Saudi Arabia flogs orphan girls

[Lars77]

Source: The Guardian

Six girls aged between 12 and 18 receive 10 lashes each for attacking head of orphanage.

Six orphan girls aged between 12 and 18 have been flogged in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of attacking the head of their orphanage, an official has said.

The girls received 10 lashes each at a women's prison in Medina, Islam's second holiest city.

"The order against the six orphans is a legitimate court order," Mohammed al-Awadh, the public relations manager at the ministry of social affairs, told Reuters. "The ministry does not have the right to interfere in a court order."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/10/saudi-arabia-flogs-orphan-girls

[Turbineguy]

1. Morale should improve.

Beating children always helps. Ask any child-beater if you don't believe me.

[gratuitous]

2. A trial?!

What kind of fuckin' panty-waists bother with trials anymore?

[panader0]

3. In sixth grade, in Texas, I got paddled a few times.

The teacher had a wooden paddle with holes drilled in it (?) Go to the book room, bend over and get whacked, try not to cry in front of the girls.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Do you know what 'lashing' is?

Flogging. With a whip. On exposed flesh.

[pnwmom]

9. The SCOTUS's last case allowing kids to be "paddled"

approved of a paddling which resulted in a 9 year old with a broken arm. Apparently there is no limit, even here.

[chrisa]

21. This type of punishment has also been proven not to work.

It's the worst kind of dumb, baseless traditionalism. America also needs help ridding itself of bad traditions.

[ZombieHorde]

4. Flogging little orphan girls is so ridiculous, if you saw it in a movie, you would roll your eyes

and laugh. So absurd.

P.S. Your sig line is funny.

[2Design]

6. These are bushes kissing friends and friends of rethugs - go figure - just saying

[bluesmail]

7. Despicable! eom

[AlbertCat]

8. Does it matter that they are orphans?

Saudi Arabia sux a big one.

[harmonicon]

12. more than the US?

Even on DU when there's a thread about a child (and some of these girls were 18, so actual adults) being punished, many tell me that I'm nuts for thinking that children are different, and/or that circumstances should be considered. Worse is when the legal punishment isn't enough, and people hope for criminals to have further crimes perpetrated on them in prison. The world is full of blood-lust; I don't know why.

[chrisa]

15. 1000X worse than the US

Women can't drive or vote there. Stick a fork in their piece of crap of an inferior culture. I think we can all collectively say that Saudi Arabia can go fuck themselves.

[harmonicon]

17. I agree....

but I also think we're collectively hypocrites to judge their legal system when we continue to have capital punishment and try children as adults. Those are the things that seemed to make this a story (well, corporal punishment instead of capital punishment).

[snooper2]

23. Oh come on...our legal system is 10,000,000 times better

How would you like religous nazis walking down main street grabbing your wife or daughter or girlfriend.

Yo, where's the male relative who is supposed to walk you everywhere.
Oh that guy, he's your boyfriend!

Bam bam bam a couple more cracks to the head...


Fuck SA

[atreides1]

24. It could still happen here

Let's face it the religious right fanatics are climbing into bed with the TeaBaggers, and they've been sleeping with the Repukes since Saint Ronnie...just look at the current attacks on Planned Parenthood that are succeeding in the states taken over by the Repukes!

Look at Florida, trying to adjust the state constitution to allow tax payers to foot the bill for religious organizations...if that succeeds you can bet that other Repuke states will follow suit...

We may be closer then you think to those religious nazis walking American streets...

[snooper2]

25. nope, won't happen, they are a minority that are dying off

and if it did you would see civil war between States

[harmonicon]

31. I'm not talking about particulars.

The US tries, convicts, and executes children. Sure, some people have it worse in some places, but to claim that we aren't so bad because there are a few worse examples does not give us a leg to stand on. For the US to criticize Saudi Arabia is for us to refuse to look in a mirror.

