WTF? "Sorcerer" Sentenced to Death in Saudi

[TwoTongues]

Just watching CNN and they're reporting on this Lebanese radio guy who sometimes predicts the future, who went to Mecca to see the stone etc and was arrested, and now they've sentenced him to death (head chop). In an interview with the guy, they ask him "how long have you been using magic" to which he responded "for the past 8 years..." and so on.

I don't know where to start with this one. How much of a 'tard do you have to be to claim you've been doing magic for 8 years, and then how evil do those bastards have to be to convict him to death for predicting people's future on a radio in an entirely different country?

http://edition.CNN.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/19/saudi.arabia.sorcery/index.html

The world is a fucked up place

[divea]

Mad! but how does one manage to get arrested in Saudi Arabia while on pilgrimage?? Unless he was trying to do some predictions there.....without looking into his own future of course. And sorcery, where was Aladdin born?

[Chris]

How effed up on so many levels. For one thing, this "crime" was committed outside of Saudi jurisdiction.

[TwoTongues]

And sorcery, where was Aladdin born?

I have a hard time seeing the "defense lawyer" showing this picture in court and getting much traction with it:

[divea]

Belief In Genies

Belief in genies, or jinn, as they're called in Arabic, is quite common in Saudi Arabia. But the strict form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia forbids people from worshiping anyone other than God.

The religious police headquarters in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, has an entire department devoted to combating sorcery and witchcraft and regularly distributes pamphlets and DVDs. In one DVD, which is set to religious music, police search people's homes for signs that they practice witchcraft.

Saudi political analyst Tawfiq al-Saif says religious authorities truly believe they are helping society by discouraging faith in the supernatural.

But, he says, there is also a political reason for the recent rise in sorcery cases.

In the past few years, the government has tried to curb the influence of the religious establishment by sacking key religious figures, pushing for reform in the courts and criticizing the religious police.

"One time, I met the head of the Hey'a [the religious police] and he was really sorry because in the past he was saying that they were free to do whatever they like to enforce the Sharia laws — even, he said, in the public buses, in the train, in the airports," Saif says.

But now that they are under pressure, the religious police are trying to flex their muscles in the few ways they still can, including looking for people who practice magic or who don't pray five times a day, and for women who don't properly cover their hair, Saif says.

[urodacus]

Hang on, the guy couldn't even predict he would be arrested and executed in Arabia. Shows he was not a sorcerer after all.

Do the Saudis behead con artists?

[olm]

Saudi political analyst Tawfiq al-Saif says religious authorities truly believe they are helping society by discouraging faith in the supernatural.

So Islam is not "faith in the supernatural?

[Mother Theresa]

Reminds me of this article from a few months back about witchcraft in Uganda. Bloody barbarians.

The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase, and . . . is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly. . . .

"They capture other people's children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits… They bring them in small tins and they place these objects under the tree from which the voices of the spirits are coming," he said.

Asked how often clients brought blood and body parts, the witch-doctor said they came "on average three times a week . . .

Former witch-doctor turned anti-sacrifice campaigner Polino Angela says he has persuaded 2,400 other witch-doctors to give up the trade since he himself repented in 1990. . .

Mr Angela told us he had first been initiated as a witch-doctor at a ceremony in neighbouring Kenya, where a boy of about 13 was sacrificed.

"The child was cut with a knife on the neck and the entire length from the neck down was ripped open, and then the open part was put on me," he said.

When he returned to Uganda he says he was told by those who had initiated him to kill his own son, aged 10.

"I deceived my wife and made sure that everyone else had gone away and I was with my child alone. Once he was placed down on the ground, I used a big knife and brought it down like a guillotine."

Asked if he was afraid he might now be prosecuted as a result of confessing to killing 70 people, he said:

"I have been to all the churches… and they know me as a warrior in the drive to end witchcraft that involves human sacrifice, so I think that alone should indemnify me and have me exonerated.". . . .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/n ... 441813.stm[/quote]

[TwoTongues]

Honestly, truthfully, not only does this shit make people like TainanCowboy, Chewy et al look like Gandhi and Mother Theresa (the woman not the poster) rolled into one, but it almost makes me want to agree with the fringe who believe in bombing the shit out of half the world and turning certain parts into a land of glass... almost. Really fucking close to almost.

[Mother Theresa]

Meanwhile in developed nations, people send their children to be molested by lecherous old holy men in the hopes that they'll have a better life after they die as the result of a man who died 2000 years ago and came back to life. . .