"We" behead people too

The West has been quick to condemn IS for its barbaric and abhorent behaviour. Civilised society, our political leaders tell us, don't, for example, behead people as IS did so graphically and publicly recently.

But, wait! It's not a case of "them" (the baddies) and "us" (the goodies). One of the countries the Coalition (?) has lined up to join in the "fight" against IS engages in beheadings and other barbaric, inhumane and medieval conduct.

"Now that the United States is forming another military coalition to combat evil in the Middle East, maybe we should pause to take a closer look at the members of this coalition. Sure, ISIS is terrible and does awful things like behead people, but they’ve got nothing on Saudi Arabia, which beheads people as a matter of policy.

Between August 4th and 22nd, Saudi Arabia executed 22 people, bringing the yearly total to 34. (They executed 79 people in 2013 and killed 2000 people between 1985 and 2013.) They recently killed four members of the same family for drug trafficking.

I’m not saying every one of our allies in the fight against ISIS has to be perfect, but it does seem a bit hypocritical when one of our most important allies in the Middle East has such a thing for beheading— just something to keep in mind when the next terrible ISIS beheading video is released. Nobody seems to get worked up when prisoners who have been tortured and condemned by a religious court are beheaded in a public square, as long as it happens in Saudi Arabia."

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