Where Do Those Terrorists Get Their Crazy Ideas?

The Saudi government beheaded 52 men and one woman last year for crimes including murder, homosexuality, armed robbery and drug trafficking. But Saudis say that while Islam condones the punishment in one context, it condemns militants who decapitated hostages here and in Iraq.

Islam permits the death penalty for certain crimes, but few mainstream Muslim scholars and observers believe beheadings are sanctioned by Sharia, or Islamic law.

The Saudi government says the punishment is sanctioned by Islamic tradition. State-ordered beheadings are performed in courtyards outside crowded mosques in major cities after weekly Friday prayer services.

A condemned convict is brought into the courtyard, hands tied, and forced to bow before an executioner, who swings a huge sword amid cries from onlookers of ”Allahu Akbar!” Arabic for ”God is great.”

—-

The grainy video, on an Islamist website linked to the al-Qaeda terror network, showed Berg being decapitated with a large knife by a group of masked men.

After the killing, shouts of “Allahu akbar” (God is great) are heard and the masked men then hold the head up to the camera. Berg’s remains were found on Saturday by US troops along a road near Baghdad.

—-

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States condemned as “criminal and inhuman” the decapitation in Iraq of American Nicholas Berg.

Speaking in Arabic on Wednesday to the Saudi media in Jiddah, the Saudi summer capital, Prince Bandar said the al-Zarqawi group, which took responsibility for the execution, was “a criminal, deviant and un-Islamic group allied with (Osama) bin Laden and the criminals of al-Qaida.”

Bandar said the group had also killed Muslims and Arabs for no reason.

“It is not out of character for them to commit acts that violate the teachings of Islam, a noble religion that deplores such acts,” Bandar said in response to questions from the Saudi media.