By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: December 6, 2011
I have to admit that the words “Amish” and “rebel sect” were ones I never thought I’d see together. What do rebel Amish do? Watch Jeopardy? I shouldn’t make jokes. That’s probably exactly what they do. I know if all my technology was suddenly barred from me, I would still find bootleg, black-market Jeopardy.
These particular Amish rebels, however, aren’t watching Jeopardy. Sam Mullet and his three sons Johnny Mullet, Lester Mullet and Danny Mullet have instead formed a tightly-knit, revenge-driven group of Amish men and women that perform stealth missions to other Amish communities, where they pin down the people they don’t like and cut off all their hair.
I couldn’t make this up if I tried.
In the Amish world, you have to keep in mind, this is a huge insult – their religious belief state that women should grow their hair long, and men stop shaving as soon as they marry to mark their ascension into manhood. Walking around with no hair, then, is beyond humiliating – it marks women as defying the faith, and men as being too young and weak to earn wives. One Amish man told the FBI that he would rather be “beaten black and blue than to suffer the disfigurement and humiliation of having his hair removed.”
Hold up, you say — FBI? Why are the Amish talking to the FBI?
It got to the point where these Amish communities were living in such a state of fear that they had to call in the big guns. Usually the Amish pride themselves on being able to take care of their own problems, but the Mullet clan was out of control. They had invested in battery-powered shears; they were unstoppable.
The FBI, of course, was only too happy to step in after catching a whiff of what may be considered a hate crime. As of this moment, the Sam, Johnny, Lester and Danny Mullet are behind bars and were denied bail. I would like to take this time to say that their mug shots—four wildly-bearded men sporting collared shirts, suspenders and bowl cuts, but still defiant and absurdly badass—are some of the most entertaining images I’ve seen in the last month. Oh, Amish people. The drama you get into when left to your own devices – or… lack thereof.
