HJS Comments: What many of us level-headed folks would call “downright silly”, other folks, without benefit of our upbringing in our culture would not only believe, but would actually kill some innocent person (or people) because of such bizarre superstition. Of course, in the case cited below, the charges of a woman’s practicing sorcery and witchcraft may have been made only to convince the local population that the woman was executed for plausible and logical reasons. In any case, the people who felt obliged to make up the story certainly need lots of re-educating (or better, replacement by reasonable, modern jurists); and anyone who truly believes the stories about the sorcery and witchcraft, needs to get a life and join the modern world. If Amina, the daughter of Abdul, the son of Salem Nasser was actually executed for exercising freedom of speech, as Reuters suggests, then it is time for the entire area to grow up and join the modern world.
Of course, one might truly wonder about how level-headed we truly are to elect such a undistinguished, no-talent hack for a president. Remember, people who support his presidency also support bringing in the anti-American Sharia Law.
Amnesty calls Saudi beheading for sorcery 'shocking'By Reuters
DUBAI -- Rights group Amnesty International has described as "deeply shocking" Saudi Arabia's beheading of a woman convicted on charges of "sorcery and witchcraft," saying it underlined the urgent need to end executions in the kingdom.
Saudi national Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was executed on Monday in the northern province of al-Jawf after being tried and convicted for practicing sorcery, the interior ministry said, without giving details of the charges.
"The citizen... practiced acts of witchcraft and sorcery," Saudi newspaper al-Watan cited the interior ministry as saying. "The death sentence was carried out on the accused yesterday (Monday) in the Qurayyat district in al-Jawf region."
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has no written criminal code, which is instead based on an uncodified form of Islamic sharia law as interpreted by the country's judges.
"While we don't know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion," Philip Luther, interim director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program, said in a statement.
Amnesty said the execution was the second of its kind in recent months. A Sudanese national was beheaded in the Saudi city of Medina in September after being convicted on sorcery charges, according to the London-based group.
Amnesty put at 79 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia so far this year, nearly triple the figure in 2010.
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