Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Saudi Arabia: Defending the indefensible
isn't just a cheap slogan, it's a way of life

News item from Reuters:
Saudi Arabia defended on Tuesday a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes of the whip, after the United States described the verdict as "astonishing".

The 19-year-old Shi'ite woman from the town of Qatif in the Eastern Province and an unrelated male companion were abducted and raped by seven men in 2006.

Ruling according to Saudi Arabia's strict reading of Islamic law, a court had originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between 10 months and five years. It blamed the woman for being alone with an unrelated man.

Last week the Supreme Judicial Council increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two and nine years in jail.

The ruling provoked rare criticism from the United States, which is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to attend a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland next week.

A State Department spokesman told reporters on Monday that "most (people) would find this relatively astonishing that something like this happens".

The court also took the unusual step of initiating disciplinary procedures against her lawyer, Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, forcibly removing him from the case for having talked about it to the media.

"The Ministry of Justice welcomes constructive criticism ... The system allows appeals without resort to the media," said Tuesday's statement issued on the official news agency SPA.

It berated media for not specifying that three judges, not one, issued the recent ruling and reiterated that the "charges were proven" against the woman.

It also repeated the judges' attack against Lahem last week, saying he had "spoken insolently about the judicial system and challenged laws and regulations".

Dear Saudi troglodytes,


You seem to misunderstand the Western world's criticism of how your judiciary sentenced a rape victim to 200 lashes of the whip and six months in prison.

We do not question that you followed Saudi law and the court's procedures to the letter. I would imagine your attention to the law and to detail was exemplary.

What we question is your adherence to your idiotic Wahhabi flavor of Islam, which terrorizes the world in the name of God and thinks it acceptable to lash and imprison a 19-year-old woman because she dared to be seen in public with a man not her kin. This after she had been gang raped.

Not big on mercy, are you? What, in the name of "Allah the merciful," you get to act like devils?

Frankly, what we object to is that you are a bunch of Neanderthal goons who treat women as property and "infidels" as fair game for whatever sadistic idiocy you'll infect the world with next. We posit not that you are unfaithful to your twisted image of Allah but that, instead, you dour, sour Wahhabi fanatics have been slavishly faithful to a warped, grim and demented conception of the Almighty.

What horrifies us -- well, some of us, at least -- is that when you attack the dignity of an innocent young creation of the living God, you thereby offend the dignity of Him who created her.

And, as you profess to believe, God -- Allah -- is not mocked.

Have a nice day, and go sit on a minaret and spin.

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