A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local media reports.
According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, “Fahd” and “Hadian.”
Fahd told the policeman that he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.
Don’t you dare judge them. We are the world, and so on.
If she can’t do the time, she shouldn’t do the crime.
And Allah knows best!
Lex … You bet I’m going to judge them for this. When a society allows and encourages old women to be beaten for receiving gifts from thoughtful friends, it’s a toxic society. And everyone in that society who stands by and lets it happen is implicated for not protesting or preventing the outrage.
I’m more and more drawn to the mile-high-wall-around-the-Middle-East solution. As you say, put a door in it after 100 years. Maybe.
Marianne
Marianne – That’s what I like about you – practical and thoughtful at the same time.
You suggest putting a door in the wall around the Mid-East.
Me? I’d just rather see the whole thing filled with water…
Speaking of judging, I note that Mohammed’s laws follow a long list of precedents, namely those who went before the Prophet.
From Hammurabi, we find article 3: “If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.”
Harsh justice, but kind of nice to know a false accusation can be punished so readily. As was once opined in a law office, “This is serious — it could be the death penalty!”
“Well, not for the lawyer.”
Let’s now turn to the Book of Armaments, Chapter 12, verse 9.
9: And as for my house, we shall follow the Lord.
10: And the Lord did see, and blessed was the House of Browning in his eyes.
11: And there came upon them a son, John Moses, and the angels rejoiced on high.
11a: In fact, Gabriel drank himself silly (as archangels are wont to do) and was later discovered in bed with a goat, a virgin, and a collection of empty Coors Light cans.
11b: And the Lord looked upon him, and being a merciful God, created Guinness in moderation.
12: And in the house of Browning John became a man, and put away childish things like bicycles, and that silly styrofoam helmet so many use when riding them.
13: And John Moses Browning created the M1903, and he offered it unto the Lord.
14: And the Lord spaketh, “A little more angle on the grip, beavertail to keep the hammer from biting the web of the thumb, and I think you’ve a winner there.”
15: And John Moses heard the word of the Lord, and he was sore afraid, and went to his workshop to fulfill the Will of the Lord.
16: John Moses’s new offering to the Lord was the M1911. For it did have a beavertail in the slightly more angled grip, and was chambered in the holy caliber of .45ACP.
17: And the Lord looked upon his works, and was pleased.
From this narrative we can conclude three things:
1) The Colt M1911 is divinely inspired and hence should be in your collection. Also, you should introduce it to your sons.
2) religious police entering your home should therefore have to pass the test of the Divine Gift afforded from the host of hosts. Preferably against a full magazine. Failure to do so is proof of innocence from the home-owner.
3) Max should not stay up for 38 hours straight at work then open a Guinness and read Neptunus Lex. It gives him delusions of ability as a writer.
– Max
A forty lash sentence for a 75 year old woman amounts to a painful death sentence.
And these people are our “friends”?
If NOW expresses one tenth the outrage at this as they offered in concert with the usual suspects that they did for the problems at Guantanamo I’ll be shocked.
But then, they always, “Blame America First”.
I’d opt for the water board but then that would be torture and we can’t have that.
Marianne/
You old fashioned ninny–how dare you to to suggest we force our own hegemonic, Imperialist, Western colonialist perspectives on other “native” cultures? How provincial of you! I’m ashamed to even share these pages with such retrograde thought! Have some considerations for the cultural mores of others, please, you embarrass us all here…you truly do–have you no shame? What gives you the right to elicit moral superiority, etc………………sorry, have to stop, got to go talk to Ralph.
vx, sounds like you have been in SOCAL entirely too long. You need some serious chill time in NO. LOL.
virgil, my precious … You’re right. This old-fashioned ninny has no shame. I’m proudly politically incorrect, and feel multculturalism is pernicious rubbish. Some cultures are wonderful, some are O.K. if they will only make progress, and some are positively evil. Those of us who are lazy and refuse to cowboy up and make judgments on this will live to rue the day.
By the way … who’s Ralph?
Your admirer, Marianne
Isn’t he the sheepdog that punches in at the same time clock as the coyote? As for the filling the basin with water, where would we get all the sharks to put in it after filling it?
Wonder what Human Rights watch will say about this?
((crickets))
Imagine if it happened at Gitmo.
SILENCE!!!!!@!
BE QUIET OR I KEEEEEELLLL YOU~!
From my favorite dead terrorist, Achmed.
I caught some talk radio this afternoon and one of the guests was talking about how the whole Muslim world was being swept up in Christian evangelic conversions in the millions even in Iran, gasp. Iran and Pakistan believe in death and practice death for apostates. Even harmless fuzzy little Kuwait believes that death is appropriate for apostates. Saudi Arabia probably either flogs, stones or burns apostates to death. God knows what they’d do to a woman driver….
What a spectrum. Progressives have no problem with anything muslims do. Democrats and Republicans love to snuggle up to the House of Saud and never ever comment on its reprehensible behavior. Greens love Saudi Arabia and arabs because arabs are big adherents of “alternate power”….you know, slaves.
I’m not seeing it in the article you have linked (then again, I merely scanned and may have missed it), but the article I read said that one of those boys’ fathers testified against her, saying she was corrupting.
Essentially, he ensured a sentence of flogging, not only to this elderly woman, but also to his own son.
Lovely group, they are.
Absolutely ghastly.
My sense of humor is gone. Religious police? entering homes uninvited? Flogging elderly women?
The Crusades begin to sound reasonable.
I think it may be time to operationally test some of war-shots.
The faster we no longer have to rely on oil from the ME and instead have alternate fuels to drive our cars, trucks, planes and trains, the better.
And the quicker we can start work on that wall.
That reminds me of the story I heard during the first gulf war about the female GI at the bowling alley in a shopping mall in Saudi Arabia. She was bowling with a couple of male friends when one of the religious police came along and got in her face with his stick and started yelling at her in Arabic. (No head covering, exposed arms, etc. etc.) When he raised the stick to hit her, she reached over to her gear and pulled out her M-16 and stuck it up his nose. I think that her comment at that time was along the lines of “make my day”. The bearded one got the message and backed off quickly. Word got around and the religious police tended to avoid the female GI’s after that.
True or not, I could not find the original on the web, – it is a good story.
Yak, I, too, think of incandescent lithium deuteride at times like this. On the K’aaba. A shame it is, that the B-41 is no longer in the stockpile. Arabia has too much petroleum and not enough trinitite. Serious mineral-abundancy disproportion there.
Stan, I find that story doubtful because women were not allowed off PSAB unless they were in full hijab, and they certainly weren’t allowed to carry weapons with them. Also, the Muttawa rarely travel alone, being gang bullies by nature. In fact, there was an Air Force LtCol who challenged as an unlawful order the directive that she had to be in hijab when the men didn’t, and IIRC, she went to either mast or Courts Martial. I never heard the outcome, but I don’t think she succeeded in doing much other than ending her career.
But, but … Islam is the religion of peace. Oh my.
Marianne – you are my hero.
I don’t know Stan, I seriously doubt that story. When my husband was in tent city I couldn’t even send him a Maxim magazine in his care package. Such things were confiscated. No wearing crucifixes either.
Nice fantasy though.
Does anyone, in the billions and trillions of dollars in “stimulous” see an avenue for domestic oil and gas procucers? Let’s not even talk about nuclear even though France, which we love for all things, produces a majority of electricity with nuclear.