From the L.A. Times:
When the popular 46-year-old Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat went on-air and made his predictions about the future, the phone lines of the satellite television station Sheherazade used to be flooded with calls.But ... while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last year, Sibat was [arrested] by religious police in the holy city of Medina ... on charges of sorcery.
On Nov. 9, Sibat was given a death sentence by a Mecca court for allegedly practicing witchcraft....
Scores of alleged witch doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians each year are dragged through the Saudi courts, including Fawza Falih, who’s been on death row since 2006 for witchcraft.
Her accusers include a man who claims the 51-year-old, illiterate Falih is the reason for his impotence....
Thanks to Religion Clause for the pointer.
Martinned says:
From the book of Exodus:
That last one comes back in Leviticus:
If you’re going to believe in a holy book hook, line and sinker, what’s wrong with a ruling like this one? My pdf-version of the King James Bible mentions some version of witch or bewitched 14 times. (10 times in the Old Testament, and 4 times in the new.) In addition, there are 15 references to sorcery in some form (7 OT, 8 NT) and 17 to magic or magician. (all OT)
Not having anything turkey-related to do, I also checked the Quran. It mentions sorcery only in Surah 2.102:
Witch or witchcraft isn’t used at all, but “magic” gets 36 hits.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 6:15 pmEugene Volokh says:
What happened in the West over the last 300 years is that many people stopped believing in the holy books hook, line, and sinker — and even many who continued to believe (or say they continue to believe) have either reinterpreted them, or have concluded that the legal system shouldn’t follow those books. Not so (or at least not enough so) in Saudi Arabia, apparently.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 6:24 pmWaste93 says:
You may also want to search through the haditha for sorcery and variations.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 6:34 pmKazinksi says:
Its all fine to believe in the holy books and keep their commandments, but putting someone else to death for not following strictures you believe in is counterproductive, let them go to hell in their own time.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 6:39 pmGEORGE LARSON says:
If I attempt to predict movements of the stock market, the economy, on time arrival of an airliner, outcomes of athletic events, the weather, or global climate am I guilty of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 6:49 pmPeteP says:
Burn the witch ! Burn the witch !
Sorry, I was reverting to my childhood in Salem for a minute there ....
Quote
November 26, 2009, 6:58 pmMartinned says:
I know. My point was that if you’re going to refer to the Bible as justification for discriminating against gays, for example, you can’t cherry pick. Either you’re going to believe everything the bible says (creation, anyone?), or you have to admit that your beliefs come from somewhere else. At least these Saudis are consistent.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 7:14 pmKirk Parker says:
George Larson,
If you asked for an ETA at the Sudan Airways office in Juba, they would literally say “Sa’a tis9a, insha’allah!”. [9 o’clock, God willing–and pardon my lame transliteration.] Hence the popular name for SA being “Insha’allah Airways”.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 7:17 pmSP says:
Or, it could be that Christians, as well as everyone else in the West, view witchcraft as simply not true. It is thus harmless, and there’s little to be gained in punishing it.
Telling Christians what they should believe, especially when it relates to Old Testament doctrine, is an especially tiresome approach.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 7:18 pmLarryA says:
On pilgrimage? Guess he got his money’s worth.
I wonder how many of the people here in the U.S. who have converted because it’s cool would last a week in a country run by the real deal?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 7:19 pmMartinned says:
I have no interest in telling anyone what to believe. And if I did, I’d start with these Saudis. That said, if someone is going to believe something, I’d hope they might try to be consistent. If you’re going to believe in a literal 6 day creation because it says so in the Bible, how does that not also require you to believe in witchcraft?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:20 pmthelemic_fire says:
The irony of course is that — as in many instances involving things Saudi — there are double standards and exceptions to the rule. Depends how connected you are... and how public your voice is.
Sex trafficking, abuse of foreign domestics is overlooked if you are connected and keep it low key. But if you happen to be a lowly airline employee such as Mazen Abdel-Jawad and go on the telly to boast about sexual conquests — expect to be publicly vilified and condemned to a 1,000 lashes.
The arrest and trial of Ali Sibat is outrageous. For one thing he is a Lebanese citizen. For another we are hardly talking about a Middle Eastern version of Anton La Vey. All the guy was ‘guilty’ of basically was giving advise on life issues and making general predictions about the future.
It can get even sillier. In 2006 an Eritrean national was arrested for possessing “a book of witchcraft”. The ‘book’ turned out to be a phone book that contained writings in the Tigrinya alphabet, commonly used in Eritrea.
What I would like to know is where people like Starhawk, Fiona Horne and the neo-Pagan community in general are on what amounts to ‘a burning time’ in Saudi Arabia. Does political correctness and the urge-to-appease mean that people who should be leading protests condemning Saudi executions of alleged ‘witches’ are now in the closet, kissing up to Wahhabists in order to tow the WH line? Certainly looks that way.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:34 pmJonathan Adler says:
That old black magic has me in it’s spell
That old black magic that you weave so well
Icy fingers up
And down my spine
The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine
The same old tingle that I feel
Inside
When that elevator starts it’s ride
Down and down I go, round and round I go
Like a leaf that’s
Caught in the tide
I should stay away but what can I do
I hear your name, and I’m aflame
Aflame with
Such a burning desire
That only your kiss can put out the fire
You are the lover that I’ve waited for
The mate that fate had me created for
And every time your lips meet mine
Baby down and down I go,
All around I go
In a spin, loving the spin that I’m in
Under that old black magic called love
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:40 pmWilliam Stoughton says:
The Salem “witches” were hung.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:42 pmrc says:
Martinned: “I have no interest in telling anyone what to believe...”
but you claim that “Either you’re going to believe... or you have to admit...”
You’re forcing me to believe a false dichotomy.
When you attack Christians, you have thousands of years of history and doctrine to parse for inconsistencies. It’s ridiculous to say that in order to believe in God, I must embrace all that was written by His church over the aeons. Were I informed of just a few of your beliefs, I could play this stupid game in a way would paint you inconsistent, as well.
As it stands, I have no problem with a witches being punished, if indeed they harmed others by using dark powers gained through congress with the Evil One. If somebody truly hurts someone using dark powers gained from cooperation with an evil force bent on human destruction, that person deserves harsh punishment. Can I get an amen? But the thing is, not one of us believes that ‘black magic’ is what happened.
The tragedy isn’t that witches are being punished, but that they aren’t witches at all.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:50 pmArthurKirkland says:
Other than in Salem?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:56 pmAnonymous says:
People blaming charlatans for their ills proves there is no Evil.
News at 12.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:58 pmObserver says:
Martinned: So you actually believe Sibat was practicing witchcraft? I would think that, if one believes he really did have the powers that the Saudi Arabia court imputed to him, even non-believers would think that this is a pretty major issue. If, however, as is far more likely to be the case, Sibat did not actually have supernatural powers, then he should not have faced punishment (either under a secular regime, or a regime that applies religious law). This has nothing to do with whether the holy books should be interpreted literally.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:59 pmKuzbad says:
Re: Inshallah (god willing), salam aleykum (pax vobiscum) and a handful of other phrases are basically Arab cultural expressions that have spread with Islam. Airliners in Pakistan–and probably across the Islamic world–say the same thing. A professor of mine once gave maybe a 15 minute talk on the usage of inshallah and how much of a catch-all expression it is. My favorite example he gave
Person A: “Can I borrow $10?”
Person B: “Inshallah!”
Quote
November 26, 2009, 8:59 pmrc says:
Arthur: “Other than in Salem?”
Are you implying that real witchcraft occurred in Salem? I’ll note that, for example, I believe in the death penalty for murder with malice aforethought... but I don’t believe in the death penalty for people wrongly convicted of murder. Most people agree with this view.
The tragedy isn’t that witches are being punished, but that they aren’t witches at all.
The biggest problem in all this is not Saudi Arabia’s religion, but rather its lack of due process.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:04 pmCornellian says:
Her accusers include a man who claims the 51-year-old, illiterate Falih is the reason for his impotence....
You’d think guys would be embarrassed to admit being impotent, yet this seems to be a surprisingly common accusation against “witches” in primitive societies.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:04 pmPatHMV says:
martinned said:
... but rather than start with criticizing the Saudis, I’m going to take a post criticizing a truly medieval practice by a very backwards country and use it as an opportunity to criticize Christians for being inconsistent and hypocritical about their religion, since they don’t want to actually kill anybody for blasphemy or other sins anymore.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:06 pmvfbvfb says:
The problem here is that the Saudi judges believe that the Defendant is practicing witchcraft. But if one believes that there is no such thing as witchcraft, then it seems that professed psychics/palm readers/fortunetellers/tarot card readers should be charged with fraud. If you believe that these charlatans ready believe that they have supernatural powers, then there might be the defense of lack of intent. But I think most of these people know they are frauds.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:11 pmthelemic_fire says:
rc: “As it stands, I have no problem with a witches being punished, if indeed they harmed others by using dark powers gained through congress with the Evil One.”
Does ‘rc’ stand for Roman Catholic perchance?
This alleged ‘evil one’ you speak of with such conviction — oh and the big G to boot — are unproven postulates.
Truth is the magical tradition in its many guises hasn’t come close to committing the amount of “evil” (if we must use that word) dished out by the Roman Catholic church in the course of the burnings, inquisition and numerous genocidal persecutions aimed at Huguenots and others — (let’s not even get into child abuse).
If that’s the reps of Christ on earth in action, then witchcraft looks pretty good. That’s something witches don’t do — burn, torture and murder people en masse because they happen follow the wrong religion.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:18 pmNowMDJD says:
Every major religion starts with canonical works and then these are interpreted. Much like judicial interpretations of the US constitution.
