Somebody call Amnesty International.

Islam is the Religon of Peace.

for all the trolls on the rape thread.

Sharia "law" is reprehensible.

But those guys are your heroes. Take the bad with the good, I guess.

This is barbaric!

Can she get out of there and claim refugee status someplace else?

...it's Saudi Arabia. Far more of an outrage to human dignity than Saddam's Iraq ever was. Remember those school girls who were burned to death because the religious police wouldn't let them out of a burning building without veils? It's not an urban legend - it really happened.

Oh, and yes, there's the little fact that Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis and that Al Qaeda gets most of its funding from rich Saudis.

But then Saudi Arabia is one of our closest friends and allies. Just ask George Bush.

1) It is not Sharia law per se that does not allow a woman to be in a car with a male non-relative (the Koran & Hadith do not actually mention cars any more than the Bible or Torah do). Otherwise taxis would be unknown throughout the Muslim world, which let me assure you is not the case. It is the Saudi Wahabi/Tribal interpretation of Sharia that says this. Don't blame Sharia, blame Wahabism, and even more, Saudi's bizarre feudal/theocratic/tribal government. Sharia stands to day to day law like the Bill of Rights stands to day to day US court operations: think of Saudi as a country that has been taken over by Montana Militia/Aryan Nations types. And remember this is the only country in the world named after a family, a polygamist tribal one at that.

2) The real determining factor is not so much that she is female, as that she is a member of Saudi's oppressed & feared Shi'ite minority. If she had been say one of the approximately 15,000 princesses related to the al'Saud family (corrupt whiskey-swilling debauched whoring free-spenders that they are), you can bet there would be no question of lashes, and the boys that did it would be in Riyadh's public square getting their heads cut off, PDQ.

3) Arab generally, and Saudi particularly, judicial processes are actually somewhat similar to North American ones: the prosecution (the "Judges" are also prosecutors, similarly to the French/Napoleonic system) goes maximal for the press at the start, but somehow or other the actual punishments imposed after the trial process is done usually work out a good deal more humanely. (Not humanely by Western standards, not by a long shot, humanely in comparison to the maximal charges and punishments laid out at the start.)

4) Which is not to say that this isn't totally vile and revolting. It is a pretty good picture of the US's best friend in the Arab World. Yay!

How could anyone troll an article like this? Is there anything to comment other than grief for the girl, and grief for the system?

As always, your first-hand knowledge of the Arab world is enlightening.

Wow, here's something you must blog about, but you can't blog about, but you must blog about, but you can't blog about. Your head is about to asplode!

Two rappers. Nothing to blog about.

Women rappers. Maybe blog worthy.

Talking about oppression to women. Blog worthy.

But they are virgins. Must not blog!

They are good girls and religious. Must not blog!

Talking about oppression to arab women. Must blog!

But they are Israelis. Must not blog!

But they are Israelis talking about arab oppression to arab women! Double must not blog!

http://www.theworld.org/?q=taxonomy_by_date/2/20071115

Wow. What will politically correct Broadsheet do now?

(It's truly weird and ugly how many of us on the political left find a need to demonize Arab women apostates like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan -- google em and read how others describe them. These women are described by those of us on the left as liars, whores, idiots, and apparently know nothing about Arab cultures or Islam. Is their crime that often times they say positive things about Israel, or is their crime that they often times find friends in America on the right? Who knows?)

Anyway Broadsheet, I apologize for bringing this decision upon you. I hope you will find a way out of it without causing your smallish brains to asplode.

I'm sure there are embarrassed Saudis, just as many Americans feel humiliated at the thought the Bush regime represents us. So I won't condemn all Saudis, just the fundamentalists and the government in thrall to them.

That gets to the heart of the problem of foreign disapproval having no effect. Religious fundamentalists see the outside world as an enemy anyway, or at best as people who don't understand them and are lost in their unbelief. So of course they don't listen. We see that same behavior in our own government.

Not that this excuses the treatment of this rape victim, the occupation of Iraq, or anything else, but I hope it clarifies the problem.

It's "The Religion of Peace" (tm) when they're Saudi pals of the Faux-Cowboy in Chief;

It's "Radical Fundamentalist blah blah blah blah" when the pals are Defense Contractors.

Either way, the womenfolk aren't exactly a major concern.

As a "tainted" woman, it will be very hard for her to find a husband in a Muslim nation, much less love, respect, and understanding.

The travesty is that she will suffer a life of harshness and persecution for an incident that she had no control over.

But the lack of remorse for tainted women isn't an Islamic thing, it is a cultural thing. But Islam is very intertwined with the cultures it resides in.

That only justice that would be fitting would be for a Muslim man to find it in his heart to not blame her.

the only way to effectively do that is to reduce the economic importance of what they have to sell. This may seem maddeningly irrelevant in a sense but Islamic fundamentalism would never have gotten where it is today without oil money and the longer they have this money the more they will be able to continue to buy influence and protection with it.