Everyone knows about the four contractors whose bodies were mangled and at least partially dismembered in Iraq. Today the New York Times carried a story about Palestinians who exploded an Israeli armored vehicle and then tore the bodies into pieces and withheld them from Israel in order to prevent their burial.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the story:
quote: Palestinian militants, who made off with some remains of the soldiers on Tuesday, celebrated the grisly contest over body parts as humbling an invading force.
quote:In an interview on Wednesday in Gaza City, Khader Habib, a leader of Islamic Jihad, cited several conditions for returning the soldiers' body parts, including an Israeli withdrawal from Zeitun and an end to incursions into Gaza.
Asked which of several factions that claim to hold the remains actually have them, he said: "Everyone has some. We have the head."
So whence comes this lugubrious and ghoulish desire to tear dead soldiers apart? Why go beyond killing these men to desecrating their bodies and disallowing their burial?
I have to admit that this practice makes me sick. It inclines me to view those who would engage in such things as savages and to view the harsh measures taken against such groups as altogether justified.
[ May 13, 2004, 04:04 PM: Message edited by: Jacare Sorridente ]
Posted by Eduardo_Sauron (Member # 5827) on :
They do that to further offend the jewish people. It seems that they (jews) must bury as much of the body as they can, because of some religious practice. Knowing that, their enemies steal as much body parts as they can, thus preventing the burial.
At least that's what I learned while reading newspapers and internet articles about the fact you mentioned, Jacare.
Tenha uma boa noite!
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Jacare,
I don't pretend to understand the practice, but it's something that is strongly associated with mobs and lynchings. And not historically limited to Muslims.
Here's something interesting that has some parallels:
quote:Statistics do not tell the entire story, however. These were recorded lynchings; others were never reported beyond the community involved. Furthermore, mobs used especially sadistic tactics when blacks were the prime targets. By the 1890s lynchers increasingly employed burning, torture, and dismemberment to prolong suffering and excite a "festive atmosphere" among the killers and onlookers. White families brought small children to watch, newspapers sometimes carried advance notices, railroad agents sold excursion tickets to announced lynching sites, and mobs cut off black victims' fingers, toes, ears, or genitalia as souvenirs. Nor was it necessarily the handiwork of a local rabble; not infrequently, the mob was encouraged or led by people prominent in the area's political and business circles. Lynching had become a ritual of interracial social control and recreation rather than simply a punishment for crime.
I'm not offering this up to say, "gee, look how bad Americans have been."
I think the point is that dismemberment is a traditional practice in mob rule directed at inspiring terror at a target group. I'd guess that at least part of that comes from the religious traditions that hold the physical body needs to be kept intact after death.
Dismemberment (butchery) is something that is reserved for animals - it's one interpretation of what is being communicated when this is done. It's a literal dehumanization of the victim.
Posted by ludosti (Member # 1772) on :
I don't think this practice has anything to do with relgious affiliation, but rather as the ultimate act of depravity and renounciation of the dead's personhood.
[Edit: what sndrake said]
[ May 13, 2004, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: ludosti ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I suspect it's more of a cultural practice than a religious one. But it's still wierd.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
actually, for muslims it is a very bad thing to desecrate the body as well. Perhaps the ones that are doing it are using it as the ultimate insult, as it is really bad for them. Some of the anti american muslim clerics have actually spoken out against the practice. One of them recently said that the mutilation of the bodies was an affront to Allah (or something along those lines). Note, killing americans was fine with the cleric, mutilation was the only thing that bothered him.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
There is also the need for press.
Terror is only as powerful as the press it gets.
You kill a car full of soldiers? Big Deal. The top stories are about the ripping apart of corpses and beheading in Iraq.
