Despite the hosannas recently lavished upon it by the State Department and White House, the cruelty, barbarism and oppression of the Saudi regime appears, if anything, to be getting worse.
By GARY L. BAUERGary Bauer(photo credit: Courtesy)
Just when you think things can't get worse in the world of "Islamic Justice", things get worse in the world of "Islamic Justice." Despite the hosannas recently lavished upon it by the State Department and White House, the cruelty, barbarism and oppression of the Saudi regime appears, if anything, to be getting worse. Last week, the Saudi "regime", which is all the glorified "Kingdom" really is, doubled the outrage of a recent sentence imposed upon a 19 year-old gang rape victim by doubling her sentence. The young woman from the town of Qatif hired a well-known human rights attorney to ppeal her first conviction.
A Saudi court responded to the appeal by throwing out her first conviction on the grounds that it was too lenient. To teach the girl and the country a lesson the three judge Wahabist panel unanimously ordered the girl's sentence be increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence. The lawyer who dared challenge "Saudi Justice" - an oxymoron if ever there was one-- by appealing the first conviction, was arrested, had his law license revoked and is now facing possible treason charges. In a country that executes people, like an Egyptian foreign worker who left his Koran on a bathroom floor, for being "careless with a Koran", it doesn't take much imagination to figure out the penalty for treason.
If convicted of treason, the "Qatif Girl's" lawyer will be likely be lead straight from sentencing to the Riyadh public square, where there will be a large sheet of blue plastic already waiting for him. Facing Mecca, he will be stripped of his shirt and shoes and forced to kneel on top of the plastic sheet. His name and crime will read aloud so that everyone who has gathered can hear. The executioner, also ready and waiting, will be handed a 25 pound three foot long Arab scimitar that he will raise above his head. When he swings the long heavy broadsword over his head a time or two to loosen up his muscles, the crowd will roar with approval. The executioner will then approach the prisoner from behind and poke him in the small of his back with the tip of the blade.
This will force the prisoner to raise up his head. Then, with a single swing, the executioner will cut off his head. "Paramedics" will be standing by to bring the head, which will likely have bounced a few feet from the body, to a "doctor" who will sew it back onto the body, which will then be wrapped up in the plastic and taken away; unless of course, there are other executions scheduled for that afternoon, in which case, the sheet will be used for them too.
In November alone, a Saudi court forcibly divorced a couple after the wife's half-brother complained that her husband was socially beneath him. In another case, a doctor managed to get off with only 80 lashes for going public with details about court attempts to keep secret details of a government Koran teacher who had repeatedly raped his 12 year old son.
But even to us, at least treason sounds like a crime. But what words are we to use to describe, let alone understand, the alternate universe that would sentence a 54 year old English teacher who, in an act of Christian love, moved to the Sudan to teach little girls at the Khartoum Unity School and allowed them to name their beloved teddy bear after their beloved prophet Muhammad? The government that sentenced her to 40 lashes and three weeks in prison is a genocidal government that as a matter of state policy has murdered hundreds of thousands of black Christians in the southern province of Darfur for being neither Arab nor Muslim.
What are we to make of our own government's correct and proper decision to boycott a meeting of Asian nations to protest the human rights violations of the Burmese government on the very same day our government welcomed representatives of the genocidal regime of Sudan to attend the Middle East Peace Conference at Annapolis? While one could at least "explain" our governments pathetic acceptance of Saudi Arabia's outrageous behavior at that conference-refusing to shake the hands or speak to any Israeli and insisting that no Israeli be allowed to enter the conference hall through the same door as Arab delegates-after all, we need their oil, what possible explanation can there be for putting up with such behavior from Sudan? We cannot summon the courage to answer those painful questions if we don't even have the guts to ask them.
Gary L. Bauer works in Washington D.C. as president of American Values, a Christian organization dedicated to moral government and family values.Previous Entries:Equating the 'unequatable'Wizards of failure'Values voters' and IsraelThe process vs the progress of peaceAnti-American is anti-IsraelThe Ivy League and Ahmadinejad
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
