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Saudi Justice: 10 Years and 2,000 Lashes For Internet Video of Naked Dancing
An anonymous reader writes with a link to The Huffington Post, which reports "that a Saudi man was sentenced to 2,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for dancing naked on the roof of a car and posting the video online, according to multiple reports. Three other men were also sentenced to three to seven years in jail and hundreds of lashes each for the incident, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Arabic-language paper Al-Sharq. The four men were hit with a number of charges, including "encouraging vice" and violating public morality, according to the report. The prosecutor in the case, which was heard by a judge in Saudi Arabia's conservative Al-Qassem province, reportedly objected to the sentences for being "too lenient," Gulf News notes. The video was reportedly circulated widely on the Internet, but could not be found by The Huffington Post."
They abuse women, have a cave man's idea of a criminal justice system, are a theocracy and fund terrorism. What else do they need to do before we decide to stop tolerating their shit?
Are we still talking about Saudi Arabia?
which is totally what she said
> Yes, there are hate crimes... but usually someone caught doing a "fag bash" will get a 10+ year
> sentence just due to the pressure put on the judge and DA by the press and other groups.
But of course, part of that is because violent crime isn't generally all that punishable itself without "hate crimes". We had a prosecutor arguing to extend hate crimes legislation to homeless people.
Why? Because a homeless man was beat within an inch of his life by two guys for kicks, and because there was nothing stolen, no home to invade, and no defined hate crime, they were out in a couple of months...for coming just short of murder.
Seemed to me at the time the problem was not that homeless people need a special designation but that violent crime is poorly differentiated and there are gaping holes in the law that they are now trying to fix....with duct tape.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This is why the UAE is trying to kick-start a world-leading financial industry. Their plan is to throw oil money into getting it started, so once the oil money runs out they'll have a new service industry ready to take over.
No, they're not, under international law. There is no way to justify Sharia law with human rights other than by abandoning the concept of human rights altogether.
In fact, most Islamic countries try to do exactly this because they don't have a legal construct by which human rights can be acknowledged. Under Sharia, humans don't have rights, god has rights, humans only have responsibilities to god.
This is why the UN Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
Is drastically re-written by most Islamic countries:
http://www.alhewar.com/ISLAMDECL.html
In the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, one has the right to obey god without question or hesitation. Here, "rights" are derived from divine law, and though there is lip service paid to the freedom of religion, every country that has adopted it has interpreted it as intended, that is, that everyone has the right to obey the Koran, the hadith, and the sunnah.
A lot of your points either have no basis at all or are ill-informed. I'd just like to state here that I'm from Pakistan and I've lived their for 30 years (pretty much all of my life, can't vouch for anything that happens in Saudi though).
* It's not the women only who are 'routinely' murdered, it happens to men too, and as frequently. The problem is not religious, but cultural (please mind the difference).
* I've never heard of such a room in my entire life, may be it's more prevalent in Saudi.
* There is no law in Islam that states that female testimony is not valid. Only that it takes 2 women's testimony to be counted as 1.
* I'm not sure where you got this from, but it's kind of rare to even hear of it in news, and news in Pakistan spread quite rapidly.
* Yes, that is true, and I'm totally against it. Fair point.
* The driving part is also true, and it is kind of stupid. Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) wives used to ride camels, used to go out on their own and do all the chores, so it's ridiculous to not follow that and follow your own ideas.
P.S. I'm not here to justify anything I've said above, I'm only stating the facts and correcting the wrong perceptions of people who think Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt are one and the same!
The US spent the 80s arming Saddam for his war with Iran, and he borrowed money from Kuwait to finance his war. When it was over, Kuwait refused to discharge the debt. They also refused to raise prices and cut oil supply, both of which would have helped Iraq pay off its war debt. Saddam bitched the US, and the US said "deal with it yourself," after spending over a decade and a half helping him out. Saddam felt betrayed by the US, and invaded Kuwait to show them a thing or two about his ability to wage a war. The US has had a history going back decades of getting involved with Middle Eastern politics, and its bit them in the ass on more than a few occasions. Shah of Iran, anyone?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yes, I am arguing that theocracies aren't inherently a bad idea, primarily because of the fact they aren't inherently a bad idea.
