Saudi Arabia has added yet another infamous case of religious intolerance and hatred after a Lebanese man was given 300 lashes with a whip and sentenced to six years. His crime? Simply helping a Saudi woman who wanted to convert to Christianity. While Saudi Arabia continues to object to any slight of Islam in Western Countries, the Kingdom continues to deny the human right of people to choose their faith — and impose medieval punishments for those who try to exercise their faith under the Sharia system. The woman fled the Kingdom in the hope of being able to worship the God of her choice.
The court in the Eastern Saudi city of Khobar also sentenced a Saudi man to two years in prison and 200 lashes for helping the young woman named Maryam to escape to Sweden to secure asylum.
Maryam has stated that Saudi Arabia worked to instill her and other children with an intense hatred for Judaism and Christianity. The men worked with Maryam in an insurance company. Notably, they were arrested after Maryam’s family went to police to demand punishment of her friends. The lawyer for Maryam’s family, Hmood al-Khalidi, “expressed satisfaction with the severe punishments.” It is hard to call such a person a “lawyer” when he demands Sharia punishment for people who merely help an individual seek freedom.
Of course this record of repression of religious faith did not stop the Obama Administration in working with Saudi Arabia to create an international blasphemy standard to allow for the punishment of those who insult Islam.
Source: Yahoo
It is Pirate Territory. Fly over if you must, but flush.
Nick, I’ve used that variation on Robert Towne’s Chinatown line before and in the same context, in my April 5 post below.
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/04/05/after-forced-to-marry-60-year-old-man-at-age-12-pakistani-girl-escapes-beatings-only-to-be-attacked-with-axe-by-her-own-brother/
Of course, you’re welcome to use it. The original is one of the greatest lines in the movies IMO.
East of Corfu one converts to Christianity with a pressure cooker.
Gene H:
You’re right of course. We have some truly accomplished people here and their postings are unique in the blogosphere for their wit, relevance, depth of knowledge, and humanity.
Don’t worry, Noam Chomsky, Desmond Tutu, Stephen Hawking and the Amnesty International Leftists are going to take a stand for human rights and boycott the Saudis. They are brave, courageous defenders of freedom, human liberty, and the dignity of mankind. (If you happen to live in the Bizarro World, that is.)
You should be very thankful that the world has space for ‘Stupid people’ like you.
mespo,
What you say about the forum is true. It is just the nature of a place populated by in large by skeptical critical thinkers. Reason, logic and evidence are paramount. It’s part of what makes the place unique on the web.
Gene H, agree 100%
When the money starts to get tight with diminishing oil flow, the masses will start to revolt, the leaders will flee to safe havens where they and their offspring can attempt to live off the billions $ they are hiding in offshore banks.
I propose we start whipping the Saudi & the Iranian Clerics, first….. Just to demonstrate to them the viciousness of their punshments…. Say 100 lashes each, to start. Line up you worms…………
nick:
It’s a sane world where you have to earn your respect before it is voluntarily given. Someone else making similar comments might be criticized, but the point is you have to earn your stripes and we have to understand your motives before we can decide. That some here think I’ve earned mine is gratifying but I don’t decry the process. I took my lumps too but stuck with it.
mespo, I again ask that you put yourself in the place of some newcomer making the same reasoned comment. I believe our ranks would be greater, and more diverse, if we treated all w/ the respect afforded by people like yourself. As I said in the pressure cooker thread, you have earned your respect. You have had it from me for a longtime, and I can read people quickly. And I agree w/ the dripping irony.
I wonder what she did for him…..
It would be a Blessing for the Planet….. if Saudi Arabia were turned into a Nuclear Wasteland… Just make sure the winds are blowing away from Israel first!
I like the irony of the juxtaposition between this story and the passenger with the airborne pressure cooker. I’m not sure you can separate the issues of reactionary savagery with the pressure cooker. While nurture may not always triumph over nature don’t we have the right to be suspicious of the denizens of a country that so easily and without objection tolerate barbarism like this? It may be impolitic to say, but our first duty is to ourselves and protecting our borders from these forces involves tough choices in the tension between safety and respect for civil rights. I say we err on the safe side — our own safety.
What Gene said. They do give pigs a bad name.
“Forget it Jake, it’s The Kingdom.”
this would kill him
There needs to be a new online volume, Insaneapedia, for stories like this.
Thank You Gene H…….. This is what I’ve been saying for years… Yet everyone on this blog says, I’m always advocating violence. THESE People understand nothing but Violence!!!! Let’s make them & us happy at the same time!
Riyadh should by all measure of justice be either occupied or a radioactive sheet of glass for Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11. The end of that nation and it’s theocratic aspirations of regional and global “supremacy” cannot come soon enough. They are an anathema to liberty and democracy. If they didn’t have oil wealth? In the words of the character Brian Woodsman in Syriana, “Twenty years ago you had the highest Gross National Product in the world, now you’re tied with Albania. Your second largest export is secondhand goods, closely followed by dates which you’re losing five cents a pound on… You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other’s heads off and that’s where you’ll be in another hundred years”. They are, however, a perpetual danger to both regional and global stability until such a time the money goes away.
I’d call them pigs, but that would be giving a bad name to porcine life.