Saudi Arabia sentences TV psychic to death


The world doesn’t need more examples of how religion institutionalizes evil, but here’s one anyway. A religious court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to be executed for practicing “black magic” because he hosted a TV show where he gave advice and made predictions. According to CNN,

The judges in Medina issued a statement expressing that [Ali Hussain] Sibat deserved to be executed for having continually practiced black magic on his show, adding that this sentence would deter others from practicing sorcery.

Sibat is actually Lebanese and lived in Beirut, but he was arrested by Saudi Arabian religious police when he was visiting their country in 2008, and he’s been their prisoner ever since.

This is why we can’t have nice things, people.

“Saudi Arabia ’sorcery’ death sentence upheld” [Amnesty.org]

March 27, 2010 | Filed Under Crime, News, People, Religion, Ugly Humanity | View Comments 

The Vatican’s chief exorcist has published a memoir of his demon-fighting career

Father Amorth, aka Don Gabriele, is 84 years old and is currently recuperating in a hospital next to St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome for some blood infection (non-demon-related, he says, but I think we know better). He’s been performing exorcisms for half a century and was the basis for one of the characters in “The Exorcist,” and he was appointed to the Vatican as an exorcist’s assistant in 1986, where he’s now the chief exorcist. His rates must be astronomical.

He’s published a new memoir of his demon-related hijinks, so The Times sent a reporter to Rome to interview Father Amorth, probably partly for the publicity junket his publisher is surely forcing him on even though he’s sick. (Everyone knows that marketers are seething with lower demons.) He sounds like a cool guy to hang with:

Now frail, he becomes animated as he describes his life-long struggle with demons who possess the bodies of their victims, at one stage spreading his arms wide to show me the length of one particular demon occupying the body of a woman he had “liberated”.

Read more

March 18, 2010 | Filed Under Monsters, People, Religion | View Comments 

Indian police want to display head of local murdered “witch”

Mannequin headsA small museum in a rural part of India is considering displaying the decapitated head of a woman killed over the weekend by a villager on suspicion of witchcraft. “I think displaying this head in a museum will create a sensation in society and could be helpful in preventing people from taking to such heinous crimes,” says the police officer. Well, okay, but how about displaying the severed head of the villager who committed the crime? That would probably be even more effective.

(Photo: troismarteaux)

April 24, 2008 | Filed Under Crime, Religion, Ugly Humanity | View Comments 

Penis Theft Panic Hits City; Accused Sorcerers Fear Lynchings

Sign of a penis thiefAccording to Reuters, “Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises.” The police have apparently arrested both the sorcerers and crazed “victims” who have told police that, okay, maybe the penis wasn’t stolen per se, but it’s smaller and non-functioning now.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Don’t steal penises, kids. It’s not cool. Nobody like a penis thief.

(Photo: rust.bucket)

April 24, 2008 | Filed Under News, Religion, Strange But True | View Comments 

Human Muti: Ritual Killings And Organ Harvesting For Luck

ms-mutipurchase300.jpgIn 2005, an Australian news agency put together a lengthy news report on Sangomas, or traditional healers in Southern Africa, and the folk medicine called muti. For the most part, muti is all about roots and herbs, asking for help from ancestors, and good luck charms. But there’s also a vicious minority of practitioners who use human parts, usually harvested from victims while they’re still alive because the pain is believed to make the medicine more powerful.

Around the 8:55 mark is a horrible story of Peter Sello, a child who lured into an ambush, possibly by a neighbor who is a local healer, then “harvested” by a group of attackers. He was found still alive, but missing several body parts and part of his brain, and later died.

The Independent has an article about muti and ritual killings from August 2004, centered around the attack on the Sello child:

How the body parts are used varies with what customers want to achieve. They are eaten, drunk or smeared over the ambitious person. Various parts are used for different purposes. A man who had difficulty in producing children killed a father of several children and used his victim’s genitals for muti. In another case, a butcher used a severed human hand to slap each of his products every morning before opening as a way of invoking the spirits to beckon customers.

Mathews Mojela is the head teacher at Sello’s primary school. He has worked in rural areas for nearly a quarter of a century and says muti is founded in the archaic belief that there is only a limited amount of good luck around. If one wants to increase his wealth or luck, then it should come at another’s expense.

The screaming of a child while his body parts are being chopped off is also regarded as a sign calling customers to the perpetrator’s business, Mr Mojolela said. It is also believed that magical powers are awakened by the screams. Eating or burying the body parts “capture” the desired results. Robert Thornton, an anthropology professor at the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg , who has done research in traditional healing, says children like Sello are targeted because it is believed that the power of the virgin is greater than that of a sexually active adult.

The main motivating idea is what Professor Thorntorn describes as “symbolic logic”, the idea that another person’s penis will strengthen the perpetrator’s, or that the perpetrator’s far-sightedness will be improved by devouring the victim’s eyes. Blood is thought to increase vitality.

Wikipedia’s entry on muti links to more recent ritual killings and evidence of harvested body parts—like the story from December 2006 of the discovery of human body parts found in the walls of a beauty salon that was still being built:

Police armed with sledge hammers, angle grinders and chisels hacked at the ash brick walls of Ngoveni’s salon after two sniffer dogs indicated several areas – which two State witnesses had earlier pointed out – from which the scent of rotting flesh emanated.Ncube’s mother collapsed in hysterics as police began pulling chunks of cement, mixed with what seemed to be human flesh, from the broken walls.

Police filled three evidence bags with the dark brown and black chunks.

[tags]muti,ritual killings,religion,south african,africa,zulu,sangoma,murder,organ harvesting[/tags]

January 16, 2008 | Filed Under Crime, Places, Religion, Ugly Humanity | View Comments 

Next Page →