Like most people, I first became aware of the practice of stoning in Sunday School, as the prescribed penalty for adultery in biblical times. Jesus is teaching on the Mount of Olives when the local scribes and Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery and ask what should be done with her. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," Jesus says. And everyone goes away.

The passage doesn't really do justice to the grisly reality of the practice, at least as it’s practiced these days. The accused is buried in the ground up to the waist. A sheet is tied around the head. The men of the village gather around and after the sentence is read by a religious leader they start aiming huge rocks at the head, often at point-blank range.

A kind of infectious mania spreads throughout the gathering. The event is clearly a form of catharsis, the accused providing a release for the pent-up rage of the herd.

Stoning videos are all over the Internet, but I don’t recommend them to any but the most hardened of viewers. They’re indescribably horrific. But a mere description of the practice doesn’t bring home the awful horror. It has to be seen to be believed.

Stoning isn't officially sanctioned. It's the Muslim equivalent of an old-fashioned Southern lynching. And, like the latter, most people are violently against the practice. It's not found in the Koran. In fact, if scriptural authority were the guide, it would be a more prevalent practice among Jews, who abandoned the practice many centuries ago.

But stoning has nothing to do with religion. For all the justifications, it’s nothing but cold-blooded murder based on the deepest and darkest of sexual repression.

Listen to Will's story on stoning in Iran.