When you are in the game of believing utterly crazy things, and then start to impose this delusion on others, you will find truly outrageous things happening. The news, as reported in the Guardian today, is …
Saudi Arabian authorities may order execution of woman after man reported her for casting a spell on his daughter
So the story here is that some bloke is out shopping with his 13 year old daughter, when suddenly, “she started acting in an abnormal way“. Since there happened to be a lady from Sri Lanka nearby his immediate xenophobic conclusion was … “Witchcraft”, so he reports her and the religious authorities believed his daft claim.
Seriously!!
In most other nations on the planet, even the Muslim ones, a parent complaining about his 13 year old kid behaving oddly would have the concept of puberty explained to him. If he then insisted it was “Witchcraft”, he would be considered to be a nut.
“He reported her to the security forces, asking for her arrest and the specialised units dealt with the situation swiftly and succeeded in arresting her,” Okaz reported.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has no written criminal code and where court rulings are based on judges’ interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
“The punishment is always beheading for anyone found guilty of witchcraft,” a Saudi lawyer and human rights activist, Waleed Abu al-Khair, told Reuters.
So in essence, some innocent lady is out shopping when suddenly a bunch of religious thugs turn up and arrest her for being a witch, and she now faces death. They is utterly outrageous … if you are as offended as I am, then please publicise this … shout about it, blog about it, complain to the Saudi embassy about it, press your local government representative to move for sanctions against this utterly corrupt and totally insane Saudi regime. You might feel that such attempts would be futile because the need for oil means many turn a blind eye to such atrocities, but throwing a very public spotlight on this creates pressure on the Saudi’s to not go ahead with her execution.
Would they really execute her for “witchcraft”? Yep, and they have done it before, a couple of months ago. What makes all this even more insane is that sorcery is not a capital offence in Saudia, yet because some clerics declare it to be a threat to Islam andpress for an execution it happens.
Links
- Reuters news report on this here – Reuters checked and verified this.