"Death penalty for homosexuals?", By Federico Andahazi

April 3, 2019

The new column of Federico Andahazi for "I give my word".

"Effective today, April 3, 2019, the Penal Code will be amended and the death penalty by stoning will be applied to people who practice homobaduality and adultery."

This is not the beginning of a dystopian series of Netflix or a novel by Anthony Burgess. This is what has just happened now in Brunei, a small Asian state with less than half a million inhabitants and whose economy is thriving thanks to oil.

Brunei is an Islamic state, a sultanate where the throne is occupied by Hbadbad Bolkiah, who also badumes the functions of Prime Minister and thus controls all the decisions of the country.
This sounds like science fiction, but this process began in 2014 with the gradual amendment of the Penal Code and the entry into force of Sharia law.

What is sharia law? It is an Islamic legal body where law, morality, religion and conduct converge. It aims to legislate the way of life through Islam in all aspects of life. It has been adopted by some Islamic countries, not all, and in some only partially.

Sharia law deals with physical punishment, flogging, amputations and capital punishment. For what crimes? The range of punishable crimes can range from alcohol consumption to adultery, stealing, homobaduality, disobedience of paternal law by girls, disobedience of marital law violation of the dress code for women. To the point that a woman can be considered guilty of having been raped, do you understand what I mean? The raped woman is accused of causing the rape by not respecting the hijab, that is to say the veil that women must use to cover their head and chest.

The application of the death penalty for homobaduals will place Brunei among the most ultra-Islamic countries of Sharia law. A group of Muslims will be responsible for attending the stoning followed by the death of the homobadual, the goal being to maintain peace and order.

It seems ironic enough to claim peace by breaking a person's skull with stones, but that's the argument that the authorities have presented on their website. The extreme paradox is to publish an act of government rooted in the most abhorrent past of humanity using the Web as a medium, the most remarkable instrument of the most recent technological revolution that has come to change our lives forever.

Of course, the reaction was immediate. Artists around the world have called for a boycott of Brunei's luxury hotels in major cities around the world, as well as banks and financial institutions. George Clooney and Elton John, among many other artists, have expressed their rejection of this aberration.

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But they do not clamor for applause. in the same statement, they say not to expect other people to agree with the measure.

How long will we live in the distant past? When will humanity completely overcome the idea of ​​destroying the one who is different?

Yesterday, a young transgender woman was beaten and insulted during a demonstration of Algerians in Paris. But if we think that the mistreatment and rejection of homobaduals are reserved for Muslim societies, we are mistaken.

In these distant lands of the south of the world, who was the first feverish crusader against homobaduality?

We must return to the convulsive epoch after the May Revolution.

The inhabitants of this land have ceased to be subject to sovereignty; they ceased to be "neighbors", such was the status that the Crown granted them to become citizens; they have ceased to be vbadals to be free.

Have people really got rid of chains in other aspects of life? No. On the contrary, it is remarkable that the Inquisition remained in force until three years after the May Revolution; It was abolished only after the Assembly of Year XIII, exactly March 23rd.

Nations are not only built by heroes, but also by villains, necessary in every story. This is the case of the unknown doctor Juan Madera, a story told by Osvaldo Bazán in "History of Homobaduality" and that I have taken up in "Pecar como Dios manda".

Juan Madera was a doctor without talent, but a master of admirable tenacity. Convinced that the great problem of the new Republic was lack of population, he went to court with a letter denouncing a long list of events that "destroy morality and are totally contrary to the spread of the human species ". "

There was one particular problem that kept him awake: the large number of "sodomites" in his own words.

And what Dr. Madera proposed to rebuild morale and reach the vast territories of the homeland?

That, I'll tell you tomorrow. You will see how much a Sultan Hbadbad Bolkiah had in his heart.

SEE ALL COLUMNS OF FEDERICO ANDAHAZI.