Post #1: Beheading bedfellows

CNN: Saudi woman beheaded for 'witchcraft and sorcery'

The twisted politics of the Middle East rear their head (pun intended) over and over in recent months.  Much attention has been placed on the actions of the so-called Islamic State as it institutes a narrow, extreme Islamic theocracy over the lands it claims dominion over, and generates heaps of publicity through its theatrical and grotesque executions of prisoners-of-war and other foreign hostages. To combat the Islamic State and other projectors of radical religious terrorism, the US seeks whatever allies it can find in the region - notably the apartheid state of Israel, the military dictatorship of Egypt, and the Islamic-State-lite of Saudi Arabia. 

The Saudis execute by beheading just as ISIS does, in the streets and for a kind of blood-and-circuses spell over the masses.  Unlike ISIS, the Saudis are not at war and are not trying to intimidate other nations.  They are merely conducting their internal affairs in the manner that they prefer.  If that means chopping a woman's head off in the middle of the street because she has been accused of practicing witchcraft, so be it.

People were once executed for such things in this country.  Four hundred years ago.  Since then, in many ways, the structures of the United States criminal justice system have been a model for the world.  But the realities of our system have made us a global embarrassment - massive incarceration rates, retrograde views on the death penalty, huge racial disparities, massive profits for the corporate prison complex.

The issue of criminal justice and human rights is of massive importance and I really wish the US were leading the world in this area, instead of blundering its way ignorantly without the slightest hint of reform.  How can we claim to be a global leader in human rights while at the same time implanting images like this into the global psyche:

I am interested in what playwrights and dramatists have done in recent years to explore these two related issues - criminal justice and human rights, and the struggle against theocratic extremism.  It takes some kind of fanaticism to treat people this way, and the US, ISIS, and Saudi Arabia all have this grotesque blood on their hands.  How can we encourage an audience to have a nuanced view of international relations and our own spotted record of human rights?