Female rape victim gets 200 lashes, jail

[Aptrgangr]

Female rape victim gets 200 lashes, jail

From correspondents in Riyadh
November 16, 2007 08:45am
Article from: AAP

A COURT in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail.

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.''

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism and forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover head-to-toe in public.

Last year, the court sentenced six Saudi men to between one and five years in jail for the rape as well as ordering lashes for the victim, a member of the minority Shi'ite community.

But the woman's lawyer Abdul Rahman al-Lahem appealed, arguing that the punishments were too lenient in a country where the offence can carry the death penalty.

In the new verdict issued on Wednesday, the Al-Qatif court also toughened the sentences against the six men to between two and nine years in prison.

The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite community. The convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Ms Lahem, also a human rights activist, said yesterday the court had banned him from handling the rape case and withdrew his licence to practise law because he challenged the verdict.

He said he has also been summoned by the ministry of justice to appear before a disciplinary committee in December.

Ms Lahem said the move might be due to his criticism of some judicial institutions, and "contradicts King Abdullah's quest to introduce reform, especially in the justice system.''

King Abdullah last month approved a new body of laws regulating the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, which rules on the basis of sharia, or Islamic law.

Female rape victim gets 200 lashes, jail | NEWS.com.au

[3rdEye]

A COURT in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail.

We should not rely on established mass media, but if they set their priorities to cases like these, the Islamic issue would soon be under control.

Those who like to claim that different cultures just have different but equally sound ethics need to get this rubbed in their faces until they're sane.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Seekers

We should not rely on established mass media, but if they set their priorities to cases like these, the Islamic issue would soon be under control.

Those who like to claim that different cultures just have different but equally sound ethics need to get this rubbed in their faces until they're sane.

What about cultures that penalize "Holocaust denial" and impose such heavy taxation on everything, for example, on land (not to speak of construction permits), so as to make impossible to most people to ever make a piece of decent, even if modest, living for themselves and their families, in their own house and with a piece of land? How about the "culture" that forces you to cut down lemon orchards or olive trees and forbids you to plant new ones, in case it does not fit with the "agricultural quotes" imposed by some beaurocrats in Brussels?

[3rdEye]

Originally Posted by Plethon

What about cultures that penalize "Holocaust denial" and impose such heavy taxation on everything, for example, on land (not to speak of construction permits), so as to make impossible to most people to ever make a piece of decent, even if modest, living for themselves and their families, in their own house and with a piece of land? How about the "culture" that forces you to cut down lemon orchards or olive trees and forbids you to plant new ones, in case it does not fit with the "agricultural quotes" imposed by some beaurocrats in Brussels?

Not good, of course. But I think it would be a mistake to assume that there is an ethic in a cultural sense behind things like that. Those are things of a kind that take over when ethics are no longer practiced, and some people of a nation employ a vendetta against rather innocent people of the same nation.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Seekers

Not good, of course. But I think it would be a mistake to assume that there is an ethic in a cultural sense behind things like that.

Of course there is no ethic in a cultural sense behind things like that. But many people think there is some ethic in imposing such nonsense and many "citizens" believe that it is ethical to obey such nonsense. They mistook ethics with the positive law. I met many people in my life who think that the opposition between good and evil equals opposition between legal and illegal (legal = good, illegal = evil). That is a monstruous spiritual perversion.

Muslims have great many ridiculous laws and regulations that regulate all possible spheres of life. But at least they think that these regulations come from God and must be therefore obeyed, while modern Europeans (and "Westerners" in general) religiously believe in laws brought by their worthless and sh**ty liberal-democratic parliaments, having no deeper metaphysical value than the majority of hands lifted.

Originally Posted by Seekers

Those are things of a kind that take over when ethics are no longer practiced, and some people of a nation employ a vendetta against rather innocent people of the same nation.

True. In the 18th century Ottoman Empire the ruling caste behaved sadistically with all its subjects, in the first place with the non-Moslem ones, but sometimes even with common folks of Moslem religious affiliation. It was popularly called zulum (a loanword from Turkish, originally coming from Arabic, meaning "pressure"). It was a widely known notion in the Balkans as well. We could say that modern liberal democratic despocies are practicing zulum.