Dr. Hayat Sindi is a Saudi Arabian medical scientist and a woman who has earned respect for extraordinary accomplishments in a country that denies women basic liberties. She is not only an award-winning scientist but one of the first female members of the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia. Ranked by Arabian Business as the 19th most influential Arab in the world and the ninth most influential Arab woman, it is not surprising that Harvard University has brought her to the country as a visiting scholar. However, a nasty lawsuit in King County has raised deeply disturbing allegations about Sindi’s efforts against women who she accuses of hacking her emails. According to counsel for one of those women, Sindi worked to have another woman flogged for writing on Facebook that she had had an affair with her husband. On the other side is Samia El-Moslimany, a women’s activist and photographer who lives in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, who is fighting to keep Sindi from forcing the disclosure of the women, who would face medieval Sharia justice in Saudi Arabia.
All of this began when El-Moslimany posted statements on social media in 2012 alleging that Sindi had had an affair with her husband. Sindi responded with a Saudi defamation case and, according to an affidavit submitted by El-Moslimany’s lawyer, she wanted El-Moslimany flogged. The effort backfired. A Saudi judge decided last year that El-Moslimany should spend four days in jail for the public defamation while Sindi should spend two months in jail for forming an illicit relationship with El-Moslimany’s husband. Neither has served their sentences.
Sindi however has continued to try to force disclosure of the names of the women commenting on the Internet under the claim that she was hacked. A King County Superior Court judge decided Friday not to sentence a Burien woman to jail or to levy a $500 fine for each day of withholding the names in light of the danger to these women.
Judge Mariane Spearman denied Sindi’s request to hold El-Moslimany in contempt of court because Sindi’s new lawyer could not specify which Facebook comments might be a basis for investigating any of the women.
The idea of a Harvard academic fighting to have women flogged for alleged defamation is deeply troubling. The fact that Saudi Sharia law allows for medieval justice does not excuse a demand for such justice over the exercise of free speech. Even if such speech was defamatory, it should not be a criminal matter subject to flogging. Whatever the truth of the adultery, it should not be relevant to Harvard or anyone else other than those involved in these families. However, flogging for posting matters on the Internet raises significant issues of due process and free speech.
Should Harvard be involved in such dispute when one of its faculty seeks to have women flogged under Sharia law or this is simply a private matter under the laws of another country?
Happy:
I’m not angry. Frankly, I’m concerned that intelligent people like you sacrifice their reasoning skills for some emotional pablum that religion offers them. As Voltaire famously notes, that’s dangerous. It’s not descecration if the thing wasn’t sacred in the first place. Btw sensitivity like its cousin naïveté is overrated.
Mespo, I think your religion is nutty. Am I allowed to say that? Or would that be disrespectful?
Correction
. . .women happen to get more than their fair share. . .
So, tellingitlikeitis. What do you think should be done? Outlaw Islam in the U.S.? You say you support the practice if peaceful Islam, but somehow you seem to not be very convincing. FYI, I abhore the mysogyny in countries that have adopted Islam as a state religion and have said many times that it’s a curse to be born a woman in such societies. It’s the culture and it’s mixing religion with governing.
Inga:
I love a good cavort. Sometimes in the early, crisp Sping evenings, I don my purple ceremonial cavorting robe and kick up my heels over both brook and dale communing with nature for hours in the moonlight. Most call it crazy; I call it religious — and demanding of respect.
Correction
. . .threats were made, to have family, still living in Afghanistan, killed. . .
Doody:
Well no, but I like to think that any possible paramour did. It’s called defenestration.
Mespo, I can see you cavorting in the forest until dawn,lol.
Po:
“Is the world of Islam limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia?”
I have repeatedly stated that there are moderate Muslims. In fact, many moderate Muslims in America moved here to escape extremism. So, that obviously has answered your question which, for some reason, you keep insisting I have not answered.
I oppose extremism and support moderate Islam. You keep arguing that my position is Islamophobic.
You are wrong. And you can repeat this position ad infinitum. That will not make it correct. You appear to have a very difficult time tolerating criticism of extremist violence done in the name of Islam around the world. This is a curious position, because I had no such compunction when the pedophile priest scandal, Branch Davidians, or Yearning for Zion stories broke. It is anathema to me to try to silence someone for speaking out against terrorism or child abuse.
If Muslims condemned it, and reformed extremism, we wouldn’t have a problem. If they walk the Earth calling every critic Islamophobic, they enable evil to be done in the name of their faith. That is your call. Will you be an instrument of reform from within, or will you be an excuser and an enabler?
Anyone who is remotely interested in the plight of women around the world, in cultures including but not limited to Islam, should watch Honor Diaries. Anyone who claims it is anti-Islam has clearly never watched the film, as several of the activists are devout Muslim women. One of them gave a moving testimony that whenever she has doubts or fears for her safety from the many death threats she receives, she prays to Allah, the source of peace for her. She knows in her heart that she is doing the right thing, pushing for reform.
