No Abortion For 9-Yr Old Victim - But The Pope Welcomes Holocaust Denier!

Abortion is usually a very contentious issue, especially for the fervent religious rights groups who think, rather illogically of course, that a fertilized embryo or a fetus is the moral equivalent of a full-fledged human being, completely endowed with rights pertaining usually to real adults and children.

This lunar lunacy to alleviate the status of fetuses gets worst when the fetus itself is deemed more valuable to the religious lunatics than the lives of women: According to the Vatican, women are not supposed to have abortions even if their very lives are threatened by their pregnancies.

& it gets worst: The doctors and the mother who helped a 9 yr old girl to abort were actually excommunicated for what is perceived to be an act of murder!!!!

Read on and puke:

Vatican Backs Abortion Row Bishop

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication in Brazil of the mother and doctors of a young girl who had an abortion with their help.

The nine-year-old had conceived twins after alleged abuse by her stepfather.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re told Italian paper La Stampa that the twins "had the right to live" and attacks on Brazil's Catholic Church were unfair.

It comes a day after Brazil's president criticised the Brazilian archbishop who excommunicated the people involved.

Brazil only permits abortions in cases of rape or health risks to the mother.

Doctors said the girl's case met both these conditions, but the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho said the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would apply to the child's mother and the doctors, but not to the girl because of her age.

'Sad case'

Cardinal Re, who heads the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, told La Stampa that the archbishop had been right to excommunicate the mother and doctors.

"It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said.

"Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

The abortion was carried out on Wednesday.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, himself a Catholic, said on Friday that he regretted what he described as the cleric's deeply conservative attitude.

"The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old," he said.

The girl, who lives in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, was allegedly sexually assaulted over a number of years by her stepfather, possibly since she was six.

Breathtaking Stupidity & Misogyny

The Vatican's stand in this case can only be classified as a dash of stupidity coupled with a whole lot of misogyny: A raped child being forced to bear twins when she's barely 9 is so cruel and horrifying that I can't even fathom why the church is actually punishing the doctors for assisting in the abortion!!!!!

Clearly, this is a case of misplaced priorities: The life of a child is deemed less valuable than the twins she harbors. And why didn't the erstwhile priest condemn the actions of the rapist? Maybe it is because the fucking catholic priests are committing similar, insidious crimes on altar boys??? If that is true, congratulations I say. Fucking altar boys doesn't make them pregnant.

Whenever I read stories of such breath-taking inanity, I am bound to let loose a stream of vulgarities and blasphemy at the Catholic Church: Those old fucks in the Vatican have their brains screwed up so badly, they can't tell the difference between fetuses and adult humans anymore. But there again......they never could in the first place.

Thank goodness then that we don't live in the Dark Ages; otherwise, the good doctors and the brave mother would have suffered a whole lot worst than a mere excommunication. And if I were the doctor I'd say good riddance to the Vatican.

Holocaust Deniers Welcomed by the Church

While the Vatican is trigger happy when it comes to administering excommunications to abortion doctors, they are quite happy to welcome Holocaust Deniers back to the fold!!!!



Pope Outrages Jews Over Holocaust Denier

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Jewish officials in Israel and abroad are outraged that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lift the excommunication of a British bishop who denies that Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers.

The pope's decree, issued Saturday, brings back into the Catholic Church's fold Bishop Richard Williamson and three other bishops who belong to the Society of Saint Pius X.

The liaison for Vatican-Jewish relations -- Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity -- said he was not consulted.

"It was a pope decision" he told CNN in a phone interview. "I have my opinions about it, but I do not wish to comment on a decision made by the pope."

The Society of Saint Pius X was founded by Archbishop Lefebrve, who rebelled against the Vatican's modernizing reforms in the 1960s, and who consecrated the men in unsanctioned ceremonies. As a result, Pope John Paul II excommunicated the four in 1988.

Within the Catholic Church, many Vatican analysts suggests that in an attempt to heal one rift with ultra-conservative church members, the pope is risking creating a wider gap with those more liberal groups that have fully embraced the changes and reforms.

The church's decision to lift the excommunication comes a few days after a Swedish television aired an interview with Williamson in which the 68-year-old claimed the Nazis did not use gas chambers.

"I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against -- is hugely against -- 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," he said in the interview, which appeared on various Web sites since its broadcast.

"I believe there were no gas chambers," he added.

He added: "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."

It seems to me that not only is the Church misogynistic, it is hell bent on being antisemitic as well.

