John Leonard Quotes
When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things.
John Leonard, 1936-2008, Critic & Essayist, Private Lives in the Imperial City, 1979
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The implication of this sura is that it is permissible to kill non-Muslims but not Muslims. The same is true of slavery. Another prescription of this sura is that a Muslim should never kill another Muslim, so while this sura is very discriminatory and in that sense reprehensible, it does call into question the Islamic terrorist practice of the late 20th and early 21st century of killing fellow Muslims who might vote, serve in an official role or cooperate with non-believers. And it definitely to the Western mind prohibits the kind of Islamic sectarian violent practice of Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims torturing and butchering each other—a practice that has continued since the two groups fought over who was the rightful successor to Muhammad. The religious rationale for that murderous behavior is that each Islamic group sees the other as apostate and therefore no longer real Muslims.
Einstein had changed his mind. He like almost everyone else at the time favored the death penalty, but in 1927 came to the new conclusion for the same reasons that many American politicians stated 70 years later. He had no compunctions against capital punishment for murderers who were dangers to society, but the potential error of the justice system led him to oppose state sanctioned execution. At the time the number of errors in capital cases that had been demonstrated were few. But as a scientist, Einstein knew that all human endeavors were prone to error. He was a strong law and order supporter however—see {588606}.
He referred to the Biblical injunction for capital punishment which mandated the death penalty for murder. However the Bible also requires the death penalty for adultery, heresy, blasphemy, homosexuality, and a number of other offenses including a son being disobedient to his father where death was also proscribed. This quotation is an excellent example of a rhetorical political technique where the speaker selectively provides the truth. Taken at its face, this argument would persuade many people, few of whom would still support the argument if they knew that it applied equally to a host of other behaviors many of which are not even regarded as crimes in a modern civilized society.
He was describing a real case in Canada. There as well as the United State, for those who oppose capital punishment give as their main reason the mistakes made by the criminal justice system, and the innocent people who have been executed.
John Leonard (born 1965) is an Australian poet.
