[Reader-list] Rape Victim ordered 200 lashes and prison by Saudi judges

[anuradha mukherjee]

I think Shuddha's reply has summed it up beautifully. Why should a horrible
incident in Saudi Arabia be brought up to shame those who are against a
particularly violent form of Hindutva being practised in India? What is the
connection?
Best
Anuradha


On 11/30/07, shuddha at sarai.net <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>
> Dear Pawan,
>
> Hell comes in different flavours, as I tried to explain in an earlier
> post,
> and as is evident from your posting of the brutal treatment meted out to a
> young woman who has been the victim of gang rape in Saudi Arabia.
>
> Being against one kind of hell does not mean that we have to be the
> partisans of other kinds of hell, elsewhere. The kind of intellectual that
> I find interesting it the one who has no problem at all in terms of
> evolving an engaged critique of oppression, no matter what form it takes,
> no matter where it occurs. That is why, despite our respect for people
> like
> Noam Chomsky, some of us took it upon ourselves to sharply criticize his
> prevaricating apology for the 'Left Front' government's violence against
> its own subjects in West Bengal
>
> And so, contrary to your expectations, some of those of us who have been
> active on this list in arguing against the Indian state's military
> occupation of the Kashmir valley have had no problems at all in being
> determined in our opposition to oppression when it occurs in Left Front
> ruled West Bengal, in the current conditions of military dictatorship in
> Burma and Pakistan, or for that matter when it occurs under the aegis of
> the Ibn Saud dynasty in Saudi Arabia. Tomorrow, if North Korea were to be
> discussed on this list, I would be certain that there will be clear
> arguments on this list against the imbecilic regime that rules North Korea
> at the moment. The list can be justifiedly expanded to include Iran, the
> United States, Russia and many other countries and states.
>
> Saudi Arabia is one of the most horrible places on the planet. It is ruled
> by a corrupt, decadent ruling elite and kept in place by money, weapons
> and
> influence wielded by British and American corporate intersts and foreign
> policy. If the international community was justified in operating a set of
> sanctions against the hated South African apartheid regime, it should have
> no business in cosying up to the sexist, slave-owning, xenophobic,
> anti-semitic Saudi regime which is the favourite retirement support agency
> of third rate dictators like Idi Amin and corrupt rulers like Nawaz
> Sharif.
>
> The Saudi Monarchy, which rose to eminence as the stooge of British
> foreign
> policy in the middle east in the early twentieth century presides over an
> imbecilic and paranoid gloss of Islam, and the particularly Salafist brand
> of Islam that is held out as an ideal by the Saudi monarchy and its rented
> clerics is rightly rejected by the majority of Muslims in the world. Its
> significance lies only in that it is backed by petro-dollars and American
> fighter jets.
>
> One does not have to link the decadence of current Saudi Arabia to the
> venality of Moditva/Hindutva. They are two different kinds of abominations
> that need to be fought, and fought till they are destroyed. I would be
> just
> as happy to see Salafist Islamo-fascism perish in Saudi Arabia, as I would
> be to see the short, sharp end of Moditva and Hindutva in Gujarat and in
> India.
>
> regards.
>
> Shuddha
>
>
>
> On 2:13 pm 11/30/07 "Pawan Durani" <pawan.durani at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would Someone Puhleez link this to Modi , RSS & Hindutva
> > ..........some intellectual surely would ..............
> >
> > http://www.themuslimwoman.org/
> > http://www.themuslimwoman.org/entry/rape-victim-ordered-200-lashes-and
> > -prison-by-saudi-judges/
> > What can be called a travesty of judiciary, the Saudi Arabia's Higher
> > Judicial Council has actually sentenced a rape victim to receive 200
> > lashes and prison while the perpetrators of humanity's most heinous
> > crime were allowed to walk free.
> >
> > The 19-year-old Shiite woman who was raped by six armed men was
> > originally sentenced to receive 90 lashes for traveling in the car of
> > an 'unrelated male' at the time of the rape. However after the woman
> > had the temerity of not unquestioningly submitting herself to be
> > tortured as punishment of being raped, the judges on Saudi Arabia's
> > Higher Judicial Council more than doubled her punishment for
> > attempting to influence the judiciary through the media.
> >
> > Her lawyer, human right activist Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, has been
> > banned from carrying her case further. His license has been revoked
> > and he has been called to appear before a disciplinary committee for
> > challenging the judgment, which only punished the victim of the crime
> > and not its perpetrators. The Sunni rapists were given a paltry
> > sentence of one to five years of imprisonment.
> >
> > This is the horrendous state of a country that keeps its women
> > forcefully behind veils only to extenuate and encourage heinous
> > crimes against them in the name of maintaining social discipline.
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