Just a few hours after writing about how the Saudis are seriously considering crucifying a Shia cleric, I come across this news item: now the Saudis are apparently considering deliberately paralyzing a man. Check out this BBC article: Amnesty ‘outrage’ at Saudi paralysis sentence. Here is an excerpt:
The reported sentencing of paralysis for a Saudi man as punishment for paralysing another man has been described as “outrageous” by a leading human rights group. Saudi reports say the 24-year-old man could be paralysed from the waist down if he cannot pay his victim one million riyals (£250,000) in compensation. Amnesty International says the sentence is a form of torture. The man has been in prison for 10 years since he stabbed a friend in the back. Saudi newspapers say Ali al-Khawahir was 14 when he paralysed his friend in the attack in the Eastern Province town of al-Ahsa. The law of qisas, or retribution, in Saudi Arabia means his victim can demand that he suffers exactly the same punishment as he caused.
Good God, what is wrong with these people? Have they lost any kind of common sense? Do they not have a sense of shame of belonging to society which can actually adopt a law which allows for the deliberate paralyzing of a healthy person?!
This just comforts me in my belief that there is no form of compromise possible between the Wahabism and the rest of mankind. Putin was right when he told them “change your ways or prepare be exterminated”.
What also baffles me is the deafening silence of the Muslim world out there. Why? Because in the case of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr “The prosecutor invoked haraba, a form of Islamic punishment enforced by the Saudi government, involving crucifixion and dismemberment” while in this latter case, “The law of qisas, or retribution, in Saudi Arabia means his victim can demand that he suffers exactly the same punishment as he caused“. Now, I am clearly no Islamic legal scholar, but even I am aware of the fact that the vast majority of Muslim countries do not practice crucifixion, dismemberment, stoning or deliberate paralyzing. And yet, Islamic law is invoked in these cases and that, I believe, does require some kind of a reaction from those Muslims who do not consider as legitimate the Wahabi interpretation of Islamic law. What are the most respected Muslim scholars saying about this? What does the Organization of Islamic Cooperation have to say about that?
Why are Iran and Syria alone in openly denouncing these murderous psychopaths?!
The Saker
The Saudi’s seem to be getting desperate & are utilising a Wahabbi version of the late Roman ‘bread & circuses’ act to distract the populace.
Their greatest fears are now twofold – 1) that the massive wave of Wahabbi extremists that they’ve financed, trained & unleashed onto the world in collaboration with US will eventually turn on them;
2) That the genuine component of the Arab spring seeps into the population & brings the whole corrupt joke of the Royal circus to the ground.
They have reportedly needed oil to be over $100- per barrel for some time now to pay for the vast corrupt enterprise that keeps them in power & the economy is appallingly mismanaged – and this is with Saudi oil the cheapest in the world to extract (around $2 per barrel is what I heard).
The day the Saudi’s finally fall to into civil war & dissolution will be a good day for mankind (& I generally do wish that on any country due to the horrors that are unleashed, but the Saudi’s are a cancer & much too far gone for a reform process).
@KenM:The day the Saudi’s finally fall to into civil war & dissolution will be a good day for mankind (& I generally do wish that on any country due to the horrors that are unleashed, but the Saudi’s are a cancer & much too far gone for a reform process)
That is exactly my feeling too! I normally don’t care for threats of ‘extermination’, but in the case of Wahabism, there is sadly no other solution that I can think of. These folks are rabid maniacs who are a direct threat to any and all countries on the planet. I therefore fully agree with your characterization of them as a ‘cancer’. And its *their* crazy worldview which makes any hopes of negotiations or some kind of a modus vivendi absolutely delusional. This is one of the very very few circumstances in history where its really “either us or them” and even though that kind of primitive expression always reminds me of that idiot Bush, in this case it applies. Very sad, very scary, but true.
If the neocons had decided to launch their crusade against Islamofascism by invading Saudi Arabia I’d have been a lot more sympathetic especially since Saudi was the nucleus of Al Qaeda not the poor Afghans.
Hello Saker,
Meanwhile and among all the current instability, business is business as usual. What is happening in the upper levels of power? You can create a global war out of nothing but doing business below the table? how can you explain this?
“through complex financial acquisition, the Russian state-owned Rosneft bought the private oil consortium TNK-BP, composed of British Petroleum (BP) and a quartet of Russian-Israeli oligarchs clustered into Alfa Access-Renova (AAR).
The biggest deal in Russian corporate history-for 55 billion dollars to the state-catapult Rosneft as the first (supersic!) Global producer, displacing the private U.S. ExxonMobil.
According to the Reuters news agency (03.26.13), the operation reinforces government control in the energy sector and represents a victory for its director, Igor Sechin, a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin.
The predator-BP with serious legal / financial due to the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is forced to sell half of its business succulent urge liquidity.
The global energy czar Vlady Putin nationalized but desprivatiza restatiza and via the market at a cost of 55 billion dollars and providing 20 percent of the shares of Rosneft with the blessing of the U.S. investment banking USA. Vova sure knows something we do not know.”
FWIW: Haraba is an event that happened during the prophet time and is in NO WAY a punishment. However those Wahhabis tend to blindside their populace by claiming that since it is in the QUr’an then it is a punishment prescribed according to Sharia.
Boloney: no one can understand classical Arabic let alone believe what has been written yrs after the death of the Mohamed.
I guess the torture of Shi’a Bahraini through the savage methods of ian Hnederson must also be in the Qur’an if we believe those Saudis :(