Believe me, I get it with this election cycle. Everyday you open the browser (because let’s be honest-who reads the paper anymore??) and are captivated by the hot mess that #Election2016 continues to be. It is easy to forget that there is a whole wide world out there that continues to exist, and frankly, whose problems are more immediate than the USA’s election woes. Honestly, the country will continue to exist if either Trump or Hillary wins-hell if we haven’t ceased to be after eight years of Obama I doubt the implosion will happen on November 9, 2016.

The problems of Syrian civilians are far more serious and immediate. These people are being subjected to chemical attacks by their own government for pity sake, and now ISIS has come calling in the area of the country that lies close to the Iraqi border. On Friday two men were accused of adultery and stoned to death in a public spectacle in Abu Kamal. Hundreds of people, including children, showed up for the brutal execution and bayed for the blood of the accused. This is nothing new in the area, it seems that in June four married men met the same fate as these two. If you have never seen the end result of the biblical punishment known as stoning, let me warn you. It is messy, since it actually involves pelting the person in question with stones until they die. These aren’t small pebbles either-no these are big rocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FSleIDD3Hw

In the video above we see the executioner reading out the charges that the condemned have been sentenced to die for. Then the prisoners are handcuffed and forced to kneel on carpets in the town square and suffer the executioners hurling large rocks at their heads until they bleed out from their injuries and die.

The article in the Daily Mail that covered the execution mentions that this is the result of ISIS’s “warped interpretation of Shari’ah”. Would that were so. Unfortunately, this is not a warped interpretation of Muslim holy law, it is simply the Islamic law that adulterers are stoned to death. According to The Religion of Peace, a non-profit and non-partisan fact based site dedicated to showing the real face of Islamism, the following are all mentions of this punishment for adulterers and fornicators within the Muslim holy books-the Quran and the Hadith.

“Sahih Muslim (17:4192) – This hadith clarifies the different penalties for adultery (when the subjects are married), and fornication (when they are not): “in case of married (persons) there is (a punishment) of one hundred lashes and then stoning (to death). And in case of unmarried persons, (the punishment) is one hundred lashes and exile for one year” (See also 17:4191)

Sahih Muslim (17:4196) – A married man confesses to adultery.  Muhammad orders him planted in the ground and pelted with stones.  According to the passage, the first several stones caused such pain that he tried to escape and was dragged back.

Sahih Muslim (17:4206) – A woman who became pregnant confesses to Muhammad that she is guilty of adultery.  Muhammad allows her to have the child, then has her stoned. The description is graphic: “Khalid b Walid came forward with a stone which he flung at her head and there spurted blood on the face of Khalid and so he abused her.”

Sahih Muslim (17:4209) – A woman confesses adultery and is stoned to death on Muhammad’s order.

Ibn Ishaq (970) – “The adulterer must be stoned.”  These words were a part of Muhammad’s farewell address to his people on the occasion of his final pilgrimage to Mecca.

Islamic Law – “The stone shall not be so big so as to kill the person by one or two strikes, neither shall it be so small that it cannot be called a stone”  The victim is intended to suffer.”

This is what is going on in the rest of the world while we debate whether a vulgar man who describes grabbing women by their nether regions and a criminal guilty of collusion with foreign powers are more (or less) fit to be the leader of the free world. So, when you are beginning to succumb to the media buzz about the latest #FirstWorldProblem, just take a moment and thank the good Lord for your good fortune to be here where the worst choice you have to make is still twenty some odd days out and in the meantime you can sip your PSL in relative calm without coming upon a site like the one pictured below with your child in tow.

No matter how bad things get here I am still thankful for my good luck to be born into a society that does not place an actual price on my head as a woman, and where I am free to choose my destiny. When the #SpecialSnowflakes are looking for a “safe space” remind them that in other countries, there is no such thing for men, women or  children.