It displays ignorance, if not arrogance for you to tell people they are inconsistent if they don’t believe literally in your construction of the meaning of phrases in the translation of a religious work you happen to possess. Judaism is not just the Tanach (Old Testament). Islam is not just the Koran.
By the way, the passage about not suffering a witch to live was translated from a passage written well over 2500 years ago in a Hebrew dialect in literary use at that time. Do you know the actual word translated as “witch”? Do you know exactly (or ever more or less) what it meant when the passage was written? I can’t speak for the Christian clergy, but Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis start with the text as written, not as translated by King James’s scholars (whose translation was informed by a belief that the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy had been superseded by Christianity, and which belief affected their construction of the text) over 2000 years later. I believe that most serious Christian scholars begin with the original text as well. If you can address this issue of what the text actually said, then you start to comment intelligently on whether any given religious tradition is interpreting those words correctly in its current doctrine.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:29 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » 300 Years Behind the Times -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jason D. McClain, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: 300 Years Behind the Times: From the L.A. Times: When the popular 46-year-old Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat went o.. http://bit.ly/8wYJWf [...]
Martinned says:
I took it as a given that none of us thinks this guy deserves what he got (or anything remotely like it). So I took the liberty of going slightly off topic to pose a question I’ve been wondering about for some time: How do Biblical literalists, who claim to be bound by the word of God whether they like it or not, justify the fact that they are nonetheless cherry picking? (I’d like to think that my version of this question is slightly less annoying than Aaron Sorkin’s version.)
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:54 pmArthurKirkland says:
One of the many points indicating the United States’ superiority with respect to Saudi Arabia is that we do not (or at least no longer) kill witches.
This is an especially important point for televangelists, especially Pat Robertson.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 9:56 pmrc says:
thelemic_fire: “Does ‘rc’ stand for Roman Catholic perchance?”
No, but I’ll stick up for the Roman Catholic Church, nonetheless. I’ll do that for the same reason that I don’t like Martinned fishing over aeons of history, then gloating over inconsistencies: any real institution has flaws.
So yeah, inquisition, blah blah. That doesn’t mean you can follow up with any statement you want. Because as it stands, priest-rapists pale in comparison to soul-sold damnants who hurt others at the bidding of an evil power whose intent is the destruction of humanity. I think we can agree on that.
The reason we don’t burn witches is because they aren’t witches. They don’t exist. So anyone convicted of witchcraft is the victim of injustice. Convicting witches isn’t bad because also priests rape boys, it’s bad because the conviction is due to a failure of due process.
Arthur: “we do not (or at least no longer) kill witches.” So you believe that at some time the U.S. did kill witches?
If witches, in the tradition Christian sense, existed, then any moral society would be well advised to find them and punish them. Or kill them.
But witches don’t exist, so any conviction is an injustice on due process grounds.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 10:05 pmValentino Rossi says:
hanged or crushed to death
Quote
November 26, 2009, 10:47 pmD.O. says:
How do you know?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 10:47 pmFrater Plotter says:
Hey, did anyone notice that the group bringing this case to the attention of the Western media was none other than ... Human Rights Watch?
Funny ... to judge from some folks around here, that should be impossible, since everyone knows HRW only ever condemns Israel, and never says anything about rights violations in Muslim countries.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 10:52 pmOff Kilter says:
Yes, clearly, these people represent a powerful threat to our very existence. Without doubt we must build up our military and further erode our civil liberties to protect ourselves from the threat of people who kill each other for practicing withcraft because their threatening holy war with the West is so credible.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 11:04 pmGuest_user says:
How do Biblical literalists, who claim to be bound by the word of God whether they like it or not, justify the fact that they are nonetheless cherry picking?
Are they cherry-picking, or are you? To supply an imperfect counterexample, can you claim anyone who drinks alcohol is violating US law because you read a book about US law and history somewhere past 1919 but didn’t continue reading to 1933?
In general Christians, including many competent biblical literalists, believe that the Bible is one complete work and should be read and believed in sum total of what it says, and not based upon, in your own words, “cherry-picking”. (That they may do it anyway is a separate thread of debate.) The New Testament redefines the relationship between God and man based on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The value of Exodus 22:18 is not changed in that it still shows God’s position regarding witchcraft, but the believer in the present day does not live under Old Testament law — which existed to instantly and publicly judge sin in all of its manifest forms — because Jesus Christ paid the price for sin, and any who will believe can be saved from the eternal consequences of their sin.
Hence, the Christian is not under orders to go executing witches.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 11:09 pmLarryA says:
Why?
Suppose there are people who follow a higher power other than the God of Christ. Suppose further that the deity is “evil” according to Christian belief. How is that sufficient reason to punish them?
Christian governments have a long tradition of persecuting other Christians who have “wrong” beliefs. How is that different than punishing those who worship a different deity?
Suppose that the “witches” gain some supernatural power from their deity unavailable to Christians, different from the Christian supernatural power of prayer. Is that reason to punish them? Sounds like envy.
IMHO the only reason to punish a person is for maliciously harming someone. Whether they do it with “witchy” powers or earthly weapons is irrelevant.
Actually most of the excesses of Christianity (Catholic and Protestant alike) happen within Christian government, when beliefs are codified into law and enforced with the power of the state. The same is true of the excesses of Islam. The same is also true of those who follow secular belief systems like tree-hugging environmentalism. Magic is magic.
That’s why the Founding Fathers designed a secular U.S. government and protected it with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 11:11 pmTeh Anonymous says:
So ... was the point of this post that we should be thankful that we don’t live in Saudi Arabia?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 11:14 pmSeamus says:
Guess what? They don’t want to follow biblical injunctions to put people to death for sodomy, either. So what was your point again?
Quote
November 26, 2009, 11:42 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Larry, suppose you had a neighbor who poisoned your cow so that its milk soured immediately, poisoned your garden so you had nothing to eat, poisoned your wife so that she miscarried all of her children. You’d prosecute the hell out of that neighbor, wouldn’t you? Suppose that you were convinced that your neighbor had done those things, not with literal poison, but by calling on the devil to do it for her. I mean seriously convinced. Would you really just put up with it, b/c your neighbor’s religion is her business and you can’t be so intolerant as to call those things “evil”?
We can say with great moral superiority that we no longer undertake witchhunts, but that’s only because we no longer believe in witches.
Quote
November 26, 2009, 11:53 pmMartinned says:
Thanks for the reply, though I’m not sure that I understand what this means. Whether witches exist (or existed) is a factual matter, just like the story of creation. So apart from the question of what to do with witches, how can one consistent approach to reading the Bible lead to a person believing in literal 6 day creation but not witches?
It’s not just an Old Testament thing. In the Acts of the Apostles it says:
In St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians he writes:
Of course all of this can be fixed with a suitable flexible approach to interpretation, but people who read the Bible in this way generally don’t believe the Earth is 6000 years old, so they are not the subject of my query.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:00 amArthurKirkland says:
Superstition laced with legal procedure can produce this.
And not just in Saudi Arabia.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:27 amD.O. says:
Martinned, there might be a not-so-fine distinction between witchcraft as a ritual in which some people are involved and witchcraft as a result of these (or other) actions. Laura quite vividly described the second possibility. We are sure now that the two (that is practice and result) have no causal connection. Thus we do not persecute witches. In which sence authors of the Acts and Paul used the words sorcery and witchcraft i don’t know and it is quite possible they made no distinction. But many modern Christians might.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:28 amFub says:
I regularly travel a stretch of road in California that has a number of “Psychic Readers” and similar establishments. As long as the transaction is to pay money to have your fortune told, your palm, cards, tea leaves or aura read, they are legal. My recollection is that over the years there have been a few flaps by some municipalities trying to ban them by zoning, but they are not banned by all municipalities.
There have been occasional criminal cases for a species of fraud very close to medical quackery, along the lines of “There is a curse on you that is making you ill. I will remove it for lots of money.” These involved large sums of money and victims who were vulnerable due to mental disability or dementia, whom the con artists worked for a long time.
I think that as long as the fortune teller is just selling an opinion of your future (or whatever they opine about) for a fee, then there is no fraud.
Fraud requires knowing misrepresentation of a present fact.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:44 amrc says:
Arthur– Your reference is to the Salem Witch trials, which happened in the US in the late 1600’s.
The point of this webpost is that Saudi Arabia is 300 years behind the times. Yes, superstition causes problems. Yes, this happens in places other than Saudi Arabia. I don’t know if you’re equivocating, or just sayin’.... but if Saudi was 300 years behind in, say, medical technology, no reasonable person would reply with ‘But people still die in the US, too.’
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:46 amtheobromophile says:
I’ve always found this “witch” thing to be rather amusing, especially in the modern era. There is the joke about wanting to know why psychics have to ask you for your credit card number; likewise, it would seem as if any witch worth his salt would bring despair and destruction upon those who would dare to put him on trial and end his life.
Martinned: the New American Standard Bible and the New International Version translate Exodus 22:16 as “You shall not allow a sorceress to live.” Obviously, under this particular translation, only women can be put to death for witch craft.
Finally, I will say this: it’s terribly ironic when non-Christians criticise Christians for not being inhumane enough. I doubt that any moral atheist would want to encourage people to put others to death for homosexual practises, engaging in the Wiccan religion, pre-marital sex, or blasphemy, but that is exactly what is happening through these “hypocrisy” charges. What is the complaint, exactly? That modern Christians generally act as you would want them to act?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:50 amRicardo says:
That’s the exact opposite of Martinned’s complaint. Rather it concerns the actions of people like the parents of a Cuban friend of mine who have told him he is no longer welcome at their house or at family gatherings since he revealed he is gay. Presumably, the parents (who are devout Catholics) feel justified in their position based partly on their particular understanding of biblical doctrine and their sincere belief that homosexuality is a grave sin. To them, finding out their son is gay may be equivalent to finding out he is a pimp or a thief. The point is if they took some of the other Old Testament laws literally, they might begin to realize the absurd results of their interpretation and would stop being so rigid.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:27 amneurodoc says:
Any statistics to share for Sudan Airways’ on-time record, and more importantly its safety record? When things going other than according to plan, that is planes do not arrive/depart on time or they do not take off and land without injury or loss of life, do they lay that off on Allah, or does Allah only get credit for the good stuff that happens with respect to airline operations? I prefer airlines that take all credit and blame for their operations. (And I don’t like airlines with pilots who think Allah would approve of their including their passengers on a suicidal mission.)
