The Sharia courts of southern Somalia are busy again showing the world the importance of the separation of mosque and state. In the latest outrage, the Sharia court of al-Shabab ordered Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, stoned to death in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the town of Merka. The Islamic judges, however, showed mercy for the woman who is pregnant. She will be allowed to give birth and then immediately stoned to death.
According to witnesses, it took at least seven minutes for the man to die as he screamed in pain from the stoning.
Many in Islam are equally horrified by this extreme interpretation of the Koran — though we have seen similar outrages in Saudi Arabia.
The al-Shabab organization has been regularly stoning people to death, including two men in the same town just last week. They previously stoned a 13-year-old girl to death. She was reportedly raped before her execution.
President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has accused al-Shabab of corruption as well as brutality. He noted that they “are forcing women to wear very heavy clothes, saying they want them to properly cover their bodies” but they are also selling the women the clothes and making a profit.
For the full story, click here
@C The story I shared above given the full context from the hadith literature. Anyone who reads it in its entirety would find your conclusion about context quite unbelievable.
@ Buddha is Laughing: Actually, you’re wrong. There is NO justification ANYWHERE in Islam that permits the punishment of a child for the parents’ sins. What they did is twisting and bastardizing the religion, however there is no way to twist it into the punishment of a child as the Prophet specifically states that one cannot be punished for the sins of their parents.
@ dga 5000: This text is being taken out of context. The typical translation is not that she was stoned for adultery, but rather that she did not repent for her sin. Which is why he gave her so many chances to come back and tell him.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about this story is that it is not an abuse of Islam. Rather Muslims in Somalia are going back to the Classical Muslim texts to justify their actions (The Qur’an and the Hadith). For this particular story they have a clear example in the hadith literature:
Muhammed Commands the Stoning to Death of An Adulterer and Adulteress Woman After Childbirth:
“Ma’iz came to Allah’s Messenger and said: Allah’s Messenger, I have wronged myself; I have committed adultery and I earnestly desire that you should purify me. He turned him away. On the following day, he (Ma’iz) again came to him and said: Allah’s Messenger, I have committed adultery. Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) turned him away for the second time, and sent him to his people saying: Do you know if there is anything wrong with his mind. They denied of any such thing in him and said: We do not know him but as a wise good man among us, so far as we can judge. He (Ma’iz) came for the third time, and he (the Holy Prophet) sent him as he had done before. He asked about him and they informed him that there was nothing wrong with him or with his mind. When it was the fourth time, a ditch was dug for him and he (the Holy Prophet) pronounced judg- ment about him and he wis stoned. He (the narrator) said: There came to him (the Holy Prophet) a woman from Ghamid and said: Allah’s Messenger, I have committed adultery, so purify me. He (the Holy Prophet) turned her away. On the following day she said: Allah’s Messenger, Why do you turn me away? Perhaps, you turn me away as you turned away Ma’iz. By Allah, I have become pregnant. He said: Well, if you insist upon it, then go away until you give birth to (the child). When she was delivered she came with the child (wrapped) in a rag and said: Here is the child whom I have given birth to. He said: Go away and suckle him until you wean him. When she had weaned him, she came to him (the Holy Prophet) with the child who was holding a piece of bread in his hand. She said: Allah’s Apostle, here is he as I have weaned him and he eats food. He (the Holy Prophet) entrusted the child to one of the Muslims and then pronounced punishment. And she was put in a ditch up to her chest and he commanded people and they stoned her. Khalid b Walid came forward with a stone which he flung at her head and there spurted blood on the face of Khalid and so he abused her. Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) heard his (Khalid’s) curse that he had huried upon her. Thereupon he (the Holy Prophet) said: Khalid, be gentle. By Him in Whose Hand is my life, she has made such a repentance that even if a wrongful tax-collector were to repent, he would have been forgiven. Then giving command regarding her, he prayed over her and she was buried.”
Sahih Muslim, Book 017, Number 4206
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/017.smt.html#017.4206
I mean: Daughters of Copper Woman!
lottakatz,
I was hoping to find this fast:
“Frans de Waal and ‘The Age of Empathy’ (broadcast Friday, October 23rd, 2009) on science friday at npr.
Is it human nature to be greedy and selfish? Primatologist Frans de Waal doesn’t think so. In his new book “The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons For a Kinder Society” de Waal says empathy and solidarity are our primate heritage. De Waal joins guest host Joe Palca in this hour for look at how he thinks we humans may learn to get along better by looking to the natural world.”
