Even for the late 17th century, the witch trials at Salem were egregious: the last hurrah of an early-modern culture of superstition and retribution that was stopped dead in its tracks by the early sparks of the Enlightenment. By the time, in 1692, that Abigail Williams and her friends wrought havoc across three counties on the Massachusetts frontier, it was widely considered that “sorcery” was, if not whimsical in itself, at least a matter unsuited for the courts. Indeed, so keen was the horror at the hysteria that had taken hold in Salem that the mere mention of the place was sufficient to cool any passions that looked in danger of spiraling into outmoded and dangerous thaumaturgy. For America, it was the witch-hunt to end all witch-hunts.
The news that Saudi Arabia executed a woman for “witchcraft and sorcery” on Monday is thus made all the more heartrending when one considers that the practice was last seen in America just one year before the Dodo was reported missing, and 100 years before the passage of the Bill of Rights. As is so often the case, Mecca is at least 300 years late to the punch and, worse, its government seems steadfastly determined to ignore the salutary lessons that the Western world learned at the cost of so much blood, sweat, and tears. Britain and America, without external examples to mimic, had at least some excuse for mistakes made while blazing a path to liberty, capitalism, and reason. The Saudis have none, and their myopia is appalling. For the steadfast refusal of the House of Saud to conform to liberal norms, a young woman paid the ultimate price.
The latest victim of medieval thinking, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nassar, was condemned in al-Jawf province, having been, according to the Saudi interior ministry, “convicted of what was accused based on the law.” What was accused was that Nassar was a “witch” who had been performing “sorcery.” What the “law” prescribed was that she be beheaded. Such language parodies the Western argot, but not the nature of our judicial tradition. Witchcraft is a “crime” intrinsically incompatible with the classical Western conception of justice, relying as it does on proof that will — nay, can — never be forthcoming. Nassar’s conviction was secured after authorities found in her possession books on sorcery, a selection of talismans, and glass bottles that were allegedly “used for the purpose of magic.”