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:35 amtheobromophile says:
Not so, Ricardo. The complaint was about consistency of actions, not the actions themselves. Besides, if Martinned’s theory were brought to its logical conclusion, there would be no Christian religion: after all, any part of the Bible that were used as a basis for a religion would be subject to the same criticism (i.e. that one cannot reject some parts of the Bible while retaining others).
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:38 amPatHMV says:
Ricardo, theobromophile is correct in her understanding of martinned’s comment. He’s saying that if you don’t want to kill witches, you have no business believing in anything the Bible says, period.
There are ample reasons to criticize the parents of your friend; both from a standpoint of morality independent of religion and from within the Christian religion. But do we really want to push people to either have to defend killing witches or giving up half of the rest of their believes? It’s just a stupid argument and short-sighted argument. Look, you want to point out that they cut their hair, eat bacon, and violate about 2 dozen laws of Leviticus on a daily basis? Fine by me. But let’s make an exceedingly clear line between condemning people, criticizing their actions, and the like on one hand, and KILLING PEOPLE on the other hand. They aren’t remotely comparable, and it’s offensive that folks like martinned seem to think that they’re close enough to warrant diverting the thread a bit, and turning it into an excuse to further criticize one of the world’s religions and cultures which is not, in fact, trying to kill people because of their religion, or because they are sorceresses, or because they are gay, or whatever.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:41 amneurodoc says:
So, you think Emerson was wrong about “consistency,” or that the “consistency” you wish to see is not foolish? (“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”)
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:58 amneurodoc says:
What is really funny is that you believe there are others here who “know() HRW only ever condemns Israel, and never says anything about rights violations in Muslim countries,” and that you imagine you are somehow convincingly rebutting HRW’s critics. Who are those “folks around here” who you say think it impossible that HRW would point out human rights violations in Saudi Arabia or other Muslim countries? Will you name them and point us to posts of theirs that support your contention?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:09 amneurodoc says:
9/11? And the ’93 WTC attack; USS Cole; embassy bombings; mass murders in London, Madrid, Bali, and other places around the world; etc., but no need “to protect ourselves from the threat of people who kill each other for practicing witchcraft because their theatening holy war with the West is so credible”?! Call me a worrywart, but I do think we need to protect ourselves against them and their threats.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:17 amRicardo says:
I’m not going to debate the meaning of someone else’s words: I’ll let Martinned respond if he wants to. However, he did say quite clearly, “Either you’re going to believe everything the bible says (creation, anyone?), or you have to admit that your beliefs come from somewhere else.” I don’t know that many Catholic theologians would have a problem with this statement: they have always looked outside the Bible and appealed to logic and reason for some of the core tenets of the faith. Even atheist moral philosophers study the works of earlier thinkers in the Catholic Church or the Church of England precisely because they were so good at finding non-Biblical foundations for moral principles.
His comments seem to target people like Douglas Wilson — who is more or less a Biblical literalist — rather than more mainstream Christians who are quite comfortable with the idea that the Bible needs to be interpreted flexibly.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:17 amthelemic_fire says:
There is something exceedingly ironic about monotheists on this thread who refer sarcastically to witchcraft as a superstition or other subjective-type fantasy when they believe in old Nobodaddy upstairs, presumably Old Nick also, a hell, heaven and other highly dubious theological stage props. No doubt some with RC leanings also believe Ratzinger is infallible, that transubstantiation happens and that statues of Mary have been known to bleed.
Monotheism was concocted for reasons of political and military supremacy. It was the unifier par excellence. It justified war and slaughter, instituted taboos, the patriarchal control of property and women, gave rise to vicious sectarianism and some might also argue racism. The catalog of crimes that span its history — Christian, Jewish and Muslim — makes grim reading and there is no end to the atrocity. In the OT it goes from book to book... from generation to generation, with an efficiency at killing that makes any serial killer you care to mention seem like a bungling amateur. When Joshua entered Jericho he slaughtered every man, woman and child. In the light of today’s values, that would rank as a Rwanda-like atrocity. Joshua wanted to continue his genocidal campaign to secure Canaan, until the setback at Ai. Jericho was only one mass butchery. The so-called “holy” book is full of them.
Believing in a supreme “God” entity when there is no hard proof at all is really a form of insanity. It never seems to occur to believers that the big patriarch upstairs may have been a masterful projection, the great supernatural ventriloquist with prophets, priests and other dummies to channel his alleged “word”.
Unlike the bizarre and unproven beliefs that go hand-in-glove with God belief, witchcraft and related nature religions work with what we know to exist — namely energy, the sub-conscious mind, carefully designed ritual methods, the power of symbol etc. That which is believed is experienced, not taken “on faith” because some shepherd back when happened to scrawl some tale or other on a sheepskin that now apparently has morphed into nothing less than ‘the word of God’. And if the Catholics weren’t happy with some of the original scrawlings, well they had legions of theological spin doctors to do revisionist duty.
Of course the occult and related areas attract a percentage of charlatans, but are you suggesting Christianity doesn’t? Look at frauds such as Benny Hinn who plays on the susceptibilities of people with terminal disease in order to rake in yet more cash. Look at the obscene saints and relics circus in the Catholic Church and the many hokey superstitions that go along with it.
Islam is no better. These so-called ‘witch trials’ in Saudi Arabia target women who lack power and influence, and it has ever been thus. It was the same during the witch burnings in Europe. Saudi Arabia is a shameful society with many hidden injustices and a sharia based penal code that is an insult to anyone who cares about human rights and the dignity of men and women. These trials simply re-enforce all we know about the travesties that pass for ‘justice’ in that country. And of course it is yet one more example of monotheistic madmen following the letter of the book... and then some.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:39 amneurodoc says:
??? No ignorant, repugnant religious beliefs and laws based on those religious believes, no outcomes like this Saudi one. And in the presence of such religious beliefs and laws based on them, as there are in Saudi Arabia, “due process” cannot guarantee that there won’t be what we see as “injustice.” Injustices may be less likely in the absence of “due process,” but they are by no means rare in the presence of a full measure of “due process.”
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:41 amtheobromophile says:
Most Catholics and theologians that I know have huge problems with that statement, in context. If their religious beliefs come from “somewhere else,” (i.e. not the Bible), then they would not be Christians. The Bible — and the entire Christian religion — would be nothing more than a common-sense approach to life, sort of like Dr. Phil, just with a bit of the supernatural thrown in to make it more interesting.
Aside from the fact that Martinned did not argue for a nuanced view of the Bible in which some parts are taken literally and some are not (he argued for the opposite, in fact), he’s yet to put forth any logical, principled reason why some beliefs should be maintained (e.g. Christ is the Son of God), others should continue to be rightly ignored (e.g. stoning witches), and tenets that run contrary to his political beliefs (e.g. the prohibition on homosexuality) should be in the latter category.
Now, maybe someone who is actually religious can explain this better... I’m just going to eat some chocolate before heading to bed.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 3:07 amyankee says:
So are claims of witchcraft “essentially fictitious, not realistically distinguishable from allegations of ‘little green men’ of the sort that Justice Souter recognized in Iqbal as properly dismissed on the pleadings”? May a court dismiss a wrongful death action because the plaintiff claims the victim was killed through defendant’s witchcraft?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 3:17 amGuy says:
I understood Martinned to only be criticizing blind, uncritical acceptance of the Bible as literal truth (people who say “I’m right, because it’s in the Bible”). To the extent that most Christians take in the Bible through a filter of preconceptions and personal beliefs, they should be aware that merely quoting the Bible ought not to be persuasive. This is not only a phenomenon that affects the Bible, or even just religious texts. The Constitution, for example, has a tendency to be interpreted to be consistent with the moral beliefs of the interpreter. The danger is when people don’t realize this is happening.
“Most Christians” might object to the idea that their beliefs don’t come from the Bible, but that doesn’t change that they don’t come from the Bible, at least, not entirely. People are exposed to different spins, different emphases of values in the Bible, and they adopt the one that makes sense to them.
Let me give you an example, some, like Pat Robertson, respond to the “pick and choose” argument by saying that when Jesus died he lifted the requirements to obey “ritual rules” but not the “moral rules”, implicitly indicating that opposition to homosexuality is a moral rule. To me, I would think it is better understood as a ritual rule. Why? Because ritual rules are arbitrary restrictions disconnected from the “do unto others” rule, I see no harm being done to others, or to society, thus there should be no objection. This is consistent with a deeply held belief of mine: That morality is generally not dependent upon gender. I’m not of the opinion that society should prescribe behaviors, or roles to played in society, based on an ascribed status (like gender). It is impossible to morally distinguish homosexuality from heterosexuality without believing, to some degree, that people of different genders have different roles to play in society, and in relating with one another, and that those differences don’t merely exist in fact, but ought to be reinforced. People who disagree with me seem (as near as I’ve been able to tell) to be coming from the perspective that society’s stability is threatened by the upset of these traditional roles, and that there is a fundamental difference between a man and a woman, between a mother and a father, that we ought to recognize and reinforce.
