Amish on Amish Crime?

The leader of a breakaway Amish group said an attack on fellow Amish in which a man's beard was cut off was a religious issue stemming from long-standing resentment of his group's treatment."We'd like to get up in the morning, be left alone, live like normal people," Mullet said Monday. "They won't leave us be." Mullet said he didn't order the hair-cutting but didn't stop two of his sons and another man from carrying it out last week on a 74-year-old man in his home in rural eastern Ohio. "I didn't order anything like that," he said, and added: "I didn't tell them not to, I'm still not going to tell them not to."

Mullet said he should be allowed to punish people who break the laws of the church, just as police are allowed to punish people who break the laws of the state. "You have your laws on the road and the town — if somebody doesn't obey them, you punish them. But I'm not allowed to punish the church people?" Mullet said. "I just let them run over me? If every family would just do as they pleased, what kind of church would we have?"

Amish men typically grow beards as adults and stop trimming them when they marry, and the beards are held in high esteem.

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