Saudi king orders that women no longer need man’s permission to travel or study
gulf-insider.com
gulf-insider.com
In sharia/islam, women are the legal property (effectively, not "in legal theory") of their "guardian". When they're married (yes I'm using the passive, they don't get to pick when, where & to whom after all) that becomes their husband. They have full legal authority over them.
In fact they have less rights than a dog has in the West: in legal theory, you cannot legally just abandon a dog in the west, but you can just abandon a woman, even if you're her guardian, in Saudi Arabia.
Maybe I misunderstand, but I think you can do that in the West. Or are you just saying there aren't alimony payments?
Saudi Arabia, allies to the west where they cut peoples heads off in public with a sword because they think they're gay. No really. Our allies. If Saudi doesn't make you think there could be a problem with war machine corruption driving invasion in the middle east, what would? Iran is very civilized by comparison, yeah the bozos with the death sentence for a Booker Prize winning author, Rushdie, look good in comparison. McCain still singing "Bomb Iran, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the beach boys? Nobody seems to hold Saudi responsible for originating bin laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers. If any nation state was responsible for that it's saudi, not Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKhX4poO0o
Saudi, our allies. Makes you sick, don't it?
The fact that this can be posted and unchallenged for 2 hours on this website is interesting considering the userbase typically touts themselves as on the right end of the intellectual bell curve.
Muslims immigrants were, at least up until post-9/11 scapegoating, a fairly reliable Republican voting bloc. If there has been a shift since, it was a reaction to (rather than the cause of) the absence (or at least lesser level) of anti-Muslim rhetoric from the Democrats.
But the Left (or Democrats, which aren't the same thing, but it's true either way) have not treated all Muslims as beyond criticism, they've just tended to avoid bigoted, sweeping attacks on Muslims as a group or Islam itself.
I'm inclined to feel that the latter is more problematic on the Republican side because a pro-biz agenda is more directly beneficial to opportunists, but honestly I don't think it's very useful to spend much time discussing which side is more evil. At the very least I don't think Democrats are worse than Republicans when it comes to 'coopting'.
To be clear, I don't identify as strictly left, although I'm probably more left than right if I had to pick. And I'm also not saying that 'the right' doesn't care about the underprivileged; far from it! Rather it seems to be less part of their core agenda (for reasons that I've become somewhat more sympathetic to over the past years).
Unilateral and immediate divorce by males for no reason is legal in Saudi Arabia (talaq) and just forces the husband to provide support for 4 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_system_of_Saudi_Arabia#F...
Being in violation of gender segregation is a punishable offense more harshly punished than rape: http://www.webcitation.org/6JdMstMvl
Until 2015, divorced women had no legal status: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/saudi-arabian-...
You know, I will fight unjustified islamophobic caricature anytime, amywhere, but Saudi Arabia is the epitome of why theocracies suck and is at the root of many things that gives Islam a bad name. Bin Laden, ISIS, salafist imams in Europe, etc...
We overthrew the Talebans (partly) for moral reasons. If we had been serious and honest about these reasons, Saudi Arabia should have been on the "axis of evil" too.
Theres plenty of things to criticise Saudi for. Just like theres plenty of things to criticise America for (institutional racism, foreign policy, drug laws etc) and every other country.
"I will fight unjustified islamophobic caricature anytime".
Evidently you won't because here you are spreading caricatures of islam targeting rape victims.
"We overthrew the Talebans (partly) for moral reasons. If we had been serious and honest about these reasons, Saudi Arabia should have been on the "axis of evil" too." If you were serious about "these reasons" then America would probably be higher on the list than 3rd world Afghanistan.
Come on now.
True, but they did commit adultery when they were raped. Technically, they aren't punished for being raped, but in reality, they are punished for being raped.
Then, based on an unwritten confession, without so much as mentioning what the victim "confessed", the sentence was increased. In defense of this, famously, on live TV, a former Saudi judge and current consultant to the justice ministry called the rape victim a "cheating spouse" to her husband (for being raped ...).
Furthermore it is apparently customary for rape cases to prosecute both the criminal and the victim [1], and the justification for this, as stated by the government is that islam demands it.
Is this supposed to be a defense ?
Since you're accusing human rights watch from inaccurately reporting this ... can you provide a citation for your new fact that there was a second offence ? Or are you perhaps claiming that while the rape was an offence of the rapists, getting raped was a separate offence by the victim ?
I would also like to point out that punishing rape victims is part of islamic rules:
e.g. "if a man comes upon a man, then they are both adulterers," "If a woman comes upon a woman, they are both Adulteresses," "When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes," and "Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to." (Abu Dawud 4462 and al-Tirmidhi 1456)
Google it to find more references than you could ever need to be satisfied. And yes, this is about gay sex, but is widely interpreted to include gay rape. Getting raped by someone of the same sex as you is punishable by death according to sharia. Are you seriously disputing this ?
And just so we're clear. We're talking about this Saudi Arabia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Mecca_girls%27_school_fir...
Where the "religious police" beat up firefighters and sent rescued girls BACK INTO THEIR BURNING DORMATORIES because of the mingling laws ... at least 15 did not survive.
OK, not lying but being deceiving.
They never actually say she was sentenced for being raped if you read it carefully.
Why have they done this?
In order to believe that this is not in fact the case, you suggest that human rights watch is a conspiracy against Saudi Arabia, or perhaps against islam. And we are to believe that, as opposed to the many different sources pointing out that islam assigns second-class status to women, and Saudi Arabia forces that on women, on your word, without so much as a single source.
Can you provide some sources for this ?
https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/11/15/saudi-arabia-rape-victim...
Please read it carefully, they never say she was prosecuted for being raped.
