Academia, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Religion, Society

Did Harvard’s New Saudi Scholar Try To Have Women Flogged For Revealing Her Affair?

Drhayatsindi220px-Harvard_Wreath_Logo_1.svgDr. 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?

563 thoughts on “Did Harvard’s New Saudi Scholar Try To Have Women Flogged For Revealing Her Affair?”

  2. happy

    I have no connection to or association with the Rev. John Hagee; again, he was used as an E X A M P L E. Do not suppose to know or what I am; trust me, I have no interest in finding out who you are. The voices may tell you who I am, but it doesn’t make it so.

  3. happy

    You have no idea, whatsoever, who I am. Further, I’m not quite sure that you even know who you are.

    Please leave me out of your psychotic episodes.

    1. happy

      You have no idea, whatsoever, who I am. Further, I’m not quite sure that you even know who you are.

      I know what the Holy Spirit gave me to work with which is more than the hate that speweth forth from your pie hole;

      Please leave me out of your psychotic episodes.
      And You think I don’t know who you are.. Trying to control the blog. Spewing about Moral Relativism. Good Lord. What are you swilling?

      I don’t care if you are associated with Hagee or not. You keeps saying he is not murderous like Muslims and he is too. He is worse. I proved it and I am sure you didn’t even read it as you are a know it all.

  7. Paul

    I second the motion. Honestly, I don’t care which organization, if any, he is posing as a front for on this cite. There is a tendency to paint, with moral relativism, all religions and all belief systems. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, starting with the words of our President. . .the Apologist in Chief. . .speaking the other day at a prayer breakfast. We are not supposed to be outraged by what is happening globally with Islamic terror. . .why, we folks should be ashamed of ourselves because of the Crusades. . .same kind of mindset found here. . .deflect, deflect, deflect. . .and hope that nobody catches you. I’ve never been ashamed of one of our Presidents. . .I’m ashamed of him, and I’m ashamed of his pompous, indifferent attitude. Everyone is so frightened to categorize what they witness on the news and read in the daily papers. Silence will be our downfall.

  8. happypappies

    Again, this isn’t about following the Rev. John Hagee; my only reference to him, if you were reading closely, was to state that despite being a fundamentalist, which is his right and privilege, he does not preach the murder and/or destruction of people who do not adhere to his branch of Christian theology. Inga said repeatedly that she was against fundamentalists. My use of Haggee was to aid in portraying an example of a fundamentalist who does not pose a threat to other faiths. He has the right to be a fundamentalist. . .he has the right to be an atheist. . .he has a right to howl at the moon. What he does not have the right to do is to call for the death and murder of nonbelievers, something preached from the pulpits in mosques the world over. You like to google things; google hate speeches preached in mosques. See what you come up with. My whole point was to show that religious fundamentalism does not always put the lives of others in danger. Islamic fundamentalism does.

    1. The New Christian Zionism and the Jews
      A Love/Hate Relationship
      By Rachel Tabachnick

      ShareThis | Printer Friendly

      Rachel Tabachnick is an independent researcher and contributor to Talk2Action.org, the group blog about the Christian Right. She frequently presents workshops and talks about Christian Zionism.

      In late October, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel spoke at a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) event hosted by the controversial Christian Zionist John Hagee at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Internationally broadcast on GodTV, Hagee presented $9 million in donations to 29 Israeli and U.S. Jewish organizations.[1] Hagee is one of the world’s most successful televangelists and a prolific author who prophesizes that apocalyptic wars and the migration of Jews to the holy land will help trigger the return of Jesus and his thousand-year reign on earth.

      J Street ’s leaders are not the first in the Jewish community to resist the embrace of Christian Zionism. Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism has stated that an alliance with Christian Zionists must be rejected for the sake of Israel.[3] Still, there has been little education in the Jewish community on the precise nature of these dangers. Indeed, some Jews may avoid publicly criticizing Christian Zionists out of concern that it would damage interfaith relations – though Christians show no hesitation in criticizing Hagee. Others, including a few questioned at the J Street conference, say Christian Zionist beliefs are of absolutely no interest to them.

