Are We Simply A Few Centuries Up The Road?

[Khandro]

I'm reminded that on this day 323 years back the Salem Witch Trials commenced, resulting in 19 people hanged and one 'pressed to death' !
A century prior to that we were busy beheading and merrily disembowelling, hang, drawing and quartering folk in public and displaying their heads in spikes.
As Peter Kominsky, director of Wolf Hall said in an interview, (with reference to Anne Boleyn's beheading) "Does this sound familiar today?".

[Zacs-Master]

If you're Muslim, yes.

[Mosaic]

We've been fortunate in our lifetimes in Britain / civilised western Europe. Outwith this time and space, horrible things are normal.

[pastafreak]

Probably less than a few hundred...and I wouldn't brag too much about how we've "progressed' in the UK or Europe. Cynic that I am, I worry that given the chance or left to their own devices,many would revert back to such modes of punishment/revenge. And I'm not sure religion would play a part in it either.

[naomi24]

//As Peter Kominsky, director of Wolf Hall said in an interview, (with reference to Anne Boleyn's beheading) "Does this sound familiar today?".//

Not really. Like many others, Anne Boleyn wasn’t beheaded for the reasons people are beheaded today. Islam will never concede to a leader who, like Henry VIII (albeit in his case for personal reasons), is determined to oppose the status quo. Its book demands some gory penalties for perceived opposition to Islam and since the book is considered infallible, that will never change - so don’t hold your breath.

[Noe-schitt]

Whats with this "WE" stuff

[Khandro]

//Not really. Like many others, Anne Boleyn wasn’t beheaded for the reasons people are beheaded today.//
I see, so there are degrees of culpability for beheading?

[naomi24]

Khandro, //I see, so there are degrees of culpability for beheading?//

I don’t think you do see. Within civilised societies both rules and accepted penalties for breaking those rules change continuously but the analogy you and Peter Kominsky are making simply doesn’t work because Islam cannot change. Its rules are not man-made … allegedly.

[sandyRoe]

Not so very long ago the French were doing it with a Guillotine. The Nazis were known to employ headsmen.
But how culpable would an aid volunteer, or a working man, be who found themselves in the hands of ISIS?

[mibn2cweus]

In any age, how better to demonstrate one's own commitment to one's own preferred delusion than to take another's life in the most gruesome way imaginable. How better to prove that one's own irrational arbitrary beliefs lead to correspondingly irrational behaviour.

[Khandro]

naomi; I must return to; //Not really. Like many others, Anne Boleyn wasn’t beheaded for the reasons people are beheaded today.//

Doesn't having ones wife beheaded on trumped up charges of adultery have familiar ring?

[goodlife]

Some people say that history repeats itself.

If so, God’s Word says that “it all happened to them by way of warning for others, and it was written down for the purpose of instructing us........................ (1 Cor. 10:11)

[Canary42]

Auschwitz, Guantánamo Bay, etc spring to mind for more modern examples.

[Hypognosis]

Back in the days when there was only just enough food to go around, free food and shelter would have been regarded as a 'reward' for serious crime. Hence the continued clamour for the death penalty. Deterrence and prevention of repeat offences in one fell swoop.

Oh, did you see what I did there?

[vetuste_ennemi]

Many people opposed the trials and challenged the evidence at the time. The verdicts in the trials were all overturned somewhat later (I thought as the result of a Royal Commission in the reign of Anne, although Wiki says it was a local Massachusetts court). So England and its colonies still had religious mania, superstition and frenzy, it had something else: freedom of speech, due process and the acknowledgement of the rule of law. Better two hundred years ago, then, than some theocracies today. Better than some would have this country be now.
There was, many years ago, an enthralling TV program about the trials and the subsequent compensation paid to the families of those hanged. I think the rather poignant title was "A Shilling for Sarah" or some such, but can't find it on Google.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Oh, I forgot to ask you, Khandro. What serious (as opposed to banal) point is your post trying to make?
Good to have you back, by the way. Thought we'd lost you to a heart attack or an ashram.

[vetuste_ennemi]

So WHILE England and its...

[Svejk]

Guantanamo Bay? It may suit your own prejudices to include that, canary, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the question.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Oops, three hundred years. Rounding error!

[Jackdaw33]

I agree that Boleyn's trial and execution was a farce. Not so that of Catherine Howard (although she was attainted rather than tried) who was as guilty as sin. It was perhaps poetic justice that Jane Rochford, Boleyn's sister in law, should die on the same block as Howard for complicity in her treason. Interestingly, according to the law at the time she would not have been executed as she had gone mad and even in those days mad people could not be put to death. Henry persuaded parliament to pass an act making it an exception in the case of treason.