I think the long prison sentence is for the original wife, who is complicit in some of this stuff. Not the 14 year old.
The recent NYT article highlights that ISIS is using this as a recruiting tool to attract Muslim men from sexually repressed countries.
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Oh, got it. I thought the 14 year old was the wife. In any event, this is all sad.
This is just awful. I hope our guys and destroy this bastard.
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Invasion, rape, torture, mutilation and wanton killing have been a tool of islamic proselytizing for centuries. Remember, the flag of Saudi Arabia contains a beheading sword as the only recognizable icon. Modern wahabbi sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda, Taliban, Daesh/ISIS, Boko haram, al Shabbab have adopted inhumane and primitive practices such as rape, kidnapping, torture and beheadings into their everyday life and a routine instrument of repression. They have been insensitized and dehumanized by the loss of reason and their fervent religious beliefs.
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Look, Iâm an agnostic, but no, youâre just wrong on multiple levels. Theologically, one of the basic tenets of Christianity, going back to the Pauline Epistles which pre-date the Gospels, is that belief in Jesus frees Jews specifically, and Gentile converts generally, from adherence to the letter of Mosaic law except to the extent taught by Jesus. So, no, âChristiansâ donât embrace every last bizarre horrible thing in Deuteronomy as âtheir own.â
More importantly, however, Deuteronomyâs prescriptions for the treatment of captured women following the sack of a cityâwhich, by the way, were pretty amazingly liberal by the standards of Bronze Age warfare (you had to give her a month to mourn her dead family before you forcibly married her and free her if things didnât work out rather than doing the normal Bronze Age thing and selling her) --isnât a problem. And the reason itâs not a problem is only crazy people think all the rules concerning the laws of war in the Bronze/Early Iron Age Levant have anything to do with modern standards of decency and humanityâwhether Jew, Muslim or Christian.
Whatever the more aggressively evangelical atheists may say, no, religion doesnât make people crazy, nor does being religious mean you are crazy as a definitional matter, just as surely as not all crazy people are religious. What is true is that when crazy people are religious or become religious, religion provides the parameters and material for their craziness rather than the voices from the electrical sockets or the dog upstairs. It gives the craziness a shape that is different from the shape it would have in the case of a non-religious crazy person.
This isnât a question of a grotesque theology. Itâs a matter of a grotesque and evil ideology that finds its source material in a shallow, literalistic reading of a religious scripture rather than, say, a shallow, literalistic reading of the writings of a 19th Century German philosopher or a 19th Century German economist.
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As if we needed another reason to drone these bastards.
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Thatâs a great post, NCSteve. Not only substantively, but the turns of phrase! âaggressively evangelical atheistsâŚâ ââŚrather than the voices from the electrical sockets or the dog upstairs.â Nicely done, sir!
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Go with what ever razor you want I just want good viking age revenge and think it out later
This is a horrifying story which was posted here yesterday, and I hope everyone has had a chance to read it.
There will be a reckoning with al Baghdadi one day. It wonât be revenge but rather, a reckoning.
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Very well said!
âWhat is true is that when crazy people are religious or become religious, religion provides the parameters and material for their craziness rather than the voices from the electrical sockets or the dog upstairs.â
Thatâs an excellent point.
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She just might be angrier at whoever kept her from her family and whoever killed her, than at any media coverage however distorted.
Reading the Timesâ description of ISIS fighters praying before and after ritually raping women made me wish Margaret Atwood had been a little less perceptive about the result of unrestrained religious zealotry. I suppose ISIS is at least more honest than Boka Horam in that they actually call it slavery instead of marriage.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say I donât think this is what the prophet Mohammad had in mind. And all the sh*t done in the name of whatever religion is probably not what any originators had in mind. Tyrants and despots will use any thing they can to justify their horrible deeds.
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@Stiggy: This idea of slavery is not limited to wahabbi sunni terrorist groups such as ISIS.
Many wealthy wahabbi sunni sheikhs routinely visit developing countries in predatory raids as tourists, reach out to mosques and buy young girls from destitute families as wives. These wives are turned into slaves. There is evidence that young boys have been âadoptedâ from natural disaster zones and turned into camel jockeys. It is a cultural, societal and economic practice in many oil rich wahabbi sunni countries that is not particularly rare.
How about a Spongebob episode instead?
Youâre obviously flat-out wrong in claiming that Christians embrace Mosaic Law as their own. Your total inability to find any real-examples of similar behavior by modern-day Christians, for example. You might also be stunned to learn that Christians often wear clothing made with two different types of fiber, eat pork, and very frequently suffer witches to live.
Sloppy anti-Christians make the same mistake as sloppy Islamophobes: you think that finding something in scripture and shouting A-HA! is a meaningful argument about religious identity and practice.
ISIL-sympathetic conspiracy mongering?
I disagree that religion does not make people crazy. I have seen perfectly nice, rational people beguiled by religion turn into some of the most irrational hateful people I have ever met. Not all of them, of course, just some of them. Itâs basically the same as limiting oneself to obtaining information by watching Fox News and listening to Limbaugh; the day-in/day-out brainwashing eventually takes root and literally changes their mental functioning. So, yes, religion can make people crazy.