The beast in paradise

The ugly head of Islam has once again found a way into the news.

A 15-year-old girl from the remote Feydhoo Island in the Maldives has been ordered to receive eight months under house arrest and 100 lashes for the dastardly crime of being repeatedly raped by her stepfather. The flogging will be delayed until the girl reaches 18-years-old, but in a touching display of compassion the court ruled the girl could petition to take here lashes sooner if she wishes to just get it over with.

Maldives is a Muslim country employing Sharia law in their court system and under this wonderful system of laws pre-marital sex is a crime punishable by flogging. The men involved are often sentenced as well, with public flogging almost universally meted out to the female. Both partners are sentenced regardless of circumstance… even rape.

The courts in this otherwise beautiful country seem particularly fond of religiously-inspired misogyny and tend to enjoy beating women as often as possible. As recently as September 2012 a Sharia court ordered public flogging for a 16-year-old girl who had confessed to premarital sex, and in 2009 a pregnant 18-year-old woman received 100 lashes in public after she admitted to having sex with two different men. She was only one of over 100 women similarly sentenced that year.

Certainly some of the incidents involve simple promiscuity, but in other cases the woman/girl is punished for the crime of being raped. Someone please explain the fairness in such insanity.

The girl involved in this latest case received the harsh sentence after it was learned that she had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather, gave birth to her rapist’s baby and then watched as the man murdered the newborn and buried the body under the home. The man faces up to 25 years in jail if he is convicted of rape and murder.

Maldivian President Mohamed Waheed, Masood Imad is quoted by AFP as saying that the girl should be treated as a victim rather than a perpetrator of a crime, but added, “…she is not going to be lashed to cause her pain... rather, it is for her to feel the shame for having engaged in activity forbidden by the religion.”

Religious idiocy in Islam is endemic across the Muslim world. The Maldives has been in the news several times but the country is actually not any worse than all majority Islamic societies. Christianity was every bit as dangerous and stupid some 600 years ago. Since Islam splintered from Christianity in about 600 CE, it appears that what we are witnessing is merely delayed development.

The Afghan idiots pictured in the video are bronze age throwbacks, and the behavior deserves the worldwide criticism it is receiving. Amnesty International is on the case, and the United Nations Human Rights Council has issued statements. This religious stupidity has got to be stopped.

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