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Owner59 -> RE: accused "witch" burned at the stake in 2013 (2/8/2013 9:41:59 AM)
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"The Real Danger of Sarah Palin's Witch Hunter"
"It's easy to think of the connection of Sarah Palin to Thomas Muthee, a man who hunts people he accuses of witchcraft, as just a story of harmless eccentricity, something to giggle about or a matter of personal conscience on Sarah Palin's part that should be beyond serious consideration. After all, we all know that there's no such thing as witchcraft, except on Halloween, ho, ho, ho!
I want to plead with people to give this story a second, more serious, round of consideration. Sarah Palin and the Wasilla Assembly of God church certainly do. You see, while you and I may not believe that evil spells cast by witches actually exist, other people do, and what they do on the basis of that belief is horrific.
Thomas Muthee used fear of witchcraft to gain political power in the town of Kiambu, Kenya. He identified a woman who was connected to local leaders, and made her the target of a campaign of terror. He sent mobs of people, some of them threatening violence, to stand outside the clinic where she worked. At Muthee's instigation, police stormed into her home firing their guns. Muthee had her arrested on suspicion of killing people with magic spells. Muthee demanded that she convert to Christianity or be forced out of Kiambu, and the woman ran away in fear of her life. Some believe that the woman never actually made it out of town, but was murdered.
This incident exposes Thomas Muthee as a violent bully who is willing to endanger the lives of innocent people for the sake of his own personal gain. After the fame he gained because of his witch hunts, the Wasilla Assembly of God church became Muthee's financial sponsor, and Muthee claims to have started hundreds of churches.
However, it would be a mistake to think that Thomas Muthee's persecution of accused witches is an isolated event of personal eccentricity or an expression of his individual, unscrupulous ambition. It's important to understand the larger cultural context within which Muthee was able whip up crowds into a violent fervor against an accused witch. Muthee exploited a widespread fear of witchcraft that exists in many places in Africa, and cynically use that fear to promote his own power.
You see, violence against people accused of witchcraft is not uncommon in Africa. In the case of Thomas Muthee's mob the accused witch is presumed to have escaped in the nick of time, before she was stoned to death. In many other cases, the accused witch is actually murdered.
Thomas Muthee has one of his many churches in the Kisii region, just 125 miles from Kiambu. Kisii has been the scene of many murders of people accused of witchcraft. In the latest of these incidents, in May 2008, at least eleven elderly people were killed, some of them burned alive, by a mob of hundreds that accused the victims of being witches. The following two video news reports describe the attacks:"
http://irregulartimes.com/witchproblems.html
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