Teju Cole Quotes
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.
Cole, Teju. "The Print of the Black Hand." The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2012.
The Senator was referring to the large number of people who had been exonerated by DNA evidence while on Death Row.
See Jonathan Swift {35359} and William Shenstone {642165} for a later expression of this notion.
While most Islamic fundamentalists supported the lower court decision, there were many who saw the tradition as having nothing to do with Muslim theology. While fornication is a serious sin, it is equally sinful for a man before marriage as a woman, yet the same clerics who rail against a woman committing such a sin, assume that a man’s similar act is “natural.” Modern Muslim clerics such as Boubakeur not only refused to use the religion to justify old tradition, but was particularly critical of civil law being used to support religious customs. The French Justice Minister appealed the case but the French left and right politicians who were secular were pitted against the French minority which saw the decision as the state finally giving respect and credence to the culture and religion of minorities.
There had been a major labor strike in the textile mills of Lawrence. Ettor was one of the major strike leaders and strategists. The city authorities sided totally with the mill owners and used police and militia to try and break the strike. When one of the strikers was shot and killed (historians generally agree that the police had fired the shot), the authorities used the death to incapacitate the leadership of Ettor and two other “socialist” leaders who were professional strike organizers and leaders. The 3 were arrested and charged with murder, firing the shot that killed the striker. Ettor and the others were miles away at the time giving speeches to the strikers at another mill. None-the-less, they were arrested, jailed, and not even tried until after the strike was ended. The three were quickly acquitted. The jailing of the strike leaders backfired and made the strikers even more resolute. The laborers finally won the concessions, not to have their pay cut. The defendants went on to lead other strikes.
Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian.
