Who Would You Be Ruled By?

From the front lines of the Islamist war on vice. Allah’s preferred warriors, apparently, are a few young women from the local girls’ madrassa:

"I don't think Islam allows anyone to beat a woman and drag her through the streets like a dog," the Associated Press news agency quoted her as saying.

She told the BBC's Urdu service about 30 women from the madrassa had abducted her, helped by a similar number of men.

"They tied me, my daughter and daughter-in-law and my six-month-old grand-daughter up with rope," she said.

C.S. Lewis wrote that he would rather be ruled by robber barons than by puritans. The robber baron, he said, might sometimes take a break from his tyranny. The puritan, on the other hand, dominates you not merely with the approval of his conscience, but at the behest of his conscience.