The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Death
 islam virgins and executions




From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Subject: Re: I'm back - and a UL
Date: 14 Apr 1993 22:38:36 GMT

Quoting styri@hal.nta.no (YuNoHoo):
+|> Btw, driving to work today I listened to a program on the +|> radio about different "facts of life" where they claimed +|> that if a young girl is sentenced to death in a Muslim +|> country she must be raped before the execution because +|> it's against the religion to kill a virgin. Horrible story, +|> but is it true?

Btw, Haakon, I'm sorry about posting those stories with the typos and whatnot, but I thought you wanted to test your mailer too.

Basil Hamdan (bh437292@lance.colostate.edu) writes: +First of all what is your definition of a "Muslim country", +two possible answers: a country whose inhabitants are mostly Muslim, +or a country which applies Islamic laws in criminal matters. +For countries that are mostly Muslim of course the story is +untrue since criminal laws are governed, not by the Islamic +Shari'a (system of laws), but by the criminal code +which is indifferent to whether the criminal is a virgin or not. +As for the the countries that claim to apply Islamic laws for +criminal matters (only Saudi-Arabia, Iran and Sudan make this claim), +the answer is that the story is untrue since rape itself +is forbidden in Islam.

Uh, yes, but that's not exactly a clear "proof" is it? A parallel argument is that Islam (and various other religions) forbids murder, but that doesn't mean that the state can't execute a criminal (be it under the criminal code or the Shari'a). I am not saying that this story has any truth to it, but merely that a better debunking is in order. I seriously doubt that the story has any validity to it because the few articles that I've read about the "severity" of the Shari'a (e.g., cutting off hands, execution, etc.) have never mentioned anything about something like this. It's the sort of item that the media would love to write up about.

+So this story is obviously part of the general campaign +of fear mongering against Islam, the new "Evil Empire", +in the eyes of the West. Often these stories start with +malicious intent, but then are transmitted and propagated +due to lack of information and ignorance.

Islam a new "Evil Empire?" Nah, "old Evil Empire" maybe. I think to some degree, a fear and/or prejudice against Islam goes back to the early days of Christianity. This, along with the general xenophobia of most, if not all cultures, these stories always make the rounds. Many times, the availablity of information really doesn't do anything anyway....

Terry "And so it goes..." Chan


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