Not in Saudi Arabia. The prosecution and the judge presiding over the case ignored the footage. Four of the rapists were sentenced to one to five years in prison, along with up to 1,000 lashes—not for rape, but for kidnapping. The rape charges, the court claimed, could not be proved.
And the woman who was raped? She was sentenced to 90 lashes. Her crime: riding in a car with another man not her husband. The woman was, naturally enough, incensed. She protested. “At the first session, [the judges] said to me, ‘what kind of relationship did you have with this individual? Why did you leave the house? Do you know these men?’ They asked me to describe the situation. They used to yell at me,” she told Human Rights Watch. “They were insulting. The judge refused to allow my husband in the room with me. One judge told me I was a liar because I didn’t remember the dates well. They kept saying, ‘Why did you leave the house? Why didn’t you tell your husband [where you were going]?’”
And for that, the court doubled her lash sentence, to 200, and added six months in prison for good measure. The court also suspended her lawyer’s license to practice law. The reason: “Judges of the Qatif General Court,” the Times reported, “have accused him of trying to tarnish the court’s image by talking to the media.” Lashes, the Times notes, “are meted out in increments because offenders could not survive hundreds of lashes at once. The administrator of the punishment is supposed to hold a Koran under his arm so he cannot swing the whip too fiercely; lashes are not supposed to leave permanent scars. The sentence is frequently delivered in public, often at the entrance to a jail.”
Not that those qualifiers diminish the brutality of the practice, or its misogyny, or the court’s sadism. But that’s Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, where it wouldn’t even be accurate to compare the law to something Medieval—unless the comparison was with Christian Medieval law. In Medieval Islam, none of this would have been tolerated, and even less so in the Prophet Muhammad’s time. Muhammad would have regarded as barbaric and unacceptable such treatment of women, who were, in his eyes, on equal footing with men in all matters moral, social or commercial. (On Tuesday, the Saudi Justice Ministry, bowing to the embarrassment of international outrage, agreed to “review the case.”)
But Saudi Arabia is far from the only outpost of Byzantine barbarism when it comes to reviling women, punishing the innocent, and excusing rapists.
Hop over to allegedly modern and snazzy Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, that rich city state doing so much to attract investors, tourists, foreign laborers and celebrities to bask in its immense riches and supposedly western-friendly environs. Alexandre Robert, 15 years old, was enjoying himself there last summer when, taking a ride with a friend, he found himself surrounded by three adult Arab men, Emiratis, who proceeded to kidnap him, strip him, rape him, then dump him off with a threat that they’d kill his parents if he talked.
Robert talked anyway, and the men were apprehended. But the Egyptian doctor who examined Robert (and found the men’s semen inside him) dismissed Robert’s claim that he was raped and accused him of being a homosexual. The authorities lied to Robert’s family, saying at first that the two assailants were medically clean, when, in fact, one of them had tested positive for HIV when imprisoned on a prior offense. And for good measure, Robert was threatened with prosecution and prison—for engaging in homosexual acts.
Places like Dubai pretend that homosexuality doesn’t exist by banning it, then re-branding it an aberrance and casting it off, literally, when it happens to appear: foreigners, who make up three-quarters of the population of the Emirates, are deported when outed, although Emirati homosexuals are generally treated gingerly.
Where does that leave Robert? In the safety of Switzerland, for fear that, had he stayed in the Emirates, he might have ended up in prison. But his case carries on. He returned to Dubai in early November just to testify in the case. His mother has started a web site, boycottdubai.com, dedicated “to all the children of the world whose wounds were never recognized, their words never heard and their suffering never known,” and dedicated “to all the mothers of the world even the ones of my son’s aggressors.”
The Arab Peninsula is awash in a certain kind of riches. Justice is not among those.
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Comments
Fantastic analysis! This is the only mainstream in which place I’ve ever seen such reporting, and it’s utterly vital. These are “our” closest allies, after all. A shame the public doesn’t hear more of this kind of journalism…Thank you!
