That’s the punishment you get in Saudi Arabia for being a woman and riding in a car with a man who is not in your family. Oh, after your gang rape. (Via Feministing.)
A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
The 19-year-old woman — whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms — was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for “being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape,” the Arab News reported.
But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.
A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”
But, lest you jump to conclusions, understand that it’s not only women who have to feel the occasional lash to be kept in line. It’s gay men, too!
About 50 people picketed Saudi Arabia’s embassy in London on Oct. 19 in protest against the nation’s reported floggings and executions of gay men.
On Oct. 2, two Saudi men convicted of sodomy in the city of Al Bahah received the first of their 7,000 lashes in punishment, the Okaz daily newspaper reported. The whippings took place in public, the report said.
I presume that the strong connections between totalitarian impulses, religious fundamentalism, and sexual repression have already been the subject of dozens of Ph.D. theses. There is a truly ugly part of human nature that feels a need to control the lives of others, and theocracy serves as a mechanism for amplifying those impulses into public actions.
Regardless of what you might say about abuses that were historically committed in the name of Christianity, Islam does far more damage in the world *today* because of the atrocity that is Sharia. I think that that fundamentalist religions are all a threat to civilization, but Islam is far and away the most pernicious example, and anyone trying to defend it should first answer why they think that it’s OK to hold Muslims to such a wildly different standard of behavior than everyone else.
Ferret wrote: ” However, this Saudi outrage appears to be within their long-established cultural heritage and legal tradition.”
Not that long-established. The worst of Saudi excesses come from the Wahhabis, whom the Saud family is allied with to retain power. In the 1800s, the Wahhabis were just a fringe group of extremists who made life difficult for other Arabs by doing things like raiding Mecca.
I’m sure the non-Wahhabi standard of freedom wasn’t great either, but the Wahhabis are positively rabid.
But think about this case the next time George W. Bush goes for a walk, holding hands with the head tyrant of Saudi Arabia.
I wonder…
If a Saudi company is a victim of embezzelment, do the managers and owners of the business get punished along with the perpetrator of the embezzelment?
After all, they tempted the embezzeler by providing access to funds.
Mohammed: It might have helped if you had said that you think Islamically this ruling is incorrect instead of singing the supposed praises of Islam. Otherwise, it appears that you think it is correct and you support it which wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Farhat,
By “this ruling”, you mean the sentence made by the judge against the girl ? I thought i have clarified that already
his action was a mistake, even if he thought she shares part of the blame (for his reasons) then he should have considered what happened to her already as more than enough punishment
or by ruling you mean applying islamic laws generally ?
in all cases, well,
for concreteness let me pick up homosexuality
most muslims including myself value family, in the sense of man and woman and kids, consequently they are ok with prohibiting homosexuality, many non muslims or christians in non muslim (or muslim) countries are against it for the same reasons too
now as for the punishment thats a whole different story, i beleive homosexuals should not be punished but treated, i have a few friends who are gays, i dnt hate them i hate what they are doing, and they pretty much agree with what i am saying (two of them are muslims by the way)
unfortunately, and it is very sad, many muslims beleive that homsexuals should be punished, i would say such muslims are just ignorants who need to be enlightened (among such muslims unfortunately, of course are the judges who apply the islamic laws, some of them apply the laws very strictly and blindly)
pls let me know if i have answered your questions
Mohammed says
…”It saddens me how some ppl find no problems in judging a culture based on its worst examples, and it saddens me even more when i find that some ppl …
You are guilty of the same thing, you used the worst examples to show why Alcohol or homosexuality should be banned.
You conviniently left out Homosexuals who genuinely love and care for each other or the social reasons why people still like a beer or two after a hard day in the office.
Religion has place in politics ….period!
ha…shows how ignorant some people are. Just threaten not to buy oil..hahaha.. Firstly, Saudi arabia isn’t that big a oil supplier to the US. Most of US oil comes from Canada, Mexico, or Venezuela.
Wrong, Saudi Arabia is our largest source of crude oil imports, and our second-largest source of all oil imports total…see the chart here.
