Saudi Arabia: A teenage girl is gang-raped, and then sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes. Is there a logical discontinuity somewhere in that sentence? Of course, but such are the rights of women under Shariah law — the legal code for millions of Muslims throughout the world. As an outsider I find this a sickening juridical concept: The victim as perpetrator — if she’s a female.
The story of “the Qatif girl” is one of the most tragic to flash across international headlines in recent memory. Allegedly, the 19-year-old victim was alone with a man with whom she was having an affair when both were abducted by several men and violated repeatedly. The young woman was originally sentenced 90 lashes and short jail time for being in the company of a non-relative male, but the sentence was increased after her lawyer appealed. The attorney has since been banned from practicing law in the Kingdom. The woman’s rapists received prison sentences of 10 months to 5 years.
I don’t intend to attack Shariah law in totality, but when it comes to the rights of women, Shariah’s legal standards smack of medievalism and an utter dissolution of the boundaries of human decency. Hammurabi’s Code was more progressive than the Saudi concept of equal application of law.
Now, I am generally a believer in state sovereignty and a nation’s ability to conduct internal affairs within its own cultural context or prescription. But this can only be tolerated to a certain extent. When a government ceases to abide by the principles of universal human morality (and in my conception of universal morality, a woman is not sent to be tortured after she is sexually violated), I cannot sit silently. International players must take action, even if this means cultural or societal norms must be uprooted for the protection of individual citizens.
We must first recognize that “cultural practice” or “relativism” is not a viable defense whenever egregious violations of human rights occur. Simply because Shariah law is the legal code of Saudi Arabia and supported by a religious subtext does not make it sacrosanct — it was unacceptable for the Third Reich to exterminate millions of untermenschen as a “cultural” cleansing matter, even though it was under codified law. It is likewise incorrect to allow persistent abuse of women and others under Islamic law if these nations hope to be a part of the international community.
Some will claim, as the Saudi government has, that “foreign interference” is unwarranted and hypocritical; apparently even Western nations don’t take moral criticism well. Even the supposed dictator of international ethical norms, the United States, is faced with accusations of “barbarism” by the European Union regarding its use of the death penalty. No nation is so virtuous as to avoid an internal scrutiny.
Admittedly, as a westerner I cannot understand the true meaning of Shariah as a legal or cultural concept. And in all fairness, the West is not so far removed from corrupt practices of sexual jurisprudence. (See the concept of matrimonio riparatore in the 1965 case of a Sicilian woman named Franca Viola who was raped then told to marry her attacker according to an Italian law that would make him, once wed to the victim, invulnerable to prosecution.)
Yet I remain deeply troubled by the situation in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations, where a woman remains subject to her husband and a penal and judicial system that reflects ancient tradition, not modern practice. Shame on the Western-educated leaders of these nations for giving in to popular fears and avoiding necessary reformation. Yet larger disgrace need be heaped on the pusillanimous leaders of Western nations who have done nothing but toe the line between ambivalence and silence. Certainly there have been a few half-hearted words of scorn and some toothless admonitions, but true criticism and initial action has yet to spring forth. Sadly, the need for fuel has once more forced the eyes of the Western World away from Draconian practices — blood for oil in more ways than one.
The solution is not simple. The West should not and cannot force its social mores throughout the world simply because it satisfies our sensibilities. However, in a time of global citizenship, certain national or cultural principles must give way to modernity. The rights of women under Shariah provide a horribly anachronistic notion of justice by any standard and must be reconciled with contemporary human rights principles — even if those principles are patently westernized. Is it so awful to believe that perhaps the West could be correct on a philosophical matter?
The story of “the Qatif girl” is just one of many to come out of countries that implement Shariah. While I wish it were an aberration or misconstruing of a valid legal principle, the simple reality is that female rape victims are often brutalized for coming forward — whether by honor killings or hundreds of lashes. The West must remove the shades-of-gray thinking from its moral calculus and take a hard-line stance against the Islamic world’s criminalization of rape victims. As Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Neil St. Clair, a senior in the College of Communication and College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].
