd like to see a reference for that fatwa, but I have to say, it wouldn't suprise me given the clerics in that region (who follow the non-traditionalist interpretation of Islam). The first part is old testament style eye for an eye, Old Testament styles (known as Qisas punishment) - however, that really does mean an eye for an eye, not lots of eyes for an eye, so the opposing force would have to mutilate and break the Geneva convention first.. The second part is stupid as this does not fit with the juristic method of durara (super-extenuating circumstances) to override the respect that is due to any dead body (breaking the bone of a corpse can elicit the same punishment as breaking the bone of a live person). It is expressly prohibited to torture anyone save when executing a qisas punishment - ie if they do something nasty and deliberately inflict damage upon another, they are open to the family of the victim demanding either that exact same punishment, or alternatively blood money as recompense - you cannot torture for information for example, mental or physical. Still, you get all sorts..

By: quonsar

quonsar — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 10:25:01 -0800

i can't wait for Ethereal Bligh to breeze on in!

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 10:40:09 -0800

What, no desecration of an infidel in return for a gmail account? These extremist muslims; it's like they're living in a different century.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:05:00 -0800

I don't see anything wrong with this post, swerdloff, other than that as a single link to an opinion piece it's a bit weak and could use some bolstering contextual supplementary links, but your first comment in the thread (and the intent behind posting the link that it reveals) is pretty obnoxious and out-of-place.

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:08:33 -0800

I would like to announce the opening of the Depends for Conservative MeFites Foundation. As victims like swerdloff and David Dark show, recent events have led to unstable conditions in which bitchy right-leaning posters feel suddenly become incapable of controlling their ability to urinate all over the front page of MetaFilter. With proper undergarments, we can control this. Please, send a donation. For just pennies a day, you can help. I'm Sally Struthers. Goodnight.

By: Witty

Witty — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:41:02 -0800

Don't worry, you still have them beat, ten-fold... always have.

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:59:09 -0800

bitchy right-leaning posters feel suddenly become incapable of controlling their ability to urinate all over the front page of MetaFilter. And as we all know, that sort of indiscriminate urination & axe-grinding is strictly limited to "right-leaning" posters and certainly never occurs ON A DAILY BASIS by anyone else. Hilarious.

By: matteo

matteo — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:04:28 -0800

I wish people would shit on their own blog's front page, instead that on this community's blog, but whatever. NeenerNeenerFilter. it must be nice to be 12 years old all over again. it is very annoying, but on the other hand, it's a very useful IQ test for members, too.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:04:35 -0800

Just give up the damn politics and go back to the "great stuff on the web" that made me love this spot in the first place. posted by swerdloff at 11:09 AM EST on June 12 Like this? I don't know what you're hoping to prove by this, but on the off chance that this ridiculous thread survives the Smiting of the Matt: any Muslim cleric can issue rulings, which will influence anyone who wants to be influenced by them, and no one else. Islam is not a centralized religion, and it is just as full (and no fuller) of crackpots and extremists as any other religion. This has exactly as much to do with "Islam" as the ravings of some TV evangelist have to do with "Christianity." If the implication is that this particular bit of looniness somehow justifies any of our criminal behavior in Iraq or elsewhere, that's pretty dumb. And personally, I care a lot more about what gets done to living people than dead bodies, but that's just me.

By: 2sheets

2sheets — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:05:59 -0800

And this from the guy who all but accused me of being a klan member once, because I quoted some rednecks using the "N" word. I figured as much.

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:06:03 -0800

NeenerNeenerFilter. it must be nice to be 12 years old all over again. How true.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:25:51 -0800

I heard one of those Christians said a really awful thing once about the Muslims. Well, maybe it was even more than one Christian and more than once. "Just because they're language is Arabic, doesn't mean they're preaching the Religion of Peace. Just because I'm a western liberal doesn't mean they're not out to get me." - dash_slot, do you mean the whole Islamic World ? Or just Islamic terrorists ?

By: lathrop

lathrop — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:32:54 -0800

Everyone has their wackjobs. How about an FPP about the Israeli settler rabbi Dov Lior, who says killing innocent non-Jews is no problem: "during warfare, killing non-Jewish civilians is permitted if it saves Jewish lives" and "a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail". http://www.rense.com/general53/lessr.htm Then no one feels left out.

By: Ptrin

Ptrin — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:43:24 -0800

I AM TAKING VENGEANCE UPON SWERDLOFF, WHO IS UNABLE TO MUSTER THE WEB-SMARTS OF A CHIMPANZEE AND LINK TO THE FUCKING ARTICLE, BY TYPING IN ALL CAPS. THIS WOULD ALSO BE ACCEPTABLE IF IT GLADDENED THE HEART OF TROUTY. Stick a fork in this thread, it's done.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:56:07 -0800

Anthony Swofford described the desecration of Iraqi corpses during the first Gulf war in Jarhead. Evidently, the precedent was there.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 14:35:24 -0800

Another Vasser education wasted...

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:20:45 -0800

Sorry trout, I thought it was clear from: Just because most muslims are not murderers, doesn't mean that 1% of 1 billion can't inflict a lot of damage. I don't think most americans are torturers, but a few can do a great deal of damage. A plague on both your houses, would be an understandable response. Except I don't want any innocents to be infected.

By: FormlessOne

FormlessOne — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:51:09 -0800

Too late.