How can a good Hamas terror cell hope to get any press with simple killings? If those Iraqi upstarts raise the stakes, well, the ole Palestinean terrorists must follow suit just to stay on the TV.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Kat, if it's a cultural thing, then it's in our culture as well. Note sndrake brought up American lynchings. Don't forget that our culture (back in the days of old blighty) invented 'hanging, drawing and quartering'. This involved dragging someone behind a horse (on something like a section of fence) to where they were to be hanged - but they only hung them for a little while, long enough for it to be really really painful, then they'd do the William Wallace thing, cut off their genitals and occasionally limbs as well as disembowell them slowly until they reached the heart - where they finally died, unless they were lucky enough to die of shock before hand. Then they'd take the body, dismember it, send the bits to the four corners of the kingdom, parbroil the head so it wouldn't rot and stick it on a pike for everyone to see.
So while I agree that what these terrorists did was a depraved, sick and cowardly act - it's certainly not limited to the muslim culture. Let's not forget also that over the centuries our Christian culture has burned a lot of people at the stake, a process similarly horrifying, to my mind.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I think it definitely used to be part of our culture, but I don't think it is now.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Imagine living in a country where the government is unstable as hell or ruled by one extremeist group while multiple other extremeist groups vie for power. Living in a country where it doesn't matter if you're a civilian - you're just as likely to be collateral damage in some spat of religious infighting. That your only hope of a better life you and your family is to tie your fortunes to one of these groups. Imagine you believe as passionately about your religion as you do here - and that people want to kill you for it, over minor doctrinal differences. Imagine you're in a country occupied by a foreign power; one radically different in culture from the fairly similar cultures you've been fighting all your life.
It's not an excuse, but it is a reason.
Scratch the surface and barbarism is much closer to the surface in all of us than we'd like to admit. Fear of the "Other" is very strong in humans, and we're exceptionally good at alienating people for the slightest differences. OSC had it right in Pastwatch - we only feel a familial bond with the rest of the world because we have the wealth and luxury to do so. If it came to the crunch, we'd sacrifice everything for the good of our children and even the people down the street would be different enough to be "other".
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:I think it definitely used to be part of our culture, but I don't think it is now.
I don't agree.
Posted by Dragon (Member # 3670) on :
care to elaborate on that?
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
You see it with reasonable frequency - we still, in our civilised and safe society fear anything considered "other" and de-humanise them in our minds.
Obviously it's a comparitive rarity that this leads to actual killing, but even so, it's still there.
Look at Matthew Shepherd, beaten to death for being gay. He certainly wasn't human to his attackers.
And while we can contest that we'd never behave that way, I believe that we're all just one hot meal and a light-switch away from that kind of behaviour. Take away our comparitive luxury and we'll fight to the death to maintain our own and our families lives - even if it means striking pre-emptively.
Posted by Dragon (Member # 3670) on :
But do you think that we would dismember eachother? That seems a bit extreme... Though, as someone said above, it does inspire a lot of fear.
Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
I think what is more sickening is that they choose to display it so openly: http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/09/23/LatestNews/LatestNews.35190.html From the Sbarro bombing, they created a replica of the bombed storefront as the entrance to their university. Complete with blood and pizza strewn across it. Kinda sick.
Posted by Zamphyr (Member # 6213) on :
quote: Among the charges he (Kerry) lodged were that troops had committed rapes; cut off ears, limbs and heads; taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals; blown up bodies; and randomly fired at civilians.
I know its not proof positive, but a Presidential candidate saying we did it as recently as '71 is pretty damning.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
We'd do it now if they were in our country and we hated them enough.
Imagine if Osama Bin Laden was miraculously deposited on the streets of New York on September 12, 2001 - do doubt he'd be literally torn limb-from limb?
These people HATE us, and not in the pathetic, whiny way we hate the next-door neighbour for playing loud music. They hate us because they see us coming into their country, disrespecting their religion, killing their friends and damaging their way of life. They feel they have to fight for it.
Again, it's not an excuse, but it is a reason.
