Comments on: What does stoning a person to death entail?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

nah, same thing applies to any other form of the death penalty, dontchathink?
be it Iranian stoning or the Texas lethal injection of juveniles (abolished in 2005)..

kinda sucks no matter which method you chose..

By: Ugly Canuck

Ugly Canuck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a requirement that witnesses throw the first stone?
What happens to the condemned, if a witness willing to do that cannot be found, or does not otherwise come forward?

That’s a question for an Iranian lawyer or judge, I guess.

By: blueelm

blueelm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Perhaps. Those indeed would stand out more if we did them say to adulterers and rape victims.

Maybe it’s the fact that we don’t savagely kill swaths of our population due to our archaic social values that lets them fly under the radar in some states.

Then again our prisons are swollen with people who are convicted of drug use so, there’s that.

Still… yeah… not quite digging a hole and beating people to death with rocks is it?

By: peterbruells

peterbruells — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It is, when you go by degrees and by intent.

All three methods you mean *are* barbaric, yes, but they are intended to put the victim to death quickly and painless.

It’s the difference between hitting you child to â€ždisciplineâ€œ it and using a bullwhip, for sure, but there is a difference.

By: Phikus

Phikus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So Bob Dylan was just being multiculturally unbiased in advocating this? Oh wait…

By: sirkowski

sirkowski — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The end result of the death penalty is always the same. I don’t think the dead care how they died.

By: blueelm

blueelm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I disagree.

I’d rather be shot in the head than drawn and quartered, for instance.

Not that I support the death penalty.

But no, all death is not created equal. That’s a fact.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Stone Age.

By: GIFtheory

GIFtheory — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Oh, hey there, Pharisee, wassup?!

By: abulafia

abulafia — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So many women; so few stones.

Where are the feminists?

Hats off to Napier, I remember that quote very well indeed. Thanks Ernunnos

Just curious. How many men escape death from stoning, as opposed to women? Burying women deeper so they can’t escape is obviously a sign of ‘respect’ in some way, no?

By: Mike Estee

Mike Estee — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

comparing brutality if just infantile. seriously people. as your mother used to say, two wrongs don’t make a right.

stoning is just plain fucking barbaric.

By: Ernunnos

Ernunnos — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m all for multiculturalism and respect toward other cultures. But that must work both ways, or it’s merely subjugation in the guise of tolerance.

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
- Charles James Napier

By: Guido

Guido — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not really trying to troll – I just mean that anyone who condemns this practice sure as hell better be against the sanctioned execution practices in Western countries…

By: Ugly Canuck

Ugly Canuck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We cherry-pick them as to what we wish to adopt as our own.

Don Cherry’s Multikulti:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKGiRm37ykI

Long live multi-culturalism: we are resplendent in our divergence.

Motes and beams when it comes to means and methods: ’tis the death penalty, itself, which is the true horror.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So, if you can wriggle out, you can go free. If you’re a man, you’re burried to the waist, probably wearing pants. And your girlfriend is buried to the neck, probably in an ankle-legnth gown. Who do you suppose it more likely to wriggle out?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t they do something thing similar in Saudi Arabia? Oh wait…were beating the war drums for Iran not the Saudis, I forgot. The Saudis are our Friends….

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The last picture indicates that those throwing stones tend to be men, but are they sure these are not women wearing false beards and talking in lowered voices?

By: emo hex

emo hex — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

OUCH!

By: landmonster

landmonster — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Now I know how to do it properly.

Thanks BoingBoing!

By: GeekMan

GeekMan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Has anyone in the thread so far suggested that we bomb Iran?

The petty rationalisations that you’ve stated are pretty obviously implied by the listed procedures themselves. But for all its stated principles, there is no denying that this act is designed for a specific effect: to give a (accused) sexually promiscuous individual a slow, frightening, painful death at the hands of a mob.

With that in mind, implying that there are any elements of harm reduction is a sick joke.

By: Ugly Canuck

Ugly Canuck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Whoops wrong link, unlike some, I’m not infallible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyKl1vkYoKM

By: xzzy

xzzy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I say we bring back the prison colony idea. Anyone got a huge island we can re-purpose?

By: Phikus

Phikus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So, according to the article, those who wriggle free for an adultery stoning are allowed to survive. My question then is: Why isn’t this a reality show?

By: sdmikev

sdmikev — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What this shows is the brutality happily employed by those that make the rules.
It’s really as simple as that. Whatever it takes to keep ‘em down and in line. However you’d like to look at it.
Gigantic swaths of this planet may as well be living in the middle ages. But that knows no boundary..
Sometimes I think we’ve only been saved that here (In the “west”) by infrastructure and knowledge (whatever that is). Which is why propaganda is so important to our masters. But that’s another topic.

By: jcolvin

jcolvin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Since the bible clearly says that adulterers must be stoned to death, I’m surprised that there’s no groundswell of activism from the godbots in the USA to bring back this penalty. Perhaps God must only be obeyed when He talks about gay people.

I’m surprised though that only the Iranians are getting pressured on this. Saudi Arabia does the same thing, but for some reason we never hear about that.

By: PathogenAntifreeze

PathogenAntifreeze — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So, in your attempt not to troll, you seriously think that death by torture as a sentence for people having unmarried sex or getting married without their parents’/villages’ blessings, or changing their religion, is logically and ethically and morally equivalent to quick and clean death sentences for mass murderers, etc…?

You imply that these two types of government-sanctioned kills are ethically the same and no one who opposes one can logically endorse the other?

By: mdh

mdh — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

simply put, stoning is cruel and unusual.

By: rhamantus

rhamantus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You know, people keep implying that this sort of thing should negate respecting other cultures. It does not. As someone with a BA in anthropology, I’ve heard all of the rhetoric about cultural relativism, and I can tell you that nowhere in that does it say you have to have a moral agreement with anything you are witnessing. It simply states that you must do your best to understand it from within the framework of that society’s own culture and mores, not your own. Understanding is not the same as condoning. For example, I understand why certain people, living in poverty, would commit infanticide by neglect — resources are scarce, and they are maximizing them by sharing them with stronger, less sickly children. I do not, however, accept this as just the status quo, and I believe something should be done to reduce infanticide (and the apparent
“need” for it) in these societies.
Similarly, cultural relativism tells me that stoning adulterers exists in Iranian and other fundamentalist societies throughout the Middle East because it reinforces patriarchal, tribal, and governmental authority, authority grounded in strict religious principles/laws. Morally, I am sickened and outraged that this and related practices occur, that people can be so inhumane as to inflict that sort of pain and terror on another human being.
I am all for multicultural acceptance, but not when it causes or condones causing human suffering.

By: Manooshi

Manooshi — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I teach my 12th-grade English classes during our Post-Colonialism unit – that although the colonialists more often than not were intent on destroying most native traditions under the racist auspices of “white man’s burden” and “civilizing the savages” – there were and continue to be problematic native traditions that are better left forgotten. The Nigerian novel, “Things Fall Apart” is a good example of all of the above.

Peace.

By: mchampag

mchampag — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ernunnos, that is an amazing quote! I’d never heard of this Napier fellow. Thanks for sharing it.