Saudi Court Sentences Vctim of Gang Rape to 90 Lashes

This is hard to even read...

And these are our allies.

Something is very, very wrong with this picture...

Another thing just occurred to me, as I re-read the article:

"The woman's family says it will appeal what it considers inadequate sentences for the rapists."

Blind acceptance of "that's the way it is"? The woman's family isn't appealing her "punishment"?

I know these folks have a peculiar sense of "Justice", but I would still try to do something about it. Or, do you get whipped for that, too?

Sometimes it's really hard to grasp the actions of strange (to us) cultures; perhaps they should have just burned her at the stake.

90 lashes with a whip is essentially a death sentence. If she survives she will be maimed for life. I was whipped one time many years ago by a lunatic. The wound required 6 stitches to close and I still have a scar on my back.

Saudi Arabia is a vicious religious dictatorship. Because their wealth gushes out of the ground, they are idolized by some western powers whose god is oil.
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How Bush can tiptoe through the tulips and hold hands with a Saudi heavyweight is beyond me.

Saudi Arabia is a culture that until 75 years ago was living in the 12th century. That same culture has had everything it knew turned upside down in the space of a couple of generations. 99.99% of the population have never been in a house let alone lived in one, never even heard of a toilet or running clean water, read a book or attended a classroom.

When Dys lived in Saudi Arabia, he would see heads, hands and feet dangling from the guard post where the Saudis meted out punishments. It will take time for such a restrictive culture to come to a more equitable way of punishing crime or to realize that women don't deserve to be punished for being victimized.

This isn't meant to condone in any way the methods used or the attitudes toward women, but simply as another perspective on a culture that was changed completely by foreigners coming to their country to more fully develop oil production. They were suddenly faced with immense amounts of money and access to a lifestyle that was completely unknown to them before companies like Aramco arrived.

In some ways, it reminds me of sports stars being paid obscene sums of money for their physical prowess. How many of them have ruined their lives and, in some cases, the lives of others, because of too sudden access to the kind of power only money can buy.

Just a little over two hundred years ago, our ancestors were burning women, sometimes children, at the stake for being witches---and the lives of those people hadn't been changed to any substantial degree. The possibility for monstrousness exists in all of us, yet we are all too ready condemn others for what once was done at the hands of our own ancestors.

We can blame culture, religion or unhappy childhoods for our actions, and we rightly should be appalled and condemn what is horribly sadistic, but at least we should try to understand the circumstances and hope that, with time, those attitudes will change. Political sanctions could be used to try to reduce that kind of savage law, but which president has had the guts to enforce sanctions when we are so monetarily enmeshed with those same governments?

Industrialized countries made Saud king of Arabia. Saud then told the imams that they could continue to control the inner, social working of the society while the Sauds controlled the business workings. The Sauds remain just a tiny percentage of the total population of Saudi Arabia. Their real power only exists in the world of money, not in the religious control and social mores of their country. The complexity of changing an ancient, restrictive religious society, with which we have an extremely close relationship, is almost beyond comprehension.

Good work, Diane, Dys.

Thank you, D&D, for providing some context. It is much appreciated.

Thanks, Edgar and Eva.

There are times when i ask Dys not to be so abrupt with his posts because most of us don't have the background to understand such things. He sometimes reacts to a post and answers rather shortly without taking into consideration that he lived there and grew to understand the culture from the time he was about three years old.

Agree.

I knew what he meant, Diane, but, the addirional info is helpful, too, since most of us don't really look that deeply into the societies of other lands.

It remains, though, that I can hardly bear to read the topic post.

Here are the rulers who drive the latest Italian cars and live in unbelievable luxury. These people should be excused when they rule like ruthless monsters in medieval fashion?

I see you have zero knowledge of the political/social/legal workings of other nations/cultures but that doesn't refrain you from passing judgement. Rather barbaric attitude I would say but then I don't walk in your shoes.

But... It took much less than two hundred years for us to progress past burning "witches" at the stake. We've come a long way, Baby. In contrast, for a country thousands of years old, it's hard to understand why so many there have never seen, let alone been inside a house or seen a toilet.

I'm with Osso, very hard to read / hear about happening anywhere in the world.

Dys, can you hazard a guess for me -- what would happen to a princess if she had been found alone with a man (and raped)?

not many years ago a princess committed adultry, this niece of the king was beheaded; The king in Saudi Arabia has little influence over internal laws.