Posted by Black Fox (Member # 1986) on :
Maybe I'm just one of those odd persons who prefers just to kill his enemies. Mutilating the bodies of the dead is one of those things that I find to be somewhat useless. It causes no pain to the deceased and I suppose to myself its not exactly scary to watch someone do things to a corpse which obviously cant defend itself.
If you really want to be brutal than just torture a person, but then even then I really don't understand the whole .. idea behind a lot of torture that goes on, especially cinematically. Why torture a person you are going to kill? I doesn't really make a lot of logical sense, just save yourself the time and end the person. Once their dead they won't ever know what happened to them.
Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
I find no pleasure in bathing in the blood of my victim. There are people I hate, and to kill them? maybe yes. Do they deserve to die? Yes. To desecrate their body after their death is inhumane. It serves no purpose, no justice, it is animalistic. Humans arent lions that parade around with the blood of the gazelle staining their fur.
Posted by Dillon (Member # 6536) on :
yeah I wish I could see from their perspective but it's impossible. I hate politics. Why cant we all just get along.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Since you asked for a recent example of desecration, katharina, how about in Texas?
quote:The tombstone of a black man who was dragged to his death was found broken, with an obscenity and racial epithet carved into a metal plate on the bottom of the stone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byrd...crossed the path of three white men who...beat him, chained him to their truck by his ankles, and dragged him more than two miles until he was dismembered and decapitated.
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Aspectre,
those aren't analogous at all - One can find individuals like that who do those things in secret in almost any culture.
I think it's fair to say that we haven't this as a public behavior for awhile. Not that it couldn't happen.
I think Troubador's example of dropping Osama bin Laden into New York on September 12th is right on - given the right circumstances, it could happen again here.
Posted by Yank (Member # 2514) on :
I believe it's an aspect of Arab, not Islamic, culture. Most Muslims are not Arabs.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
I think dismemberment appeals to a very primitive, superstitious part of our beings. There's a trophy-taking qualitiy to it. I have vanquished my enemy, and look, here is proof. There is also the talisman aspect. If I keep a piece of this one who has wronged me, and that I have destroyed, then I remind myself that I am stronger than those who would oppose me. It makes me more powerful. I would gladly and proudly keep the teeth of a predator I had killed, especially if it tried to hurt me or my children.
To the dismemberers, those they kill were predators after them and their children.
Posted by Toretha (Member # 2233) on :
If I recall correctly, in Vietnam, didn't US soldiers often cut off and keep the ears of people they'd killed-call them something like gook ears?
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
I hadn't heard that something other than individuals had desecrated body parts, sndrake. So was it Chimera or Hydra, or Fluffy or what?
Heck, ya don't hafta go as far as dropping Osama into NewYork on September the 12th. Police and investigators ended up becoming highly ticked off that identification of victims was potentially being hampered by looting for "souvenirs": some of which undoubtedly had enough tissue (body parts) to be used for DNA matching.
The net reality of the situation was that some individuals of the Palestinian militias had decided to keep/hide Israeli bodyparts: partly to tick the Israelis off, and mostly as bargaining chips. And the Palestinian Muslim clerics so strongly denounced the act that it became politically impossible to hold the body parts as hostage.
So how exactly is this about Muslims rather than some individuals who tried to defy the tenets of Islam for the sake of secular politics?
[ May 14, 2004, 04:26 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
aspectre,
either I communicated badly or you're being deliberately dense and distorting what I was trying to say. Too tired to know which it is.
There have been fairly recent incidents of public mutilation/desecration in that area of the world that played well to crowds. The burned and hanged bodies in Falujah, the holding of Israeli body parts.
If you had read my posts at all, I never claimed this was behavior limited to Islam - but we're hearing more about it there right now. Mobs take on minds of their own.
Mussolini's body didn't fare too well with a mob either, as I recall.
Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
Its not like its a couple of ppl. Scroll up to one of my previous posts, look at what they did to that college front. I mean...they glorified it. Their university's entrance was a replica of blood, gore, bodyparts...