Andrew Stuttaford, from the National Review Corner:

DOUBLE STANDARDS?

So displaying dead bodies in public is against Islam, eh? Fair enough, but we didn’t hear much in the way of outrage from the mosques of the Middle East when this happened (the bodies, we read, were left out 'to deter others'), or this (before his hanging Najibullah, the former Afghan dictator had been castrated and dragged around town behind a jeep. His corpse was later put on display). And while we are on the topic, why the lack of criticism of the repulsive treatment of the slain Americans in Mogadishu or, for that matter, the silence after Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali publicly toyed with the corpses of Americans killed in the attempt to rescue the embassy hostages in Teheran?

Hypocrisy, that’s why.