Monday, July 19, 2010

What's 'medieval' about stoning people to death?

I was pleased to hear today that Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian lady convicted of adultery by one of that hellhole’s kangaroo courts, will not now be stoned to death, though it is still possible that she will be judicially murdered in some other way. (My reading of the Koran is that the Prophet demanded that four male Muslim witnesses had actually seen the act in progress before an adultery charge could be proved; but who am I, a benighted Anglican, to comment?)

Thanks are also due to prominent figures around the world who spoke up for Mrs Ashtiani, including our own William Hague. I don’t want to qualify my praise by carping, but I do take issue with Mr Hague’s choice of language. In condemning the proposed execution, he called death by stoning a “medieval punishment”. Following Mr Liam Fox’s dismissal of Afghanistan as “a broken 13th-century society”, one begins to wonder just what the new government has against the period.

Click here to read this article from The Telegraph