They were subjected to various threats such as destruction of their homes, life imprisonment, beheading or rape.

In Saudi Arabia, where public executions by beheading persist, the body of an Egyptian national was reported to have been crucified following execution for murder.

On the other hand, Japan's reply expressed the view that hanging as a way of execution is not particularly cruel in light of humanitarianism compared to other ways such as beheading, shooting, electrocution and lethal gas .

To escape from want we are told we must embrace illegality. To promote the truth, we are told that old crimes even the beheading of a journalist and the poisoning of our president must not be closely examined.

American reactions to the Abu Ghraib torture scenes, followed by the beheading of the American hostage Nicholas Berg, show clearly the route to barbarism in a supposedly civilized country. In May 2004, The New York Times polled readers in a city in the US heartland, Oswego, Illinois.

Members of the religious police remain adamant that the country s Christian guests must continue to live according to strict Wahhabi rules of behavior. While the Wahhabis could yet be bribed again with oil money, the sect s power hungry judges eagerly await the next beheading, stoning, or lashing in Riyadh s public square.

LONDON Among the most chilling developments in the rise of the Islamic State is that so many citizens of Western countries have joined the group s ranks, becoming suicide bombers and beheading hostages. Why do hundreds of Muslims, many of them educated and from middle class backgrounds, leave comfortable Western democracies to join a brutally barbaric movement?

But recent tensions in the region may partly reflect a lack of progress in another, overlooked area Japanese constitutional reform. Indeed, despite the powerlessness so vividly highlighted by the Islamic State s beheading of two Japanese hostages, Japan has not adopted even one amendment to the peace constitution that the occupying American forces imposed on it in 1947.

The Islamic State is now employing a similar strategy, mixing ruthless military operations with an incendiary social media campaign, punctuated by photos and videos of brutal executions, including the beheading of US and other Western citizens. These efforts have mobilized the Islamic State s enemies, while inspiring a growing number of discontented individuals and groups to self recruit to its banner.