So you see, it’s really all about world view, not the text of the Bible. Where the harm comes in is when people are content to merely cite the Bible as a binding authority without being able to articulate why, as a rational matter, they think they are correct. That makes it impossible to have an intelligent discussion.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 5:59 amGuy says:
I think this kind of lack of communication was apparent in Lawrence v. Texas, many criticized the opinion for seeming to say that morality was irrelevant to lawmaking. I don’t think this is what happened, obviously if a law truly serves a moral purpose it ought to survive rational basis (possibly depending on what definition of morality is adopted), but the mere claim of immorality can’t suffice without a rationale to back it up, that’s the entire purpose of the rational basis test. Texas was in a tough spot, because either they had to proffer a rationale that would have come off as homophobic and unconvincing (e.g. the rational basis is to curb the spread of STD’s). Or they could have told the truth, that they are trying to preserve traditional gender roles in society, sexual relations, and marriage, which wouldn’t have come off as a terribly convincing argument that your law survives an Equal Protection challenge.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:15 amRicardo says:
Not true. The Episcopal Church, for instance, has always considered Christian doctrine to be informed by the triumvirate of faith, reason and tradition with all three taken in about equal measure. I believe the Catholics are similar: hence Anselm of Canterbury’s famous ontological argument for the existence of God. If you think the Bible is the absolute truth by definition, Anselm would have been wasting his time. Similarly, I’ve never heard which Bible verse the principle of double effect comes from. It is a key part of Catholic moral philosophy that was developed by Thomas Aquinas and incorporated into the Church’s doctrine (and one could say the same for the Church’s rejection of the death penalty). Finally, most of the mainstream Christian denominations abandoned the literal interpretation of Genesis a long time ago. Are the only true Christians left the fire-breathing fundamentalists and Biblical literalists?
“Of course all of this can be fixed with a suitable flexible approach to interpretation, but people who read the Bible in this way generally don’t believe the Earth is 6000 years old, so they are not the subject of my query.”
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:45 amHarry Eagar says:
There certainly were and are witches, and some of them do things like ritual murders. What they don’t have is connections to an authentic occult power.
Roman Catholic priests also claim connections to occult powers that they do not really have.
They’re all crazy. Some are more of a danger to me than others. That’s all.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:56 amuberVU - social comments says:
Social comments and analytics for this post...
This post was mentioned on Twitter by jasonmcclain: Saudi Arabia ::: popular Lebanese psychic given the death penalty for sorcery / witchcraft ::: http://bit.ly/78F76v...
markm says:
Even when people believed in witches, witchhunters still had to “prove” things that never happened. It required strange rules of evidence and believing ridiculous testimony.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 9:03 am11-B/2O.B4 says:
Muslims jail men for witchcraft, execute several women?
Christians toss a gay man out of the house.
Muslim kills 13, wounds 30+?
The entire bigoted nation rises up in violent backlashes against the muslim community......Oh wait, no, that would have been in a muslim country. And cartoons would have had to be involved.
The false equivalency on display here is just wonderful.
Look, this isn’t difficult. Hard line muslim societies are insane and at odds with any concept of justice or logic. Individual muslims may or may not be intelligent, modern and peace-loving, but as a group, they are misogynistic psychopaths living in a Dark Ages barbarian fantasy where “witchcraft” is still a problem. And while I may not believe in subverting the Constitution (not for terrorists and not for politicians either), this is and will be a threat for years to come. We are not dealing with a rational people.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 9:58 amSeaDrive says:
The truth is always more complicated than the executive summary, but I think in regard to Western Christianity, this statement would have to be footnoted with so many exceptions and explanations that it would be simpler to just call it false.
The doctrine that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God which is the cornerstone of the American religious conservatives arose in the 19th century. For most of the 2000 years AD, it was not considered that every jot and tittle of the Bible was literally true. Rather, it was considered to have been compiled by real persons capable of error.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 10:18 amCornellian says:
For most of the 2000 years AD, it was not considered that every jot and tittle of the Bible was literally true. Rather, it was considered to have been compiled by real persons capable of error.
I believe that is still the position of most Christian denominations, other than a subset of American evangelicals.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 10:30 amRicardo says:
Well, of course, individual Christians have done things far worse than this. The genocide in Rwanda or the wholesale destruction of civil society in Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe (a practicing Catholic who has been received as an honored guest by the Vatican). Now, these aren’t done “in the name of” Christianity but you added no such qualifier to your comparison.
As to the charge of false equivalence, sure Islam as practiced is much worse than Christianity as practiced today. But does the history of Christianity begin in 1964 for you?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 10:34 amMartinned says:
While I always love a good, bold, one-liner, I cannot accept Emerson’s statement as a serious claim about how to think. Lawyers, particularly, need consistency, since we have little else. (Let’s face it, my question in this thread would be quite unproblematic if it was about the US Constitution.)
Quote
November 27, 2009, 10:52 amMartinned says:
I agree. People, including Christians of all sorts and sizes, are allowed not to like homosexuals. Values are tricky, and to some extent they defy rational debate. But defending a value by pointing to the bible and leaving it at that exposes a person to the question about witches. (Or the whole list that Martin Sheen throws at that woman in the West Wing clip I linked to earlier. [Though admittedly I think he quotes quite a few rules that were never meant to apply outside the people of Israel.])
Quote
November 27, 2009, 10:56 amtheobromophile says:
Ricardo: you keep shifting the goal posts. We started on this because I stridently disagree with Martinned’s comments about Christianity, which, on their face, would require that one believe all of the Bible or none of the Bible.
If you want to start off with “Martinned’s wrong, but,” fine by me. What you are doing, however, is offering a freakishly strained interpretation of what he said. You’re also, as per above, moving the goal posts quite a bit. For example, you started off with this:
and then came around to discussing how Aquianis, et al., use natural law to explain Catholic beliefs. Those are two radically different things, Ricardo. In one situation, which you are Martinned started to discuss, the person is just thumbing through the Bible to find a justification for his bigotry. In another, people point out how natural law, philosophy, and reason support their beliefs.
I’m not doubting that Christians often use reason to support their beliefs; it happens all the time and is one of the best arguments for Christianity out there. Nevertheless, you overreach when you claim that this somehow means that the origins of people’s beliefs is extra-Biblical; nothing could be further from the truth. You erroneously claim that people use the Bible to back up their pre-existing beliefs that are based on natural law, when many theologians go about things in the exact opposite manner.
From a religious standpoint, this is fundamentally important: if the origin of one’s beliefs is Biblical and reason supports those beliefs, then one may rationally believe something in the Bible that one does not fully understand from a secular perspective. However, in the case of the reversal that you advocate, one must ditch any Biblical mandates — no matter how clear — if they do not conform with one’s preexisting beliefs. That’s not Christianity.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:05 amMartinned says:
I didn’t really argue for anything yet. (Except consistency as a virtue in thinking.)
No matter what Pascal said, I don’t think you can make yourself believe. Faith is not a rational choice, and it is not open to rational argument. You believe, or you don’t. That’s why proofs of the existence of god are so futile. (Unless they were really convincing, I suppose.) People don’t believe in Jesus but not Witches because of some theory of biblical interpretation, but they look for some approach to reading the bible that confirms what they already believe: that Jesus is real and witches are not.
Much the same goes for values. I think an earlier thread this week already mentioned how both the defenders and the opponents of slavery used the bible to support their arguments. While I’m sure there were exceptions, I have no reason to believe that both sides didn’t argue in good faith. (No pun intended.) I already quoted that line from Leviticus about homosexuality.
What I would argue is that if you support something that has become unpopular, like slavery or homophobia, you can’t stop the conversation by bringing in the bible. If you think homosexuality is disgusting, say so. Then you can point to the bible to argue that your view really isn’t that strange, and should be respected. Fair enough. But saying that you personally have no problem with the gays, but that God makes you, exposes a person to questions about witches.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:08 amMartinned says:
Cool question. I’m not sure about the US, but over here the courts may take “judicial notice” of certain facts that are of common knowledge, as a way of getting around rules of when and what and by whom evidence. That would allow the court to take judicial notice of the fact that witches don’t exist, and throw the case out.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:10 amtheobromophile says:
Well, at least we’re finally getting down to what this is really about: bashing people who have the audacity to take their religion seriously. What next, snarking on women who wear mantillas while ignoring the atrocities that happen in the Middle East?
On a side note, let’s be real about something else: the Koran says that infidels ought to be beheaded or enslaved. Does anyone who criticises Christians for disagreeing with homosexuality think that Western Muslims ought to adopt the beliefs of the Koran in full, too? Or is it only Christians who say politically incorrect things who get this treatment?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:12 amLarryA says:
Nope. Not my job. I would make a report to law enforcement, and hope that the district attorney would “prosecute the hell out of that neighbor.” I might also file a civil suit for damages. (Picky, picky. But it places a supposedly impartial party between us.)
Of course not. As I said in my previous post, I would want her punished for maliciously or negligently harming me.
Your point is that she shouldn’t be prosecuted because we don’t believe she is a witch. My point is that she also shouldn’t be prosecuted just because we do believe she is a witch. She should be prosecuted for her actions, not her beliefs.
In your example, I say she should be prosecuted for harming my cow, garden, and wife. It doesn’t make any difference whether she causes the damage by chanting an incantation over a clod of dirt, or by throwing some “literal poison” onto my soil.
You seem to be presuming that a witch who has powers you consider illegitimate will (1) necessarily do evil things, and therefore (2) should be preemptively hunted down. I am not presuming the first, and objecting to the second.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:12 amAthelstane says:
What an interesting thread.
I can’t speak for Protestants — certainly not Puritans (who admittedly no longer exist as such), who always made much more direct use of Old Testament sanctions than obtained generally among Christians — but for the Catholic Church, it has always been understood that the Old Testament laws are not treated equally. Christ’s fulfillment of the Old Law and the Old Covenants meant that gentiles coming to the faith were not bound by all of its provisions.
