The prophet Muhammad himself ordained decapitation as a routine procedure, Professor Timothy Furnish makes clear in this essay on Beheading in the Name of Islam (from the Middle East Quarterly, Spring, 2005):

The essay rewards reading in full. Here are some extracts:

Sura (chapter) 47 [of the Qur’an] contains the ayah (verse): “When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely; then bind the prisoners tightly.” …

Beheading has particular prominence in Saudi Arabia. In 2003 alone, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia beheaded more than fifty people. This number included both Muslim and non-Muslim workers. Over the past two decades, the Saudis have decapitated at least 1,100 for alleged crimes ranging from drug running to witchcraft and apostasy. The Saudi government not only uses beheadings to punish criminals but also to terrorize potential opponents….  While outsiders may consider the Saudi practice barbaric, most Saudi executions are swift, completed in one sword blow. Zarqawi [the al-Qaeda leader killed by coaliti0n forces in Iraq in June 2006] and his followers have chosen a slow, torturous sawing method to terrorize the Western audience. …

The  beheading of the Americans, Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong, were filmed and the videos distributed for world-wide television news.

Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited by both state and non-state actors to legitimize beheadings. And two major aspects of decapitation in an Islamic context should be noted: first, the practice has both Qur’anic and historical sanction. It is not the product of a fabricated tradition. Second, in contradiction to the assertions of apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, these beheadings are not simply a brutal method of drawing attention to the Islamist political agenda and weakening opponents’ will to fight. Zarqawi and other Islamists who practice decapitation believe that God has ordained them to obliterate their enemies in this manner. Islam is, for this determined minority of Muslims, anything but a “religion of peace.” It is, rather, a religion of the sword with the blade forever at the throat of the unbeliever.

The only part of this that we challenge is his phrase “for this determined minority of Muslims”. If Islam is a religion of war and violent conversion by order of their holy book, the Qur’an, then it is so for all Muslims, or else the alleged majority is Muslim in name only and not belief.

One religious belief versus another religious belief. Nonsense versus nonsense. But the devotees of Muslim nonsense are crueler now than most others.

Persecution.org tells this story (which we retell in our own words as the publishers are, inexplicably, limiting the spread of their story with tight copyright protection):

A convert to Christianity and a Muslim were fellow-travelers (by bus?) in Somalia. They got talking. The Muslim asked the Christian, whose name was (still)  Muhammad Guul Hashim Idris, if he thought that the prophet Muhammad was God’s messenger. The Christian (pointing out the obvious) replied: “If I thought so, I would have believed in him rather than the Messiah.”

When the bus reached its destination in the district of Hudur, the Muslim reported the Christian to the terrorist organization Al-Shebaab which, its seems, constitutes or commands the legal authority there, since it had Idris arrested on the charge of “insulting the prophet Muhammad”, a crime punishable under sharia law by death.

Idris, a recently married man with a pregnant wife, was duly condemned to public execution. The sentence was carried out (we are not told how but probably by decapitation) in a football stadium. Among the hundreds of watchers were schoolchildren, brought to observe the edifying spectacle.

Such killings in the name of Allah the Merciful are not rare but all too common in Muslim countries.

Here’s a link to a video of three men being beheaded.

The Northeast Intelligence Network explain why they provided it:

Amid much controversy, the Northeast Intelligence Network was the first “legitimate” Western web site that provided the West the ability to view al Qaeda “beheading” videos. We did so at that time as we believed that Americans and the people of the West were being deceived by Islamic apologists and others who depicted the Islamic method of execution as relatively quick and painless. The beheadings were referenced in media in an almost cavalier manner, failing to reflect the truly vicious nature of the act and the Islamists who performed the act. The truth is that the beheadings performed in accordance with Islamic (Sharia) law are anything but – they are absolutely horrific and gruesome – and represent unspeakable evil. …

The execution … of three “spies” by the Taliban in Pakistan was filmed and uploaded so it could be shared – as an Islamic rallying cry – with other Islamists who want to see the implementation of Worldwide Sharia.

The following video is extremely graphic and should NOT be viewed by anyone under 18, or those who are hypersensitive to the most horrific of murder scenes.

We are posting the following video so that every American who continues to believe that Sharia law is not a threat to the West, and that the adherents to fundamentalist Islam are peaceful. The following video evidence will illustrate otherwise.

Video (GRAPHIC)