The gruesome murder of a soldier outside London by a Muslim convert, Michael Adebolajo, brings to mind that throat slitting and beheading are Islamically sanctioned forms of execution. Although these occur particularly often in the course of family-related crimes – think, for example, of the case of Aasiya Hassan in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., killed by her husband in 2009, stabbed with two hunting knives more than forty times in the face, back and chest, then beheaded – this monstrous form of violence is also used in non-family instances. Some of those that took place over the past decade in the West in chronological order include:

In addition, Ibragim Todashev, who was shot and killed yesterday while being interviewed about the Waltham murders, reportedly grabbed a knife and stabbed an officer several times, including in the head, possibly an attempt on his neck. In any case, it was so threatening that the officers used deadly force and on the spot killed Todashev.

Postscript: What this analysis does not cover: (1) Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and other Westerners murdered in Pakistan, Iraq, and other non-Western places. (2) Meir Kahane, Hitoshi Igarashi, and other prominent individuals assassinated in the West but not beheaded; Theo van Gogh is the only person listed both here and at “Islamist Assassinations in the West.” (May 23, 2013)