Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Every so often I’ll see something that can fill me with such disgust and outrage it becomes difficult to express my feelings. This is one of those times.
And to anyone who claims that the members and writers of Irregular Times give Islam a free ride while harping on Christianity, I’m about to prove you wong.
Female rape victim gets 200 lashes and jail
From correspondents in Riyadh
November 16, 2007 07:15amA 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.
Mr 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.
Mr 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.
This is the kind of people who the USA supports. We’re allies with Saudi Arabia even though the majority of the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 9/11 were from there and we’re even sending them military equipment.
When I first read this, I admit, I found I could easily renounce an anti-violence ideal if it meant I could deal some Old Testament type punishment on the people involved with this story, but right now it’s making me feel sick to my stomach.
Religion of peace my achin’ ass.
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November 16th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
The Saudis should be ashamed.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
It’s not a religious question, Damen, it’s a question of male privilege and controlling women’s sexuality, which in this culture is owned by the male head of the family. This is also the person ultimately responsible for providing for any offspring, as the wellbeing of individual family members is provided for by the extended family as a whole under his orders.
Virginity has a monetary value here and abortion would be unthinkable. If she is no longer a virgin, no one will marry her. Or maybe she could be a third or fourth wife of someone who could afford that. Avenging her privately the family will not even consider, as they would be killed in turn by the brothers of the men who attacked her.
The article is a bit misleading in saying she is sent to jail as punishment. Rape victims are usually sent to jail to protect them from being killed by their families. Sometimes a brother will get one to come out of the jail as they are used to having huge numbers of siblings around all the time and are usually homesick and lonely in jail. When they do that they will be dead within a few hours. Then the person who does the killing–always a brother under orders from the father who is prohibited by Koran from killing his own children–turns himself in to police, shows them the weapon and is let go. Even where honor killing is now illegal there is no provision for enforcement. Any political leader who tried to do that would have serious problems from the tribes.
Jim is entirely correct to put the shame for this on the Saudis themselves.
November 17th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Iroquois mentioned that being jailed might be to protect this girl. How sweet of them to then add on those 200 lashes. I’m sure that will only help her to heal from the humiliation she feels at being GANG RAPED and then *tried* for this brutal crime against her. I just can’t even understand this bizarre case - this puts them back in the dark ages morally.
November 17th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Help her heal? I don’t know if I made this clear, but THIS GIRL IS DEAD. It’s just a matter of time. If they put her in jail for a while it will just delay the inevitable. Her family will kill her as soon as they can get at her and no one will lift a finger for her. The Arab penalty for being raped is death.
If you are actually in-country, GirlinSaudi, maybe you are in a better position to get an explanation than anyone else. When I lived in the Middle East, I had a number of “cultural informants” I could go to for answers to particular cultural questions, over a casset of tea of course. I tried to ask several people the same question to see how it would be answered from different points of view–city/country/bedouin-tribal/immigrant/male/female and while most people did not have a good Koranic understanding there would be someone in their family that could also give a religion-based answer.
Here are some guesses:
1)honor. These are called ‘honor killings’ because the brothers who commit them always say they had to do them to preserve the family honor. Why is family honor vested only in the women? It’s not culturally okay for men to be sexually active without getting married, but there is no penalty. Do men have any honor?
2)Boys get teased about their sisters. A lot of these killings are done by 13 and 14 year old brothers who see their sisters talk on the telephone and decide she is talking to a man, or just get teased on the playground and want to stop the teasing.
3)If you want to get technical, the girl is in jail not because she was raped, but because SHE TALKED ABOUT IT. If she had kept her mouth shut and gotten a little bag of chicken blood for her wedding might, no one would be the wiser.(this is what they do in fiction.) Under this system any woman is sexually accessible through rape, (unless she is accompanied day and night by male members of her own family, as many are) and the rapist gets away with it through a code of silence.
why punish the lawyer?
4)he didn’t uphold the male prerogative available with the Code of Silence and the penalties for disclosing an attack.
why beat the girl in jail?
