The Islamists who grabbed power in northern Mali have settled in and gotten comfortable. On Sunday they stuck a woman and a man in two vertical holes in the ground, leaving just their heads exposed, and threw stones at them until they were dead. They did this in front of 200 people.
Mali’s government has expressed disgust.
“The government learned with indignation and astonishment of the stoning to death of a couple in Aguelhok by the extremists occupying northern Mali,” read a statement from the communication ministry.
“At the same time as it expresses its sympathy to the families of the victims, the government severely condemns this dark-age practice and assures that this act will not go unpunished.”
Compassion is at the heart of every great religion.
Y’know, I just wrote a post essentially bitching about not being able to visit Timbuktu now as part of a bunch of goals that are really privileged. Fuck that and delete.
I know I’m going out on a limb here by saying this is reprehensible, so instead I’m just going to point out that we have this happen in our country, too, in this day and age. I know Wyoming might seem like faraway Africa to lots of people, but it wasn’t long ago that Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered just like this for no better reason than that he also liked hes. I’m sure there are more recent examples.
That’s an appropriate level of condemnation from the government. I can imagine a lot of governments being a lot more mealy-mouthed about the need to respect peoples’ deeply-held beliefs and feelings about stoning others to death.
From what I’ve read, they were executed for having children out of wedlock, despite their protestations that the children were not theirs. Would be nice to think that some fairly constituted authority had considered the facts (yeah, I know, fat chance), but then again, it would be nice to think that human beings didn’t restrain other human beings so they couldn’t get away and then throw rocks at them until they died…
They’re just thugs, so a fairly constituted authority isn’t part of the deal. If it were, and if it found that the two had sex without being married…in a reasonable state nothing would follow from that, because reasonable states don’t treat consensual sex outside of marriage as criminal. Even in a semi-reasonable state where consensual sex outside of marriage is treated as criminal, treating it as deserving the death penalty is another level. Stoning is another level again.