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."

Comments

Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[h4rr4r]

I get that they have oil, but come on already. This sort of crap should simply not be tolerated by the west. We should not sell them arms or have diplomatic relations with these kinds of states. 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?

Re:Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[gstoddart]

What else do they need to do before we decide to stop tolerating their shit?

Stop having all of that lovely oil?

When your former presidents are business partners with them, that tells you a little about why nobody is really pushing them on this.

Follow the money.

Re:Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[gandhi_2]

So in the two times we invaded Iraq, how many of them resulted in us taking oil?
How much money in natural resources has the US made in Afghanistan?
What riches did we try for in Haiti or Somalia?

Re:Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[Aaden42]

For the part of the US that matters (and can afford to buy politicians)? Sure! Haliburton et al. made quite the tidy profit from the whole affair.

Re:Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[Jason Levine]

We might have a ways to go before women and men are on equal footing in America, but we're light-years ahead of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, a woman can't drive a car. She can't vote. She can't even go outside without a male relative tagging along to "supervise" her. This last one strikes me as closer to how you'd treat a pet (sans leash) or a child than an adult human being. In America, a woman might not get the same salary a man does - and that should definitely be fixed - but she can drive to work without any male relative after voting in any election she wants to and nobody thinks that's out of the ordinary.

As far as abuse goes, yes women get abused by private individuals but the justice system for the most part punishes those people. No, it's not perfect and abusers sometimes go unpunished, but a woman reporting abuse in Saudi Arabia would likely get punished for being a "troublesome female" instead of the abuser being punished.

Re:Why do we bother with the barbarians?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD.

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

US justice

[Hatta]

10 years for growing the wrong plant.

Re:US justice

[Hatta]

No, the real issue is moralizers enforcing their twisted sense morality with violence. That's the only reason dancing naked is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and the only reason Cannabis is prohibited in the US. The two laws are exactly analogous.

Re:US justice

[Hatta]

I mean, the plant is illegal, dude

So is dancing naked in Saudi Arabia. We have no place sitting here clucking our tongues about how oppressive Saudi Arabia is when we have equally ridiculous laws.

Compare this to the sentence for killing a girl...

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years and 2000 lashes for dancing naked on film...
8 years and 600 lashes for torturing and killing one's own daughter...

It could have been a lot worse

[themushroom]

It could have been a woman with her face uncovered. Or a woman, period, driving the car naked. The sentence would be death by stoning and/or beheading.

Re:Coming soon to your country.

[X0563511]

There's a small difference between random citizens breaking the law in doing that, and the system of justice doing it itself. You should shut your own mouth.

Re:Being a Saudi

[smooth wombat]

Extremism is extremism, no matter how large or small.

Human rights.

[Delusion_]

Human rights are not judged according to cultural relativism. Sharia law is a violation of human rights, regardless of the religion of the victim.

Re:Human rights.

[Delusion_]

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.

Re:Coming soon to your country.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's entirely fair. The only difference between these two groups is the book they've chosen. It took a lot of work and loss of life to chill the Christians down to a point where they are almost tolerable, but they have everything they need to become (again) what the Muslims are today.

Re:Being a Saudi

[tacroy]

Really? Because I remember a story where a women caught in the act of adultery was brought to Jesus and He basically said "Don't judge her, you have no right. Then asked her to stop doing it." Very little murder was involved. Reference: http://biblehub.com/nlt/john/8.htm

Don't forget Ananias

[Anonymous Coward]

Book: Acts. Chapter 5. Ananias converted to Christianity and was told to sell all his posessions and give all the money to the commune. Instead, he gave only half the money, and kept the other half.

A priest asked him about this, and he lied and said "I gave all the money." In punishment, God instantly killed him then and there. The same thing happened to his wife shortly thereafter.

What happened to all the forgiveness and compassion?

This is a major problem with the Bible: it presents a very inconsistent image of God. Sometimes he is over-the-top forgiving, and other times he is over-the-top brutal in punishment. There is a distinct lack of consistency, leaving his followers to wonder when their best efforts at pleasing Him will just make Him go irate again.

"Mysterious ways" does not capture it. "Sociopathic ways" is more accurate. I really, really hope the Bible is not accurate in its description of God.

Re:Don't forget Ananias

[rgbatduke]

Well, or else Peter and his cronies knew he was holding back, so they grabbed him and tortured him until he coughed up the dough and then killed him, then later his wife came in so they killed her too, and then they carried the bodies out and piously said "Look what GOD does to people that hold out on us when they join up". That actually explains all of the supposed facts (assuming that "Luke" got them right in the first place) and hey, it doesn't require anything supernatural!

To put it another way, if you pulled that stunt today: Two people walk into a house where you and some burly young associates are sitting, and a short while later you carry out two dead bodies and explain to the crowd how all of the money that was in their pockets (a substantial sum, since they supposedly sold everything) is really your money -- I mean "God's" money, but you just happen to be his treasurer -- and God struck the two people down because they changed their mind about giving it all over, do you really think that any jury in the world would buy the "God did it" defense? Of course not. Because, in fact, we've never seen anybody ever get struck down by God, not even when they did things like fill entire warehouse sized buildings with men, women, children and bars of fake soap and then filled the buildings with cyanide and burned the bodies, or kidnapped, raped, killed, and ate children, or enslaved entire populations. In fact, we have really good evidence that you can commit any sin you want and while humans may not like it, not one single thing will happen to you because of God not liking it.