The article is specifically written to fool people.
Unless you can explain why if she was prosecuted for being raped HRW omitted that information?
>A court may view a woman’s charge of rape as an admission of extramarital sexual relations (or “illegal mingling”) unless she can prove, by strict evidentiary standards, that this contact was legal and the intercourse was nonconsensual.
Try to read between the lines. It's a handy tool to have. This article is decietful. The above paragraph is OT to what I was saying. But you'll notice they use words like 'may' and they don't say it was relevant in this case. They are playing games with the truth. And that's something I particularly don't agree with.
Given that Saudi Arabia doesn't even have a criminal code at all, of course they make statements like that. Judges simply enforce (their idea of) islam, rather than any legal code. There is no rulebook like in pretty much every other country on the planet. So judicial randomness is the norm, rather than the exception (and of course, one might even say this is not the fault of the judges, as they don't make the law, this is the fault of the government refusing to govern).
> The woman in your one anecdotal point was charged with a seperate case of adultery during a rape trial that wasn't in conjunction with the rape.
From the article:
"The young woman, who is married, said she had met with a male acquaintance who had promised to give her back an old photograph of herself."
"Moreover, the court in October 2006 also sentenced both the woman and man who had been raped to 90 lashes each for what it termed “illegal mingling.”"
This is not adultery, this is just meeting a person of the other gender without her guardian.
> Furthermore the rapists were charged and punished for rape, an act that is illegal.
It is, indeed, illegal, but they were not charged for that: "Despite the prosecution’s requests for the maximum penalty for the rapists, the Qatif court sentenced four of them to between one and five years in prison and between 80 and 1,000 lashes. They were convicted of kidnapping, apparently because prosecutors could not prove rape. The judges reportedly ignored evidence from a mobile phone video in which the attackers recorded the assault."
The scenario we are talking about is a husband repudiating his wife and abandoning her somewhere. Were she to be assaulted by a male, she would then be in an illegal "gender mingling" situation, often punished more harshly than rape. The only thing that is hyperbole in cup's scenario is that she would not be punished for adultery but just for breach of gender isolation.
Yes, this is anecdotal evidence, but if you want to work on Saudi's system, that is all you have, the system is voluntarily opaque and does not communicate statistics on condemnations. Activists and journalists who may try to gather figures risk their freedom.
Women's life in Saudi Arabia is probably the most totalitarian experience available in 2017, on par with North Korea's experience. https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/16/boxed/women-and-saudi-...
Whatever the woman is charged with, it's not right. If she is a rape victim, she should be left alone at the very least, and protected with the rapist prosecuted for the best. Charge her with any crime is a horrible thing to do.
She claims to be raped. By doing so, she admits that sex occurred outside of marriage, and now she must prove that it was a rape. Sharia requires 4 male witnesses to prove this. Good luck with that.
Unless the rapist was dumb enough to attack while watched by 4 males who would be willing to testify, he can't be convicted. She confessed to the sex though, so she will be convicted.
You must have got your Ijazah in Fiqh and Usool from Sheikh Google.
I take it you're muslim ? Why do muslims always lie about the basic properties of islamic law ? Are you ashamed about it ?
I mean basic statements like "islam demands slavery" (another one of those legal classes of people in islam) are obvious and very simple facts, but the rucus online if anybody mentions it is deafening.
Indonesia is headed to Sharia next. Jakarta's governor just got 2 years in prison for blasphemy: arguing the Quran doesn't instruct muslims to not vote for non-muslims.
Yeah, this'll go well.
So this tells us a couple of things:
1. If this whole oppressing women thing was ever about religion (that is their justification), they are pretty willing to forget religion when they need money.
2. That whole oil thing isn't going so great for them these days.
On a related note, they are also increasing their use on solar. For one such example, see http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Saudi-Arabia-To-Sp...
Your response was that all of "them" (hundreds or millions of people potentially depending on how you define it) are backward. Religion isn't math; it's subjective. Not a subscriber myself but I welcome the reinterpretation.
Oil / The economy isn't going so great. 1) It is certainly generating income and power. 2) The most wealthy and powerful beneficiary announced he's trying to distribute the money using that power and transform it in a positive way
No I'm sorry. It is objectively delusional.
That said: we have science now for the first bit, which is much more effective at that job minus the simplicity. What do we have to replace the second part?
I should probably expand on that somewhat tongue in cheek answer. It's a pretty cynical response, but there's truth in it. Following and/or playing sports provides people with a tribe and a set of shared values and camaraderie. Much like religion, I've never felt the need for this, but there's certainly a very large set of people who do.
No it's not. At least it's not in the case of Abraham religions. Each of these religions have texts that claim to come from God. And the content of these texts are about as open to interpretation as the sentences I'm typing now . . . which is not very. They're relatively clear and not all that open to interpretation.
So apparently there are 3 countries below SA. To find out what these odd places are I went to http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/ran.... And apparently these 3 countries are Syria, Pakistan and Yemen! How is that even possible? Didn't Pakistan had a female prime minister? And I believe there were no rigorous restrictions on clothings or driving or working for women in any of these countries.
> This is the norm.
China, India, Africa, the Middle East, parts of America and Europe - That is the norm or analagous to it.
This is not normal. It's pure crazy town.
I was very critical of this initially, but if it results in pro-women changes, then that's good.
https://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=d8vQiW5woz_iD_MaFaFAQ...
Note: I am not evaluating thousands of sourced references per day like Wikipedia - nor do I have a partisan political agenda. In this case, I evaluated the source content and it seemed fairly apolitical. Very likely, both of my linked sources used an AP or Reuters articles as their primary source.