Also, as to why this shows the true face of Islam as opposed to say Malaysia, the answer is to read the Koran. SA is closest to the conception of society offered by Koran.
So, you’re an expert in the Koran? Have you read the whole thing? Can you point out where in the Koran the Saudis might justify the “women can’t ride in cars with men” thing? Also, would you say that modern Saudi Arabia is more the “true face of Islam” then the Islamic Empire during the Islamic Golden Age in the medieval ages, when the Muslim world was a great source of learning and new developments in science and mathematics?
Mohammad wrote:
Why homosexuality is forbidden in islam? bec islam protects the family which is the building block of the society. A family by definition in islam means married couple, a man, a woman, and kids (It is the natural way of having them). Men and women are different, i am not saying one is more intelligent than the other, i am saying they are different, they are completing each other, for example a newly born baby can keep crying at night and the father would go to another room to be able get some sleep, at the same time the wife would have no problems staying up all night with the baby showering her/him with all the love and passion of the world, thats a fact, a woman can do it a man cant. The man and the woman are both needed for raising the kids. Generally speaking, a society with kids raised by couples of the same sex is different from a society with kids raised by a man and a woman
Studies of the issue have found no difference in children raised by homosexual couples as opposed to heterosexual ones–see here. But in any case this is a cop-out…why do you support punishment of all homosexuals, as opposed to just forbidding homosexuals from raising kids, if family is your primary concern? Are homosexuals worse for “the family” than people who just choose never to marry, and do you also support punishments for lifelong bachelors? Also, do you imagine that by punishing homosexuals, you can convert them into heterosexuals? There is a lot of evidence that homosexuality has a strong biological basis, see here and here for example.
Jesse M.
I never said i support punishing homosexuals, pls read my last post
Whoops, sorry Mohammad, I didn’t read your later post where you said you wasn’t in favor of “punishing” homosexuals, but just “treating” them. But would you be in favor of forcing them to accept treatment even if they were happy with their orientation? And what if further scientific research ends up demonstrating conclusively that most homosexuals are biologically determined to prefer their own sex, so that their orientation cannot be changed through any form of treatment?
The most important freedom any man can have is the freedom of choice and our society should do everything to protect it.
Why people spend sleepless night worrying what someone does in the privacy of their bedroom baffles me.
How do we get rid of this poison known as religion?
Abelian,
no i didn’t use the worst examples
but thats a good point that you raised so let me elaborate
the example i gave about alcohol related deaths, the deaths were not only of the drunk drivers of course those are bad examples, but there were deaths also of innocent ppl who were not drunk and just happened to be in the same car or walking in the street or just in another car
so out of those 20,000 ppl who were killed, how many of them were not drunk?5%? thats like 1000 ppl, out of those 1000 ppl it could be someone i know or someone you know god forbid
besides, how many homes and families break because someone at home has drinking problems , how many innocents suffer and crimes committed by poor drunk ? of course those drunk are bad example, if it were about them alone it would have been a different story, but it is about the effects on others
(there is no single night i walk late at night and i do not see one poor drunk, i prefer to see a poor at night than to see a drunk poor at night)
the uncle of my friend’s wife was shot like 11 times by a drunk
why any society would put certain ppl in the 1st place in jail ? well because they must be dangerous to others and we have to protect the innocents
thats why alcohol is forbidden in islam to protect the innocents
as for homosexuals i never mentioned or implied they are evil ppl and want to harm others so they have to be punished!!
as for the beer or two after work thats besides the point
i am not talking about you or any particular person, i am talking generally from the islamic point of view
just like the example i mentioned about drugs, why drugs are forbidden ? because it is harmful for the society, why harmful ?can’t we just smoke and get high “respensibly”? lol
no we cant, some can some cant, and those who cant will definitely affect others
thats why drugs are illegal
we put certain ppl in jail by law as a punishment and sometimes bec they are dangerous to the society and have to be isolated
so which scenario is better ? allow alcohol as an expense of having 2000 deaths of innocents per year? or ban alcohol and save 2000 lives?
