Last Updated: Monday, 17 December 2007, 10:38 GMT

Saudi king 'pardons rape victim'

The Saudi king has pardoned a female rape victim sentenced to jail and 200 lashes for being alone with a man raped in the same attack, reports say.

The "Qatif girl" case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system.

The male and female victims were in a car together when they were abducted and raped by seven attackers, who were given jail sentences up to nine years.

Press reports say King Abdullah's move did not mean the sentence was wrong.

Quoted by the Jazirah newspaper, Justice Minister Abdullah al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it served the public interest.

Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to mix with men who are not close family members.

The custodial sentence plus 200 lashes was imposed after the woman, who has not been named, appealed against an earlier sentence of 90 lashes.

'Astonishing' case

The Saudi king frequently pardons criminals at the Eid al-Adha festival which takes place this week, but correspondents say that is usually announced by the official press agency.

The BBC's Heba Saleh says the king's decision to pardon the woman victim is already arousing controversy with some contributors to conservative websites, who say he has breached the rules of religion in order to appease critics in the West.

The US had called the punishment "astonishing", although it refused to condemn the Saudi justice system.

Human rights groups had been calling on King Abdullah, who has a reputation as a pro-Western reformer, to change it.

The justice ministry recently rejected what it saw as "foreign interference" in the case and insisted the ruling was legal and that the woman had confessed to having an affair with her fellow rape victim.

Earlier, the woman - who is a Shia Muslim from the Qatif area - had reportedly said she met the man in order to retrieve a photograph of them together, having herself recently got married.

She says two other men then entered the car and took them to a secluded area where others were waiting, and both she and her male companion were raped.

The woman's companion was sentenced to 90 lashes. It is not known if his sentence was also lifted.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7147632.stm

i must say...stuff like this gives me a good laugh

finally ar….the king at least got some sense…

what pardon?

should be acquitted

sigh

despite what you may believe

The girl broke a law even though you don't agree with the law.

Kinda a more extreme case of the micheal faye incident. The law's the law. End of story.

Originally posted by deathbait:

despite what you may believe

The girl broke a law even though you don't agree with the law.

Kinda a more extreme case of the micheal faye incident. The law's the law. End of story.

ya right.

But what to do? Cultural differences do exist.

I know different people/nations have their different sets of laws. But the Saudi laws are ridiculous and beyond a sane man's understanding.

siao arh! 90 lashes alone would've killed her! have these people no sense of justice?! ridiculous.

also, doubt any of the big playing powers will say anything. saudi = oil.

read the TODAY newspaper, there's a commentary by a Pakistani journalist. Lots of details.

different custom mah...

Originally posted by caleb_chiang:

different custom mah...

Arabic laws(aka Sharia laws aka Islamic laws) are extremely discrimintive against the female gender.

So who set the Sharia laws? Please dun tell me is God. It is men. Anicent arabic men who used religion as a tool to rule and discriminate against the women.

eg a man can has multiple wives.
I know this occured in many civilisations across the world in ancient times. But guess only Arabic men included this into their religious(Islamic) laws. In this way, the women cannot argue anything as this is the law. 'Holy laws'.

When there is gender discrimination, cultural relativity has no place in the argument.

Originally posted by LazerLordz:

When there is gender discrimination, cultural relativity has no place in the argument.

Yeah. It occurs everywhere across the globe.

Originally posted by LazerLordz:

When there is gender discrimination, cultural relativity has no place in the argument.

That's just your opinion. Every society has the right to decide for itself the norms it deems to be acceptable. Who do you think you are? God Almighty?

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:

That's just your opinion. Every society has the right to decide for itself the norms it deems to be acceptable. Who do you think you are? God Almighty?

Indeed. But shouldnt there be a basic humane regulations which can serve as basis for ALL norms and laws? But the problem is, the world cannot seem to agree on this basic set of humane regulations.

For eg,

we firmly believe excuation by stoning of women is inhumane. However, to the Arabs, they view it as part and parcel of their Sharia laws.

Originally posted by Spartans:

Arabic laws(aka Sharia laws aka Islamic laws) are extremely discrimintive against the female gender.

So who set the Sharia laws? Please dun tell me is God. It is men. Anicent arabic men who used religion as a tool to rule and discriminate against the women.

eg a man can has multiple wives.
I know this occured in many civilisations across the world in ancient times. But guess only Arabic men included this into their religious(Islamic) laws. In this way, the women cannot argue anything as this is the law. 'Holy laws'.

and they used the religion as an excuse, and a shield, right?

