The Reason
Behind Isis Beheadings: Terror
Chillin with my homie, or what's left of him," tweeted
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a 23-year-old rapper from Maida Vale turned Islamic
State (Isis) militant, beside a picture of himself holding the severed head of
an enemy combatant.
The picture
is just the latest in a long series of horrific images of beheadings tweeted by
the militant group as part of its online terror campaign. Other images show the
heads of executed prisoners impaled on spikes in the centre of Raqq, Syria,
where Isis hold sway, and others decapitations in progress.
But why has
beheading become the favourite form of execution amongst the Islamist militants
on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, and other Islamist terrorists worldwide?
A history of
beheadings
Last year,
Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in
Woolwich, London, reportedly attempting to behead him after running him down
with a car.
During his
trial, Adebolajo said they had carried out the killing in revenge for the
treatment of Muslims abroad and told the jury he loved al Quaida.
Further
back, in 2002, journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded on video after being
kidnapped by al-Quaida militants in Pakistan.
A number of
other western hostages were also beheaded on video by al Quaida in Iraq leader
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be one of the key figures in the formation of
the group that would become Isis.
Experts
believe the tactic is used for a variety of reasons, including to unnerve the
enemy on the battlefield, to deter the west from committing forces in the
conflict.
"The
graphic nature of beheading, the focus on the individual, and the act
of bodily desecration involved all render this far more chilling than the
explosion of a bomb, even where the latter's death toll is greater,"
writes Shashank Joshi is a senior examination fellow of the Royal United
Services Institute, in the Telegraph.
In a 2005
article in Middle East
Quarterly, expert Timothy Furnish argues that the
practice has a long background in Islamic culture.
Fashions of
terror
He describes
how terrorists develop new forms of atrocity, as the shock value of older ones
wears off.
"Decapitation
has become the latest fashion. In many ways, it sends terrorism back to the
future," he writes.
Two verses
from the Koran are used by terrorists to justify the practice.
"When
you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks," says an ayah, or verse in Sura
(chapter) 47.
Sura 8:12
reads: "I will cast dread into the hearts of the unbelievers. Strike off
their heads, then, and strike off all of their fingertips."
Decapitations
are also described in some of the earliest histories of Islam.
Muhammad's
earliest biographer, Ibn-Ishaq, describes how the prophet approved the
beheadings of between 600 and 900 men from the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe
following the Battle of the Trench.
It was a
common form of execution under the Ottoman Empire, where it was the "primary
form of symbolic aggression among Ottoman soldiers", according to
historian James J Reid.
In Saudi
Arabia, where a strict interpretation of Sharia law is enforced, beheading is
the form of punishment for a range of crimes, including drug running and apostasy,
with approximately 80 people believed to have been beheaded by the kingdom last
year.
Though there
are no calls for beheading as punishment for specific crimes in sharia law, it
is one of a range of executions that may be used, along with stoning or
hanging.
Others
though, argue that the verses cited are traditionally interpreted by Muslim
clerics as calls to ferocity in battle, and not as justifications for
decapitation.
Muslims
condemn Isis
Muslim
leaders in the Middle east and in Europe have condemned Isis.
Egyptian
human rights activist Sa'd Al-Din Ibrahim, in his weekly column for the
Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yawm, compared
the actions of Isis to the Nazis, and says that they do great damage to Islam.
The practice
of decapitation is not unique to Muslim societies.
Many western
societies executed prisoners by decapitation for hundreds of years, with the
guillotine last used in France for an execution in 1977.
In Slate, Nina Rastogi points to decapitations
described in the Bible, as evidence that the practice exists across religious
traditions.
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