In Australia, there is an interesting case involving Sharia. Increasingly, Muslims in Western nations are turning to Sharia justice as opposed to conventional courts to address family and personal problems. In the case of Muslim convert Christian Martinez, he sought punishment and forgiveness from his Muslim religious mentor, Wassam Faayad, for drinking and taking drugs. Faayad and his associates proceeded to give him some old-fashioned Sharia justice with an electrical cord. Then Martinez changed his mind but the beating continued. Now four Muslim men are convicted of assault in a Sharia version of “no, means no.”
The four men broke into Martinez’s house to whip him 40 times with an electrical cord in compliance with Islamic law. Martinez had consented to the punishment with three men holding him down while Faayad flogged him. In the midst of the flogging, Martinez cried out for them to stop but they continued.
The judge ruled that Martinez had withdrawn his consent. The judge added that he doubted he had given informed consent to begin with.
That raises the question of whether the beating would be lawful if he had properly consented. Clearly people can consent to be beaten by a dominatrix for pleasure and can engage in sports involving physical harm like boxing and football. However, this is a flogging with an electrical cord that could cause serious injury to the individual. In torts, a party cannot consent to an act that is unlawful or criminal.
All four men have been found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company.
Source: ABC
Disgusting! It amazes me that religion can convince people that it is good o seriously hurt someone else in the ame of God!
“Clearly people can…engage in sports involving physical harm like boxing and football. However, this is a flogging with an electrical cord that could cause serious injury to the individual. In torts, a party cannot consent to an act that is unlawful or criminal.”
Boxing can kill you. It is the only sport where the stated aim is to bring the opponent closer to death (by causing unconsciousness). So I don’t see the qualitative distinction.
Withdrawal of consent seems to me the crux of this issue.
Wait…. Did…. They have electrical cords when sharia law was enacted…. Sometime moving into the 20th century ….requires adaptation….
Well, yes, but Christendom, that self rightious force that held Europe in its grip for close to two thousand years was no better! I only got the tail end of it this lifetime with three beatings each term by Brother Rainer at my prep school for heinous crimes like stuttering, instead of reciting poetry perfectly! And the balance of Christian versus Muslim shows more murdered Moslims than Christians! Still, we quit and SO SHOULD THEY! It pisses me off when the US government creates Muslim terrorism around the world; its definitely planned that way! But both sides should be brought to a kinder, gentler justice, although real treason, like Obama & the White House where inocent children & adults are killed & maimed while the right of all are systematically destroyed, should get a swift execution!. (still kinder & gentler than the deserved punishment to fit the crime)
Martinez had consented to the punishment with three men holding him down while Faayad flogged him. In the midst of the flogging, Martinez cried out for them to stop but they continued.
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Well, Your Honor, it seemed like a good idea at the time …
An early form of hazing it would seem.
The first strike with the cord was a criminal act, whether consensual or not. Australia is not a theocracy, so religious laws don’t apply, even among those who want them.
Also of interest is the hypocrisy on gender. “No means no” is being applied here, when a man is the victim and still alive, but not as strenuously when women are murdered in “honour killings”.
“Well, yes, but Christendom, that self rightious force that held Europe in its grip for close to two thousand years was no better!”
Travellinglimey,
I’ve read a lot of your comments here since you’ve been making them. I agree with some and disagree with others, but can appreciate your passion. However, this particular sentence above bothers me and I’ll explain. What you are doing is setting up a false equivalency, that in effect excuses the original heinous act. This is a tactic used here by many conservatives. Its’ essence is the rather simplistic: “Well they do it too”.
“And the balance of Christian versus Muslim shows more murdered Moslims than Christians!”
Historically a nonsensical statement and being from neither religion I don’t have a dog in the fight. I don’t know where you would get a historic body count. It is often ignored that it was Islam that spread the faith “by the sword” only to be stopped by Charles Martel in France at the “Battle of Tours” in 732.
Now I certainly hold no brief for the bloody history of Christianity, but the historical fact is that ALL organized religions that intertwine with State power have bloody history. There are so many examples today that the only rational way to view what’s happening is on a case by case basis.
What is significant about this particular case is that the Australia Court has ruled in this case that Australian Law trumps “religious law”.