As Aquinas notes in the Summa Theologica, I-II q.98–104, the Old Law consists of ceremonial, judicial, and moral precepts. Christians are only bound by the moral precepts. In fairness, of course, perhaps many Protestants think the injunctions against witchcraft are part of the moral law.
And yes, to clarify what Ricardo says above, the Catholic Church has never been sola scriptura; tradition is a valid avenue of revelation for us as well. Obviously, that remains a bone of contention with most Protestants, but we do not see how that keeps us from claiming the name Christian any more than it did in 1500 or 500 AD.
But Islam, at any rate, can’t easily draw such distinctions: the Quran and the Hadith provide a pretty systematic delineation of what an Islamic society should look like, and a self-understanding as the literal word of God without any channeling through human voices. That makes it very difficult to develop a critical understanding of it in the same way that has obtained of the Bible over the last few hundred years.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:16 amMartinned says:
What the Quran says is tricky, too, because on some points, including Jihad, it contradicts itself somewhat, between the earlier surahs which were written in the Mecca period, when Muhammed was trying to play nice with others, and the later ones which come from the Medina period. Unfortunately, the official rule for dealing with this is that lex posterior derogat legi priori, i.e. just like in law the later statute trumps the older one.
My argument, if any, is that a literal reading of either the Bible or the Quran cannot but lead to ridiculous results, like a 6000 year old Earth or a belief in witches. It follows (I think) that it is necessary to apply reason to the study of holy books, which (I think) leads to the conclusion that no one should be chopping off anyone’s head.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:26 amAthelstane says:
Hello Ricardo,
“As to the charge of false equivalence, sure Islam as practiced is much worse than Christianity as practiced today. But does the history of Christianity begin in 1964 for you?”
I’ll take the Catholic Church at any time over the last 2000 years as more enlightened than what obtains in Saudi Arabia right now.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:26 amLarryA says:
The “getting around rules” part of that makes me nervous. I think I’d prefer a procedure that gives the plaintiff the opportunity to prove how the actions of the defendant were harmful. “Magic” that has no physical results can still have psychological effect.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:30 amrc says:
neurodoc: ““due process” cannot guarantee that there won’t be what we see as “injustice.””
But, due process is the best game in town. I don’t have to prove that due process is perfect in order to recognize it as the proper solution to the problem. The US didn’t stop being Christian when we stopped burning witches, for example, but we did adopt improved rules of evidence. 300 years before Sauidi Arabia... and counting.
This issue is not about right and wrong, it’s about real and not real. Any just society should punish witchcraft, in the traditional Abrahamic definition of the act. If there were real witches, then the Saudi legal system would have a leg up on the US for recognizing that witchcraft must be punished.
It’s not to the degree that a legal system is atheist that it’s just. It’s to the degree that the system is evenhanded and evidentiary. No one will make many friends by suggesting that a just person must first scrub himself of all religion.
The key to justice is due process.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:42 amMartinned says:
Yes, this judicial notice thing makes people nervous here, too. (That’s why I phrased it the way I did.) Occasionally, you find judges taking judicial notice of facts that aren’t really as widely known and generally accepted as the judge claims. Fortunately, even in your inquisitorial system most judges have the good sense to avoid using this loophole unless it really is uncontroversial and unproblematic.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:55 ammike says:
For what its worth, I guess you can call Canada 300 years behind the times because fraudulently pretending to practice “witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, conjuration”, fortune telling and “occult or crafty science” are still illegal here. (paraphrasing from the Criminal Code”.
The last reported conviction I can find is from the 1980 and was affirmed (!) by the Supreme Court in 1987.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:01 pmArkady says:
I dunno, Eugene, The Saudi courts might in very good company.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:03 pmGuy says:
Seriously? Has anyone said anything to indicate to you that they’re a-ok with a strictly literal interpretation of the Koran? Do you think anyone here would support that? Or are you just saying no one can criticize anyone as long as that person can point to someone worse? I’ll make a prediction for you, when one the major political parties begins openly pandering to people who think our laws should be directly informed by a literal reading of the Koran as one of their primary demographics, you’ll hear more people complaining about it.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:04 pmrc says:
Mike: “I guess you can call Canada 300 years behind the times because fraudulently pretending to practice witchcraft...”
No, Canada is not behind the times. Fraud is provable and rightly punishable.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:08 pmArkady says:
Ah, forgot to add, the dude’s not a witch doctor, contrary to the video’s head. In fact, it’s pretty goshdarned clear he’s objectively pro-anti-witch doctor.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:10 pmGuy says:
Not really, that’s an issue of fraud, not people being executed for magically causing impotency. As a side note, similar laws have raised some interesting First Amendment questions here in the U.S.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:12 pmAndyK says:
Living in New York and seeing all the psychics, I can say that this isn’t a bad thing, people.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:14 pmmike says:
Correct, but the offence is still practicing witchcraft (with fraud as an element of the offence).
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:26 pmneurodoc says:
But of course your question wasn’t about the US Constitution or any system of laws. And only math and hard science promise consistency. So, either reconcile yourself to some inconsistency in human affairs, or resort to cognitive dissonance, or do whatever you will do, but you won’t be able to make everything around you consistent no matter how insistently you insist that all must be.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:34 pmMark Field says:
There were plenty of witchcraft prosecutions in Catholic Europe as well.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:44 pmMark Field says:
Math only promises Godel.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:46 pmneurodoc says:
First, what do you mean by “due process,” only that which counts as such in the United States with our constitution? A country that doesn’t recognize the same “rights” as we do and does not have the same procedural protections of “rights” as the US does cannot be deemed a just one? Procedural protections of what a country identifies as “rights” makes justice more likely, but injustices regularly occur notwithstanding such procedural protections.
Now, do you know that Ali Sibat did not get all the “due process” guaranteed by Saudi law? I imagine that the Saudi authorities may have been punctilious in respecting what counts as “due process” in their country and still sentenced him to death for being a witch and rendering that poor fellow impotent.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:52 pmneurodoc says:
Well that’s internal consistency, isn’t it?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 12:54 pmMartinned says:
...even mathematicians need faith.
Just because I can’t always have consistency, doesn’t mean I can’t try to get it. There are many things that are desireable that we nonetheless find ourselves not always having.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:04 pmGuy says:
Nope, the best you can do is assume the consistency of your theory as an axiom, but then you get a new theory whose consistency is in question (and even less likely!). On the other hand, if a first-order theory is inconsistent, it’s possible to prove that (by the compactness theorem).
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:06 pmnicehonesty says:
I see the militant atheists are out in force on this thread — starting with the very first comment — using this news report that the official judiciary of a Muslim nation arresting and routinely sentencing people to death for practicing witchcraft in the year 2009 as a pretext to rehearse their tired list of various perceived theological failings of Christians throughout history.
What a tedious and predictable display from the tiny minds brigade.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:10 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Sloppy language on my part. I basically meant what you said here.
Well, here I think you are nitpicking. When I say we don’t prosecute people for witchcraft b/c we don’t believe in witches, I mean that we don’t prosecute people for witchcraft when sickness and calamity occur because we look for other reasons they happen; we don’t think witches could do those things. Even that guy in the OP is being prosecuted because he is thought to have done things. Please remember that the original people who were prosecuted for being witches at Salem, etc., weren’t thought to be gentle peace-loving Wiccans. They were thought to have sold their souls to the devil, who hates everyone and wishes them harm. They would have done that in order to do evil things. Sure, Salem was a textbook case of mass hysteria, not unlike the more recent “satanic panic” daycare abuse allegations that ruined several people’s lives until the prosecutors came to their senses. But even the women in Salem who were accused of being witches were accused of specific acts of evil. Here. It wasn’t just a matter of “I don’t approve of your religion.”
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:20 pmGuy says:
Executing people for witchcraft is a feature of theocratic orthodoxy that shuns rational thought, it’s not a feature of any particular religion.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:22 pmMartinned says:
My apologies if I haven’t made this clear until now: my question concerns all religions, or at least all holy books. I sidestepped the original post a bit because I assumed that anyone likely to read this thread would agree that witchcraft doesn’t exist and that, even if it did, people shouldn’t automatically be executed for it.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:31 pmGuy says:
True, but don’t you think there’s a positive feedback loop going on between the lack of due process and the religious extremism? You say the justice system need not be more “atheist”, but if it’s really grounded in facts and reason, wouldn’t it necessarily be secular/agnostic, (unless someone’s definitively proved that God does/doesn’t exist and I didn’t hear about it...)
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:34 pmrc says:
Neurodoc: “First, what do you mean by ‘due process,’ only that which counts as such in the United States with our constitution?”
I’ll define due process by counterexample: convicting someone of witchcraft is not the result of due process.
“Now, do you know that Ali Sibat did not get all the “due process” guaranteed by Saudi law?”
No, I just know that he didn’t get a fair trial. With a fair trial, it’s very hard to be convicted of a nonexistent crime.
Guy: “Executing people for witchcraft is a feature of theocratic orthodoxy that shuns rational thought, it’s not a feature of any particular religion.”
And NOT executing people for witchcraft is a feature of due process. Religion and evidentiary law are not exclusive: Muslims don’t have to stop being Muslims in order to stop killing ‘witches.’ This ‘well, what should you expect from such religious primitives’ attitude is insulting.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:52 pmArthurKirkland says:
(1) Saudi Arabia’s government is despicable. The religious police and kangaroo courts it enables are despicable.
(2) The United States’ relationship with the Saudi government is a severe stain on our national record.
(3) The superstition-laced bigotry, cruelty and madness exhibited in Saudi Arabia continues to exist — customarily in far less severe form — throughout our world, including in the United States.