Well, it gets worse than that. Islam and pedophilia have an “interesting” relationship.
Abelian
nobody spends his sleepless night wondering about what happens behind the walls
i do not see what your point is
you know what ? in islam if your neighbour is doing something wrong, wrong islamically, like having sex with the same sex, or drinking or taking drugs or any of such actions which are considered wrong in the islamic law, if you are a muslim and have such a muslim neighbour you actually must not expose him, actually you have to do your best to cover him, you cover him not because you are supporting him in what he is doing but because he got a problem and you try your best to help him, and keep helping him but never exposing him
you expose him only under one condition, if what he is doing is going directly to harm others, like if you know he is a drug dealer then you have to expose him by warning others or telling the police
i remember one incident when i was chatting on mirc looooong time ago, that was as far as i remember a few months after sept 11, there was that muslim guy who was so mad and talking crap abt america, he said he was in texas and he intend to destroy some abandoned building in texas and he needed some help, i kept trying to convince him for like half an hour that what he is doing is wrong, he stayed so persistant, i had no other choice but to report what happened and i called the FBI, and they took it from there
Jesse M.
good questions
there is in this world many compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, adulterers, thieves, but many of them control it and refrain from doing it
so homosexuality would be the same, so i wouldn’t call it a deasese because thats ovbiously wrong, just some kind of a disorder
as for its treatement just the same way compulsive gamblers for example are treated, which is a long slow process which needs strong will and determination
if the person is not willing to get help for one reason or another then i beleive he can stay homosexual without bringing it to the public
from the islamic point of view, you do whatever you want inside, at your home or behind the walls
ppl who are in charge of applying the islamic laws are not going to nock on ppl doors and look to see whether they are drinking or having sex or not, you want to drink, fine drink but do it at home, nobody would spy on you, and if they spied on you then by definition thats not islam
again i am not saying homosexuals are bad ppl and wanna harm others thats why they have to not bring such orientation into public, all what i am saying is that to prevent others from getting affected by that ( as in being tempted to be homosexual, or as in getting attracted to the idea, or as in trying something new, and unfortunately may be hooked) homosexuality should stay at one’s home or generally inside
prevention is 1000 times better than cure and much easier
Mohammed;
My point was exactly that, why can’t people leave other people to live their lives the way the see fit, what so mysterious about this statement?
You say you want to treat homosexuals, With electrical shocks, psychological deprivation, gene therapy… how?
The main cause for the break-up of families is unloving relationships something that not even religion can cure
Abelian
it is not about letting ppl to live their lives the way they want or not
otherwise we should legalise drugs and lower the age of buying alcohol just to let ppl live their lives the way they want
They do not treat such disorders with electrical shocks or gene therapy, if they do then i do not agree with it, sound like horror movie to me, and that would not be a treatment but a punishment !
if i were a homosexual and beleive that i should not be doing what i am doing then i would try my best to avoide the temptations, just by strong will and practice, many ppl give up their addiction to smoking by strong will and determination, i would also to keep my secret practice hidden so i do not tempt others in the society, just for the same reason i would not smoke infront of my kids so they dn’t become tempted to try it
in a muslim society homsexuals can live the way they want but not in public, from many religions point of view a family is a man a woman and children, not a couple of same sex and children
the woman and the man complete each other and thats what the child needs, imagine two guys who are gays and married, and they have a child (somehow by whatever means) and they are going to raise that child, are you telling me one man is going to substitute a woman and going to shower the child with all the mercey and passion and love a woman would do? (may be some men are more passionate and loving than some woman towards infants or kids i agree but thats is an exception and general rules are not based on exceptions)
generally speaking a woman is as important as the man, they both are needed for building a society and the building block of any sociey is family
as for religion cant cure unloving relationships, the problem is not religion, the problem is those who apply it, many families have strong ties and loving relationships among each others bec of religion, whether they are christians or muslims or hindus, in india and in muslim countries for example we do not have as many homes for old people as in other countries, because islam, as in example, orders people to be nice to their parents since childhood, and that being nice to them is a gate to paradise (not even raising my voice or disrespecting them in any manner while talking to them), so one is raised naturally loving his parents and has to keep strong connections with his family and would never put his parents in some home for old people because he has no time for them
Mohammad writes:
good questions
there is in this world many compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, adulterers, thieves, but many of them control it and refrain from doing it
And in these cases their behavior is causing clear harm to their own lives or to the lives of individuals around them. This is not true in the case of homosexuality, where the harm you say they’re causing is not to any specific individuals but to “society” or “the family”. And you never answered my question of why a homosexual is causing any more harm to the family than a person who chooses to stay unmarried for their entire life–if homosexuals need to be treated, why don’t you say the same of heterosexuals who prefer being single to getting married and having children?
