There is a breathtaking hypocrisy in the news floating around overnight that a Saudi woman has been awarded 200 lashes and a prison sentence because she was in a car with a man who was not her relative. Apparently she was gang raped in that trip. The lads get off with a comparatively light sentence but as a victim she suffers this. It is of course her fault – if she was not a woman and not in the car then the men would not have been provoked into raping her!! The hypocrisy is even more breathtaking when in Riyadh you watch the boys picking up the girls at the shopping centre. In broad daylight. Or sit in certain hotel bars on Dubai Creek and watch the Saudi men march in (usually in pairs) and pick up their East European hookers. One (loose) rule for the men. Lots of rules for the women – which damn them for being women just to start with.
From the following news item, it would appear that the woman in question has been “pardoned” by the Saudi King: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7147632.stm
It would seem that the sentence of 200 lashes was imposed after the woman had appealed against a sentence of 90 lashes.
Further, both she and the man in the car with her were raped by seven attackers unknown to them who abducted them. The man who was raped also received a sentence of 90 lashes, though his sentence does not appear to have been lifted.
On closer scrutiny, this story truly plunders the very depths of hypocrisy. It leaves you scratching your head and asking what is worse in the Saudi ethical view of the world:
– to be a woman?
– to be an unchaperoned woman in the company of a man who is not a family member and be raped (though not actually by him or others at his instigaton)? or
– to be a man raped by another man or men?