Stoning

I'm often asked what I have against religion.  Does it really hurt me if someone else believes in Santa Clause or Unicorns or Jesus?  While an individual's beliefs obviously do not have a direct impact on me, people's behaviors based on those beliefs can and often do cause harm, sometimes to me personally but more often to others and to societies as a whole.

Religion, in particular as taught and practiced in the Abrahamic religions, is a great source of violence, bigotry and hatred.  I'm not going to leave this as an unsubstantiated assertion; I'll be pointing out examples as I encounter them.  And I'm not just talking about things that happened long long ago, I'm talking about things that are happening around the world right now.

One practice that is particularly abhorrent is stoning someone to death.  This practice is glorified in the Bible, mainly in the OT but also in the NT.  In Islam, both Shia and Sunni hadiths describe stoning as a punishment for adultery.  Stoning is a form of capital punishment in which a group (crowd, mob) throws stones at a victim until that person dies.  No one stone-thrower can be said to be the one that killed the victim.  Because death by stoning involves extreme pain and suffering on the part of the victim, this is a form of torture.

This is not just an ancient practice, either.  There are seven countries that officially recognize stoning as a form of capital punishment today: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria.  While not officially recognized, stoning also occurs in Afghanistan and Somalia.  It also happens ad hoc in other places, such as the 2011 incident in Philadelphia, in which 70-year-old Murray Seidman was stoned to death by 28-year-old John Thomas (and Thomas cited the Bible as justification for his action).

In 2006 in Iran, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted of adultury and has been in prison ever since.  She has been sentenced to death, and the method of her pending execution is stoning.  There has been an international effort to bring attention to her case and to prevent her torture and murder for this crime.  Today, Monday July 11 2001 has been designated as the International Day Against Stoning, as a way of raising awareness of both this barbaric practice in general, and her case in particular.

Follow the link for suggestions on ways to speak out and where to send letters of protest.