Originally posted by gigabyte14:

and they used the religion as an excuse, and a shield, right?

It is up to personal interpretion. All I can tell you is that Arab women have no social status in their native countries.

For example, in Saudi Arabia, women are barred from driving. Reason being if they can drive more chances for women to go out without their male relatives or husbands more rape cases???

Really bluff me.

It's a privilege to enforce such Islamic ideals. We can't afford such ideals. Women folks are our part of our productive assets and we show appreciation for their efforts by giving them more rights in return. Unlike us, the Saudis have oil and have limited use for their women folk. With limited use, the Saudi women are given less recognition and appreciation. In return, they lived a luxurious comfortable lifestyle that average Singapore men cannot afford to provide.

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:

That's just your opinion. Every society has the right to decide for itself the norms it deems to be acceptable. Who do you think you are? God Almighty?

Tell that to the creators of the Womens' Charter, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child et al.

You're just ignorant of the importance of fundamental universal norms.

Sure, cultures are diverse, but if that sort of reductionist theory holds, we'd still have slavery today.

Kindly do us a favour and get some real knowledge and empathy of comparative universal human rights discoure before you decide to even enter such a debate

Such views, while you are free to espouse, are clearly archaic and irrelevant in the eyes of others to this discourse at hand.

thuings like this, i am thankful i was born in singapore.

Originally posted by laurence82:
what pardon?

should be acquitted

sigh

Yeah man.

Originally posted by Spartans:
Arabic laws(aka Sharia laws aka Islamic laws) are extremely discrimintive against the female gender.

Plenty of muslims don't like the House of Saud's laws either. The Saudis seems to be the headquarters of Islam ( ) only because of their dominion of Mecca, the locus of all Muslims. Automatically, it is assumed to be followed that the Sauds are presumptly the leaders in religion, but that is not so.

So who set the Sharia laws? Please dun tell me is God. It is men. Anicent arabic men who used religion as a tool to rule and discriminate against the women.

Shariah consists nothing more other than the legal opinions of muslim jurists in their interpretation to regulate muslim life, constructed post-Muhd. It wasn't what to be called divine or immutable in the first place.

eg a man can has multiple wives.
I know this occured in many civilisations across the world in ancient times. But guess only Arabic men included this into their religious(Islamic) laws. In this way, the women cannot argue anything as this is the law. 'Holy laws'.

The sanction of polygamy was for protecting economically defenseless women, like widows with children. The operative cause is no more, irrelevant now in 99% of places and situations, and you can find many muslim scholars, male and female challenging that idea. Some of our local female ones are Norani Othman, Siti Musdah, Marina Mahathir, Sinta Nuriyah Wahid, Nursyahbani Katjasungkana etc.

only said one thing we have not evolved.

Originally posted by johntoil:

It's a privilege to enforce such Islamic ideals. We can't afford such ideals. Women folks are our part of our productive assets and we show appreciation for their efforts by giving them more rights in return. Unlike us, the Saudis have oil and have limited use for their women folk. With limited use, the Saudi women are given less recognition and appreciation. In return, they lived a luxurious comfortable lifestyle that average Singapore men cannot afford to provide.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Luxurious? Comfortable?

They are imprisoned in their own homes until they are allowed to go overseas or accompanied by a male relative.

Women are not assets or human. They are human beings.

The girl seriously should have gone out with her male relatives OR her husband aka her fiance at that time, to retrieve the pictures. Stupidity on her part.

funniest thing is this is a singapore forum.

as if singapore is a just system or a free and open or liberal system. in fact the ones that raise most hue and cries (usa/uk) are not the most liberal either.

some people DESPITE accepting that differences in culture exist like lazerlord, can't accept it. quite ridiculous.

the original ruling was fair.

Originally posted by Spartans:

ya right.

But what to do? Cultural differences do exist.

I know different people/nations have their different sets of laws. But the Saudi laws are ridiculous and beyond a sane man's understanding.

you're implying that only your culture is sane. that's obviously not the case in reality. time for reality check friend.

the law was absolutely ok.

Originally posted by knockonmydoor:

siao arh! 90 lashes alone would've killed her! have these people no sense of justice?! ridiculous.

also, doubt any of the big playing powers will say anything. saudi = oil.

read the TODAY newspaper, there's a commentary by a Pakistani journalist. Lots of details.

they WERE going to provide justice originally but backtracked and the king pardoned the woman.