Boy, 16, executes father's killer

[IndianaGreen]

Tuesday, 2 May 2006, 21:41 GMT 22:41 UK

Boy, 16, executes father's killer

A teenage Somali boy has stabbed to death his father's killer in a public execution ordered by an Islamic court.

Large crowds gathered at a Koranic school in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, to watch Mohamed Moallim, 16, stab Omar Hussein in the head and throat.

Hussein had been convicted of killing the boy's father, Sheikh Osman Moallim, after a row about Mohamed's education.

Islamic courts have brought a semblance of order to Mogadishu, imposing Sharia law after years of rule by warlords.

However there is some opposition to the courts. A group of warlords has been fighting a militia loyal to the Islamic courts, which they accuse of links to al-Qaeda.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4967108.stm

[dipsydoodle]

1. That really is

an eye for eye.

[Kagemusha]

2. It is sad to see people calling this the best solution

because the alternatives are far worse.

And they may well be, that's why it's sad.

[President Kerry]

3. Good lord.. Now this is some due process.

:crazy:

[trixie]

4. just wonderful

they have taken a child and made him a killer.

[superconnected]

5. Actually this is what I'm afraid of with the fundies.

What a sick backward society these shria law supporters have.

I doubt OT Moses laws from deuteronomy and leviticus would be any better if they ever do get to impose them on us.

[IndianaGreen]

6. They are no different from the Christian Dominionists in the US

They want to impose the Christian version of Sharia law in our country.

[FiveGoodMen]

35. They do, indeed. And THEY are the REAL enemy.

Many of them from my own $%^&*(*) family!

[alfredo]

9. Read this and see the Reconstructionist's hand in * policies

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=234

Reconstructionism’s scope of time and change is vast. A society so reconstructed is not merely amended but rather razed and rebuilt. For example, Reconstructionist books and newsletters reveal that in a Reconstructed America minimum-wage laws and Social Security for younger workers would be eliminated; most old-age security would be covered by personal retirement plans or by care from adult children; and the federal government would play absolutely no part in regulating businesses, public education or welfare. In this brave new world of radical libertarian economics, all inheritance and gift taxes would be abolished, while income taxes would be no more than 10 percent of gross income (and then only until government was shrunk further). Gleaning for the poor on private farms after harvesting would be encouraged. All banks would be required to hold 100 percent reserves, and America would return to a gold and silver standard. Because of biblical injunctions against usury, no loans—including home mortgages—would be given for longer than seven years.

Various social customs would change under the appropriated Law of the ancient Israelites. Strict patriarchy would return to the family, and the practice of indentured servitude would turn prisons into temporary holding places, end unemployment and keep problem teenagers busy. Following Old Testament law, the criminal-justice system would get tougher on homosexuals, blasphemers, career criminals, Sabbath-breakers, adulterers, incorrigibly misbehaving older children and nonbelievers.

[MrSlayer]

7. Sounds like justice to me.

I strongly advocate turning the guilty party over to the family of the victim. Probably the only thing I agree with radical Islam on.

[yngliberal]

13. Sounds hypocritical to me....n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. I hope to god you have no power over any one

Ugh.

[dflprincess]

18. And if it turns out the individual convicted and turned over to the family

was not the one who committed the crime?

[MrSlayer]

36. Obviously I'm saying when they have the actual culprit.

C'mon, do I really need to say that? :eyes:

[American Tragedy]

20. In that case I hope you never attain any position of power in this country

[MrSlayer]

37. Too late, I'm committeeman for my district.

Unfortunately it does not give me the power to change the laws.

[fujiyama]

23. Revenge

is a very fundamental human emotion and the concept of an "eye for an eye" is as old as human civilization, but the problem with this is where errors of judgement occur.

Without a system of proper due process, where it is absolutely proven beyond any reasonable doubt that a person is responsible for a horrific crime such as murder, these errors become more common. After all, Somalia has no access to things like "DNA evidence" and I doubt even basic forensic techniques are in place.

Once the state murders someone innocent for a crime someone else commited, the point of the death penalty itself is defeated.

We don't know what evidence the court used to sentence this man to death. If he was truly responsible, it does seem like poetic justice.

But without that information it is difficult to conclude anything. This is basically why the death penalty itself is inherantly flawed. Death is irreversable and societies should be EXTREMELY cautious when killing people.

[MrSlayer]

38. How do you know this guy wasn't caught red handed?

Standing over the corpse with a butcher's knife in hand? I know where you are coming from but there are an awful lot of open and shut no doubt about it cases. It is these I'm referring to.

[Puglover]

24. And you are a progressive how?

:shrug:

[MrSlayer]

39. In many ways.

A single issue does not make up a person's political character. I'm sure you realize this being here and all.

[hippywife]

25. I just don't have the words

at the moment for how sick a position this is to take. Appalling!

[MrSlayer]

40. Too bad.

I really wanted the full details of how and why you find this so disgusting so maybe I can understand not wanting to kill the person who killed your father. The idea is alien to me.

[hippywife]

42. If you leave open any reason to kill

people will always justify other reasons to kill. If peace is to ever have a chance in the world, murder for any reason must be abolished.

The taking of a life to avenge the taking of another is never justice. It's only revenge. Nothing lasting is ever gained by it. It only perpetuates the violence.

On edit: I apologize if I sounded so harsh in my response this morning. I was just so stunned that anyone could support such a thing that I didn't know what to say and had little time to put my feelings into words.

[American Tragedy]

43. Furthermore, righteousness is not always defined by what you "WANT"

to do. Just because you feel a strong desire to kill does not make it right, nor does it remotely qualify you to be the ideal arbiter of justice. Part of the point of the justice system is that it is implemented by an ostensibly impartial third party (the state) which doesn't have an emotional ax to grind.

