Everything you always wanted to know about stoning…

Studying a Practice: An Inquiry into Lapidation

By Darius Rejali

How can one make sense of what people are doing when they practice violence?  I propose to examine here a single violent practice, lapidation, or death by stoning (rajm in Arabic and sangsari in Persian). My first goal is to make sense of this form of capital punishment.  It is not hard to explain what people are doing in the course of lapidation:  killing another human being whom they believe has committed a crime.  Asked another way, the issue is not so simple: Not “what are you doing?” but “why are you killing a human in this way for this crime?”  Typical answers to this question show how difficult it is to understand the logic of lapidation.  What people say about violence does not rest well with what we know people are doing or have done.  Making sense of what is said and done turns out to be challenging.

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JudgeBob
I don't really study English words that carefully, but I tend to pay closer attention when rootwords are explained and so I'm wondering how the term Lapidation came to be used. I mean, isn't it the opposite of dilapidated, dilapidating, dilapidation?? One thing is for sure, its barbarous. A slow, everybody helps, means of capital punishment. I can see putting somebody on the judgment seat, convicting them, and even executing them, but choosing a slow and torturous method like the cross or stoning is reprehensible.

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