. . . and then there were those oh-so-holy Salem witch drownings.Sometimes I wonder what ‘justice’ really cuts it.
Yes, the Australian authorities are doing the right thing. We don’t have a big problem with Christian extremism today, but the stat on past violence is actually correct. Yes, converting by the sword was indeed a Muslm tactic, so you can say they started it. Body counts are probably more reliable than anything else in history. I’m more libertarian than Republican, so my views may sometimes coincide with conservatives or liberals. The party thing is a smokescreen while the evil Illuminati steal the country they never meant you to have.
Reblogged this on Free Commentary.
Dredd, RE: hazing, this is likely the most rational explanation for this sort of behavior, young men who think “growing up” means inflicting harm on others. It’s tough to move past the immaturity of it all, and I am not sure anything of substance exists beyond that, mostly because of the required magic-thinking.
To think that those who are religious fundamentalist types are always lecturing everyone who doesn’t believe in a god how morally superior they are to them. No, they just follow the dictates of a god made up by uneducated and superstitious goatherders.
@travelinglimey “Still, we quit and SO SHOULD THEY!”
Corporal punishment is still allowed, and practiced, in a large number of states in the US: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934191.html
But, you know, those are kids so it’s OK to hit them. That’s not assault, it’s discipline.
Looks like his conversion to islam is really working out for him.
Some members of Opus Dei still flog themselves to repent for their supposed sins. I wonder if they ever tell themselves to stop. Or for that matter, why doesn’t their God tell them to stop?
Elsie. It’s been going on since King Arthur’s time.
Electrical cords would seem to be an innovation-which in Islam is not a good thing generally according to those who would resort to whipping, in any case. Also, in Islam, confessing ones sins is discouraged. Unless you are caught out, you need to make your repentance privately. There are hadeeth that emphasize this. I’m kind of confused about the whole thing-Islamically. It seems kind of out of the bounds in more than one way.
This case has been ongoing for a while and it was pretty obvious what the result was going to be.
What is interesting is that there is agitation in Australia (as there is in various other western countries) for Sharia law to be recognised formally in the Federal and State legal systems. Indeed one of the prominent spokepersons running with this agenda in Australia is a senior staffer in the federal attorney general’s department which must be a worry in itself for the Australian public. I have heard this guy speak in one half hour radio interview last year and one of his outrageous claims was that there was no real conflict between Australian law (essentially a British based system) and Sharia. Like this example I suppose. There are of course major conflicts.
The current Federal Government has made it abundantly clear that the legal system will not be changed to accommodate Sharia but the agitation continues I am told. No surprises there as these people have an agenda and they do not give up.
Muslims move to basically Christian based western countries and then aggressively insist that the legal systems must be changed to accommodate their 12th/13th century Sharia principles and practices.
I have not researched the details but I understand that the Britain has made some legal concessions to Sharia which was done during the destructive regime of the previous Labor Government. So much for the “progressives”.
You must go back to India! You must go back!
Mel Jo, I don’t think so. If they are beating the kids in the States its breaking the law. We all know thats true in public school. I’d need some provable specifics to believe that is not so in private schools. Now I did grow up in British Uganda, prep school in British Tanganyika, high school in southern England. I got wacked a lot more in Tanganyika with the Rosminian monks, versus the Benedictine monks (of ‘spare the rod & spoil the child’ infamy) in the UK. Ironically I only got wacked once a term in Benedictine ‘care’. Two decades later they had decided to close the school because the dicipline master, R H Palmer, could not keep his beating hands off the kids & it was illegal to do that by then. They kept the monastry & turned the brick & sandstone school (early 20th century but Renaisance style) into upscale condo’s. Personally, I think its one advance we made in the 20th century. We still have genocide popping up around the globe, but most western countries don’t beat the children like they used to. It did me no good. I did not learn poetry better; quite the opposite on memory. No improvement there until I got to try Dianetics. I did get a stutter I got rid of later, easily traced to the poetry beatings in the wilds of Tanganyika.
Why does Beldar want to send someone to India?! I didn’t see he was from there & deportation would have to be repeated violations by a non citizen. If Beldar is a Conehead, perhaps he wants a free trip to Andromeda!