Also, one of the best books about a shamanistic spirituality is called Copper Woman by Anne Cameron. It is the written version of the Nootka indians oral tradition. They went underground with it, passing it along orally because the christians tried to destroy it.
This book is good also: Beyond Power by Marilyn French.
Thanks lottakatz,
Violence and hierarchy are relatively new to the human species. I will get you info on that (but will have to be later, sorry).
And AMEN to above!
Jill: Here’s some interesting news for womens’ rights (not) from our wonderful friends in Congress:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/07
——
What utter and complete BS. When did it become perfectly acceptable to retreat on fundamental civil rights? I am sooooo tired of living in a Patriarchy/Oligarchy/Corporatocracy.
Jill, I read Buddha’s posting as a question dealing with the social anthropology of religion (at its most basic level) and it’s relationship to violence based on a religious belief and asking which came first; the propensity to violence possibly using religion as an excuse or, peoples reliance on a belief system that was false and potentially inherently given to violence. Are people violent by nature and channel it using religion to pick targets or is religion inherently violent.
Shaman may not have been the actual word required to describe the earliest persons valued by a group for the kind of knowledge and influence I was trying to convey but I think the actual word is lost to us in prehistory. I was also talking about the period of time prior to an organization of groups into successful society’s that had the luxury of specialization into full-blown, multi-participant classes. A fully developed priest or priestess class would not have existed but, certain individuals would have existed within a group that would have specialized in skills later to be broken down into various independent skill groups like healers, story-tellers, priest/priestess etc.
I would have to dig through my book stacks to pinpoint the exact time range but it resides sometime around 60-70k yrs ago (and probably started earlier) as people began moving out of Africa and into the Golden Crescent and India. Organized but not yet societal as we would define a society and probably unable to sustain an entire class of persons not primarily involved in the getting and processing of food. Shaman seemed to be the word to convey the concept best because the range of duties fit the Shamans job description.
I’m just going to use Wiki because it’s easy:
“Shamanism comprises a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. It is a prominent term in anthropological research.[2] A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman, pronounced /’???m?n/, /’?e?m?n/, (|’shäm?n; ‘sha-|) noun (pl. -man(s)).[3] There are many variations of shamanism throughout the world, but several common beliefs are shared by all forms of shamanism. Shamans are intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds. They can treat illness and are capable of entering supernatural realms to obtain answers to the problems of their community. … Shamans perform a variety of functions depending upon their respective cultures:[14] healing;[15][16] leading a sacrifice;[17] preserving the tradition by storytelling and songs;[18] fortune-telling;[19] acting as a psychopomp (literal meaning, “guide of souls”).[20] In some cultures, a shaman may fulfill several functions in one person.”
Shamans definitely were more than healers. I recall reading about the plight of the rug weaving Indian Shaman of the Andes like, 20 years ago. They are the Indian weavers famous for their rugs which were much sought by collectors. Their culture was being actively destroyed by the Peruvian government to please the American government as part of the war on drugs. As well to advance their own political advantages to weakening indigenous cultures I have no doubt.
The weavers were a matriarchal class of Shaman that would retreat to secluded parts of the mountains, stay high on mushrooms for weeks, experience spiritual revelations and then come back down to their villages. Using specific color-language and/or symbolic imagery they would weave rugs that revealed the message of their spiritual visions which would be passed on to their tribes. The Peruvian govt. was working to eradicate the ‘mushroom culture’ and doing a very good job of it.
I had seen examples of their woven art in various art books before I read that particular article and had my suspicions, but when I read the article I just had to shake my head and do an ‘I KNEW those were mushroom visions, I knew it!’ sort of thing. LOL. One of the ways their culture was ‘moderated’ was to encourage commerce (probably at gunpoint) in their woven rugs. You could find their rugs for sale through galleries. The weavings they were producing for sale used similar iconography but was not spiritual weaving and did not incorporate spiritual messages.
Kinda’ got off topic there but ‘Shaman’ to describe a priest or priest class at its most fundamental, as well as it/her/him being the repository of a basic belief system with powerful influence over group life, fit the bill for me.
Here’s some interesting news for womens’ rights (not) from our wonderful friends in Congress:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/07
Lottakatz,
I’m not understanding your idea of Shamanism. Shamans are healers who bring knowledge of plants and what we would call the “spirit world” to help others. Like any other human being, being a shaman doesn’t guarantee that one is a good person, but I just can’t equate shamans with fundamentalists.
This story reminds me of the antiabortion forces in the US. As a child there was a Catholic woman down the street from me who needed one of those “sinful” late term abortions or she would die. She was so afraid of going to hell and that she would be evil for choosing an abortion that she didn’t get it. She left behind a husband and seven other bereft children. Those kids were devastated. They lost their mom. I’ll never forget that level of cruelty, not ever.
