The Terror of Beheadings: Who Is Responsible?

By Tarek Fatah

When the British Army finally captured Delhi to crush the 1857 Indian War of Independence, it was left with an urgent task—how to strike terror in the hearts of millions of Indians.

The British colonialists wanted to let the Indian population know that the last of the Moghul Emperors, the symbol of Indian resistance, was their captive and that further fighting was futile. However, more importantly, the British Army wanted strike terror into the hearts of the Indian freedom fighters, who were refusing to lay down their arms and were engaging in hit and run tactics throughout the vast Indian subcontinent.

In the absence of newspapers, television, and taped video messages—the modern means of propaganda, the British engaged in public acts of terror to scare their opponents. Captured Indian soldiers would be strapped to mouths of cannons and then blown to bits. However, these publicly staged barbaric acts of terror failed to dampen the resistance. Fighting continued across the sub-continent

Frustrated, the British then did the unimaginable. It is said they beheaded the two sons of the captive Indian Moghul Emperor and then presented these severed heads to him on a silver platter covered by rich satin cloth. As if this was not enough, they started public hangings and then strung the dead Indians from trees that lined the roads approaching Delhi. The dead bodies stayed hanging for weeks, terrorizing the population into submission, as stories of British barbarity spread across India.

Today, the terror tactics used by the British and other European colonizers to break the will of their captive populations are being used by a new group of people—the Al Qaeda terrorists who have infiltrated the freedom fighters trying to get rid of new occupations.

While the British in the 19th century blew up prisoners on cannons and hung dead bodies on public thoroughfares, Al Qaeda and its supporters are beheading their captives and posting these executions on the Internet. The despicable and barbaric act of beheading prisoners and hostages is not simply an act of savagery, but a calculated attempt of terrorizing the populations of the western countries that are conducting the so-called war on terrorism. The tactics of Al Qaeda and other Islamic fanatics are not new; they come borrowed from the past.

Ordinary people throughout the world are justifiably horrified at these acts of barbarism. Many people in the west cannot comprehend how anyone could execute innocent people in front of video cameras without flinching or hesitating for a moment.

However, people in the west and specially the US should take into consideration our own complicity in creating the monsters that kill Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl.

In the 1970 and 1980s, I used to call Saudi Arabia my home. One of the regular events that became an attraction for ordinary Saudis and guest workers was the Friday ritual of public beheadings.

People would gather at what was referred to as “head-chopper square” to witness the beheading of prisoners. Saudis and guest workers, including Americans and Europeans, would collect on Friday after prayers to see this horrifying spectacle. They would see the head of the man cut off in one swift slash of the sword, and then walk away for a day of picnicking among the sand dunes outside Riyadh.

For over 50 years, the Saudis have been publicly beheading people in gruesome executions. All this time their American sponsors have looked the other way, never once protesting these acts of cruel and inhuman punishments

Today Americans must ask their government, why were they silent for decades when the cult of beheadings gained respectability and acceptability under their active patronage.

The same Saudis and their American sponsors, who poured billions into creating a worldwide cult of Wahhabism on whose foundations Al Qaeda was built, are today witnessing their chickens coming home to roost.

Unfortunately, today many ordinary people in the West view these beheadings as acts of Muslims and associate this barbarism with the cultures of the Arab World and the East.

I need to remind them that the phrase, “rolling of the heads” did not originate in Arabic, Persian, or Urdu. In addition, Henry the Eighth was not an Arab King, and the Guillotine was not an Indian invention.

The fact of the matter is that beheadings were part of our common history from Japan to the Americas for centuries. But while most of the Western World, excluding the United States, has moved away from the death penalty, the Muslim world in a bizarre relationship with America, joins it in continuing to accept it as an acceptable for of punishment.

If Americans are outraged with the sight of beheadings in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, they need to look deep into their own past when public lynching was the tool employed to terrorize African slaves into submission; where the death penalty still finds fertile soil despite the execution of innocent Americans as a result of a racist criminal justice system; where their government still considers the Saudi regime as an ally, despite the fact people still go to head chopper square for a Friday outing.

Tarek Fatah is a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress and host of the weekly Canadian TV show, The Muslim Chronicle.

A version of this essay also appeared as a commentary on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio program, The Current. For a streamed audio version of the program, click here [Real - Fatah's commentary begins at 16:10].