Allah-o-Akbar

Saudi judge sentences pregnant gang-rape victim to 100 lashes for committing adultery

A Saudi judge has ordered a woman should be jailed for a year and receive 100 lashes after she was gang-raped, it was claimed last night.

The 23-year-old woman, who became pregnant after her ordeal, was reportedly assaulted after accepting a lift from a man.

He took her to a house to the east of the city of Jeddah where she was attacked by him and four of his friends throughout the night.

According to the Saudi Gazette, she eventually 'confessed' to having 'forced intercourse' with her attackers and was brought before a judge at the District Court in Jeddah.

He ruled she had committed adultery - despite not even being married - and handed down a year's prison sentence, which she will serve in a prison just outside the city.

She is still pregnant and will be flogged once she has had the child.

wonderful.

Can this stuff be true? - another link

Sometimes it has to be said that Islam as a political organisation needs a thorough feminist revolution - and quickly. Religion turning to political control often makes for a fascistoid mix, but this looks an extreme case.

And this story (linked here) is with names and places, and what appears clear evidence. - Or is evidence still extracted by torture in Iraq??

I would just add the (hopefully) obvious point that such practices do absolutely no service to Islam - and bring shame not on the individuals such people manipulate, but on the name of the religion they distort and promote.

PeterCS wrote:
Sometimes it has to be said that Islam as a political organisation needs a thorough feminist revolution - and quickly.

the fact about Islam is that it never has had any revolutions (feminist or otherwise). Please correct me if this is not true.

Islam is about authoritarianism and complete subservience to the ruler.
It is due to this religion that it's so easy for despots of all manner to rule muslim-majority countries.

Haven't you heard of the Islamic revolution in Iran? Or the Taleban?

Seriously though, if you mean has Islam ever been overturned or radically revised from within, I don't know enough to argue one way or another about the whole history of that religion.

Here FWIW is what I think, from what little I know. Stop reading here if two cents' worth is inflammatory.

I would say that Islam has indeed often been radically revised from within to become, for example, a largely disparate set of political movements. The examples above (at the beginning) were not just a joke.

There are reasons for this: the despotism of The Shah and Saddam in different eras, the "not altogether enlightened" foreign policy of Soviet and various USA governments. the enduring commitment of Israeli governments to security by force, hardened in response to similar or worse attitudes growing among those oppressed by Israeli rule .... being some examples.

Al Q'aida has not always existed, nor have the Taleban.

The point, I think, is that less aggressive traditions abound in Islam, among the "common people" and even among the clerics.

It seems that Sunni traditions - Ba'athist rulers apart! - have generally been more open-minded than the more "fundamentalist" (e.g. Shi'ite) readings of Islam.

Sufi traditions, far from being oppressive and - one sign - far from fearing and reviling music and the arts as devil-work, as fundamentalists tend to do (it took Yusuf Islam years to feel confident enough to return to the guitar), embrace all of that and show a far better, generous face of the religion.

The worst faces of Islam, I think, are partly created from conditions such as are mentioned above, and partly manipulated by hard men who tend to monopolise the voice of Islam, and - like a jealous God - allow no other but themselves. And worst of course, bear down with extreme intolerance on those who diverge or (God help them) attempt to escape or convert.

If that is a foretaste of their afterlife, one has to wonder if it worth living and prematurely dying for.

So I would not necessarily blame "Islam" any more than any other religion (several of which have - interpreted narrowly or fanatically - been responsible for war, a great deal of superstition, intolerance, ignorance, cruelty and oppression in various ways at different times in history).

Rather, the problem lies with its exclusive and violent appropriators.

As to how to move that ..... difficult of course! Obama might or might not help to roll back some damage. Iran may or may not be moving. But then Israel is back on a war footing again. etc etc.

There may well be a "life to come," but a brave belief in death as the end of things would help solve many problems.

Ban God!

India is God?

Surely only SRT?

(Who incidentally > BCL + SRW)

PeterCS wrote:India is God?

Only in the mind of the BCCI.

@ PeterCS

Iranian revolution was a revolution of Islam, not in Islam. I will explain why it is so below.

Firstly Islam as a religion is intimately connected to the Arabs. In fact I can venture as far to say that Arabs created Islam in their own image .. just as God created man in his image.

Islam has been the imperial tool that Arabs used to Arabize the non-Arabs.

From Mesopotamia to Maghrib they were almost completely successful in this Arabizing process. Today the people in these parts of the world mostly have forgotten their pre-Arabic history and heritage and consider themselves Arabs even if Gulf Arabs consider these "others" as lesser Arabs.

The Arabs though were not as successful in Persia. The Persians had their own strong indigenous culture and in addition they were a huge human mass that resisted the initial Arabic surge towards east. And this trend continued throughout history and was reversed only in fits and starts. One such reversal of this trend manifested itself in the Islamic revolution in Iran. It was one such attempt to Arabize the Persian culture.

As I suspected, you know more than me about the bigger picture, Buckster.

But are you saying the Iranian Revolution wasn't successful?

I'm not entirely sure the imperialistic drive (as you portray it) was quite so much "of one piece", though.

And I'm not sure there hasn't got to be some local receptivity if the Islamic (or perhaps Arab/ic) empire-building is to succeed. Why did it succeed in, say, Indonesia? And yet why (to come from the other side of the argument) is that not an Islamic republic?

Indonesia and Malaysia are more Arabized (Islamized) today than they were a decade ago. Probably you will admit this much.

the reason is simple.

Since they are lands far away from the Arab core of Islam, they obviously took their time getting there. In lands further away from the core center the process of Islamicizing/Arabizing is a step-by-step process. At first the goal is to introduce Islam in pieces into native culture were it can easily fit in. In later steps and further generations pre-Islamic history is completely varnished and replaced by the Islamic/Arab one. And complete compliance is sought.

You can see this in progress in both Malaysia and Indonesia.

the Islamic revolution in Iran was not completely successful because it was resisted through Safavid Shiaism movement in Iran, which was an assertion of their non-Arab Persian heritage. Same happened to an extent in Turkey with the Sufi movement.

the new resurgance in Islam is partly due to British/American interference and meddling in these regimes and their role in propping up dictators. This is ongoing from 1890s.

Again, B, I admit only that I don't really know. Certainly not the full story.

But you say "Probably you will admit this much", as if I were an apologist for Islam. I certainly am not - nor a fellow-traveller. I have expressed quite forcefully what can be (very) wrong in Islam, in the name of Islam.

The only thing is, I would not want to tar a religion all with one brush. I have known good and less good Muslims - and I mean, good/less good not in Islamic terms of devoutness or purity, but in general human terms of their behaviour, generosity, open-mindedness, sociability, hospitality and kindness - or otherwise.

I fully agree that anything like hardline (political) Islam knows none of these things, other than as a tool, as a means to an end.

Anyway, I am finally off to bed at this belated hour, B.

If I may say so, I think you speak eloquently when you are not "on the warpath"!

So I wish you peace (of mind), and productive arguments.

That might sound patronising, if you misread it. Not my intention.