NS November 27th, 2007

I am seriously cheesed off right now.
As (hopefully) many of you know, a Saudi woman had her sentence doubled last week from 90 lashes to 200 and a six month stay in prison for the grievous crime of violating one of the many sex segregation laws inherent to Islamic rule in the Kingdom. Not only did she ride in a car with a male not related to her (gasp!), she was then gang-raped 14 times by no fewer than  seven men. All of the rapists have been given sentences of five years or less. The victim’s original sentence was doubled upon appeal because the judge seemed to think she had ‘influenced and aggravated the judiciary’ by using the media to broadcast her plight.

Un-fucking-believable.

And though this was a moderately covered story last week, there was no call to arms or public outrage beyond a few feminist websites and blogs. People read it, perhaps felt a bit sad or outraged, but then kept flipping channels/turning pages/clicking on images. Because it didn’t matter to them. Wasn’t their problem. If those savages want to do that to their own people, fine. Right? Fucking wrong.

Now –NOW!– everyone is getting all bent out of shape and stomping their feet because a middle-aged white British lady who teaches primary school in Sudan is being held in a jail and may face charges of blasphemy for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. As you probably remember from the Danish cartoon debacle, it is considered highly offensive and even illegal to create an image in Muhammad’s name. So by naming the teddy bear after the Prophet (even if done so innocently and voted for by the children themselves), she may have broken the law. A possible sentence could be six months in prison, 40 lashes or a large fine.

Notice I sad she may be charged and that a sentence is possible. Nothing has happened so far but the media and everyone in the Western world are getting their embroidered panties in a bunch over the mere thought of a civilised Brit being subject to barbaric Sharia law. Yet nothing is done about the woman being punished for being a victim of the most barbaric crime of all. All this hand-wringing over a teacher but nothing more than a ‘oh, that’s too bad’ for the Saudi woman. It astounds me.

I don’t want either woman to be punished, I think corporal punishment is wrong, but I get so tired of people begging for leniency for Westerners living and working in countries with different judicial systems — based on different ideals, values and religions — who have committed a crime. Even if we think the crime is absurdly stupid, the punishment barbaric and the circumstances questionable, we have no right to expect clemency because we “don’t know better.” If a Sudanese Muslim immigrated to America or the UK and did something which broke one of the laws there (say, giving a strange child a lift home because it’s cold out and being charged with kidnapping), there would be a shortage of sympathy. I guarantee that most of the commentators would say “Well, he should’ve known that we do things differently here and educated himself on the law and customs.” I expect there would be little leniency from the law enforcement officials or the general population.

Ignorance is not an excuse, ever.

We say that all the time but apparently it only applies to situations in which we see fit to judge others and perch ourselves up on the moral high ground. I mean, we very well may be on the moral high ground. I too find Sharia law cruel and horrid and I wish the Islamic Sharia judiciaries didn’t inflict such severe corporal punishments on its citizens. But the US still has the death penalty and I find that equally as barbaric. I don’t value human life any less there than I do here, and I don’t change my belief in what is right and what is wrong based on what color skin or even what color passport a person has.

So go on, Britain. Fight for your teacher, bring her home unharmed. But for fuck’s sake — use that screechy, middle-class outrage to save someone else’s skin besides your own, too.

• I Bitch Therefore I Am , In The News
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