That's the reason Christians invented the whole "heaven/hell" thing. Since there is very, very visibly no such thing as cosmic justice in our real lives in the real world, they needed an entire infinite posthumous existence where one could be rewarded or punished to be able to argue that a just God exists at all.

If God truly disliked hypocrites, would one single member of congress be out there not yet struck dead, or blinded, or maimed, or enslaved or raped or tortured (because God loves slavery -- it says so right there in the Bible, just like God approves of marriage by rape plus 50 shekels)? I don't think so. If God punished religious liars, would all of the members of the Catholic priesthood who raped small boys and went on to live their entire lives receiving the communion -- often enough from the very hands of those that were aware of their crimes -- and doing other religious stuff not have had their equipment blasted off by a lightning bolt the first time they reached for an innocent? How is it that so many Christians simultaneously oppose abortion and favor the death penalty and support the idea of a just war without being swallowed up by a pit? I don't think you can assert that God opposes hypocrisy at all. God, after all, is a hypocrite, ten times over, according to the many, many contradictions in the infallible bible.

rgb

Stop Dismissing this with False Equivalencies

[FreeUser]

Oh for fucks sake please stop engaging in such false equivalencies. I know you appended the smiley in an effort to make a joke of this, and this isn't aimed at you personally. Far too many people really think it isn't that bad, and we shouldn't say anything because we're not perfect either, and your post (meant in jest or not) feeds into that notion.

The United States may have put an inexperienced African-American in office ahead of a vastly more qualified female, but our gender (and other issues) are miniscule compared to how women are treated in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other places.

* Women are routinely murdered for stepping out of line, in despicable, dishonorable acts referred to by their perpetrators as "honor killings."
* Women who offend the sensibilities of the men of their family are often locked up for life in a room with no light, no sound, and no outside contact beyond a tray of food being shoved under a door, a practice that makes solitary confinement in the US and other western states look like a picnic in comparison. The result is almost universal madness on the part of the victim, usually within a relatively short time. This practice is so common and entrenched that there is a term for this facility, the "woman's room" (not to be confused with a restroom or loo)
* victims of rape are routinely charged and convicted of fornication, adultery, etc. for having the audacity of being a victim, and imprisoned or worse (see above). Worse, they are convicted merely on the word of a few men, while female testimony is dismissed (by law) and not considered as a counterweight. In many places, they are stoned to death.
* Even women who manage to escape all of this and are considered "upstanding" by the psychotic standards of the culture can, at best, expect to be buried in the desert with no record of their passing (no marker, no death record, nothing). This after a life in servitude and bondage.
* Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to leave the house without the company of a man, even if the man is a boy-child.
* Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive, on pain of severe punushment.

and the list goes on. Women drowned in front of their entire families in the family swimming pool. Women disfigured by acid for refusing the advances of a suiter, and so on and so on, ad nauseum.

People should read the book "Princess" by Jean Sasson, about the nightmare of being a Saudi Princess, arguably the most privileged and sheltered position a woman can occupy in that society. There are also several excellent, Iranian-made movies that depict, describe, and criticize the epidemic of female-stonings in that society, often with little or no evidence beyond the word of a husband keen to ditch his wife for a prettier woman, e.g. The Stoning of Soraya M.

It's appalling, and we in the west have betrayed everything we purport to stand for, year after year and decade after decade, by cozying up to such regimes and abusive societies.

Re:Coming soon to your country.

[ebno-10db]

destroying this wealth and peace

Describing 20th century Europe as peaceful is, um well, peculiar.

Re:Being a Saudi

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "extreme Atheism."

Level of belief has a floor - and that is zero.

What you refer to is leader worship and/or state worship. Usually some sort of Fascism though often with the label Socialism. These can indeed be as ugly as any religion, but they are very much like religion. Such totalitarian states have claimed Atheism simply as a way to shut down competing religions. i.e., worship Stalin/Mao/etc., not God.

Re:Being a Saudi

[macraig]

What you describe is sociopathy, not "extreme atheism". It is not the case that Russia or China were disproportionately populated by atheists. Sociopaths don't all share the same existentialist beliefs any more than neurotypicals do, but what they do share is a lack of ethics. Atheists do not share lesser ethics than theists.

Re:I agree with the punishment

[mrops]

That is what Saudi Arab is, another dude 8 years for raping, torturing and killing his own 5 year old daughter.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/saudi-cleric-years-prison-killing-child-20506973

Oblig. Holy Grail reference

[Reformed Lurker]

      GOD: Arthur! Arthur, King of the Britons! Oh, don't grovel! If
            there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
    ARTHUR: Sorry--
    GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's
            "sorry this" and "forgive me that" and "I'm not worthy". What are you
            doing now!?
    ARTHUR: I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord.
    GOD: Well, don't. It's like those miserable Psalms-- they're so
            depressing. Now knock it off!