(4) The United States’ improvement over time with respect to treatment of superstition-laced bigotry, cruelty and madness is an essential and proud part of our national record.
(5) Stevie Wonder nailed it in four words (in his early 20s, with help from his drums and clavinet): “Superstition ain’t the way.”
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:53 pmDave Hardy says:
Hmmm... this guy can predict the future, yet not foresee that Saudi Arabia is not a good place to be after claiming supernatural powers?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:54 pmRandy says:
When the issue comes up about homosexuality, many people who believe in the Bible argue against it because it’s “immoral.” It’s strange, because nowhere in the Bible does it say that it is immoral, although Leviticus says it’s an abomination. But then, Lev says quite a few things are an abomination. Eating shellfish, accordingly, is just as immoral as homosexuality.
Now, you can find homosexuality immoral based on other factors that are not contained in the Bible, but I find that’s rarely the case. Traditional morality deals with issues of actions that may harm another person, and it’s hard to argue that two men or two women in love harm anyone else.
Someone mentioned that Christians don’t take the phrase seriously because they aren’t stoning gays to death, they merely want to discriminate against them. So I guess we should applaud their charity of merely wanting to make gays treated as the lepers of old. And of course, I do appreciate their willingness to let me and my friends stay alive. Nothing expresses the love of Jesus like disowning your gay son.
But it keeps coming back to Martinned’s point: If you base your beliefs upon a book, how is it that you can pick and choose which ones to follow exactly, which ones ones you can alter, and which ones you can ignore?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 1:59 pmPatHMV says:
martinned, you’ve said that bit about assuming all would agree that witches shouldn’t be executed several times now. You’re missing the point. The very fact that you immediately see a story about a backwards, barbaric practice in a backwards, barbaric country executing “witches” as leading naturally into a discussion about the failings of some Christians somewhere is the problem. You do create some kind of rough equivalence by doing so. You’re saying “there’s no need to talk about this really truly serious act of evil, so let’s discuss a much more minor evil (if evil at all) instead.” And you do this despite repeated evidence, in the Middle East itself, Europe, and elsewhere in the world that the particular sect of barbarians executing the witches are in fact a large group of people, who are actively pushing their ideas out into the world and seeking to impose them on others, reacting violently to any criticism, and using the hundreds of millions of innocent Muslims as political cover behind which they can hide while they seek to subvert our modern ways of life.
It’s appropriate to hold oneself to a higher standard, of course. Misdeeds in a Western society should not be dismissed simply because somebody somewhere does worse things. But when the barbarians are at the gate, when there are truly great evils being inflicted on a large swathe of the global population, it seems rather silly navel-gazing to use every condemnation of such practices to try to turn the subject to a criticism of an entirely different, far more peaceful group of people.
The fact that you don’t see it this way is one of the reasons many Americans consider most Europeans to fundamentally be appeasers.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:03 pmrc says:
Guy: “You say the justice system need not be more “atheist”, but if it’s really grounded in facts and reason, wouldn’t it necessarily be secular/agnostic...”
I’ll let someone else argue the terminology. What I mean to say is that a Muslim who does not burn ‘witches’ is not somehow less of a Muslim: God and justice are compatible.
Some folks hear of this incident and immediately hope for religious reform. But what’s needed is legal reform.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:05 pmMartinned says:
I don’t think this is right. Instead, it’s more a matter of thinking about one’s audience when writing. I assume this blog isn’t read by muslim fundamentalists, or by anyone who believes in witchcraft. Given that fact, there isn’t much point in me trying to write something very convincing here to change such people’s minds. Had this blog post been posted somewhere else, my comments might very well have focused on the ridiculousness of believing in witchcraft and executing people for this “crime”. (Does Al-Jazeera have a blog?)
Given my expected audience on this blog, I commented asking a question I expected I might very well get a useful answer to (and have), regarding an issue I expected I might very well disagree on with a sizeable part of my expected audience (right again).
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:20 pmGuy says:
Yes and no, there’s nothing wrong with being Muslim, or Christian. There is something wrong with not being able to think critically about your own deeply held beliefs, religious extremism is one of many bad things that result when you don’t. Thinking critically is the due process of the soul.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:35 pmMark Field says:
Consistency if the system is incomplete, or completeness if it’s inconsistent. Pick your poison.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:48 pmGuy says:
The third option is that the theory can be both complete and consistent if it isn’t decidable, a fourth option is that it’s too primitive to represent a certain fragment of Peano Arithmetic. Of course, if Peano Arithmetic itself is inconsistent, then natural numbers are merely a product of our delusions and the whole discussion is moot. (Sorry, I have an OCD-like compulsion for this kind of precision).
Quote
November 27, 2009, 2:56 pmSeaDrive says:
I apologize since this question is, if not off topic, well off to the side of the topic, but I wonder what the general opinion is to this:
If the Taliban did not oppress their women and behead people in the soccer stadium, would we have military forces in Afghanistan? Or to put it a different way, are fighting the Taliban because they pose a threat to the US or to some US interest, or mostly because we find their social habits repellent? Or, to put it a third way, is our presence there mostly opposition to the kind of pre-medieval thinking represented in the original post about Saudi Arabia, but non-balanced by the level of international cooperation that SA displays.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 3:11 pmRyan Waxx says:
Sure you can cherry-pick. The fact that we aren’t trying anyone for witchcraft... and not even Falwell is calling for such... is an example of cherry-picking.
Most branches of Christianity are examples of cherry-picking — with their believers emphasizing different parts of the bible. Last I checked, not every sect has the same amount of conscientious objectors. So even “thou shalt not kill” gets cherry-picked.
So to say “you can’t cherry-pick” is a false premise, and the opposite is in fact true — cherry-picking happens all the time. No wonder you draw false conclusions if your premise is a falsehood chosen for your convenience.
It’s rather tiresomely predictable that in any thread that has nothing to do with Christianity but dares to criticize Islam, the usual boring suspects show up wanting to change the subject to the evils of christians.
Pity. It would have been amusing to see them try and defend sorcery prosecutions. Would have been even MORE amusing to see Martinned defend how muslims treat gays in the ME. But never shall that pass his lips. Wonder why?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 3:15 pmrc says:
Guy: “Thinking critically is the due process of the soul.”
Which is why it bothers me when some people, upon reading on a law blog that a person was convicted of a nonexistent crime, they respond something like this: “That reminds of one time a religious person said something mean to me. That’s what happens when you’re religious.”
Quote
November 27, 2009, 3:18 pmreadery says:
300 years?
The Michigan legislature prohibited the state law against fortune telling in the mid-1990s, and I believe a number of states still have such laws on their books.
They didn’t have the death penalty, of course, but prohibiting fortune-telling and certain practices analogous to sorcery is still part of American law. The Supreme Court in the 1970s, in Paris Adult Theatre v. Slayton, provided a lists of kinds of laws whose constitutionality it said was beyond question despite their involving only acts by consenting adults. Fortune-telling was on the list.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 3:59 pmreadery says:
Also, the obligation to kill Amalekites is still part of Orthodox Judaism. The issue is simply that it’s not possible to establish ancestry to be certain that any given contemporary person is an Amalekite with a sufficient degree of certainty.
Substantive biblical laws remain in Divine hands, but issues like what the burden of proof is and what the rules of evidence are are matters for humans. Thus the religion manages to reconcile the apparently contradictory imperatives.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:05 pmMark Field says:
Well, I wasn’t trying to be complete...
Moving this thread even more off topic, have you read Rebecca Goldstein’s book about Godel? I highly recommend it.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:05 pmreadery says:
Regarding the Taliban, if it weren’t for 9–11 I don’t think we would, or should, be at war with them. Because people tend to prefer to be governed by their own local tyrants than by even by the most benevelent of foreign strangers, among other reasons, war has rarely been an effective means of civilizing or improving others. It tends to produce the reverse.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:09 pmneurodoc says:
OK, if like Humpty-Dumpty, you define words and phrases to mean whatever you say they mean, then you can make “due process” and “justice” one and the same for your purposes. But “due process” is about the rules that are to be followed, not the outcome per se, and no amount of due process guarantees that the outcome will be one that we would all agree is just.
No, Saudi Arabia’s religion is the biggest problem, since it is the fount of this ignorance and evil from which the result follows, and the Saudis show no sign of being read to give up their malignant form of Islam.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:36 pmMartinned says:
I’m not defending anything. I’m certainly not defending the horrific, outrageous way gays are treated in the Middle East. Otherwise, I’ll refer you back to what I replied to PatHMV about expected audience. Happy now?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:37 pmMartinned says:
But we agree that the biblical injuction to kill witches implies that witches, like Amalekites, actually exist, or at least existed?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:39 pmrc says:
neurodoc: “no amount of due process guarantees that the outcome will be one that we would all agree is just”
I require no such guarantee, nor does any reasonable person.
neurodoc: “No, Saudi Arabia’s religion is the biggest problem”
So you’re saying that Muslims are incapable of establishing justice?
‘Yer religion sux’ never creates positive change.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 4:54 pmEinhverfr says:
Well, now this is interesting. I suppose as a Norse pagan and Runic magician (who has published books on the subject) I should now place Saudi Arabia on my list of countries never to visit.
I am also part way through the “Witchcraft and Magic in Europe” series by Ankarloo and Clark. This series attempts to trace European ideas and practices relating to magic from the early Easternizing revolution (in pre-historic Greece) all the way through the 20th century. Certainly the idea that nobody believes in magic any more is downright false. Furthermore the recent defence of ideas that magic might “work” in some way (in both anthropological and historical circles) suggests that the pendulum might actually be swinging the other way.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 5:17 pmEinhverfr says:
RC:
I would suggest limiting the question to Wahhabis :-).