Budda, don’t you ever sleep? That’s a long deep posting for 7 freaking AM 🙂 As one sleep pattern disrupted sufferer to another:
We agree in major part but what you call fundamentalism I call Shamanism. Shamanism has always been with us and it is the worlds oldest profession IMO. By profession I mean an endeavor that is a higher order activity not directly involved with the primary aim of physically getting food or building shelter, but that is intrinsically necessary to the stability of a social group and may be subsidized by the group individually (barter for services) or as a group through a tithe system.
Shaman even today perform a wide range of duties that would have been absolutely necessary to a group evolved enough to value higher order knowledge; they would have been keepers of an oral history, had an extensive knowledge of plants for medicinal purposes, probably codified the marking of time and time sensitive events using external and observable repeating patterns (inventing astronomy) and developed a myth to explain the unexplainable and interceded with the forces that controlled the world.
To have someone in your social group that could provide these services made your group wealthy; you started your migrations on time or could accurately predict the migrations of prey animals, you knew when food plants would be bearing fruit, you could avoid to some degree the death of group members from illness and injury and a system of justice and property ownership could be developed by having a group history retained and available. You could have it all put into some kind of easily graspable perspective based on your place as part of nature. From a practical point of view Shaman rocks if you’re a member of a group living in ignorance and fear for your daily survival.
Those groups still exist. Economic justice and a good education system would reduce if not completely obliterate the need for Shaman. That, IMO is the reason so much pressure is brought to bear to pervert the secular education system in this country by religious groups and why education is controlled by the religious in other countries. No home schooling and no ‘religion based’ alternate to a completely secular education (with heavy emphasis on reading skills, math, science and the arts) is necessary to break the political strangle-hold the contemporary Shaman class has on this nation.
+++
Or maybe it’s a purely medical thing, maybe people are just more crazy these days, something I’ve been thinking about for awhile now and I’m apparently not alone in that theory. Tangential but interesting read:
http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Jon%20Ronson%3A%20The%20Men%20Who%20Stare%20At%20Goats%20/
The baby, upon being born, will also be immediately stoned to death.
Hey! I’m just saying if you’re going to follow the logic that the “sin” of the parents merited death then surely the offspring must be a thing of Satan as well, should it not? Surely the Prophet does not want a child from such an “unholy” union either. Is not sin plus sin, duh, more sin? So spare me the fake civility of sparing the child. And that’s “civility” as in “civilized”.
Fundamentalist Barbarians.
Which raises an interesting question. Which came first? Barbarism or Fundamentalism? And I don’t mean barbarism as a measure of technological savvy, but as a measure of ethical behavior. Tools do not barbarians make. If that were the case, let’s talk about the fact that one of the reasons the barbaric Huns were so successful was their superior bow design to the locals. If technology is the measure of barbarism then, duh, of course it’s barbarism first as we were all Stone and Bronze and Iron before we were Silicon, Genetics and Particle Physics. Kinda chicken and egg (although there is a scientific answer to that one and it’s the egg). I’m certain that somewhere in the deep past, before the dawn of agrarian civilization, someone was whipping up somebody into a killing frenzy so they would go kill the tribe in the next valley who thought the Muk Tree wanted all Her children to be free and happy while the Fundies say the Great Muk Tree Goddess wants a return to the literal word of the tree as passed down by the forefathers where someone gets to serve “it” but – more importantly – some gets to eat “it”. All for the benefit of the Shaman who, of course, gets to decide who eats its using rules he/she is making up on the fly to their greater earthly material glory.
Some say prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. They usually follow that with agriculture. I beg to differ. It was clerical fundamentalism. After all, isn’t the corollary of selling one’s body for profit selling one’s soul/ethics/goodness for profit? And which is most damaging to society? Giving sexual pleasure or inciting hatred and division for profit and the sheer thrill of killing for “God”?
There is a reason prostitution should be legal and fundamentalism illegal.
We are primitive creatures walking backwards.
Now this sounds about as ass backwards as you can get, unless you smell the air in DC you won’t know what I am talking about. Man, killed for Adultery: Check. Woman pregnant with child from Adulterous affair: Check. Man and woman who committed acts of adultery together to be killed: Check. Child to be born first, wait, who is gonna take care of the child. Something missing here. Where is the logic? This one stumps me, even after reading the article.
nal, you are going to have lots of body parts making you somewhat immortal. I guess you can take care of the kid.