By EXISTANCE
Updated: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:24:22 UTC

This article is interesting.

A boy from Paris has been brutally killed by family members he was visiting in the UK. The reason for this is that the perpetrator believed he was a witch. Because of this the victim was then subjected to days of imaginatively cruel and sadistic and vindictive torture.

I'm trying to understand what motivates these people. I guess they justify their actions by rationalising (as far as their minds are capable of any rationalisation) that they aren't doing these things to their family member, but rather to the evil spirit that has invaded him. I think they will also have been motivated by irrational fear. Fear of a nonexistent evil spirit, and fear of their deity too, who might punish them should they not carry out these actions. Fear and ignorance. An age-old, yet ever potent, cocktail.

I don't believe the article mentions what particular brand of superstition these people believed. The Old Testament instructs the Israelites to 'not preserve a sorcerer alive'. It doesn't say anything about inflicting days of unimaginable torment before said execution. Mind you, I suppose they could view it, on some warped level, as a means by which they could prove their special zeal in carrying out their chosen god's instructions.

Altogether astonishing that this can happen in the UK in the 21st century.

TAGGED: HARM, IRRATIONALITY