[mopinko]

22. blood lust and violence have served the human animal well

my son likes to say that this is because we are descended from chimpanzees, who make war for territory, instead of gorillas, who are very peaceful.
i think that although violence is still very prevalent, we are beginning to evolve away from it. slowly. not beating our offspring could be a start.

[makhno]

10. UN resolution and NATO strikes to follow ...

... or not.

Paging the Jasmine Brigade, moral ambiguity cleanup on aisle 5.

[harmonicon]

11. I expect this to be very popular here.

Whenever a subject comes up involving the punishment of children, people cheer, because "they should know better". See, these 12 year olds are hardened criminals and must be punished.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. "The girls defended their actions, saying they were harassed by the director,"

Something tells me there is MUCH more to this story than we are being told.

[chrisa]

14. One of the most backwards cultures in the world.

I wonder why they hate human life so much other there. It's like somebody gets up and pisses in their breakfast every morning.

[rayofreason]

16. All cultures are NOT equal.

And it is not racist to say that some countries are shitholes because of their culture.

Islamic countries are the poster child. The best Islamic country is still not a place I would want me or my daughter(!) to live. To quote Winston Churchill from "The River War" published in 1899:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

Rhetorical flourishes aside, countries where it is normative to stone gays and women having affairs (which includes rape to some of these cretins) or to flog orphans- all because of religious sanction - are truly in need of some major attitude adjustment. Back the days of the British Raj, some Hindus adhered to the practice of Sati (or Suttee) - where widows were burned alive on the husband's funeral pyre. General Charles Napier, Governor of Bombay and Commander-in-Chief of India for the British Empire, countered:

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

[marasinghe]

27. while agreeing fully with your sentiments - on the barbarity displayed by certain societies ....

that mass-murdering, racist asshole churchill, or his British society, are hardly the poster children for civilized behavior.

while they might treat their own citizens humanely, these are the same scum who murdered, tortured, raped & pillaged half of the world; churchill is the war criminal who ordered the poison-gassing of Kurdish freedom fighters in Iraq; he's the same asshole who adamantly opposed withdrawing from the occupation of the British colonies; and that attitude still lies festering beneath a skin-deep veneer of good manners - check with immigrants of Caribbean, or South Asian, origin - how the vaunted bobbies of the London Metropolitan Police handle 'em. or ask the Iraqis about Tony Blair & his government and their armies.

Greece, Rome & the Mongols - all - treated their own citizens quite decently & well, while going round massacring, torturing, burning & raping half the known World of their time. The British were, & are, no different.

time to recycle the overused Gandhi quote: ".... Western civilization? I think it would be a good idea ....".

[rayofreason]

29. Much of what you say is spot on...

...yet it is a great irony that those lands that were conquered by the British and incorporated into the empire are the ones most likely to have emerged from the colonial era as democratic societies. Compare Haiti and Barbados, for example. Or India.

And regarding Rome. If you were a citizen, your were probably OK. But there were a large number slaves and non citizens. Still, being in the Pax Romana was preferable to being in the Mongol empire. No rights at all. But if I have a choice of empire in which I am to be a subject I would prefer to be a subject of the British Raj before any other.

[bemildred]

30. + whatever you like.

Well said. The problem is that we always think that we are the good guys.

[CBGLuthier]

18. Now I hope everyone is happy they got a trial

Trials guarantee justice every time.

Barbarians.

[leftynyc]

19. Fucking animals

Flogging anyone, let alone a 12 year old, is barbaric. All cultures are not created equal.

[Odin2005]

20. America's "ally" ladies and gents.

:puke:

[marasinghe]

26. attack dogs practicing for the takedown of Bahraini schoolgirls, i presume.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4847083

orphans yet; as always, fucking rich scum having their trained wolves attacking the weakest, the most vulnerable.
hope i'll be around to see payback come to these filthy parasites, when their check falls due.

[plumbob]

28. Hey, they're orphans. They should have held onto their families.

This is their just punishment for losing their families, careless girls.

Now they will grow up to become much better people.




















Right?