Men may believe what they like about sin. The catastrophe begins when they decide that what God will judge in the next world, the state must punish in this one. A cruel law that its own keepers are ashamed to enforce is not thereby made harmless. It sits on the books like a loaded weapon in an unlocked house, waiting for the first intruder who is not ashamed.
The Stadium
On the twenty-seventh of October 2008, in the port city of Kismayo in southern Somalia, about a thousand people filed into the football stadium. A hole had been dug in the middle of the pitch. A girl was placed in it and buried up to her neck. Then about fifty men began to throw stones at her head.
At one point, witnesses said, the stoning was halted, and nurses were sent to see whether she was still alive. She was. She was put back in the hole, and it continued.
The militia that ruled the town announced that an adulteress of twenty-three had been punished according to the law of God. Human rights investigators later established the facts. Her name was Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. She was thirteen years old. She had gone to the authorities to report that three men had raped her, and the authorities had treated her complaint as a confession of unlawful sex.
5 more minutes: A Penalty Not in the Book, The Two Who Put the Stones Down, Interpretation, The Lesson
Members read every case to the end and watch each film before release. The complete argument is also in the book.