5)in folktale accounts of girls being raped, the girl is supposed to commit suicide, and always does. Otherwise she is doing something nasty and unfair to her brother by making him kill her himself (!) Perhaps this is an attempt to pressure the girl into taking matters into her own hands. But as far as i know, this only happens in fiction. The only real girl’s suicide I have ever heard of was over a failed national exam–a friend suggested the girl would then be pressured into an unwanted marriage by her family.
6)The rapists may be very important people and have “de facto immunity from prosecution”. I love that phrase. Think of how our own president failed to show up for his military service, or how long congressman Foley was cozying up to underage boys before someone blew the whistle. In the Arab countries they have the same thing, only “wasta” is more institutionalized. Who knows what all those dozens of minor Saudi princelings are getting away with now and are afraid will be found out.
7)Arab men want to marry virgins. They want to see blood on their wedding day. They find this very hot to think about and describe to outsiders with a great deal of detail and drooling. I suspect American men don’t want to marry virgins, and I certainly wouldn’t. But that’s what Arab men want, and the girl who is no longer a virgin is not marriageable, the only game in town for a woman. Her life is over.
8)Saudi has “religious police”. I don’t really understand who they are, maybe rednecks without skills who can’t do anything else, but part of extreme Wahabbi group the ruling family needs to stay in power, but is frequently embarrassed by.
If you hear any interesting answers, or even any puzzling fragments, do post them.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
We’ve been taught to believe freedom and equality is the way, and that has made all the difference.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
[…] A follow-up to the story of the Saudi government punishing a rape victem located here. […]
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Well Iroquois…….You have obviously ben brain washed to think this is a reasonable
reaction for a rape,”VICTIM,” key word VICTIM. I am all most 100% posative that she wanted to be a virgin till marriage. She dambed if she does and dambed
if she doesnt. Oh and what would happen if a man was raped by another man, there both men,would the male victim get 200 lashs and jail time, would the family kill him……hhhhmmmmmm all i have to say is poor girl. The fuckin peices of shits should have just killed her, so she wouldent have to go through all the pain and shaim, but they didnt bcause they and most of the men in the country are sexist. Go ahead give me a posative explanation to what i had to say, enlighten me if you will.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 pm
For one, what those people did was wrong, and if anyone laid a hand on my sister I’d kill them …Morally and relgiously it would have been wrong for them to do what they had done to her, so the Arabian government has actually sickened even me.
IT is wrong religiously and morally in the Arab world to do that, I know since I myself am Arab, and counting the fact thatthe Saudi government is based off the Quran it says to respect the women more the men themselves, there is a whole chapter in where the woman is dictated her rights.. Which the arrogant arabs, and I point this to the certain ones, have twisted to control the women, because society dictates it as such for them. And I’d like to see someone try and touch my sister.. I’d kill them, and if the government itself touched her I’d kill them.. Let their brothers come and I myself will kill them… It is fear that drives every country back…..
Now to the ones who said Saudis should be ashamed and others who possibly talking bad about my people, please direct it to the certain few who give my people a bad name. And none of this goes to the right one.
She knows me personally.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
yes saudi american i know were you live… mawa ha ha ha
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I know where you liveeeeeeee hahahahahahahahaahahhahaahahahah I wished you live closer though
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
okay you know what this isnt a chat room
February 25th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
“Quran it says to respect the women more the men themselves, there is a whole chapter in where the woman is dictated her rights”
–oh yeah? “Dictated her rights?” “Dictated?”
Anybody else see the irony here?
February 29th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
The book of the Koran about “al Nisaa” (the women) has 177 verses about orphans and inheritances and stuff.
From what I can get out of Islam, the whole Koran was “dictated” by an angel of Allah. Then The Prophet (PBUH) turned around and dictated the verses to a Jewish guy who wrote them down, except of course the “Satanic verses” which the Prophet (PBUH) later retracted from the Koran, saying they were dictated by Satan. I guess Allah is a pretty authoritarianistic type of deity and just likes to dictate. The word “Islam” is supposed to mean “submission to Allah”. So it’s not that Allah doesn’t dictate to everyone, it’s just that women are more specialer.