Saudi Arabia Pushes For Tougher Sentencing For Homosexuality and a Crackdown On “Sins and Obscenities” on Social Media

The Saudi Arabian government is again reaffirming the extremist Islamic system under Sharia law this month in pushing not just for more severe punishment for homosexuals but more prosecutions of people who are viewed as espousing or encouraging homosexual views on social media. One such major victory for the Saudi religious police came this week with the arrest of a Saudi doctor for raising a rainbow flag outside his home in Jeddah. After his arrest, the doctor insisted that he had no idea that the rainbow was a symbol for gay rights. Yet those champions of Islamic purity in the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice still charged him.

The Kingdom has ramped up prosecution in the last six months with 35 cases of homosexuality and 50 cases of cross-dressers as well as prosecutions for “sexual perversion” in Saudi Arabia. While Saudi princes are notorious for drug-laden debaucheries in their mansions in the West, the Kingdom continues to flog and execute those deemed insufficiently moral under Sharia law inside the country.

The Saudi judiciary has pledged to combat a perceived rise in “perverts” displaying “sins and obscenities” on social media in the Sunni Kingdom.

First offenders in anti-homosexual prosecutions have generally faced floggings as well as jail time and fines. A second conviction automatically warrants execution.

There are calls for greater numbers of executions as we have seen in Iran.