Including the context of the post I was responding to in this discussion, it is the responsibility of the person arguing against a "theocracy" to define it in a meaningful way and thereafter use it consistently.
Since he/she didn't, I'll give you the opportunity again here--what do you mean by "theocracy", specifically? Again, if we are talking about all religions, are you suggesting that a government of Taoist religious leaders, holding as their perspective there is some broad, spiritual "world force" that aligning oneself with will lead subtly to a more harmonious existence, and who do not have any particular behavioral mandates at all, would be functionally the same to you as a government of Islamic extremists?
But, really, the Argument From A Void gets a bit tiresome. You are arguing the preferability of a government founded on the basis of ethical axioms that are nonexistent. I'm sure you'll claim there are valid ones you can back, that you have to offer as a suitable alternate guiding ethical framework for government. You don't. Assuming you're even going to have enough personal consideration of the question to forward one of the historical ethical systems proposed by secular philosophy, of which I submit I am probably well-more versed in than you, a bit of discussion of the "is-ought dichotomy", as well known in formal philosophy (and particularly unanswerable to a material-reductionistic worldview) should rapidly disabuse you of the notion you have a functional system.
You have what ethics you've culturally assimilated from present Western culture--that is, you have it because of religion. If you think you got it elsewhere, and think you can back that source as meaningful objectively, feel free to do so here.
The common complaint about religion in government is like arguing how you like your apartment's 10'th floor view, you just want to get rid of the building itself. You didn't build the floors beneath you. More importantly, you -can't- build those floors beneath you. 2500 years of unsuccessful attempts to do so, and build the most fragile, broad consensus on any core axiom in ethics by secular philosophy more than adequately demonstrates this.
So, in reality, you have a choice between religion as the basis for morality that the legal system broadly fashions itself after, or having nothing as that basis. In practice, that will mean we will continue, as we have been, having religion being the unstated formative underpinning, and anti-religion people pointlessly complaining about it, while offering no alternative.
Thus giving us a "quasi-theocracy". I don't know your degree of objection to that (that is, to reality) is, but when one sees "theocracy" equivocated and vague aspersions and non-arguments being presented regarding it, it generally doesn't bode well.
If nothing else, though, be clear that your claim as to the nature of a theocracy and citizen recourse as it is "by definition", is just false because of the actual definition, and what definitions actually are.
A religious leader could certainly set up any degree of "liberality" toward the citizen he/she found appropriate (and, indeed, were we discussing specifically Christianity, this is extensively advocated in its defining documents)--precisely as would be the case for a hypothetical atheist ruler. The only difference would be, there is generally an objective reference to refer to in terms of evaluating that leader's actions, as opposed to unbacked, ultimately-unaccountable secular whims. The results of such whims we saw quite clearly last century in the USSR, as having accomplished more genocide and public misery in 20 years, as a formally-atheist nation, formally and explicitly following an atheist agenda, than religion has in all of history.
Does this clarify my stance? If not, I'll need more information as to what exactly you are talking about with "theocracy".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I know wikipedia makes a lousy citation, but you can go from there.
In case you don't understand why this would make sense, and can't be troubled to click the link:
Most oil sales throughout the world are denominated in United States dollars (USD). According to proponents of the petrodollar warfare hypothesis, because most countries rely on oil imports, they are forced to maintain large stockpiles of dollars in order to continue imports. This creates a consistent demand for USDs and puts upward pressure on the USD's value, regardless of economic conditions in the United States. This in turn allegedly allows the US government to gain revenues through seignorage and by issuing bonds at lower interest rates than they otherwise would be able to. As a result the U.S. government can run higher budget deficits at a more sustainable level than can most other countries.
-- Wikipedia
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
That said, dancing naked on the hood of a car—presumably in public—violates even America's public morality standards, and can get you jail time for indecent exposure.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.