As I’ve stated before, I’ve followed the plight of women globally before it was cool, in the caste system, Sharia Law, bride burning, etc. People should not look the other way out of fear they will be wrongfully labeled Islamophobic, or some other slander.
I am proud of the clear and firm stance that I’ve taken against extremism and in support of the peaceful practice of Islam.
Inga
Guess what? Why are there millions who are VOLUNTARILY Muslim? I’ll tell you why. Because unlike any and all other religions, Islam’s answer to one of its own CHOOSING to convert to another religion is DEATH. YES, DEATH. In case you somehow believe that I am exaggerating, ask your pal, Po, about this. I’m sure the typical response will be one to evade the question at hand and list some woman in Bangladesh, who managed to crawl out of the poverty and desperation, and earn a position of some authority. The fact is that Islam, unlike other civilized religions, demands the death of anyone choosing to leave. I have firsthand knowledge of this, and I currently help a local family that fled Afghanistan and settled in the US. They started to attend a church and wanted to convert to Christianity. Local Muslims threatened to kill the family if they continued to pursue this path, and threats were made to have family, still living in Afghanistan. The family members had to stop attending church out of fear for their lives and the lives of others in the extended family. Because there are some, just SOME, societies where Muslim woman have some miniscule amount of personal freedom, societies which strictly adhere to Shariah law persecute women and men. Women happen to get than their share.
Paul C. Schulte
po – with ISIS setting up a new caliphate I have a one word response to your weaseling: Janissaries.
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Paul, are you expecting an answer to a question you forgot to ask?
Janissaries, yes, now what?
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/21/135523680/lifting-the-veil-muslim-women-explain-their-choice
Lifting the Veil. American Muslim women unveil and explain why.
Inga:
Let ’em pray for you. I do. I then go parading around the forest floor playing my pan flute and gathering flowers for them. At dawn, I sacrifice a gardenia in their name. I think it helps them, like they think prayer helps me. 🙂
Inga, how fascinatingly difficult it is for some people to think!
They claim A, but B is presented to counter A, but since B doesn’t fit their narrative, they refuse to consider it. Instead, they go to C and claim that your B is because you hate them.
Darren:
“This is not a pugilist’s arena where rights are inherent in the ability to criticize or attack others. We do not live in a world where contention is the basis for society as it is the adversarial system in an American courtroom.”
*************
Well, Darren glad you replied. To your point, that is exactly what this is and that’s the world of every democracy. Ideas compete where people are free to hold and express them. The reason is that firmly held beliefs have consequences as we’ve seen globally and even here on this blog. And rights are held to the extent they can be defended with words, Darren.
If you don’t think we’re in a culture war (both here and abroad) of reason pitted against superstition you’re just not paying attention. Hitch had it right when he asserted religion poisons everything and the first victim is always reasoning skills since most theocratic systems demand the suspension of critical thought to survive. I have no obligation to respect the absurd ideas of another which is not to say (as Mike A so eloquently points out) that the person’s right to stupidity needs be questioned. Be dumb all you want, but don’t expect a modicum of respect for it. Respect doesn’t come so cheaply. There is likewise no obligation to patronize someone by feigning false respect for their inanity. To do so, would be … disrespectful.
I note you haven’t replied to my example. Why must anyone respect the unfounded beliefs of another? I’d love to know why and how you can swallow that bit of tripe.
http://en.qantara.de/content/the-german-islam-scholar-lamya-kaddor-why-i-as-a-muslim-woman-dont-wear-a-headscarf
There are modern Muslim women that live in cultures in which they are not subjugated. These women remain Muslim, yet are ok with modernization.
Completely ignores culture versus religion again. Why are there millions of Muslim women in modern countries that are still voluntarily Muslim, don’t wear a hijab, drive, have careers, even consider themselves feminists?
Karen
For what it’s worth, I commend you for speaking up against the horrors that Islam is currently bestowing upon the world. Everyone cowers in the face of this death cult known as Islam, afraid of being labeled an Islamophobe, while Christians are summarily rounded up and beheaded, school girls are kidnapped, raped and sold to ISIS soldiers, newspaper employees are murdered for daring to draw a cartoon of a madman who preached hate and violence, Christian and Jewish cemeteries are desecrated in France by the proponents of the religion of peace, innocent shoppers are hunted down and killed in Jewish markets. . .the list is endless. Po can list all the women he wants who have, allegedly, achieved some modicum of success in their lives. What he will never list are the thousands, if not millions of women, who live lives of quiet desperation, suffering at the hands of Islam as they endure lives where honor killings are the norm.
Keep speaking the truth, Karen. No need to ever apologize to those who support terror and mayhem.
Bull feces not allowed, only horse feces passes muster.
Happy, there was something going around on Facebook a while back about not judging others because we don’t know what they are going through. It doesn’t take religion to make one have some empathy for another human being. We’ve all had those rough patches. I always told my kids when they felt hopeless that a person’s life can change in a heartbeat , either in a good way or a bad way, but life is never stagnant.