Thanks for the note Michael. Interestingly, the press in the UAE (Gulf Times, Khaleej Times) has been pretty forthcoming about the two cases.
So, there’s more coverage and room for public questioning in the UAE than here. Hmm, wonder why…
To be fair Michael, I did get a good bit of my background information from lengthy reports on each case in the Times. Censorship, in the form of press regulation or worse, is part of the UAE’s media landscape. Just this month (on Nov. 17) Dubai slammed shut two Pakistani television stations as, of all things, a favor to Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani dictator (there’s a huge Pakistani population in the UAE, and the stations could be watched by satellite in Pakistan).
Pierre, as usual an excellent analysis of a sad and shameful event. But you forgot Iran. Since the 1979 revolution the government of Iran has systematically hanged anyone accused of homosexual act or of sodomy. No wonder its president claims there are no homosexuals in Iran: they hang them. Iranians are a tolerant people. Before the revolution, there was nothing done against, or said about, such things.
You are right in saying that Muhammad would not have allowed lashing a woman. He adored women, especially the pretty ones. I think he would not recognize the brand of Islam practiced by the mullahs in Iran, the Talibans in Afghanistan, and the Wahhabis in the Arabian peninsula.
I am not an Islamist scholar by any stretch of mind. But, I think there are two main reasons for the deviations from Muhammad’s rather simple and straightforward teachings: the hadith and the fatwas. As you know, after the death of Muhammad, there was a flood of hadith, “oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of Prophet Muhammad.” (Wikipedia). A few centuries later, a scholar, whose name I don’t recall now, collected all of them, screened them for their authenticity, and decided that not all were authentic. The number that passed his test was still quite large. The hadith of course are the subjective interpretation or extrapolation of Muhammad’s instructions. They caused division, disagreement, and deviation from his intent. We also have the fatwas “a ruling on Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar.” (Wikipedia). Yet another purely subjective interpretation or extrapolation of Muhammad’s teachings.
In the course of many centuries, these interpretations and extrapolations have caused great damage to the original Islamic laws, which were simple and embraced astonishingly simple theology. Muhammad was a simple man. Through his frequent travels to the northern part of the peninsula, he became fascinated by the monotheism of Judaism and wished to introduce it, or something similar, among the Bedouins of the Middle Arabia. The first major deviation of his teachings was done by Othman, a highly educated and literate follower, who collected Muhammad’s oral pronouncements, edited and modified them and put them in a highly polished language. I have read articles and books by experts on Arabic, that the early Surats in Koran are written in the tradition of rhyme used by the tribes: simple and unpolished, but quite appealing. Most of the later Surats have a more sophisticated structure: the sentences are longer; they are no longer written in rhymes.
Islam, like all other religions, is based on fear, and demands total obedience. But it has shown remarkably more tolerance that other religions, especially Judaism and Christianity, toward people of Good Books: Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. The most savagely intolerant of all the Semitic religions is Judaism, which has changed very little since Yahweh was promoted from a third rank god to the supreme God. The Christianity of Crusades and Inquisition has nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus, whether he existed or not.
All the original geopolitical issues have now taken the mantel of religious conflicts. They are therefore no longer subject to discussion and compromise. The savagery and barbarism rule supreme. It is now a war to the end.
Now I’m trusting that this won’t add to my comments at the notebook site – though I saw omeone else who made 4 wasn’t censored I made 2 and will wait and see what happens. Anyway my comment here is wow, I totally agree with you on the issue of Saudi Arabia and the tale of two rapes. Only I thought Muslims (at least in Iran) simply murdered anyone for any “crime” involving homosexuality. Guess not in Saudi Arabia though. What, sharia is that subjective?
You are wrong about Mohammad believing women are equal with men. The sacred writings state many times the permission of the Prophet to rape and abuse women this is not an indication of respect.
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