Death penalty: Obsolete?

[al_hamza]

i was away on a trip,

it was a beautiful jill station, 12c maximum temprature, alhamdulillah, no american/western products on display (in the shops) except coke and pepsi, but the locals had something muslim for me to drink a muslim cola, tasted so much better than pepsi and coke, everywhere i went, wherever i spent, i didnt see any kobo going to the westerners hands, so he could pay taxes as such give money to the western government to kill my muslim brothers somewhere else after iraq and afghanistan,
             i was also pleased to see that jacks bragging about investment was after all useless, because  i didnt see anything lacking, i was a tourist in a muslim area, enriching my own muslim brothers, and i was in complete comfort,
          so finally am back, (though i have cough and a cold) seems like sanyi is not good for us kanawas, anyways back to the topic,
            i am happy the way people have addressed me in the last few posts, but i must say, i do agree that i am an extrimist (western ideology) so jack should be happy that i have accepted the fact that i can get a visa to guantanamo jail (oh i am above 18) so jack should not feel guilty sending me to those tiny cages that hold our lions there, our 14-16 year olds have found a new home in those torture cells and are bieng treated ruthlessly, but to jack they are not as important as Amina Lawal, a woman that is to tried at least by a law, but to jack that law isnt important, international law is more impotant, then why wont he talk about the geneva convention ? about amnesty? why wouldnt dave tell his american friend here that what they are doing in guantanamo base is wrong? i am confused, i have a 7 by 6 inch head, maybe the brain in it isnt enough to understand,

           our mujahideen brothers that were put into containers were treated without piety, no law was granted, they were put into containers and to make windows, american forces shot the containers, thereby killing my brothers inside, my brothers had to make a three day journey in those containers, for three days they had to smell the bodies and blood of my brothers matyred ruthlessly, many of my brothers arrived at the jail dead, still the jails werent enough to house them, and some were then executed, simply because thier captives didnt have enough rooms to enclose my lions! the method of torture was to cut off toes and fingers, then pour acid on thier heads, but u can all see, they were terrorists, they had to die, my brothers had to die! but no ordinarry death!
       Jack, that shariah you so much hate and abuse, it doesnt allow us to act like this with our POWs, infact it says that we make use of them e.g learn from them about things we dont know and set them free! but oh no, amina is more important for you.
          lemme tell you of a girl i know, i met her in an orphanage, she was probably a year or two elder than me, she was a half-cast (her looks told) she had lovely eyes and a beautiful skin, long hair and a smile that would humble a whole army set out to kill, but guess what? she didnt know who her parents were, (i came to know that cos my mom is very inquisitive though a helpful personality alhamdulillah), she was adopted by a family and flown to the uk, there she was treated like a slave, she could bear it an ran back to her orphanage, that orphanage recieves 4 babies on average daily(i dont know the present state since i havent witnessed sharaih yet), do you think that girl i met would be in a condition she is today if there was shariah? the probability is just maybe 001%.
                     oops am having a fever, i guess its the cold still disturbing, i will be back soon insha'Allah to continue
yours
Al Hamza

[Jack_Fulcher]

Hi folks!  Hope you had a pleasant weekend.  Work is getting really busy, so I have been up to my ears in stuff.

I owe Waziri a response to his fine post.  I agree completely with your excellent point, sir, when you point out that Americans know little about the outside world.  This is sadly true, and you no doubt know much more about us than we do about you.  Before this issue about poor Amina Lawal, all I knew about Nigeria was that it is beautiful (which I have heard from friends who have visited), it has a high population, and that it has large reserves of oil.  I even had to talk with my colleague (one of our auditors and finance specialists) who is from a small town north of Lagos to get an idea of where Kano is and even how to pronounce the name.  America is a large country and, until about 1950, only the rich could afford to travel to Europe or Africa, so most of us did not think much about the worlds across the oceans.  Even after 1950, when people were starting to travel more, most of the travel from here was to Europe, not Africa or Asia.  I suppose the internet and, sadly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, will change this self-imposed isolation and disinterest regarding the rest of the world, and more and more Americans will find the outside world worth exploring.  None of us can expect to live in isolation any more.

