generalspeaking

In God's Name

The Old Testament is rife with stories of human passion, tragedies, conflict, sorrow. It sets down a series of punishments for various types of social transgressions. It's always well to remember that these sacred texts, purporting to be the word of God handed down to the faithful, were transcribed time and again, interpreted and mis-interpreted by scribes preserving and freshening the texts, and perhaps on occasion adding a bit here, a bit there for greater clarity.

It is also well to remember that these texts were originally set down by social scholars, the psychologists of their day, attempting to come to terms with the psychological frailties of humankind, with the violently emotional expressions of men, with the continual outbreaks of tribal conflict. Above all, with the need for a tool by which personages of superior knowledge and presumably, intelligence, would be able to control the baser instincts of those they represented.

For that reason a set of reasonable and humane social tenets were put in place that exhorted believers to honour God by practising respect for one another. To value family, to abstain from greed and violence, to honour the property of others, to improve their behaviour in the eyes of an all-seeing God who would, at some future date, reward them by taking them up into Heaven upon leaving the mortal coil.

Life in the Middle East thousands of years ago was a brutal affair, much as it would have been elsewhere in the world, with the strong prevailing, and taking for themselves whatever they wished, and the weak cowering in fear and apprehension for their lives. In attempting to instill civility and empathy for others in good deeds, biblical aphorisms and teachings warn believers what they must avoid.

Adultery was taken to be a sin, as was thievery, as murder, and above all blasphemy. The sanctity of the temple demanded piety, respect and belief. An eye for an eye, in an era when tribal warfare was the order of the millennium, and any outside the tribe were seen as ripe prospects for any kinds of atrocities visited against them. Their possessions claimed, their lives forfeit.

Public stoning was often seen as a just punishment for adultery. Putting out the eyes of one whose jealous attentions might lead them to covet another's possessions. Amputation of limbs as punishments for theft. If one person caused another to lose a body part through torture or attempted murder, the punishment exacted would often reflect what had been imposed on the victim.

That was then, in times long past. The sacred writings are now read as a series of thought-provoking events, a catalogue of the righteous and those found wanting. No one who practises Judaism or Christianity would ever think of resorting to the kinds of punishment for social transgressions meted out to the unfortunate back then, as appropriate for our present enlightened era.

The most abysmally fundamentalist among them would be deemed a raving lunatic at the very hint of supporting some of the punishment atrocities deemed as normal thousands of years ago. Not so, unfortunately, among rabidly fundamentalist Islamists whose reading of the sacred Koran remains grounded in desert tribalism where vengeance equated with punishment for social transgressions.

Where, in Somalia last week, the governing theocratic council agreed with the judgement under Sharia law that a young woman must undergo a horrendous, primitive form of torture to expiate her from her torture-induced confession of having had illegal sex. Amnesty International differs from the official presiding Sharia judge's explanation that this was a 23-year-old woman who had sworn to her guilt.

According to Amnesty, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was 13 years old. She had been brutally raped by three men. Islamic law holds that four male witnesses must swear in a court of Sharia law as witness to adultery before a woman can be legally killed. But because the judge claimed that the girl had admitted guilt, and asked to be stoned, the atrocity against the child went forward.

She was dragged, fearful and resisting, into a stadium crowded with hundreds of onlookers. She was buried up to her neck, and a sack placed over her head. The crowd was instructed to do their social part in this judicial ritual by throwing rocks at her. On several occasions throughout this legal religious proceeding, the girl was pulled out of the hole to determine whether she yet lived. Then placed back for the stoning to resume.

Some onlookers sought to save the girl, and when they surged forward in disgust and outrage at the proceedings, the assembled guards fired on them, in the process killing a boy. Here is the savagery of a brutalized, but religion-respecting people believing they righteously defend the spirit of their sacred and all-powerful deity.

A blot on humanity.

Labels: Justice, Religion, Societal Failures

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 04, 2008