Beheading As Propaganda
In Iraq, ISIS decapitates a person accused of being a homosexual. Image Source: Tumblr
The psychological impact of seeing a severed head — or, better yet, witnessing the act of beheading itself — is not lost on today’s terrorist groups.
ISIS has blazed a trail in this department. While its predecessor organizations, specifically Al Qaeda, always used beheading videos to intimidate opponents overseas, the Islamic State has turned the slow, gruesome sawing off of a captive’s head into a public spectacle.
Unlike the judicial beheading practiced with a sword in Saudi Arabia, ISIS beheadings are usually done with a short knife for maximum blood and gore. Ideally, the victim screams and begs for his life throughout the killing, maximizing its propaganda value.
In an echo of the region’s Assyrian past (made ironic by the Islamic State’s effort to erase the pre-Islamic history of Iraq), ISIS victims’ heads are often mounted on pikes and displayed in public as a deterrent and as a boast of the Caliphate’s power to kill Americans and other enemies.
This still from an ISIS beheading video released in early February shows a young boy threatening America while his prisoner kneels before him. Image Source: Daily Mail
Cutting off the head of somebody you don’t like is such a simple, obvious way to kill that it will probably never fall completely out of use. While only three countries in the world currently allow beheading — and only one actually does it — the act of violently separating the heads of heretics, traitors, and enemy fighters will persist as long as such gory theater is felt to be necessary.
For more grizzly facets of human history, check out our other posts on the sordid history of defenestration and the eight most painful torture devices of the Middle Ages.
