Beheadings by Islamic terrorists: the practice goes viral

In the wake of recent beheadings by Islamic terrorists (including victim Piotr Stanczak, a Polish national  executed by the Taliban in Pakistan) I’ve found it useful to investigate more about this particularly brutal trend: its history, the psychology behind it, the cultural and religious significance, and the ways in which the trend may be developing.

Click here for Middle East Forum article, Beheading in the Name of Islam.

Click here for American Chronicle article exploring the possibility that Mexican cartels are adopting the Islamic terrorist practice of beheading their targets.

Update: (via  Rhetorican and Instapundit):  Has this cultural meme gone viral?  The Boston Herald reports that Muzzammil Hassan, a Buffalo, N.Y. area man who runs an American-Islamic television station, is accused of beheading his wife. “Hassan is the founder and chief executive of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004 in hopes of portraying Muslims in a better light.”

So is this to be a new, savage hallmark of “honor killings”? Shades of Henry VIII and Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard.

On a related note: click here for Middle East Quarterly article, Are honor killings simply domestic violence?

Taliban beheads Polish prisoner, releases video to press

The Daily Times of Pakistan reports here that on Sunday, February 8 the Taliban released a video to the foreign press of one of them beheading a Polish engineer, Piotr Stanczak, whom they’d kidnapped in September in Pakistan.

The group reportedly executed him because the Pakistani government refused to release numerous Taliban members before Friday’s deadline. According to al Jazeera and AussieIndoLanka.com (warning: graphic image), negotiations had been heating up and the terrorists had reduced their demands within the ten days prior to Friday’s deadline, but obviously both Pakistan and Poland wouldn’t budge.

Apparently, they’d also captured other hostages, including a Chinese telephone tech, and are threatening to execute more if their demands are not met. I’m not eager in the slightest to have anyone suffer at the hands of these bastards, but I would like to see them piss off China. That’s the thing about countries that don’t have respect for human rights – when it comes to dealing with terrorists, they don’t pussyfoot around e.g. the Muslim Uighurs, prior to the 2008 Olympics.

Weird coincidence point of interest: Friday’s deadline for releasing the prisoners was the same day that justices of the Islamabad high court were scheduled to rule on the detention of rogue nuclear scientist/proliferator Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (they held it to be unlawful and released him).

Update: for you bloodthirsty types, scroll down for the alleged video of Stanczak’s execution (via Unambiguously Ambidextrous). This video was first delivered on a flash drive via a third party to a member of the foreign press. I am guessing this was the one originally broadcast on Polish t.v. – they edited it and did not show the beheading. This one doesn’t either.

I’m choosing to post this to remind us why we fight and who we are fighting.

Side note: I believe this video is the real deal; however, I also believe I’ve found some fake images of  Stanczak floating around out there. Hence my saying “alleged”, above.

Click here for more information on Islamic terrorists beheading their targets.