The beheading of Paul Johnson by terrorists in Saudi Arabia horrified people around the world. What many may not realize is that beheading is the standard form of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia - and it’s a punishment that is used often.

Richard Halicks writes in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

To many critics, however, legal Saudi beheadings are as reprehensible as those recently carried out by al-Qaida terrorists. "It's even more horrible when it's sanctioned by the state," said Ali Ahmed, director of the Saudi Institute in Washington. "We live in the 21st century — give me a break! Why do we have to kill people publicly? The government of Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that beheads people."

Legal beheadings in the kingdom have received renewed attention as terrorists across the Middle East have employed the medieval execution method with more frequency. To Ahmed, the Saudi government is practicing terrorism just as willfully as the al-Qaida operatives who are murdering captive Westerners and — as was the case last week with South Korean Kim Sun-il — those they see as allies of the West.

"They believe that this practice of beheading people is mandatory," he said. "Islamic law has capital punishment in it. But it does not require a certain way of killing people. I think the government is using it for two reasons — to terrorize the nation, and to convince the population that they have control and they punish swiftly any crime."

Arguably the Saudi terrorists aren’t any more barbaric than the society in which they are operating. If this is the standard form of legal punishment, then why wouldn’t it also be used by them as a form of political punishment? It may be awful, but it makes a great deal of sense. Perhaps one of the best steps to reforming terrorism would be reforming the society they operate in.

Read More:

• Recent Books on Islam
• Islam
• Palestine and Israel
• War on Terrorism
• Wahhabi Islam
• Religion in Saudi Arabia