Nadia Bilbassy
The pardon of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia of the"Qateef girl", is a welcome outcome of an otherwise a very disturbing story. The case has attracted so much international publicity and rightly so. Here in The US, pages of editorial comments and articles have been written on the plight of the woman. They sharply criticized the Saudi justice system .The right wing outlets used it to attack Islam and linked it to the "barbaric" behavior of the Moslems elsewhere in the wake of the teddy bear incident in Sudan.
I can only imagine the trauma of a woman being gang raped, violated and then left to face a jail sentence and 200 lashes. In the Western world, rape is taken seriously and treated as a horrific crime. The perpetrators face a long prison sentence. It is in this contact that the outcry was huge. how could it be that a victim of a horrifying crime been punished so cruelly. No matter what is the justice system applied here, there is unanimity that this woman doesn't not deserve the sentence handed to her it's her tormentors who should be punished.
Now, there is a huge misunderstanding about Islam in the West and little is known about Saudi Arabia in general except negative things (hijackers were mainly Saudis, etc). For example, not many people know that according to Saudi law; a woman can't be alone with a man in public who is not a relative. It is a punishable offence.
While this may only apply to Saudi laws, it is still been used to paint a backwards picture about Islam in some circles in the American media. Maybe, I am out of my depth here to suggest reforming the Saudi Justice system, but I will demand laws across the Arab world which favors the victims. After all if the concept of justice is not about protecting and compensating and siding with the victims, I don't know what it is about...
The Story could have caused more damage if it wasn't for King Abdullah who stepped in and pardoned the woman. This kind of executive privilege is practiced in the West too. Each year president Bush pardons people who were in trouble with the law, but what is more important is that the King; the highest authority in the land sided with the victim. Long live justice.
*Nadia Bilbassy works for Al Arabiya in Washington. |