Quote
November 27, 2009, 5:19 pmRyan Waxx says:
One would have to be a sucker on the level of accepting Nigerian scammail at face-value to accept that “expected audience” excuse. Somehow, I suspect the only modifications you’d make for a muslim audience would be to turn the rhetoric up a notch, not switch the religion you are bashing.
No, you are grinding the axe that you want to grind, and your audience isn’t forcing you to do otherwise.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 5:39 pmNickM says:
IMO allegations of big green women are not meaningfully distinguishable from the Iqbal example, so yes.
Nick
Quote
November 27, 2009, 5:41 pmMartinned says:
I really shouldn’t be engaging in this kind of flaming, but since you insist, I’d like to thank you for enlightening me about my real reasons for commenting as I did, and to point out that above I quoted from the Quran as well as from both testaments of the bible, thus focusing my question on all three monotheistic religions at once.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 5:49 pmneurodoc says:
Sorry, but you really are obtuse both as to the concept of “due process” and Islam as practiced it Saudi Arabia. No, no one is saying that no Muslims are capable of “establishing justice,” whatever that may mean.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:25 pmrc says:
Einhverfr, every time I read your name, I think of Sam Sparks pronouncing ‘FLDSMDFR’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIHlMZSA4Vo
That is all.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:26 pmrc says:
neurodoc: “Sorry, but you really are obtuse...”
Well, you’re really not that sorry :P
My point is this. Some Christians used to be just as prone to killin’ witches as some Saudis are today. But what changed over 300 years? Christians are still Christians, it’s just that they’re Christians who don’t punish people for crimes unless those crimes are proven.
You claim that religion is Saudi Arabia’s biggest problem. But the problem isn’t in the religion, it’s in the proof. So why do you claim that religion is the biggest problem, when history has already shown one culture that improved their legal system by focusing on proper process, without discarding religion?
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:36 pmEinhverfr says:
Martinned:
One possible way out for some folks is to note that the devil is quite capable of conjuring up the likeness of anyone else in an illusory manner. Therefore while witches should be put to death the various tactics of the witch hunts in history are invalid.
I believe that there was a rather famous dissent from a member of the Spanish Inquisition which said something along these lines. I forget his name though and will have to look it up.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 6:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Einhverfr, from the article I linked to:
Interestingly ...
(emphasis added)
It was ever thus.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 7:31 pmMartinned says:
The Spanish Inquisition had dissenting opinions? Cool!
Actually, the connection between people’s beliefs about the devil and what the bible actually says about him is a fascinating issue all of its own, but I guess we’d better leave that one for another time.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 7:37 pmEinhverfr says:
Martinned:
I was thinking of Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar’s dissent in a 1610 witchcraft trial (tried before the Spanish Inquisition). The opinion can be read in “Witchcraft in Europe 400‑1700: A Documentary History” edited by Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 8:36 pmKen Arromdee says:
I’d suggest that if the Taliban did not oppress and behead, we wouldn’t be fighting them. Not because the casus belli for the war was that they oppress their women–but rather that the same medieval attitudes that led them to oppress women and behead people also led them to hate and kill us in the first place. If they had been civilized people, they would at worst hate us like France does–hate any Americans who support America’s interests while not actually hating Americans per se. You don’t see the French flying airplanes into buildings.
Quote
November 27, 2009, 10:18 pmMartinned says:
The French don’t hate America/Americans, they just look down on them. Don’t worry about it, nobody cares about the French. They’re not even the kings of cooking anymore. (And what may be worse for their self-image, the French are even starting to speak English at EU and other diplomatic negotiations.)
Quote
November 27, 2009, 11:11 pmLarryA says:
Okay, I’ll buy that. It just wasn’t what I got when you said, “If witches, in the tradition Christian sense, existed, then any moral society would be well advised to find them and punish them. Or kill them.”
It’s a pretty important nit.
The biggest change was that the church got separated from the government. Over the history of Christianity the worst excesses occurred when the church had the power to enforce moral rules by power of law. As in Saudi Arabia today. It’s the government connection that makes both official persecution of minorities and interdenominational wars possible.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 12:21 amDan Hamilton says:
It only means that they BELIEVED that witches existed!
Sorry, no cigar.
The witches they are talking about aren’t Wiccans but followers of Satan. How were the witches found? They were believed to have DONE bad things by witchcraft. THEN evidence was found to prove they were witches. Evidence was ALWAYS required. It was just bad Evidence. The West learned to use better rules of Evidence. That is GOOD.
Islamic Governments cannot do that because everything is DEFINED by the Islamic Texts. They haven’t changed since they were formed about 1300 years ago and there is nothing to show that they will ever change or that they can change.
Islam is NOT just a religion, it is a form of government. For a Muslem an Islamic Government is the ONLY valid Government. He is required to work toward an Islamic Government.
I have lived in Saudi Arabia and worked with Saudis. Individual Saudis can be good people but in groups they have to prove to each other that they are GOOD MUSLEMS. This causes an insane sprial. Remember in Islam NOT being a GOOD MUSLEM can get you killed. It happens all the time. See Muslims killed by terrorists in Anwar and elsewere for not following the Islamic Laws as defined by the Terrorists. We in the West stopped killing heritics centuries ago.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 12:23 amrc says:
LarryA “It’s a pretty important nit.”
It’s my nit, my quote, not Laura’s. I wish I hadn’t said it, and thus obscured the issue at hand. But briefly, if someone was proven to indeed have sold their soul in eternal obedience to the destroyer of worlds, then that person should rightly be punished or killed.
I mentioned it because the issue is not in fact that we are dealing with supernatural agents of the dark one, who do not exist. We are instead dealing with the falsely accused. It’s a matter of evidence, not a matter of morality or religion.
LarryA “The biggest change was that the church got separated from the government.”
No, the biggest change is that we started following the rules of law and evidence. Witnesses still swear on the Bible– religion does still have a positive impact on proper legal proceedings.
Religious zealots may believe in witches, but they also believe in not-witches. Wouldn’t even a zealot be interested in distinguishing between the two?
The solution here is to improve law, not to raze religion. How far do you really think you’re going to get, telling Saudis that in order to be good, you have to stop being Muslim?
Quote
November 28, 2009, 1:47 amBill Poser says:
Leaving aside the absurdity of the “crime”, another problem here is that the Saudi court appears to claim extra-territorial jurisdiction for violations of sharia law. None of the accounts that I have read suggest that Sibat is alleged to have practiced witchcraft in Saudi Arabia. His crimes, such as they are, took place in Lebanon. This would seem to mean that any foreign visitor to Saudi Arabia could find himself or herself prosecuted for offenses that took place in the visitor’s home country and which are not crimes in the visitor’s home country, including such things as consuming alcohol, adultery, and blasphemy.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 1:52 amBill Poser says:
Hardly. The Salem witch trials were conducted following the rules of law and evidence. The problem was what constituted evidence, and that problem was directly attributable to religious belief. Of course, if by “following the rules of ... evidence” you mean “admitting only valid scientific evidence”, you are imposing a requirement incompatible with Islam.
Some problems with the Saudi courts are indeed due to the process, but even a rigorous legal system would not eliminate the problem caused by the religiously based criminalization of such things as leaving Islam, publicly practicing a religion other than Islam, criticizing Islam or the Saudi regime, consuming alcohol, consorting with an unrelated member of the opposite sex, wearing “revealing” clothing, driving (if female), or attempting to leave the country without the permission of one’s male guardian (if female).
Quote
November 28, 2009, 2:05 amMartinned says:
If God tells you to kill all witches, doesn’t that mean he’s also telling you witches exist? So if someone believes in the Bible enough to believe that the earth is 6000 years old despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, wouldn’t one expect them to also believe in witches?
Quote
November 28, 2009, 9:57 amrc says:
Bill Poser: ““admitting only valid scientific evidence”, you are imposing a requirement incompatible with Islam.”
In other words, a proper Muslim must accept false witness and faulty data? Good luck selling that one in Saudi.
We have already seen one religious group stop killing witches. This change did not come about through smug people dissing their religion.
Instead, people who still believed in witches were reminded that there are also ‘not witches’.
You’re suggesting that someone must discard Islam in order to be honest. This is not true (as the evolution of Christian behavior demonstrates) and not productive.
Change the legal system, not the religion.
“even a rigorous legal system would not eliminate the problem caused by the religiously based criminalization...”
I agree, but one step at a time. What’s frustrating is that even in this cut-and-dry easy case, people immediately rocket their arguments toward how bad religion is, and how incompatible it is with justice. History and reason show that you start by changing the legal system, then religion and culture eventually comes around. Smug smacktalking vs religion is counterproductive.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 10:56 amLarryA says:
The biggest change is that we started writing laws based on something besides “I believe God says so.” Before that (for example) you could be asked whether, in communion, the bread and wine transubstantiate into the literal body and blood of Christ, or whether they are symbols. Depending on the religious government running the court either answer could be “wrong,” and lead to criminal sanctions including death.
AFAIK in U.S. courts no witness is required to swear on the Bible, or include “so help me God.” I know there’s no actual Bible used in the courts where I live, and that’s in Texas.
I’ll agree that religion does still have an impact in the U.S. See laws against the sins of gambling (except for state lotteries, which are apparently not “sinful”) and homosexuality, and Sunday sales laws to cite three examples. I don’t agree the impact is “positive.”
Quote
November 28, 2009, 1:11 pmrc says:
LarryA: “The biggest change is that we started writing laws based on something besides “I believe God says so.””
And Christians thought it was a good idea, too. My concern with this issue is that there is no way to get Saudi justice to improve if people just keep saying ‘in order to be more fair, you must be less Muslim.’
That won’t work, and that doesn’t have to work... because Christians in the US favor non-lynchy procedures that were brought about without having to blame religion for every bad thing.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 1:35 pmEinhverfr says:
RC:
Let’s complicate this a little and explain why this ensures that I will NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES travel to Saudi Arabia.
