Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
It was clearly never about that--and you don't need the evidence of today's socieal degeneration to prove it. All you need is to point to the fact that Saddam was a largely secular tyrant. In Osama bin Laden's caliphate, Saddam would have been one of the first against the wall.
Saddam was also a lunatic and a sadist, but that's another story.
|
Well, secular in our part of the world is certainly a different thing than secular in the Muslim world. You can google any number of Saddam speeches and find they all look like this one, a guy clearly pandering to the religious crowd. Read the whole thing . . . it wasn't an uncommon raving for him during his reign. In fact, most of his speeches look like this one (two pages):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,877046,00.html
Google "Saddam, speeches, Allah, God" and you'll get pages of the stuff.
Its also very similar to what you see from President Mushareff of Pakistan, another guy that people on our side of the pond see as some kind of secularist.
Also, if you can find a speech from Saddam where he talks in a secular manner about women's rights, freedom of religion, etc, then please post it.
Deeds are different than words of course and it might be said that Saddam's Iraq was certainly more secular when compared to other Muslim countries in the region . . . . but probably no where near what we would term secular.
I'm sure you saw the video of the Big Cheese getting his ultimate comeuppance. It didn't give the impression that things are running smoothly at the Baghdad Death House.
What a circus. - RougeUnderoos
Drop tables - the formula to avoid decapitation - can be found anywhere on the net . . . . one assumes the executioners in Iraq didn't care or were to stupid to think someone could lose their heads on a long drop.
For amusement, a description in The Times in 1868 of the last execution at Tyburn, England,
that of Michael Barrett, convicted of causing an explosion at Clerkenwell:
" . . . . the mass of people was immense . . . . Now and then there was great laughter as a girl fainted and was passed out hand over hand above the heads of the mob and then there came a scuffle and a fight, and then a hymn, and then a sermon, and then a comic song and so on from hour to hour . . .
"With the first sound of the bells came a great hungry roar from the crowd outside and a loud, continuted shout of "Hat's Off" till the whole dense bareheaded mass stood white and ghastly-looking in the morning sun, and the pressure on the barriers increased so that the girls and women in the front rank began to scream and struggle to get free.
"Barrett walked up cooly and boldly . . . There was a partial burst of cheers which was instantly accompanied by loud hisses and so it remained for some seconds till as the last moment approached the roars dwindled down to a dead silence . . .
"It is worthy to remark that a great cry rose from the crowd as the cuprit fell . . a cry which was neither an exclamation nor a scream but it partook of the sound of both. With the fall of the drop the crowd began to disperse, but an immense mass waited till the time for cutting down came . . . .
Further, it wasn't unusual to throw garbage, dead animals, dung and other stuff at the condemned. A favourite song to sing was "Oh My, Think I've Got To Die." Execution days were a public holiday.
Samuel Pepys attended one execution and claimed a crowd of "12,000 to 14,000" at one execution day.
Charles Dickens attended hanging executions in England and said:
"Nobody cared or was at all affected. There was no manifestation of disgust or pity or indignation or sorrow."
"The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks and language of the assembled spectators . . .
When the day dawned thieves, low prostitutes, ruffieans and vagabonds of every kind of flock on the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour . . . . When the sun rose brightly it gilded thousands and thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore."
Cowperson