A beheading in Greece;
Is Islam entering our culture, and our psyche?

(Note: This entry also addresses how the police should have apprehended the beheader.)

As reported by the AP, on August 3, on the Greek island of Santorini, a Greek man, Athanassios Arvanitis, after a fight with his girlfriend, beheaded her dog with a butcher’s knife, then murdered his girlfriend, Adamantia Karkali, and then beheaded her. Then:

Arvanitis roamed the village of Vourvoulos exhibiting Karkali’s head, neighbors said. Townspeople said they locked themselves in their homes and called the police.

When a policeman tried to handcuff him, the suspect knifed the officer and flung the woman’s head into a patrol car, Roussos said…. Arvanitis then made off in a second patrol car and ran over the motorcycle before he was caught…

An apparently non-Muslim man not only murdering and beheading someone, but brandishing the severed head to an entire town, then tossing the head into a police car? This is just like Vince W. Li, who murdered his victim, then beheaded him, then brandished the head to the horrified onlookers, then dramatically dropped it on the floor of the bus. It is also reminiscent of the behavior of the Palestinian savages in Ramallah, who dismembered the two Israelis reservists then held their entrails aloft in ecstasy.The Greek beheading seems to have had nothing to do with jihad, and it’s questionable whether the Canadian beheading has any direct connection to jihad.

Has beheading—perhaps because of the increasing world-wide presence and influence of Islam—simply becoming a part of our, uh, culture?

- end of initial entry -

Stewart W. writes:

Looking at both this case and the Li case in Canada, it strikes me as amazing that these lunatics were allowed to continue their parade of evil for some time, even after the police show up. Li was observed by the police eating his victim, and was engaged in a “three-hour standoff,” while in the Greek case, the police tried to handcuff him. Whatever happened to just shooting him? Wouldn’t that have been the normal, sane response of all people everywhere, prior to about 40 years ago? How can any normal person watch someone butcher and eat another human, when they have the power to immediately put an end to that outrage?

It boggles the mind.

LA replies:

The police cannot use deadly force except against a person who is threatening others or is escaping. But yes, why the stand-off at the bus? He had no hostages. He had no firearm. What was preventing the Mounties from just entering the bus and arresting him? And if he charged them with his knife, killing him?

In other words, they couldn’t simply shoot him dead. But they could have sought without delay to arrest him, and he might have resisted, and then they could have killed him.

Terry Morris writes:

What can be more threatening to others (other human beings) than the brandishing of a human head severed from its body?

You’re suggesting that the mounties should have devised a plan (a plan that might fail in the event that Li chose not to resist) to kill Li on the pretense that they were merely trying to arrest him? I like Stewart’s scenario better—just shoot the sicko bastard, putting him out of everyone’s misery for once and for all, thus sending a clear message to any would-be copycats. But…

I think Stewart’s point was probably more along the lines of “what the hell has happened to our society that it would disallow law enforcement to act “with extreme prejudice” when acting with extreme prejudice is required?

LA replies:

No, I didn’t mean a deliberate effort to get him killed. I meant cutting the standoff short and just arresting him and not worrying about negotiating with him to get him to surrender peacefully. Just say, we’re coming in, if you resist us, we’ll use force.

And sure, I’d prefer if it we lived in a society where, if someone does something as extreme as this, there would be such a natural repellence against him that the agents of law enforcement would simply kill him so that no one would have to deal with him any more. In other words, his deed would be instinctively seen by everyone as transcending ordinary criminal law and ordinary restrictions on police.

Stewart W. writes:

Just to clarify, my position is more like your last comment. In other words, the police should have immediately entered the bus and ordered Li to drop his knife and fall to the ground. If he failed to comply, or took any other action, they should have promptly shot Li until he no longer posed a threat.

If they were too afraid to even enter the bus with him, they should have simply shot into the bus to kill him. It’s what they would do to any wild animal engaged in a similar activity, and I think Li deserved no more.

But yes, as you said, for a crime that clearly transcends ordinary criminal law, we instead get a “standoff,” a negotiation, while he continues to defile the body of his victim. Horrific.

Kidist writes from Canada:

I think Islam and its ways are entering into our psyche. The more we see Muslim presence in our streets (e.g. hijab-wearers) and all those sympathetic reports all over TV, including sitcoms for Muslims—CBC’s “Little House on the Prairie”—and now coming to a station in the U.S.—and CBS-CW’s “Aliens in America,” people will continue to be slowly enticed by its imagery and methods. For example, belly dancing is a huge hit in the “fitness” world, but nearly all the songs are in Arabic. So here’s another way that people (women) can get sympathetic to an alien language, and perhaps not mind so much those rants and raves by Palestinians.

As you said in a previous entry:

“We allow [evil] in our door, we feed and harbor it, we allow its power over us to increase, instead of rejecting it.”

I think this open door to evil allows Islam’s influence into us. Like the Greek man (whom I strongly assume is traditionally an Orthodox Christian), his harboring of evil gave Islam’s methods an easy entrance.

I think people don’t realize the strength and persistence of Islam, and how easy it might be for people to succumb to its force.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 07, 2008 01:00 PM | Send