How long will it take for these barbarish customs and treatments towards women to end?

The woman was gang-raped 14 times and she gets beaten by her brother for SHAMING the family and the court sentences her to 90 lashes for being in public with a unrelated man !!!!!!!!!!!!!!


A SAUDI woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother was sentenced to 90 lashes - for a meeting a man who was not a relative, a newspaper reported.

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.

Fuziyah al-Ouni, described as an activist by the paper, said she was outraged by the case. “By sentencing her to 90 lashes they are sending a message that she is guilty. No rape victim is guilty,” she said.

There are severe legal restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia, including a strict dress code required outside the home and a ban on driving.

habdul!

I think economic sanctions are the best way to force a country to come on side for human rights. Too bad commerce and profiteering (and a petroleum dependant economy) supersede.

"Man and woman sentenced for being alone together in a car"

Why is this a thread topic directed only about female abuse?

haram...

Sodomy could be reason for some cultures to force economic sanctions on another country to force human rights (to not be subjected to acts such as sodomy). Saudi Arabia could publish in the media that a man in the UK sodomized a prostitute, therefore the argue for sanctions against the west. Same thing isn't it? Different value systems.

Isn't this why this thread empasized men abusing the freedom of a woman, forgetting to accentuate that both parties in the infraction get lashings. So, really, the point isn't about torturing women, but strict moral laws regarding public commiseration between the opposite sex, possibly prostitution?

i have nothing against the muslim culture, but s. arabia seem to take it to the complete extreme and it should be stopped.

Not really. Sodomy as rape, maybe, but buttsecks in general, no, it wouldn't be the same thing at all.

Sodomy is usually consensual, so I'm not sure how that would fit into the human rights equation, unless you are taking away a person's right to be sodomized. Getting lashed on the other hand...

As for strict vs. liberal moral laws, I can see your point. The West used to have strict moral laws, but we have since evolved. Is it fair for us to look down on countries that have not yet come up to speed? I don't know. However, I don't think economic blackmail is necessarily wrong when the strict moral laws result in unfairness as in the above case (at least in the eyes of a reasonable person).

Two points of clarification, here: a country of strict moral laws could see sodomy, for example, as breaking a social contract to protect the rights of all people not to be subjected to invasions against God's law, just as we feel the restriction of personal choice is an infringement of our God-given rights; each being a perception of the culture. One has to look at the definition of "reasonable person" in each country's laws. Would it be reasonable to hold sanctions against Saudi Arabia for such rights violations as jailing computer uses who go to porn sites, or randomly trash accordions in displays of public rejection of pop-classical music?


Trash accordions--go to prison

He is I think arguing that, because cultural differences exist, anything can and must be regarded as a cultural difference. What he neglects to comment on is the Levi-Strauss observation that most cultures share certain myths, values etc with their fellows. You'd struggle to find any society that punishes the victims of gang-rape where something isn't going severely wrong, and you certainly don't have to give them the benefit of a doubt and acquiesce to it.

EDIT: see above, posted before I started writing this, for an example.

Obviously this story isn't going to strike anyone in the Western world as ideal, but I think you have to take the two things separately. She's not getting lashes for having been raped, she's getting lashes for having been in the company of an unrelated man (which, unfortunately and hopefully not intentionally on the man's part, culminated in her ending up raped).

The lashes are a side note to the rape; a horrible side note but a side note nonetheless. That the man is also to recieve lashings makes this a little more acceptable in my head, but in an (our?) ideal world perhaps neither would have to endure that. I don't think this is so much barbarism towards woman as it is barbarism in general (although you'd hope the authorities would reconsider dealing out such punishment to a woman who has evidently already suffered greatly for her apparently unlawful actions, but I guess not).

I'm sure there are plenty of examples of horrific treatment of women, but this example, while incredibly saddening, probably isn't the best one to use?

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

agreed.

I have heard of women who reported rapes being lashed or similarly punished because they'd 'admitted to adultry.' I assumed that was what had happened here before I actually read the story.

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exactly. She is not getting lynched because she got raped, the person who started the thread is distorting everything.

Having said that, I personally believe the middle east cutlures are barbarians, but I'm sure they would think even lower of me so where do we draw the line???

I hate the way muslims treat women I think it's horrible but it's a cultural thing. Many women don't see it as alien, it's their culture, they have to wear burkas and that's the end of it. The women who fight agains that are women that have been exposed to other currents of thought, other cultures and they realized their countries values are inhuman but don't make the wrong assumption that all the women are unhappy with being so repressed.

There is this spanish proverb, it translates something like "eyes that cannot see, heart that cannot feel", I mean if these women don't know they have rights, they do't know better-