Plan B Forum

BBC News wrote:
Saudi man executed for 'witchcraft and sorcery'

A Saudi man has been beheaded on charges of sorcery and witchcraft, the state news agency SPA says.


The man, Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri, was found in possession of books and talismans, SPA said. He had also admitted adultery with two women, it said.

The execution took place in the southern Najran province, SPA reported.

Human rights groups have repeatedly condemned executions for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia.

Last year, there were reports of at least two people being executed for sorcery.

Mr Asiri was beheaded after his sentence was upheld by the country's highest courts, the Saudi news agency website said.

No details were given of what he was found guilty of beyond the charges of witchcraft and sorcery.

Amnesty International says the country does not formally classify sorcery as a capital offence.

But the BBC's Arab Affairs Editor, Sebastian Usher, says there is a very strong prohibition of some practices from the country's powerful conservative religious leaders.

Some, he explains, have repeatedly called for the strongest possible punishments against anyone suspected of sorcery - whether they are fortune tellers or faith healers.

In 2010, a Lebanese television presenter of a popular fortune-telling programme was arrested while on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

Though sentenced to death, after pressure from his government and human rights groups, he was freed by the Saudi Supreme Court, which that he had not harmed anyone.

More recent cases of death on charges of sorcery include that of a Saudi woman, executed for committing sorcery and witchcraft in December, in the northern province of Jawf, and that of a Sudanese man executed in September, despite calls led by Amnesty International for his release.

rubato wrote:Its amazing how Christians killed people for the same for 2,000 years and now appear shocked that others are so much like them.

yrs,
rubato

Jarlaxle wrote:It's amazing that Islam still needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century.

Romans 3:23

New International Version (NIV)


for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Its amazing how Christians killed people for the same for 2,000 years and now appear shocked that others are so much like them.

Not that facts matter all that much

rubato wrote:The point was more general; that Christianity every other belief system has systematically murdered people for being non-Christian not like themselves or sometimes just non-conforming Christians to themselves. As the years and seasons change the particular focus of their murders changed from Witches and Sorcerers to Jews, Waldensies, Huegenots, Gnostics, Cathars (who were the first successful genocide) peoples who were deemed a threat to their survival on planet Earth, belief systems aside.

The examples and links have been presented before [or perhaps not].

yrs,
rubato

rubato wrote:There are some 'belief systems' which have not done so. Tibetan Buddhists, Jains, Western empiricists, Jews, and Quakers (to name only a few) have not engaged in systematic murder as Christians have a 2,000 year habit of. Cathars were slaughtered to the last person (about 250,000 souls) by Christians precisely because of their tolerance

A belief in the periodic table of the elements or Le Chatlier's Principle has not, to my knowledge, ever led any groups to murder people systematically as Christianity has done in staggering numbers. The periodic table and Le Chatlier have both reduced the amount of human suffering while Christians have generally increased it.

yrs,
rubato

Quakers (to name only a few) have not engaged in systematic murder as Christians have

atheists and pagans of one kind and another have a far more enviable record of slaughtering humanity than any amount of Christians can claim.

rubato wrote:

Jarlaxle wrote:It's amazing that Islam still needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century.

Well it took 2,000, I mean 1,950, years for Christians to reach the moral level Buddhism achieved 500 years before Christ, so perhaps we should be patient. I would also point out that Mohammed only lived 1,300 years ago so to evolve as quickly as Christians did they still have 650 years. Any sooner than that and they will be prodigies of moral development.

yrs,
rubato

Lord Jim wrote: As has been correctly pointed out a number of times, there were many more people slaughtered by those claiming to be Atheists in the 20th Century, than were slaughtered by those claiming to be Christians in the previous 19 centuries combined....