Imagine going to Saudi Arabia for the hajj, all the way from Australia, and finding yourself sentenced to a year in jail and…
To the best of my knowledge, 500 lashes is a death sentence. One hundred risks being a death sentence; five hundred just plain is one.
What did Mansor Almaribe of southern Victoria state do? Torture a lot of children to death? Set fire to a hospital and laugh while patients jumped screaming from high windows? Shoot up a hotel or a night club?
No.
Saudi officials accused him of insulting the companions of the prophet Muhammad, a violation of Saudi Arabia’s blasphemy laws.
And for that they plan to torture him to death.
He said something (maybe) about some people who died 14 centuries ago, and for that they plan to torture him to death.
What foul, reeking, vicious people they must be.
Always interesting to see a belief system sustaining on routinely demonizing every other faith demand reverence for itself.
He was a hajji though, so it’s not like this was aimed at someone outside the islamic faith. It’s still bloody stupid though.
I’m pretty sure Australia has the capacity to damage a Saudi port. Maybe Australia needs to say “You lash a citizen 500 times, we block a port.”
@ sumdum:
I think you’ll want to think that through a little further. You mention that this person is a Muslim as though this mitigated the horror here. If that’s so, it implies that beating a Muslim to death is less horrible than doing it to someone else. Or perhaps, that beating to death someone who shares your beliefs, a philosophical ally, is less horrible than doing it to someone who believes differently than you.
I’m sure you wouldn’t agree with either of those statements, any more than I would. The key point here is that the ideas a person has or expresses or jokes about have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether it is acceptable to beat them to death in public. Of course this applies just as much to being a Muslim at all, as it does to making fun of Muhammad’s companions.
The Saudis won’t actually give him all the lashes at once. Their usual method is to begin the beating, stop when the victim cannot take any more, let them recover over some days or weeks and carrry on where they left off.
Better than beating to death. Not much better, butbetter.
I didn’t mean that at all, and if you took it that way, I must have not been clear enough. I guess I mistook the first comment when reacting to it. It’s an inhumane punishment regardless who it’s given to.
The 500 lashes aren’t given in one go BTW, it’s over time. They cannot cause you to die. So it’s usually “today’s 10 lashes” and then more tomorrow. They aren’t barbarians you know! 😉
@ sumdum:
Ohhh, I didn’t realize you were responding to the comment before. I didn’t think you could mean what I thought you meant.
But if he lives he may come to his senses and realise what kind of religion he has bought into. May be time to gift him a subscription to Skeptical Inquirer while he is waiting for his next punishment from his co-religionists.
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