Is Lethal Injection as Barbaric as Stoning?
This is one of those posts I meant to write months ago. Emre Kızılkaya is the Chief Editor of Foreign News Service at Hürriyet, Turkey's biggest newspaper. On his blog last year Emre asserted that lethal injection, according to unnamed experts, can be just as much painful as stoning.
The Istanbulian, 10 Jul 2010, Stoning Lindsay Lohan to Death
And believe me, according to many experts, death chair or lethal injection can be as much painful as stoning. After all, they are equally primitive as they are just similar methods for the state to exercise its morally illegitimate right to kill its citizens.
As my readers know, I believe Capital Punishment is a barbaric practice that is beneath a civilized nation. However equating lethal injection with stoning is a feeble attempt to excuse its barbarity, and Emre should be ashamed. An honest person would readily admit that aside from necklacing, stoning is the most brutal form of execution where some victims take weeks and months later to die.
Emre also tried to blame the punishment of stoning on traditional cultural practices in the Middle East having nothing to do with Islam. Yet it is Islamic Law, the Shariah that prescribes stoning as punishment for certain crimes. There are numerous hadiths where Mohammed instructs his cohorts to stone this man or that woman.
There are Christian Arabs and Even Jewish Arabs who live in the Middle East. They do not use stoning as a punishment for adultery. Only Muslim Arabs do. Blaming stoning on Middle East tradition is another Muslim Excuse for the barbarism, the savagery, the brutality inherent in Islam.