if the person is not willing to get help for one reason or another then i beleive he can stay homosexual without bringing it to the public
And what if the person wants to be just as public about his or her choice of mates as a heterosexual, what do you think should be done then?
ppl who are in charge of applying the islamic laws are not going to nock on ppl doors and look to see whether they are drinking or having sex or not, you want to drink, fine drink but do it at home, nobody would spy on you, and if they spied on you then by definition thats not islam
Well, a number of Muslim countries would disagree that it’s OK to drink or be homosexual as long as it’s done at home. Is there something in the Koran that specifically forbids interfering with what goes on inside the home?
again i am not saying homosexuals are bad ppl and wanna harm others thats why they have to not bring such orientation into public, all what i am saying is that to prevent others from getting affected by that ( as in being tempted to be homosexual, or as in getting attracted to the idea, or as in trying something new, and unfortunately may be hooked) homosexuality should stay at one’s home or generally inside
What about the point I made that there’s a lot of scientific evidence that sexual preference is strongly determined by biology? You can read this article from Discover magazine for examples of various lines of evidence (the ‘Xq28’ gene mentioned at the start of the article seems pretty controversial, but later sections of the article discuss more well-established evidence). If this is true, it would mean that it’s pretty useless to try to “treat” homosexuals, and it would also mean that there is little danger that many heterosexuals will be tempted to become homosexuals (although of course some people who identify as heterosexual may actually be bisexual). I don’t think there’s any evidence that societies which are more accepting of homosexuality actually have a significantly greater proportion of homosexuals, for example.
But even if some fraction of people could be “influenced”, is it really worth stigmatizing people or making them feel ashamed of their love in order to prevent this? Once again, I’d ask you to compare homosexuality with the case of people who remain single for life–they might influence some people too, does that mean remaining unmarried should be viewed as an illness which needs to be treated?
Jesse M.
ppl who are singles are totally different from homsexuals
at least in the following sense
the probability of getting serious anal problems (inculding anal cancer) to a gay is much higher than the probability of getting the same for a single person (anal sex is strictly forbidden between a married man and woman in islam by the way)
as for science and homosexuality,
not all the homosexuals became so bec they found themselves naturally attracted to the same sex, many of them became homosexuals becauase of an experience out of curiousity or something else
i do not deny the fact that homosexuality could have a genetic origin, actually almost every aspect of our personality has a genetic origin, so i would not be surprised
but when the society encourages homosexuality and talk to kids even about it at schools and when the debate and arguments advanced by homosexuals are be what you are, and do not be ashamed of it, then many unsuspecting youth start to experiment or discover what they really are, they are infact being unwittingly ,and in their most suggestible period of growth, led astray with the power of suggestion and a convoluted logic
a:are you homosexual?
b:no i am not
a:how do you know?
b:what do you mean how do i know?
a:well you have to try 1st may be you are homosexual and you do not know it yet!
