Sex, Gender and the Middle East: Happy Women's Day - Saudi Woman gets 90 lashes for being raped
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/03/sex-gender-and-middle-east-happy-womens.htmlAttention all you progressives and women's rights groups out there. There has been a HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION in the Middle East. A really gross one. Get John Dugard out here double quick. OOPS false alarm, it happened in Saudi Arabia, not Israel. "A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes -- for meeting a man who was not a relative."
Is that a sex crime or a gender crime or what? Or are you just going to ignore it because it happened in Saudi Arabia. BBC and New York Times have apparently chosen to ignore it, so that is the politically correct thing to do.
From Tom Grossmedia:
Today, March 8, marks International Women's Day. The mainstream media, including the New York Times and the BBC, have -- true to form, since they specialize only in skewering the news against Israel and the U.S.-- completely ignored the news that "A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes -- for meeting a man who was not a relative."
The sentencing earlier this week has been reported by AFP and in Arab media, including the Khaleej Times (published in the United Arab Emirates) and the Saudi Gazette. But as far as I can tell the only Western mainstream media outlets to have covered the story are Fox News and the Scotsman (a Scottish newspaper). This is despite the fact that most Western media subscribe to AFP.
The 19-year-old Saudi woman was abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took her to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors. Five men were arrested for the rape and given jail terms ranging from 10 months to five years by a panel of judges in the eastern Saudi city of Qatif, near the teenager's hometown.
But the judges also decided to sentence the young woman, identified only as "G," to 90 lashes. "G" was told by one of the judges that she was lucky not to have been given jail time. She said yesterday that she would appeal against her sentence.
The woman told the Saudi Gazette that she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.
Unrelated men and women are forbidden from interacting in public in Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic Sharia law of a kind many European Muslims say they would like to introduce in countries like Britain and France.
* On the official International Women's Day website, there is nothing about Saudi Arabia, just publicity for the "Lighting candles for Women in Palestinian society" event.
From Khaleej Times:
A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes for a meeting a man who was not a relative, a newspaper reported on Monday.
In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, the 19-year-old said she was blackmailed a year ago into meeting a man who threatened to tell her family they were having a relationship outside wedlock, which is illegal in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.
After driving off together from a shopping mall near her home, the woman and the man were stopped and abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took them to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors.
Five men were arrested for the rape and given jail terms ranging from 10 months to five years by a panel of judges in the eastern city of Qatif, near the woman's hometown.
But the judges also decided to sentence the woman, identified by the newspaper only as 'G,' and the man to lashes for being alone together in the car.
Unrelated men and women are forbidden from interacting in public in Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic Sharia law.
'G' said one of the judges told she was lucky not to have been given jail time. 'I was shocked at the verdict. I couldn't believe my ears,' said the woman, who has appealed against her sentence.
The woman also told the paper she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.
Aren't you proud to support progressive causes?
Ami Isseroff
Labels: Arabs, Human Rights, Media, Women
posted by News Service at
1:32 PM
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4 Comments:
Posted for John Furedy:
This is a typical example of a totalitarian regime that judges and punishes on the basis of the actor rather than the nature of the act.
This actor- rather than act-based ethics is also a feature of velvet
totalitarian regimes such as those on most Western university campuses
(for details, see
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/Papers/af/vtcc7.doc) and its current leftist intellectual supporters. That this outrageous act has been virtually ignored by Western media such as the BBC illustrates the actor based ethics of the West's velvet totalitarians.
By
News Service, At
March 9, 2007 9:58:00 AM GMT+00:00
My reply:
I don't think it is related to totalitarianism. It would not have happened in USSR and probably not in Nazi Germany. It is a specific thing for religious fanatic societies.
All societal justice is somewhat actor-based. O.J. Simpson would have had a different fate had he been poor and anonymous.
Of course, the media response or lack of it (and all international law for that matter) is actor -based as you say.
By
News Service, At
March 9, 2007 10:03:00 AM GMT+00:00
I think that provided one distinguishes between the sort of velvet totalitarianism that exists, to various degrees, in free societies, and the real totalitarianism that exists in such fear-society regimes as the Nazis, Soviets, current Iran, current Palestine, and current North Korea, the act/actor distinction is clear (for elaboration of "velvet totalitarianism", see the paper I referred to in my earlier comment).
It is also almost irrelevant whether the totalitarianism is based on a recognized religion like Islam (or, say, Calvin's religion in Geneva of the 16ht century, or quasi religions like Nazism or Communism.
And while in all societies, the powers of the actor to influence the outcome to some degree, I think the extent of the actor's influence on the judgment of acts is a good indicator of the society's degree of totalitarianism. The Simpson case merely shows that, with good lawyers, one can get out of a criminal charge (for which the standard of evidence is higher), but not out of civil charge, or, of course certain ethical charges.
All this is a far cry from such totalitarian, actor-based decisions, be these concerning really evil acts like the one perpetrated in Iran, or sex-based prejudice which view the same act as less serious when perpetrated by a woman than by a man. Identity politics is the root of all totalitarian impulses.
By
John Furedy, At
March 10, 2007 7:05:00 AM GMT+00:00
I'm sorry, but I should have added that while this particular incident would hot have happened under the Soviets or the Nazis, parallel totalitarian actor-based punishments wre meted out to people like the Kulaks and Jews, respectively. Religous fanatic totalitarianism is not different from other forms of what Popper called enemies of the open society
By
John Furedy, At
March 10, 2007 7:12:00 AM GMT+00:00
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