The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) recently issued yet another condemnation of Israel — this time for considering the death penalty for terrorists who murder Israelis. The outrage was immediate and performative. For one, it claimed that the proposed law was “racist” and being solely for “Palestinian detainees,” as opposed to people who murder. It further argued that Arabs who slaughter Jews should simply be treated as “Prisoners of War,” erasing any and all lines between soldiers and civilians and thereby condemning coexistence.
Here’s another uncomfortable truth: more than half of the OIC’s 57 member states have the death penalty — and not just for murder.
In Saudi Arabia, people are executed for drug trafficking, sorcery, and “crimes against God.” In Iran, the gallows await not only murderers, but those guilty of “corruption on earth” — a charge so elastic it includes political dissent, homosexuality, and apostasy. In Pakistan, blasphemy can mean death. In Mauritania and Sudan, apostasy itself is a capital crime. In Nigeria, men have been sentenced to death under Sharia courts for same-sex relations.
Yet these same governments now gather in moral indignation because Israel — a democracy under relentless terrorist attack — dares to debate capital punishment for those who slit the throats of families in their beds.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
The OIC has nothing to say when Hamas executes Palestinians in Gaza’s public squares for “collaboration.” It looks away when Iran hangs protesters from cranes, or when Afghanistan’s Taliban conduct public stonings. But when Jews, after burying their children, consider the ultimate penalty for their killers, suddenly the OIC finds its moral voice.
If morality were truly the concern, the OIC would start at home. It would demand an end to hangings for prayer and firing squads for love. But this is theater. Raw antisemitism redressed in sanctimony.
Israel’s debate over the death penalty is about justice for the innocent. The OIC’s silence over its members’ executions is about control of the obedient.
And that’s the dividing line between civilizations: one values life enough to punish those who destroy it; the other kills in the name of piety and calls it peace.
First One Through 