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:45:46 -0800

There is no such thing as stationary apostasy

By: Satapher

Satapher — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 17:32:33 -0800

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief looks up at his great hero the Commander-in-Chief saying, "Tell me great hero, but please make it brief, is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

By: y2karl

y2karl — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 18:19:45 -0800

Interrogation abuses were 'approved at highest levels' New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington this week, adding further to pressure on the White House. The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly. According to lawyers familiar with the Red Cross reports, they will contradict previous testimony by senior Pentagon officials who have claimed that the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated incident. "There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," said Scott Horton, the former chairman of the New York Bar Association, who has been advising Pentagon lawyers unhappy at the administration's approach. "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:31:43 -0800

Eye-for-an-eye-Filter. When some folks' parents were asking them, back at the most elementary stages of the development of their childhood reasoning ability, 'if Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?' it is clear that they weren't really paying close attention. The question is not whether if or because anyone else chooses to act, as individuals, as a nation, or as subscribers to a system of belief it is right to commit crimes against humanity, the question is merely : is it right? The answer is no, and the facts that America tells itself and the world that it is a beacon of freedom, liberty, human rights and the apotheosis of what is best in human nature while committing such acts, that America has fallen so low that its defenders stoop to 'well, everyone else is doing it' whining is just ironic icing on the cake. Dipshit.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:33:42 -0800

Or : they're all killer apes, but the ones claiming to be angels while sinking their hands elbow-deep into the warm guts are no better than the rest.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:37:32 -0800

Damn it. That should read '...as if it is right to commit crimes against humanity...'

By: shoos

shoos — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 20:32:53 -0800

"America tells itself..." Just who are you talking about, dimwit?

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 21:07:28 -0800

dash_slot - you're right : your rhetoric distracted me. Let me put it in into a more familiar vernacular - "Just because most Christians are not murderers, doesn't mean that 1% of 1 billion can't inflict a lot of damage. Just because their language is English, doesn't mean they're preaching the Religion of Peace. Just because I'm tolerant doesn't mean they're not out to get me....." Also, was that an American billion or an English billion ?

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 22:43:49 -0800

Just who are you talking about, dimwit? About you, poopy-pants!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 00:09:45 -0800

hmm, seems to be a lot of bitterness about this post. I take it a thread discussing the US's willingness to torture prisoners (ie 'the memo', etc) has been equated with this imam's rambling somehow. Even Osama bin Laden is against the mutilation of infidels.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 01:04:34 -0800

I can't recall the last time the Archbishop of Canterbury made a sermon calling another ethnicity or faith 'pigs and monkeys' and calling for their extermination. Nor has that postholder ever equivocated about suicide bombers, I know that that is partly a feature of the centralisation of administrative hierarchies in the anglican religion. However, the decentralised faiths - baptists? methodists? I don't know this bit too well - tend not to make such calls either. Those bloodthirsty parts of the old religion have been reformed away by the mainstream christian brands, I'm glad to say. Credibility is lost when OT(T) justice is invoked nowadays. But not on the fringes of the Islamic world. If the moderates do not take charge, what happens to the next generation?

By: reklaw

reklaw — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 02:19:36 -0800

This guy, who doesn't have a MeFi account (and who I guess is either a Muslim himself or knowledgable about Muslims) emailed me to say:

When I saw the thread today on metafilter about torture and it's place in Islam I was rather shocked... Not all Muslims follow the same Sheikhs. Even if you're a Sunni (which I assume this fellow was) you don't even necessarily take guidance from outside of the Madhab you subscribe to. If that were the case, we'd be living in an even crazier world where a single Sheikh could hijack the entire Muslim population of the world and command them. There is very little in the way of any sort of official or leadership structure in Islam, if you head out into the poorer regions of Arabia and speak convincingly enough you can get just enough followers to cause trouble.

..which I think is a good point. We really need to re-open user registrations.

By: Mossy

Mossy — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 02:29:09 -0800

Uhhh.. You've never heard extremist Christian preachers spouting invective against muslims? There are a number of creative words for Arabs too.. The Archbishop of Canterbury's equivalent would be the leading/most widely respected scholars in the Islamic world, as opposed to the type who spout invective as extremists are wont to do. However, even these extreme preachers do not generally make racial slurs from what I have been unfortunate enough to have seen - ideological slurs, perhaps.. "Moderates" cannot force people to follow their ideology/interpretation of the religion. That goes against one of the base principles of no compulsion. I would say the socio-political situation in the middle east has given rise to a form of hybrid moderation - the most popular scholars there such as Qaradawi (as can be found on islamonline), or preachers such as Amr Khaled don't generally go around calling people pigs or monkeys. With reference to the West, figures such as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf or Tariq Ramadan have had an increasing amount of the spotlight focused on them as they deal with the issues pertinent to the Islamic youth here - for example how to reconcile democracy with Islam etc. Here is an issue of Q-News magazine (which generally provides a wide variety of views) pertinent to the issue of who exactly speaks for muslims..

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 08:03:23 -0800

reklaw, I too think we need to have more varied membership here, but I feel compelled to point out that your correspondent is restating what I said in my earlier comment (but with nice crunchy vocabulary like "Madhab"). stav: "Remember, it's not important that we did torture these people. What's important is that we are not the kind of people who would torture these people."

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 09:12:02 -0800

Over at Brad Delong's site, Rick Pearlstein reports on hearing Sy Hersh at a recent talk : "He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run." He looked frightened."

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 13:27:12 -0800

Trout: Thanks for reading and reposting that link for us...

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 15 Jun 2004 08:05:36 -0800

dash_slot - oops. It must be monolingualism-driven age related mental decline.