Things that make you go.......WTF?

[swoop42]

It aint 100 years ago.

That's the bloody point.

[Tannin]

I think it's too simplistic to say it's 'evil'. Our own laws weren't much better in this regard about 100 years ago.

^ Ahistorical rubbbish. Our laws a century ago were not even on the same planet of barbarity as the laws we see not just upheld but actively promoted and spreading like a cancer out of the Middle East today. You won't find anything remotely close to this in Western nations anytime closer than the 1690s and the Salem witch trials - that's more than 300 years ago - and they are famous precisely because they were a historical oddity, an unexpected and quite inexplicable throwback to the Dark Ages; for genuinely comparable Western law you need to go back a full 500 years. No sane judge could examine our law of 100 years ago, not even on the the most superficial level, and conclude that it was comparable to Sharia law as it is practiced in many parts of the world today.

It's just pure fantasy to think that Western countries are going to fall under its sway.

Sorry, wrong again. It is a perfectly sensible projection of current trends into a bleak and very dangerous future. Personally I believe that Western education, enlightenment and rationality will survive and eventually overcome the dreadful rising tide of ignorant, bigoted religious evil currently spreading out of the Muslim world, but that is just my prediction. I could be wrong. I also believe that we will survive and overcome the equally dangerous, equally ignorant and equally bigoted tide of extremist religious evil flowing out of (mostly) the United States at present, though here too I'm making a prediction as much on hope as on evidence or reason. All else aside, simple demographic trends make the alarming predictions of Sharia takeover in modern Western countries quite plausible. Rapid immigration into Europe followed by unrestricted breeding has already brought massive problems across that continent, and we are firmly on track to follow. If we allow the extremists to multiply and gain the upper hand, we are going to be in deep, deep shit.

[luvdids]

you could expect the death penalty for extramarital sex

Yeah, but did being raped count as extramarital sex?? Big difference between having an affair and being raped.

[Jezza]

you could expect the death penalty for extramarital sex

Yeah, but did being raped count as extramarital sex?? Big difference between having an affair and being raped.

Under this ruling it counted.

The woman was charged for extramarital sex, consuming alcohol and perjury because they thought she was lying about the rape allegations. What a joke of a system. When religion and state clash with each other, the result is disastrous.

Who believes in this barbaric nonense to start off with?

[Dr Pie]

I think that you are all missing the point. The reason we need to talk about the awful way this woman was treated is not to engage in a round of Muslim bashing or arguing whether our society is intrinsically better than one practising Sharia law or merely two hundred years more advanced. The reason that we need to discuss this on Nick's is that we are implicated.

According to Wikipedia - "Emirates (Arabic: طَيَران الإمارات‎ DMG: Ṭayarān Al-Imārāt) is an airline based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The airline is a subsidiary of The Emirates Group, which is wholly owned by the government of Dubai's Investment Corporation of Dubai" In other words, our footy club is sponsored by the Government that charges rape victims with adultery.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable about this?

[pietillidie]

^That's a good question, but I think it shows the obvious contradiction underlying the hysterical paranoid side of the debate above. People will froth and foam at some "evil", and two minutes later do business with that "evil" all the same.

You see this hypocrisy in regard to that other popular sport, China bashing. One second the country is run by a barbaric dictatorship which treats humans like animals and is driving down wages, and the next second it is driving down the price of TVs and propping up our economy to our benefit.

Popular imperialist/racist thinking is full of such contradictions. Take the Pharisees who have finally caved in to concede the obvious horror of the Iraq War, yet remain entirely unconcerned with the absolute obeisance assumed by Australia's relationship with the US. The quickest way to lose an election in Australia by a landslide would be to even half seriously question the morality of that relationship, yet the benefits of supporting such horrors as Iraq keep flowing Australia's way through global contracts, market access and a massively reduced military burden.

A certain segment of the population may be genuine in their dissonance, but plenty of others are fraudulently pretending to be concerned about say dead Iraqi children, meanwhile grabbing the benefits of the relationship with the US with greedy abandon. (Still others are pushing around meaningless tokens in a game of Internet rhetorical chess and in the light of day if pressed or in a serious essay wouldn't actually hold the crap they're spouting).

Re: Sharia Law, it's just pure fantasy to think that Western countries are going to fall under its sway, and it's exactly the kind of xenophobic fantasy groups like the English Defence League seek to exploit. The reason laws like this exist in the Middle-East is that they tend to reflect the dominant cultural views there. You'd have to kill democracy in countries like Australia or the UK before there could even be a remote chance of this kind of law being implemented. To suggest otherwise is either paranoid or mischievous.

Fundamentalist Islam only has to overcome its own internal enemies, the entirety of the developed world, most of Asia, all of Latin America and much of Africa and victory is assured!

But it takes fundamentalism to know fundamentalism, so the mischievous apoplexy you're battling lends itself to much better sound bites than a more complex, self-reflective and fair analysis of the human condition.

[stui magpie]

This sharia law stuff IMO is imposed by religious nutjobs who are all about control. They refuse to allow women an education to reduce their ability to object, censor media and demand obedience by appealing to the most base male instincts.

And yes, as others have said, it is something to worry about here but not if we do what we do well, accept difference but maintain 1 set of laws for all.

[David]

[stui magpie]

^

The difference is it wasn't the person receiving the buggery getting locked up

[David]

I'm guessing you're being facetious, but if not, WTF?

Re: the Dubai case, the woman has now been pardoned (obviously due to fairly intense international pressure):

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wir ... e-19731633

As I wrote earlier, progress happens. It just doesn't necessarily always happen everywhere at the same time at the same speed.

[Tannin]

[Tannin]

As I wrote earlier, progress happens. It just doesn't necessarily always happen everywhere at the same time at the same speed.

Correct! And justice in the Middle East will catch up to something approximating justice in the Western world any time now. After all, they are only five hundred years behind.

[HAL]

What was it like before they five hundred years are ?

[ronrat]

And lets not confuse Sharia with Muslim. Vietnam and Laos who are communist but underlying Buddhist forbid sharing a bed with a woman you are not married to.(Although there are ways around that). Indonesia I have found is open slather ONCE you are out of public eye. Nearly every hotel I have stayed at in Indonesia , Bali excluded because not necessary, has a bar or massage place attached for those who want to play away. If you, as a westerner, are accused of rape in Indonesia expect a fair bit of tea money to make the problem go away or get banged up for a while if you did it.

[David]