A Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.
The sentence was passed at the end of a trial in which the al- Qateef high criminal court convicted four Saudis convicted of the rape, sentencing them to prison terms and a total of 2,230 lashes.
The court heard that the victim and her friend were followed by the assailants to their car, kidnapped and taken to a remote farm, where the raping occurred.
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Well sadam is go to get hanged, I’m surprised they don’t start putting people on the rack, I mean all the punishments of mediavel days and the old west are alive and well in the middle east.
That wasn’t point was it? Well we won’t codemn them as a nation because we are in bed with their oil.
And they say sadam was bad…
This is one of many reasons Many Muslims LEAVE, and go to other countries.
Why are the superstitions of others ridiculed? They have every right to practice their religions, don’t they? Who are we to say what they must believe? Why thats mind control..
I’m sure there was a reason for it
Tuck this story away in your file, and if we ever need to invade Saudi Arabia, we can trot out this story to help build public support for that action. Things like this helped when we overturned the repressive Taliban regime, and Hussein’s dictatorship as well.
As long as the Saudis treat us well, we won’t be forced to use this information against them.
I think we should tell them now that they are full of shit and get it out in the open. Oil be damned. They need buyers or it’s not worth much anyway. The world is in such a sad state because the reasoned and sensible are too afraid to confront the superstitious and irrational in honest open dialogue, and let them know in no uncertain terms that it is NOT okay in this day and age to act like retarded barbarians.
“I’m sure there was a reason for it”
Yep, and if you read the story, or even my blurb, you’d know what the reason was:
This story in my opinion goes hand-in-hand with the another recently web-spread one (see Digg) about the priest in Germany burning himself to death in protest of Church/West beeing apathetic to the Islamic world actions.
In that sense clear problem is in comments like #8 here. Yes, Saudis have formal “reason” for this same as Nazi Germany have had “reason” to punish people for beeing Jewish…
What is lacking (and have been lacking in 1930 related to Nazis) is huge and loud outrage in Western media and governments (where is any Western Government banning any Saudis traveling there for this?). Denying human rights (ex. freedom for women to behave independently) is the problem. But the West is acting impotent as in “that’s their culture,… let them be”. And such inaction is already hitting us back through the terrorism.
#4 – Thaaaat’s right! :>
How dare we impose our Eurocentric values on other people? They have as much right to express their own cultural values as we do – more, even! There’s no such thing as an inferior culture – who are we to judge? & cetera, & cetera.
(Just saving the self-righteous PC value-relativist imbeciles the trouble of having to cut & paste their boilerplate anti-DWEM bullshit)
#7 – …the reasoned and sensible are too afraid to confront the superstitious and irrational in honest open dialogue…
Sorry, but I have to point out something you’re apparently not considering. It makes it rather difficult, to put it mildly, to confront them when (a) they react, not with reason and sensibility but by rioting, shooting, blowing things and people up, flying airplanes into buildings and so on; and (b) they are approximately 25% of the world pop. You cannot reason with people who reject reason. You cannot engage in intelligent dialogue with people of insufficient intelligence.
Another factor is that confronting religious idiocy is made more difficult by having people with the same mindset in this country. Exposing what’s idiotic about Islam would lead inevitably to exposing what’s idiotic about Xtianity.
Muslims, exactly like our homegrown religious boobs, and fot the exact same “reasons” know for an obvious, incontestible fact that they are right!
#9 – And why, exactly, were we attacking Iraq, a secular country while we are allies with these religious idiots?
Ah, I imagine you’re referring to the secular Iraq where non-religiously-idiotic, secular Shiite Muslims are busy massacring non-religiously-idiotic, secular Sunni Muslims, am I right?
So Queried The Ghoti
#3 – Maybe some Muslims leave because of such outrages against common sense. But apparently not all. A female e-pal friend in Sydney was sitting in a popular local fast-food joint eating food that was no doubt bad for her when an immigrant Muslim walked up to her table and, unprovoked, spat at her and called her a whore. Her sin? She was by herself and dressed to go to a retro 80s rock concert.
I’m a US citizen living in Mexico and it’s a good basic rule of conduct in that situation for my wife and I to try to act like good guests and to appreciate the friendly and even generous acts of our Mexican hosts.
That value is not a part of the culture clash now in progress between host cultures and newly arrived Muslims in much of the world. I deeply despise bigotry, but the hostile judgment delivered as a wad of spit aimed at my e-pal seems to be condoned by Muslim religious leaders.
Muslims are not the first culture to resist the “melting pot” effects of democratic host cultures. But they’re the first example I’m aware of where immigrants seeking legal residence in another country not only keep their native values, they aggressively and meanly try to impose them on their hosts.
The cruelty described in this article does not seem to result from the personal failings of Saudis who happen to be rich and in power. On the world stage the sentences are not even particularly outstanding in their cruelty. Unfortunately, the cruelty seems to come from something deep and (to my eyes) ugly in Muslim culture, not from some evil quality of rich, powerful Saudis.
