Beheading is a form of execution or killing of a human being where a sword or a similar weapon is used to strike at the nape of the neck and the head severed from the torso. It is considered a barbaric custom in the present age, but there are still countries like Saudi Arabia where beheading is a legal punishment as per the Sharia.
Till the end of the Second World War, beheading was a legal punishment in the eastern societies of Japan and China. The Japanese in particular beheaded thousands of prisoners of war and opponents without batting an eyelid. In fact there are reports that 2 Japanese army officers started a race to see who would reach 100 beheadings first. It was a barbaric act and reminded the world that the Japanese are perhaps totally immune to the finer points of human sensitivity. The japanese Imperial army also systematically executed by be-headings POWs and opponents in the occupied territories.
Beheadings are almost outlawed now and democracies like India and the West including the USA abhor this act. But it is a tragedy of the modern world is tha Islam in some countries sanctifies beheadings. History records that through out early history, criminals and enemies were beheaded. It was common in all civilizations. The beheading was done by an axe or a sword and Muslims and non Muslims both practiced this form of punishment.
At the turn of the 20th century the West and India had done away with beheading as a punishment. But it exists in the Muslim world in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and Iran. Beheadings are very much in vogue in many Muslim countries and though privately many do not favor it, yet in public everybody accepts it.
Beheadings are also conducted by militant Muslim Jihad groups like the Taliban, al-Qaida among others in Algeria, Nigeria, Kashmir, Chechnya and the Muslim-dominated southern Philippines. Iranian mullahs have cut off the heads of some political figures. It should not be forgotten that the correspondent Daniel Pearl was beheaded in Pakistan and earlier in 1986 the William Buckley, CIA chief in Beirut was abducted by Hezbollah and secretly transported to Iran where he faced beheading.
The Koran has verses that sanctifies beheadings and forms the basis of the Sharia in the arch obscurantist country Saudi Arabia. To think that this country is the strategic partner of the USA. Could the Americans not find anyone better?
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