I am a Norse Pagan as some here know. My religious practice centers mostly around Odin, Thorr, and Freyr What you may not know is that I practice magic using a number of old Runic systems (both Elder and Younger Futharks) and that I have further written a book on the subject which has been well received in that community.
The problem here is that, to a devout Christian (and to a devout Muslim), all pagan gods are either devils or servants of the devil. Thus if you accept such a view of religion, my writings would be sufficient to convict me of what you describe. The problem though is that these are based on unprovable assumptions dictated by a religious system. Furthermore my tradition includes past material well attested in the archaeological and historical record which is almost stereotypical witchcraft stuff including:
1) turning hearts and minds of people from love to hate and from hate to love
2) charms rendering men impotent
3) the necromantic stuff is quite interesting but I won’t go into it here (“Scandinavian Folklore” by Jaqueline Simpson however is worth reading in this area).
Under these circumstances, it would seem to be advised to stay away from places like Saudi Arabia. In your religious view, though, do you think I should be put to death?
Quote
November 28, 2009, 2:06 pmrc says:
Before digging in, I’ll just acknowledge the absurdity of what’s to come. I believe in an all-powerful God and a damned devil, and einhverfr believes in magic. But here’s the interesting and important part: even believers in superstition and supernature and invisible gods can still agree and have a conversation concerning the law. einhverfr doesn’t need to discard his Norse beliefs to be a good neighbor, and I don’t need to disown God in order to be just.
This reality is key if we ever want to get Saudi Arabia to stop killing palm readers.
einhverfr: “The problem though is that these are based on unprovable assumptions...”
That is a problem. I believe that punishing or killing someone for their crimes requires proof, and I think that most Saudis would agree with me. After all, those who believe in witches also believe in not-witches– it’s good to discern between the two. But I think I would disagree with most Saudis thusly: I don’t believe that proving you worship Norse Gods is proof that you have sold your soul in service to the dark lord of the universe.
But the conversation between myself and a Saudi would be couched in terms of sufficient proof. And I think unfortunately that it would be harder for a Pagan to convince a devout Abrahamic that Pagans are _not_ servants of the devil than it would be to convince a devout that he needs more proof. So yeah, please don’t travel to Saudi. In fact, if you were somehow in Saudi and detained by the police under even ‘legitimate’ witchcraft charges, I’d fully support the argument that using force to break free and escape is self-defense and not obstruction of justice or resisting arrest or assault or etc. In fact, I can envision a few righteous Chuck-Norris style Delta Force scenarios involving your rescue.
But more importantly, I think that most moral people would believe that someone who’s truly sold their soul in eternal obedience to the dark lord of the universe should be put to death, or at least detained for the duration of the ‘war’ (fur-ev-er). Also, those who use spells to turn love to hate or hate to love would be guilty of a form of rape or assault. Rendering a man impotent against his will is an actionable offense, and I imagine we can come up with some agreeable crimes to go with necromancy.
So einhverfr, if you cast a spell that makes me impotent, then yes, you should be punished. If you mail me a notarized document swearing that you have sold your eternal soul in service to the dark lord of the universe, then I think you should be: a) committed to a mental facility and evaluated, or b) detained for the rest of your life as a prisoner of ‘war’. Execution is so Old Testament, and I think that when it comes to my final judgement, I’d rather be guilty of false imprisonment than manslaughter/2nd degree murder.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 3:05 pmEinhverfr says:
RC:
No worries. I have never cast spells involving impotency and I can’t really imagine too many occasions where that would be called for. I suppose OTOH if someone were trying to seduce my wife, that might be a good reason to do so. Whether such charms work by magic or suggestion is an interesting question however.
The more interesting question, in my mind, however is the cosmological assumptions surrounding witchcraft. When I look at medieval attitudes (from religious authors) towards witchcraft and compare it with what source material I can find on the subject, I find that many of the accusations seem to be based largely on this idea of a role of cosmic evil.
For example, in the Middle Ages, witches were accused of making men impotent, of causing abortions, of making women sterile, of exhuming bodies for use in magical workings, and especially in killing children (and then exhuming the bodies) for use in making the flying ointments. They were also accused of stealing harvests or milk from neighbors (this is actually such an old accusation it is prohibited even in the Twelve Tables). They were also sometimes accused of bewitching the opposite sex to fall in love with them.
The material I can find regarding making men impotent in Scandinavia are interesting. These are usually done by women who are trying to prevent rivals from enjoying men they are after. In this regard they seem to be closely parallel to the Greek erotic binding spells which are well attested in archaeology (see the example in the Louvre). Similarly, love magic is well attested in the Hellenistic period, in Norse myth, in later Scandinavian magical traditions, etc.
Abortions? Seems like an old debate. Folklore concerning abortion is interesting. Many of the formulas seem to be recorded in witchcraft manuscripts even though they look like chemically active formulas. See “The Black Books of Elverum” for some examples.
Not sure about female sterility (if this is just scapegoating or of there were practices relating to it). However, control of female fertility was a critical concern for ancient Greek prostitutes.
The necromantic side is far more interesting. Scandinavian literature talks about a “tilberi” which is a sort of demon made from a dead man’s rib and some grey wool which is capable of stealing neighbors’ milk. There are also the corpse breeches, which are made from the skin (waist down, flayed in one piece) of a dead man who gave his permission beforehand, and are supposed to draw money.
One has to wonder at some point whether cosmology is largely a force at work here which was exaggerating folk practices, or whether the folk practices were following the church writings. Either way it is an interesting field of study.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 4:36 pmreadery says:
As I understand it, it’s illegal to practice any religion other than Islam in Saudi Arabia, including Judaism and Christianity. The U.S. military reached a sort of gentleman’s agreement in which Saudi authorities would stay off base and look the other way so long as U.S. soldiers confined religious practices to base and didn’t do anything overtly religious while off-base. But my undestanding is that any overt practice of any religion other than Islam could get one in serious trouble, although I gather Judaism and Christianity get one less than the death penalty.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 8:12 pmrc says:
Einhverfr: “I suppose OTOH if someone were trying to seduce my wife, that might be a good reason [to make him impotent].”
To my Christian brain, your post reads: “I’ll cast a hex on a fool if I damn well please.”
This does not inspire confidence. For such a person, I do not offer a Chuck Norris-style rescue.
–This is because the real prize is the rule of law.–
This is also what bugs me about the stupid fad of magic and vampires and etc: it’s unaccountable power. Einhverfr, flaunting your untraceable and unaccountable power doesn’t endear you to me. In truth, I don’t believe in it, but you and the Saudis do! So I’m inclined to say, let you and the Saudis fight it out.
For any pagan to qualify for rescue by a hairy-chested karate master with machine guns in both hands, that magician must first submit their spells to DNA trace, or some other empirical authority. Otherwise, the factions of “I’ll secretly cast a spell on you,” and “he’s a witch!” can duke it out, medieval-style.
Your support of secret power is the reason why people are killing and dying for superstition. Either seek out the Odin-version of a notary seal, or (I’m sorry to say) there’s no B-movie-style rescue for you.
Quote
November 28, 2009, 9:36 pmEinhverfr says:
RC:
Umm... Who says it is untraceable. I would expect such a charm to involve a direct confrontation in person along with a declaration as to what would happen. Who knows? Might be more akin to hypnosis than magic.
Interestingly all the cases I can find regarding impotancy magic in Scandinavia involved either a direct confrontation (a wife looking in her husband’s eyes and saying “you will get no enjoyment from your mistress” for example) or a public declaration (standing up at a marriage feast and making such a declaration).
These things seem to have been largely public.
Quote
November 29, 2009, 12:21 amLarryA says:
Hmmm.
So you don’t trust your wife to resist? Yet you’re not doing anything to her? After all, she’s the one who promised to be faithful. ;-)
A couple of years ago a local lothario was named to a board my wife was on. He asked me (joking?) if I trusted him around her. “Of course I do,” I said. “I taught her how to shoot.”
Quote
November 29, 2009, 4:14 pmmarkm says:
Not necessarily. IIRC, there’s a Talmudic analysis of a Bible verse that says a father must kill a disobedient son. (Or something equally horrible.) But in the context of the entire passage, and of Jewish interpretation of the Torah as a whole, this doesn’t mean just any disobedient son. He must be old enough for moral responsibility, and yet still under his father’s authority. And the rabbis continue to discover restrictions until they conclude that there never has been and never will be a person that meets them all.
So why is there a divinely dictated verse about a person who cannot exist? To provide students of the Torah and the Talmud with practice in logic.
Quote
December 1, 2009, 8:45 pmreadery says:
Markin,
that said, some lessons in logic unfortunately come from experience:
The Talmud reports that Shimon ben Shetach’s court executed eighty women on sorcery charges in one day in Ashkelon; it relates that their relatives responded by bringing perjured charges against his son, who was convicted and also executed. The rule that a court cannot execute more than one person in one day is also attributed to this incident, along with other admonitions against repeating such an event. Given Rabbi Akiva’s comment that a Sanhedrin which executes more than once in 70 years is a “bloodthirsty Sanhedrin”, the whole incident was clearly characterized as regrettable. But it is part of the tradition.
Quote
December 1, 2009, 10:53 pmGraig Gehl says:
I was looking for articles on hypnosis, believe it or not, when I came across your post which got me thinking and lead me to what I was looking for. Strange world isn’t it.
Quote
January 18, 2010, 7:33 pmEddy Sydney says:
I was looking for articles on conversational hynosis, believe it or not, when I came across your good post which got me thinking and lead me to what I was looking for. Strange world isn’t it.
Quote
January 18, 2010, 7:34 pm