there is an element of choice in all behaviour, sexual or otherwise
we are what we chose to be whe we do what we chose to do, we chose what we chose to think
whether it is 100% genetics with some homosexuals or other factors, it is the nobelity of the human sipirt that can overcome it
the nobelity of the human spirit is to resist, and this is what elevates the human being to the status above that of the angels
as for going public with one’s orientation, there are usually already laws in muslim countries which forbids homosexuals to be public about their orientations or popularise it just not to encourage others, just in the same way that prostitution is made illegal and playboy is banned…as far as i know the punishment is something like fine or jail for short period of time, but that happens only after the person has been warned so many times to stop talking publiclly abt or spreading his orientation
as for not interfering with others, i think i already mentioned something about that, pls read my reply to Abelian, it is number 39 here
i do not really recall something specific from the quraan, probably there is but i do not remember it, on the other hand i remember that there are many authentic sunnah (sunnah basically means the actions of the prophit, what he did what he said and what he approved, islam is based on 2 corner stones ,quraan and the authentic sunnah) which says with the meaning that it is v sinful to even have one look (accidental looks are execused of course) at the inside of your neighbour’s (or somebody else’s) home since it is considered as a form of breaking his privacy withuot an invitation and thats extremely wrong (which is a strong way of saying everyone should mind his own business lol)
The bad thing of course is all such rules about Muslim societies are only for Muslim neighbors. Non-muslims have few rights, if any.
Farahat
what do you mean all such rules are only for muslim neighbors?
thats not true
what i said about neighbours applies whether the neighbours are muslims or non muslims, whether they are in a muslim country or not
Mohammad,
“ppl who are singles are totally different from homsexuals
at least in the following sense
the probability of getting serious anal problems (inculding anal cancer) to a gay is much higher than the probability of getting the same for a single person”
I suppose then that you’d have no problem with homosexuals who don’t engage in anal sex? This means lesbians are okay? Or are you going to cook up some fictitious health concern for lesbian sex also?
“a:are you homosexual?
b:no i am not
a:how do you know?
b:what do you mean how do i know?
a:well you have to try 1st may be you are homosexual and you do not know it yet!”
Would this argument convince you to change your sexuality? You can’t honestly believe this nonsense.
sigh…
gays who are not involved in anal sex are exceptions and general rules are not based on exceptions
the consequences and the effects are not caused by the exceptions!
no, lesbians will not have anal problems, and i am not ganna cook up something for lesbian sex, because i do not cook up things in the 1st place, so to make a long story short i would say allowing homosexuality among females only is practically impossible because gays would want the same right, that makes your question another exception to which the answer is illdefined
would that argument convince me to change my orientation? it might if i were under age, like it does to many who became homosexuals
i thought we are dicussing here in a civilized way, comments such as this is “nonsense”, or “you are cooking up stuff” is not what i had in mind for a decent discussion
peace
Mohammad, does that mean that if medical technology developed to the point that any problems associated with anal sex were easily preventable or curable, you would no longer view homosexuals any differently than heterosexuals who just never choose to marry?
Also, does your feeling that homosexuality is a problem because it could sway people to become homosexual and thereby hurt the family depend at all on how many people could be swayed in this way? For example, suppose that further scientific study shows that 97% of men have their sexuality sufficiently hard-wired by genetics (and possibly by fetal hormones) that it would be basically impossible to influence their orientation through social pressures, while the other 3% could be influenced. Would this be enough to be a serious danger to the family? Would it be worth stigmatizing homosexuals and causing them suffering just to minimize the chance that this 3% would turn out homosexual? Because there’s no getting around the fact that your way of running society is going to cause many homosexuals a lot of suffering…imagine you were in love with a certain woman but your society frowned on the relationship, say because she was of a different religion or ethnic group, so you were forbidden from ever admitting the relationship in public or behaving as a couple outside your home…don’t you think that would cause you a lot of unhappiness in life?
For what it adds to the discussion–The October 13, 2007 Economist has a short article (p. 50) about the Saudi legal system. Apparently, what is, or is not, sharia, and how it is applied, is determined by a pool of clerics chosen by Wahhabi scholars. A reform of the system has just been instituted, and Royalty will now determine most of the 10-man Supreme Court (rather than, apparently, the pool of clerics). The article is a bit pessimistic about how fast the reforms will be instituted–judges have, in the past, ignored reform attempts–and notes that the reform does not include actually writing down what the law is: “Saleh Lahidan, the grizzled, long-standing head of the just-demoted supreme judicial council, says there is no need to copy other countries; codification would ‘separate us from our culture'” (p. 51).