In any case, I would not want to kill someone, even one who killed someone I loved, if they were already safely in custody. Aside from finding the mental image of stabbing someone in the head and throat unbearably gruesome and primitive, it would resolve nothing, and as hippywife and others have said, it merely continues the cycle of violence. Incidentally, most of the industrialized world has drawn this conclusion as well.

[hippywife]

45. Thank you for your additional comments.

I agree that justice should be decided by an uninvolved third party.

And if you look at the reasons for execution in some countries in the ME - homosexuality, adultery, heck, even dishonoring one's family by marrying someone not chosen by the patriarchs of the family - it makes it adundantly clear that anger and pride will always find new reasons to kill.

[LanternWaste]

32. I think you're confusing justice with revenge...

I think you're confusing justice with revenge...

[MrSlayer]

41. And I think one man's justice is another man's revenge.

You say revenge, I say justice. I fail to see the difference. Justice is getting what you deserve. What the killer deserves is what they meted out to their victim.

[hippywife]

44. Not in a civilized world

trying to move forward and find peace.

[Trajan]

48. If it was wrong for the man to kill his father ....

Then it is just as wrong to kill the man ....

Punishment neednt be immoral ....

Justice neednt be death .....

Frankly, I do not see much daylight between your position and the bloody revenge that has had the Middle East by the throat for millenae ....

"Eye for an eye' is a PROBLEM ... NOT a solution ....

It is so easy to poke holes in this rationale for killing ....

[PaDem]

50. Sick and barbaric.............

in public no less. I'm sorry to see anyone condone this on this forum. It's one thing to be an advocate of the death penalty and quite another to support this kind of barbarism.

[jwcomer]

8. Actually Sharia is a huge improvement.

Well this is in fact an improvement. Traditionally, the Somali people would take blood revenge on anyone of the same clan - it didn't matter who it was. The culture was such that the first person's clan had taken something from the other clan. So there was no sense of personal responsibility but it was rather clan responsibility. So for example if you killed somebody in another clan, then the other clan was liable to kill someone in yours. Naturally your clan might not be happy with you and you would owe livestock to the family within your clan of the person who died in the revenge killing. Very odd stuff to the Westerner. So in some sense the Sharia ruling is better than the traditional somali system, because under Sharia there is a notion of personal responsibility which was lacking in the old system. The old system is half the reason Somali is such a bloody mess.

[Rex]

10. How 900 A.D. of him.

The species is doomed.

[Haole Girl]

11. I wonder if the 16 year old felt better or worse after. n/t

[Haole Girl]

12. Just answered my own question, when I read the link...

"Speaking afterwards, the boy said he felt satisfied that Hussein was dead."

[Rex]

14. He won't feel that way when he hits 30 or 40.

Then again I doubt he will live to see 30 or 40. :(

Edit - I was off by about 10 years. Still sad.

Somalia
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 48.47 years
male: 46.71 years
female: 50.28 years (2006 est.)

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/so.html

[Endangered Specie]

15. Poetic justice?

[shenmue]

16. Sure, screw the justice system...

let's all just stab each other!

Talk about not learning anything.

Barbarians.

[ConcernedCanuk]

19. I do not believe in the death penalty - period.

.
.
.

Although I consider myself in the terms available to be an Agnostic - I believe the Ten Commandments to be one heck of a good set of rules to live by.

"Thou shall not kill" being a pretty important one.

By killing someone who kills, we lose an opportunity to find out WHY, and therefore we lose the chance to study ways of preventing others from getting to that point where they feel it "necessary".

I think we need to study these people, talk to them, NOT torture or make their lives miserable - and discover the incidents that led up to the killing - and learn how to prevent it.

All murderers should be studied by different psychiatrists, not in an invasive way, but patiently and with empathy to their emotions.

We will NEVER solve the problem of people that kill people

By killing THEM . . .

Just My Canuk Thoughts

[BoneDaddy]

21. Fundamentalist Islam

like any other fundamentalist group be it our own Christian or Jewish fundies are insane...

[Harper_is_Bush]

27. No more or less insane than the death penalty in the USA.

Do we blame that on fundamentalist Christians?

[BoneDaddy]

30. No but we can blame it on the fundamentalist mindset

that is housed, based and justified in the Koran as it is in the Torah and the OT portion of the Bible

[Jack_DeLeon]

22. I somewhat support it...

[Lochloosa]

26. No Flip Flopping on this issue

you either do or you don't.

No free ride here.

[Jack_DeLeon]

34. Well when you put it that way...

yeah I support it.

If that other guy was definately the murderer then I think justice was served.

I do not support the death penalty in all cases, but for alot of murder cases I do think it is justified.

[Harper_is_Bush]

28. Most people who don't really understand the death penalty

somewhat support it.

[fun n serious]

31. I can see how I would too...

I get feelings of an eye for and eye, like in the case of the hispanic boy sodomized and beaten in Texas... I know it's wrong but my anger sometimes over rides my logic.

[karlrschneider]

29. Er,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1084107&mesg_id=1084158

[paparush]

33. Good Old Bible Justice.... eye for an eye....

[hippywife]

46. From "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

On Crime and Punishment

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong
as though he were not one of you,
but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous
cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower
than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but
with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong
without the hidden will of you all.

[Jazz2006]

47. That's just so wrong on so many levels.

*sigh*

[Hekate]

49. Sharia law provides for adulteresses to be stoned to death, too

Not the men, just the women. Of course if the woman is pregnant they mercifully wait until the baby is born.

This is sick -- making a 16 year old boy into a murderer to prove his manhood and avenge his father. Why do I think Dubya would understand and approve?

Hekate