Qatif rape case

[dreamer_easy]

I get very impatient with the constant call for moderate Muslims to decry the words and works of extremist Muslims, when moderate Muslims do that all the time: it's just not as headline-grabbing. And if you didn't happen to hear about it from the news sources you follow, it may as well not have happened. (The same rubbish is said about feminists, often without even the effort of a thirty-second Web search.) The aim is to tar with the same brush over a billion human beings, from different countries, speaking different languages, from different races, with different politics (even within Saudi Arabia), following different beliefs and practices... but they're really all the same, you see.

Some more recent Saudi commentary on the Qatif case:

From Arab News: How 'Culture' Is Defended in a Globalized World: "Time after time judgments such as that passed in the “Qatif” case mortify us as Saudi nationals by their appalling and overt misogyny that inevitably makes headlines in the international press. It is an urgent issue because these authorities keep catching us by surprise and exposing us to international ridicule and condemnation with their own narrow religious-political agenda."

The Real Issue Raised by the Qatif Verdict: "The morality of the Qatif girl is not (and should not) be the main discussion point. The real issue at hand is that of a due process within our judicial system."

British Muslims on the Sudan teddy bear case:

A bear called Muhammad is no blasphemy; Blasphemy caused by cuddly animals; There's far more to Islam than a teddy

Comments

[qthewetsprocket.livejournal.com]

Our humanity must transcend adherence to scriptural literalism, especially if it leads to mayhem and loss of innocent lives.

i would vote for this sentence to be repeatedly writ upon the brain cells / stamped across the forehead of every religious zealot on the planet, regardless of denomination or dogma.

on moderation

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

Have a chat with Code Monkey (http://www.codemonkeyramblings.com/2007/12/there_is_no_compulsion_in_reli.php).

The letters in the Guardian aren't exactly ringing in their defense of free expression... (one refer to Sudan having descended into zealotry - but doesn't say that the zealots have actually done anything beyond the pale. Another says that Ms. Gibbons should receive a token fine - that's like arguing that Darrow was wrong and Bryan was right...)

Further, the real issue isn't that there are a handful of reasonable people somewhere writing in English - it's the gazillion unreasonable people speaking and writing in Arabic on Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia and the parts of the Islamic press. I'm glad to see that there are sparks of decency - but boy, there sure are buried in an avalanche of horror.

c.f. MEMRI (http://www.memri.org/index.html).

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Yes, its quite dispiriting that the Western political dialogue continuously criticises moderate Muslims while empowering the zealots with press attention, but so seldom actually does anything to help and support them.

I highly recommend the book Desperately Seeking Paradise by Ziaudin Sardar, a book by an active engaged moderate Muslim (also a respected Western academic, but its largely incidental to the book), which reads very much as a lament for the world of moderate Islam caught between Islamic zealotry and Western dismissal and hostility (which, of course, feeds the zealotry).

From the second Arab News link
We spent years telling people that Saudis are not monsters. That our religion is one of peace and fairness.
The problem is not with the Saudi people, or even with their religion. The problem is, their government are monsters, a hereditary monarchy wildly out of touch with the rest of the world and able to maintain its backward and anachronistic, often deliberately ignorant, stance purely due to a combination of oil money and Western support, and that empowers and fosters zealotry as long as it keeps them in power and turns a blind eye to aristocratic hypocrisy. As long as there is very little economic or political pressure on them to change, they will not -- the Saudi regime is a case where the West props up and empowers the zealots in real terms, and then uses their excesses to attack all Islam.