Why Can't We Get A Fatwa Where We need On

"Cherifa Kheddar, Djazairouna’s president, is one of Algeria’s most important human rights advocates. When I meet her, she wears a gray suit and black pumps. Her hair is chin length and jet-black and she looks tired, having worked a long day before our grueling discussion begins. I receive her in the salon that Fayza’s family has given over to me. It is furnished with backless couches, and low tables with lace covers. In this serene environment, we relive some of Cherifa’s most difficult moments. “My mother went to Mecca on pilgrimage in 1996. She went with a group of Algerians to see the imam of the Grand Mosque and asked for a fatwa against what was happening in Algeria. The imam replied: ‘No, that is politics and we are not involved in politics.’ ” Why can’t you get a fatwa when you actually need one? Forty days later, armed thugs came to the Kheddar house in Blida and shot Cherifa’s mother and niece (who survived) and her sister Leila (who did not), and tortured her brother Mohamed Redha to death."

- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. (Algerian)

War Brings Out Evil Justice

"Benjamin B. Ferencz, one of the prosecutors in the Nuremberg trials who, in May 1945, investigated occurrences at the Ebensee concentration camp, and narrated them to Tom Hofmann, a family member and biographer. He was completely outraged at what the Nazis had done there. When people discovered a SS guard who attempted to flee, they tied him to one of the metal trays used to transport bodies into the crematorium. They then proceeded to light the oven, and slowly roast the SS guard to death, taking him in and out of the oven several times. Ferencz said to Hofmann that at the time, he was in no position to stop the proceedings of the mob, and frankly admitted that he had not been inclined to try. Hofmann adds, "There seemed to be no limit to human brutality in wartime."

- Wikipedia.  Death By Burning.

Where Ever There Is Sun, We Will Go

"A human being is weak, weak. In the end, that spring, even the most stubborn of us wanted forgiveness and we're ready to give up a lot for just a little bit more life. An anecdote was current among us: "What is your last word, accused?" I beg you to send me where wherever you please, just as long as it is under the Soviet government and the Sun is there! No one was threatening to deprive us of the Soviet government, of course: just the sun. No one wanted to be sent beyond the Arctic Circle, to scurvy and malnutrition."

- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Rule Of Law Means I Die?

"If I should object to force I will be arrested. If I object to arrest I will be clubbed. If I defend myself against clubbing I will be shot. These procedures are known as The Rule of Law."

Edward Abbey, The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel

Sleep

"At any minute, one of us could have been pulled out for interrogation..... One night of undisturbed sleep was more important than all the fates on Earth!"

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1

Brandy Wounds And Fire Tested Faith

(Jacob) Hutter set about developing or restoring an Anabaptist network. However, he was arrested in Klausen.....

.... he was taken bound and gagged, to Innsbruck and placed in the Kräuterturm. His torture included flogging; immersion in ice water until nearly frozen followed by thawing in a hot room before being beaten; cutting, with the wounds filled with Brandy and then burn. The outcome of his trial was a foregone conclusion. His death was by public burning in the Market Square of Innsbruck... Hutter remain defiant to the end, challenging his tormentors to test their faith with him in the fire....

Katherine, Hunter's wife, was arrested with him but escaped from prison.... She learned about anabaptism while working as a maid in a household that associated with Anabaptists.  In this way she met and was baptized by Hunter.... She was likely in her early twenties, and the significantly younger than her husband when they married. After escaping in 1536, she remained in Tyrol and was arrested two years later in Schöneck. This time she was executed. In six years as an Anabaptist, she was imprisoned four times. "

- J.Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism.

Bored With Torture!

" It's really pretty monotonous to keep doing the same thing all the time. Those trembling hands, those imploring eyes, that cowardly submissiveness-they are really a bore. If you could just get one of them to resist! "I love strong opponents! It's such fun to break their backs! said the Leningrad interrogator Shitov to G.G _____v.""
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.