Warning: Disturbing Images Posted Below
(A video version of this post can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DeuocmnhXBv/ )
Every now and again, one needs a reality check. Since I keep myself attuned to what’s going on in the country and in the world, I don’t often have to go too far to find one. I recently posted a photocopy of a newspaper clipping about an execution by beheading I witnessed on April 3, 1981, while living and working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It took place just after noonday prayers on their holy day, which is Friday, in a place we all knew as “chop square” adjacent to a large mosque in the city.
Everyone knew an execution or a stoning was about to take place since the police were busy clearing away all the cars that were normally parked in the large open square. Thousands circled the site that had been cordoned off, they came from the local shopping areas and from the mosque. I was visiting the central part of the city doing some shopping myself as it was our day off. Looking back, I think I remained because in my mind something so barbaric would never actually take place. The scene was surrealistic.
I was wrong. The two men convicted and sentenced to beheading were actually two police officers who had raped a man at gunpoint. At the designated hour, the men were taken from the back of a police van and made to kneel after their gutras (headscarves) were removed. To me, the men looked as though they’d been drugged. At this point, the Sayyaf – the swordsman – moved to the side of each man and performed the two beheadings, one after the other.
The execution was both horrific and educational. I was a first-hand witness to this base form of human behavior. Many of those men, surrounding the site, had pushed through the crowd to the front in order to have a better view of the execution, now came rushing back through the crowd unable to keep from vomiting along the way.
A big and recent news item has centered on Pete Hegseth’s plan to have Nidal Hasan publicly executed by firing squad for murdering 13 people at Fort Hood, in Texas. We haven’t had a public execution in the United States since 1936. The memory of seeing the beheadings came home to roost. Then I was struck by the irony that so many MAGA adherents and far right-wing followers are terrified over the idea that elected public officials who are Muslim will somehow convert our system of law to that of Sharia law – something that would never happen. How can these same people be so willing to stop Sharia law from being a thing in this country in its tracks be so willing to allow the reintroduction of the kind of event that is commonplace in a country that is run by Sharia law?
So, I posted a copy of that newspaper clipping and verbalized my thoughts about that irony and was immediately gifted with that very solid reality check. MAGA and their ilk, once again, showed their true colors. First, many abjectly failed to see the connection – I shouldn’t really be surprised. Second, then followed the Ad Hominem labels: twatwaffle, libtard, left-wing moron, jerkoff – nothing new in all that. It just proves the research that shows such people are on the lower end of educated society. Third, they seemed to think I didn’t want Mr. Hasan executed – nothing could be further from the truth. I believe in capital punishment – not as our society currently has it – which allows for such punishment after convictions obtained from evidence that convinced a jury beyond reasonable doubt. Given the many examples of human failure by executing innocent people, I’d love to see the law changed to allow for execution from evidence that is beyond ALL doubt. But, as to public execution, it would be another form of retrograde in the demise of American behavior…and of human behavior in general.
I am a conservative in matters pertaining to fiscal responsibility but liberal in securing human rights for all people, something MAGA would willingly deny to many segments of our society for no other reason than they can’t see past black or white sides of a situation or have the intelligence to absorb the subtleties between the two.
In late 2016, I posted that Donald Trump was not the person you wanted leading the country. I’d worked for real estate developers from New York and I knew, very well, the type of individual Trump was. I woke up on the morning of January 20, 2017, to find Trump had been elected. That felt about as surreal to me as the beheadings were 36 years earlier. I was prompted to write a blog post shortly thereafter in which I claimed that January 20th was, in my mind, The Day America Died. I hate to think this, but nearly ten years later, I think many would agree with me.
P.S. Though it seems the public execution of Nidal Hasan will not be held, we still edged too close to the precipice. It also seems, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia maintains they no longer hold public executions – I remain dubious.
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