You say that you are not opposed to science and technology, that you have used the advances yourselves.  I believe this is true, as we can all see by this excellent website.  However, I was not talking about just consuming the products of the West, using our computers, our medicine, and our machines, but participating in the discovery and development of these new technologies.  Many of our top scientists and entrepreneurs are from other countries, but would it not be better if you grew your own industries and worked WITH us in the progress of humankind?  Nigeria is in a great position to do this.  You get billions of dollars in what is essentially free money every year because of the oil and other minerals on your lands.  Not all countries are as lucky as you.  If you combine your great resources with hard work and study, you can become the envy of countries everywhere.  Why have the Japanese been able to grow such a massive economy when they have so little in natural resources?  The answer is that they educate their children and work “like ants,” as the French have said.  Their children work as hard as their parents at their studies, and parents insist that their children receive the most education they can.  The Asians in California are wealthy because they have a strong work ethic.  The Jews on our east coast also have become rich through study and working long hours.  There is no secret formula, just education and work.

Is this true in your own country?  I read another thread of posts on this website that suggests that the northern part of Nigeria is lagging the rest of the country in the participation in college education (if I read the analysis correctly).  This is not encouraging, but it is also not hopeless.  I would hope that you insist that your children receive a good education, and that you work with your children to help them understand their studies.  Only a well educated workforce will be prepared to work with the rest of the world.  I would love to read about the great strides made by Nigerian scientists in the fields of health and agriculture.  Would it not be great if the cure for AIDS came from Nigeria instead of the US?

I agree that Muslims once led the world of science, and that the Chinese once were great powers in science.  So were the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.  But this was in the past – what have they done lately?  The advances in the last few centuries have been created by Western scientists, using Aristotelian logic combined with Western scientific method and liberal ideologies.  You cannot live off of the success of your ancestors.  They were great people, but are gone now.

Maybe we are crazy to work so hard, and maybe we should spend more time with our families, but if we want a comfortable life with a lot of choices we need to create wealth.   I am always shocked to read of the work habits of the Saudis.  I read arabnews.com, which is put out by their government, I think.  They are a very lucky people, with tremendous reserves of oil just sitting under their feet.  Instead of developing and refining this oil themselves, they hire thousands of workers from other countries to do it for them.  The government tries to get their own people to take jobs in the economy, but they have been generally unsuccessful because the young Saudis do not have good work habits.  They come to work but leave before noon.  This is sad because all of this free money they are getting is being wasted on consumption.  Where are the great Saudi products, autos, and machines?  The only industry they seem to have developed is finance, which produces nothing for the people.  There is much gold jewelry, but little in actual production of things that people need.

Mr. Waziri, I know you are sincere when you say that Shariah will be enforced only on Muslims.  I believe that this is your intention.  However, the experience of foreigners in Saudi Arabia gives me doubt.  I know that SA is not your country, so maybe I am being unfair, but I can only relate what I have been told by those I know who have lived there.  There are for instance the religious police, who act like vigilantes and will hit you with sticks if you are found holding hands or if a woman dares to go outdoors without a scarf or male escort.  Good grief.  One woman told me that if she drove her car in Jeddeh, sometimes one of these vigilantes would step out into the street and try to stop her, but she would have to keep on driving, because she would be dragged out of the car and beaten if she had stopped.  Apparently women are not allowed to drive there, and the vigilantes want the women to know this!  What did the Prophet say about driving around town?  It’s clear that, at least in SA, foreigners are not safe from the dictates of their leaders’ interpretation of Shariah.

Remember what Eskimo reminds us when he quotes Ali Asghar:  “The words of Quran are DIVINE, but the interpretation is HUMAN.”  We know this is true because there are so many disagreements even among experts in the field.  This is true of all religions.  As has been said before on this board, Allah has given us brains and the power to reason for a purpose.  It is too easy to just believe what a particular group of clerics say.  It is not fair to them, either.  Imagine the burden of having a group of followers who believe everything you utter.  Would you not rather have them engage you with questions and conversation?

Mr. Waziri, we have obviously a few things in common, especially the tendency to write too much.  That is certainly true for myself!  Why do we do this?
Thank you for your elaboration of the circumstances that led to Amina Lawal’s unhappy situation.  To me it looks like she’s just a simple country woman who was taken advantage of by that guy, and then wanted someone to do something about it.  Instead of getting justice, she was hurt further by the police and the courts.  Not only that, the guy lied about it and they just let him go.  How can that be justice?  Why is it so good to lie under the Shariah laws, as al-Hamza has said?  Why is lying encouraged?  Your judges think they’re doing the baby a favor by allowing it to be weaned before killing its mother and making it an orphan.  Surely you must know how incredibly cruel and unjust this looks to the rest of the world.  I respect your goal of protecting genealogy, but if that were really the underlying reason for this, you would also kill the baby.  Certainly his continued existence sullies your gene pool.  I am glad that you point out that stoning is not something that has happened in your country recently, that this is a sensational case perhaps exaggerated by “the Media houses of the West.”  This gives me hope that perhaps reason will prevail and Amina will be released to live her life with her baby.  