But let’s see. We have a Congress that has turned its back on the Geneva Conventions, habeas corpus and, now, posse comitatus – and transferred the once limited powers directly into the hands of a lying, cheating, coke-sniffing, drunk-driving C-minus student who considers the US Constitution just “a goddamned piece of paper.”.
At least the Muslims have an excuse. Congress doesn’t. And just how far away is the US from committing the same sorts of cruelties? There is nothing holding Bush and his allies back that I can see. #11, outrage is wonderful. But let’s direct it first a little closer to home.
Your headline is very misleading.
By the way one of the two rape victims is a guy, the entire ruling is somewhat of a joke, the rapist should have been punished harder and the victims shouldn’t have been punished at all. The reason for the 90 lashes is that according to the Saudi law guys and girls aren’t allowed to be alone!! The 90 lashes is unrelated to the rape its self its because they were alone when they got rapped.
The rape was video tapped, and photographed, I’m expecting these photos and video(s) to be leaked to the internet soon as they usually do, totally destroying what ever left of these two people.
#15..badr…..the 4 actual rapists were given 2230 lashes, thats 556 lashes each….while I consider that easy treatment for rape, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
Thank God the woman wasn’t in Pakistan when this happened…..she would have got the death penalty. I cite the case of the young woman who was gang raped by a bunch(9 to 14 men) of relatives because her brother had committed some offense against their family. Under Pakistani Sharia law, the men were able to legally gang rape the girl. She has gone to court many times, and the men who raped her have been found guilty by the regular Pakistani Courts, but freed and found innocent by the Sharia courts. For quite some time she was forbidden to leave Pakistan or talk to non-Pakistani reporters about the case. This young woman has gone through hell. And the men are still walking free.
15. Yes, I was about to point out something similar re the lashes.
I believe a woman caught with an unrelated man can be charged with prostitution.
7. The problem with cutting all ties – including oil – with the Saudis is that this is exactly what the powerful religious hardliners and extremists would dearly love. They don’t want anything to do with you, America or anything else. They want their world to be as it always has been; with the rules they’ve always had.
Destabilizing the monarchy would produce the opposite of what you’d hope to accomplish. For it is the King, and his advisors, who have been responsible for any modern progress. With the fundamentalists always waiting in the wings for the King to screw up.
What very few Western values Saudi Arabia has gained (ie: women’s right to education and work; limited voting; even things you take for granted like theatres, etc.) have been a continued historical tug-of-war between the fundamentalists and the monarchy for every single little thing. 50 years ago, they were still living in mud brick huts. The place has become truly “modern” only in the last twenty or so. This after more than a thousand years of living in a very exacting way. All Saudis stop everything to pray five times a day, again, as they have for more than a thousand years. It’s no joke for them.
So knowing this, how would you go about removing the king and turning the country into a secular democracy? By force? Like Iraq? Like North Korea? Or by almost imperceptibly small steps that add up over time?
RBG
15 I dont think that the guy was raped. From the story probably what happen was the woman and her friend was alone together in the car, when a bunch of guys which had followed them, and attacked them at some point, probably beat up the guy and kidnapped and raped the woman.
As I say the headline is very misleading. The woman and her friend wasn’t sentenced because they were raped, their crime was being together in suspicious circumstances, which you may not find to your liking as well, but is definitely not the same as what the headline is implying.
It be like my house getting robbed but I forgot to hide my stash of weed when the police comes to investigate. would a headline of “robbery victim gets 6 months” be appropriate?
Thank God the woman wasn’t in Pakistan when this happened…..she would have got the death penalty.
I believe 90 lashes IS a death penalty.
Seriously. Anything over 30 or 40 (too lazy to look it up) is generally fatal.
Several made points about the US being allied with countries where these horrific things happen. The problem with that is the upper class which provides the leadership of such a nation is often fairly pro-Western values. It’s the mass of the population that goes in for lashing women and all the other stuff described.
That’s why cutting off ties to a county like Saudi Arabia not only wouldn’t help but would probably make things worse. That’s also why I’m a little leery about the drive to democratize the Middle East. What if you have free elections and everyone over there votes to throw the Jews down the well? (apologies to Sacha Baron Cohen for stealing his sketch).
I honestly don’t know that the answer is but more contact with the West and the spread of secular education is probably a step in the right direction.
19. Something can’t be right there. The four guys were sentenced to over 2,000 lashes total. Maybe there’s an annuity plan.
RBG
From Arab News, an English language newspaper there:
“QATIF, 3 November 2006 — Four of the seven men who gang-raped a young woman in March have been sent to jail for periods ranging between one and five years by a court in Qatif and will be given 80 to 1,000 lashes.”
The woman and her fiance are appealing the ruling against the men as being too light and appealing her own punishment. She is claiming that the man she was meeting had actually come to her rescue. The report also says he was sexually assaulted by some of the men.
RBG
This is what the left wants in our country. They will say it was for her own good.