      Yet it is their beliefs about the end times which drive their activism. The traditional fundamentalist leaders of the movement preach that Jews returning to the Holy Land are a necessary part of the end times in which born-again Christians will escape death as they are raptured into heaven. Jews and other nonbelievers will remain on earth to suffer under the seven-year reign of the anti-Christ. Then, as the story goes, Jesus will come back with his armies, be accepted by the surviving Jews, and reign for a thousand years. This belief motivates adherents to send funds for West Bank settlements, to lobby for preemptive wars seen as precursors to the end times, and support Jews in the diaspora to make “aliyah” and move to Israel.

      http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v24n4/jews-new-christian-zionism.html

  9. If that question was addressed to me, and I don’t know if it was, the answer is no, I am not DavidM, whoever that is.

    1. Inga

      Have you ever seen this before? With Max Blumenthal? And there is no way David would follow Hagee. It is not his style

  11. Inga

    Another example of your distorted view. While I may admire the Rev. John Hagee, I am, by no means, a religious person. Your jump to that conclusion is not rational. I merely used the Rev. John Hagee as an example of a fundamentalist preacher who poses no threat to anyone. He doesn’t call for the death of nonbelievers and he does not condone violence. His name was used to show that one may be a fundamentalist, but that title isn’t inherently evil. You stated that you are against fundamentalists, which makes no sense. Someone like him wishes you no harm and poses no threat to you or to Po. Muslims, on the other hand, especially fundamentalists, pose a grave danger to us all. Even secular Muslims, who you would consider lovely and innocuous, are often targeted for radicalization and commit atrocities in the name of Islam. Islam is the foundation for the radicalization, which turns otherwise normal human beings into suicide bombers.

    Call me what you wish; you say nutty, others say spot on.

  13. Po

    You are the last person on the planet that anyone should turn to for answers. Ask you a question? You don’t fool me. You can admonish me as much as you like, but you are not the scholar your distorted mind envisions. I would put my advanced degrees up against yours any day. . .any day. . .one seeking answers should never turn to you, especially not on the topic of religion or Islam’s toxic influence on the world. . .keep deflecting and continue to support a flawed and dangerous ideology. . .the world is now witnessing your comrades, in the religion of peace, in action. Every society, throughout the world, is scrambling to come up with a way to rid its communities of the influx of Muslims and the horrors they bring. Don’t blame the messenger.

  17. I back no organized religion. I am tolerant of those who choose to worship anywhere, to any being of thing. I admit to being intolerant of fundamentalists who give religion a bad name.

  18. Po

    As I said before, Po, I am not one of the useful idiots you so desperately seek. I’ve already forgotten more about Islam than you will ever know. Keep practicing taquiyya, by spreading falsehoods about Islam to nonbelievers, in the attempt to advance the death cult known as Islam. You twist the words of the Koran, yet anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the text can spot your failed attempts at deceit and subversion. The world is finally, finally, awakening to the dangers that Islam poses to the entire planet. Call me what you wish. . .names do not faze me. All who sing your praises do so from the comfort of their homes, without an actual grasp as to what it would be like to live and survive in one of Islam’s paradises on earth. Oh yeah, that’s right. . .they don’t exist. Shocker.

  19. Blood red moons, that is, ooooooooooo so scary, be afraid, the end is nigh. Hey don’t those ISIS guys buy into the same end times nonsense?

  20. Prairie
    Most Muslims barely tolerate the Saudi government. Most majority muslim countries do not practice wahabism, the Saudi form of Islam.
    Anyone who has been reading me a while knows I am always speaking out against the abuses of the Saudis.
    In my book, the Saudi government is one of worst enemies of Islam, starting with the destruction of the historical and geological legacy of the early Muslims.

    By the way, Telling, Jews call Hagee an extremist, Muslims call him an extremist, and so do Atheists too…
    Knowing that you follow him goes a long way towards explaining your extremism.

    “Jewish Leader Calls Hagee ‘Extremist’
    NEW YORK (AP) – The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism said Wednesday that synagogues in the movement shouldn’t work with the Rev. John Hagee, a Christian Zionist, calling him an “extremist” on Israeli policy who disparages other faiths.
    Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said Hagee and his group, Christians United For Israel, reject any Israeli land concessions to achieve peace with the Palestinians.
    Reform Judaism supports creating a Palestinian state; Hagee sees a biblical mandate for the territory so End Times prophecy can be fulfilled. …”

    1. Po,

      In one of the links mentioned, that is the first, it has the following quote:

      “Apostasy laws – like the blasphemy laws – have been borrowed from older scriptures. They have no basis in the Koran”

      Is there an equivalent in the Koran to the Apocrypha of the Bible? If so is it this Apocrypha that is being used to justify to unsavory actions by the extremists or those who instigate what is considered by the mainstream to be outside true Islamic teachings?

    2. po – you are drawing on a leftist Reform Jewish group for your support? Well, I guess everything is on the table now.

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