You point out the impeachment of President Clinton as an example of how we, too, disapprove of unfaithful people.  And you are correct, that we disapprove of such activities.  However, the impeachment was not something that most Americans supported.  Clinton had lied under oath in a sexual harassment suit, saying that he had not had sex with Monica, and the opposition party (the Republicans), who controlled the House of Representatives, brought the charge of impeachment because he had lied under oath.  If you go back and look at the news reports from that time, you’ll notice that the Republicans voted for impeachment, and the Democrats (the party of Clinton) voted against it.  This was purely political, nothing more.  Most Americans said that he shouldn’t have committed adultery, but that it was not a serious enough crime to remove him from office (let alone kill him!).  His approval rating among the citizens was always very high, as he did a good job as president. And as you see, he was not removed because the Republicans in the Senate could not get a majority to vote for this.

You make a good point that Americans haven’t elected a woman as president yet.  The Europeans, Indians, Israelis, Indonesians, and Pakistanis all have done better on this particular measure.  I do not know why this is.  We will do so eventually, I am sure, as women hold elective office throughout our government; but a woman president here may be several years from now.  On the other hand, women who are raped here can go to the police and report it, and the MAN will be the one arrested.  If a man fathers a baby, he will be made to pay the mother child support every month.  We have many protections for women such as sexual harassment laws (e.g., if you make sexually suggestive statements to a woman co-worker, you can be fired from your job), affirmative action (women are hired before men in many cases, by law), and the divorce laws.  Change comes slowly, but we are trying to make opportunities for our daughters equal to those for our sons.

I agree that the West has acted callously toward your countries, and has exploited your resources and people.  No question about it.  But I disagree that we only interfere in your world when we have something at stake.  The US imposed economic sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid government because apartheid was wrong and we wanted to do something about it.  Was that “none of our business?”  Are the problems in Liberia “none of our business?”  Should we have intervened in Ruwanda to help prevent the slaughter there?  Were we wrong to have entered the war in Europe and help kill Hitler?  Was his treatment of the Jews and Gypsies there just an internal German issue?  Suppose Hitler had said, as EMTL said to me, “We have the right to choose (our beliefs) and practice it, period!”  

We have religious groups in America who keep to themselves and practice their religions, such as the Ammish Mennonites in Pennsylvania or the Christian Scientists.  However, they are still subject to basic laws that involve the protection of people.  For instance, the Christian Scientists do not use doctors but instead believe in the power of prayer.  However, there are some Christian Scientist parents who have been sent to jail because they did not provide medical aid to their dying children.  Was this “none of our business?”  We will not allow children to be killed because their parents are trying to “practice their religion,” no matter how sincere they are.  

I am not a very well educated man in such things, but I know of no passage in the Quran that says “thinking is not allowed, and you are forbidden to use your brains to reason.”  To those like EMTL or al-Hamza who say “stay out of our business,” I say that I am only the first person who will bother you like this.  I am saying this to you as a practical man trying to speak to a practical people.  You may not believe this, but I am a nice guy and you have no idea what others in are saying about this issue.  Check out this Yahoo.com message board regarding the Lawal case:  http://news.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=l&mid=&board=37138459&sid=37138459&tid=apnigeriadeathbystoning&start=1  There is a lot of anger expressed here, and it will only get worse if this woman is killed.  I do not trust my fellow Westerners to “stay out of your business,” and I expect that at the very least we will impose economic sanctions in the same way we did against South Africa.  This is not meant to be a threat, but you should know the reality that you face.  Several of the messages on the Yahoo board are disturbing to me, and I hope you do not dismiss them as “Western arrogance and colonialist attitudes.”  You can label them however you wish, but they are reality and they will not just go away.

I am suspicious of those who say “leave us alone.”  They sound like they might depend on religion for their living.  We have similar clerics in our own “religion industry” in the US, and it is very important to them that their followers do not question them.  They say that the Prophet has said this and that, and that it means thus and so, and so that settles that!  There are some here who like that approach to life, who are very uncomfortable if they are questioned about their religious beliefs.  In short they want to be told what to do, and if someone says “but what about this…?” they shout “apostacy!” and do the questioner harm.  Are your leaders doing the best for you?  Are they open in their minds and attitudes, and willing to take suggestions from their people, or do they say “do as I say, or else!”  We have some like that in the US, like Ashcroft, but luckily our courts will not let him get away with everything.

I am sorry that I have written so much.  Peace to you all.  Jack