Sure........no Jews were ever gassed. They were shipped off to utopia lands to enjoy themselves in absolute bliss........what concentration camps??? Hitler shipped them all off to holiday camps instead!!!!

Catholic Church: Purveyors of Bullshit

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage Catholics to be excommunicated. The Vatican, being a self-professed bastion of morals, clearly is a faulty moral compass. They have no inane sense of moral values, and are apt to support people who are purveyors of lies, myths and all manner of bullshit.

If you want to be a good person, the last place you will need to go to is a Catholic Church, especially so if you have to be the altar boy.

A Disease of The Mind


-"I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out."

-Richard Dawkins (Interviewed in: Sceptic vol 3, no 4, 1995)

The Witch's Hammer Revisited: Children in Africa Accused of Witch Craft

1692, Massachusetts: A series of hearings were held before local magistrates, followed by county court trials in Essex, Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, led to 150 people being tried, arrested and imprisoned for crimes related to witch craft. The lynchings, which lasted more than a year, led to the deaths of 14 men and five men, all hanged, as well as one convicted felon being crushed to death by heavy stones.

The series of supposedly supernatural claims, and the subsequent hearings, are what has been referred to historically as the Salem Witch Trials. These charges, however, would seem innocuous today, given the fact that rational thinking has largely taken precedence over superstition. As much as witch craft is concerned, the idea that witches are responsible for causing malicious events has as much validity as Jesus flying through the clouds on board an UFO.

That said, Christianity has had a long and unbroken history of hysterical fear and hatred towards practitioners of witchcraft, especially those of the female variety, i.e the witches.

The Holy Bible on Witchcraft

Interestingly, the holy bible does have something to say about witches, and like the homosexuals, there is but one punishment for devious women who practice the dark arts: Death.
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." -Exodus 22:18 (KJV)

Such a clear, unambiguous statement of authority, as issued by the holy bible, is highly indicative of Judaism's intolerance and hatred towards witchcraft, and this intolerance and hatred was later passed on to the pious leaders of Christendom, who wasted little effort in meting out violence towards people who were suspected of practicing what was thought to be the devil's little act.

The Hammer of Witches



What is seldom mentioned in Churches all over the world is the presence of this little book, "The Hammer of Witches", or "Malleus Maleficarum" in latin.

This obnoxious book spells out, amongst other things, the susceptibility of women to the devil, as they are more inclined to learn the dark arts (In the world of Judaism and Christianity, women are often referred to, implicitly or explicitly, as the harbinger of temptation and great evil, beginning with the Fall from Paradise and Eve), methods to discern real witches, and punishments to be meted out against witches.

Whether or not real witches exist is highly subjective; what is real is that many women, particularly of the elderly, wrinkled-face variety, were often singled out and accused of practicing witchcraft and wrecking havoc on the masses. These unfortunate women invariably became the primary victims of witch hunts, and suffered ignominious, and often very painful deaths for their accused crimes (Accused victims of witchcraft are often burned and barbecued at the stake).

This wretched book from the Dark Ages was to sit in every courtroom in Europe for at least 3 centuries: By most accounts, 40,000 to 100,000 people, mostly women, were condemned to ignominious deaths based on the ludicrous doctrines of this erstwhile book by European courts.

Modern Day Witchcraft?

In the 21st century, accusations and lynchings against the practice of witchcraft in most parts of the world are sporadic at best: People are less susceptible to hysterics when faced with disasters, say, an outbreak of SARS, and the advent and success of modern day medicine means that people are less likely to fall for malevolent beliefs of the witch craft variety and blame the supernatural for such ill tidings.

That said, superstition and myths are still rife in third world countries, where people still believe that a sprinkle of holy water can dispel all manner of diseases, and children and adults alike drop dead like flies from the atrocious living conditions brought about by a succession of wars, natural disasters and petty politics.

In Africa, Churches have seized upon the gullibility of ignorant folks to spread their devious lies of witchcraft and heap blame upon kids as witches. It is as if these pious Christians are somehow attempting to throw Africa back to the Dark Ages.

Nigerian children branded as witches in deadly purge

"EKET, Nigeria (AFP) — Jeremiah, 10, stares blankly at a window, tears rolling down his burn-scarred cheeks recounting how his father doused him with petrol and set him ablaze accusing him of witchcraft.

He is just one of hundreds of children in southern Nigeria's Niger Delta oil region thrown out of their homes, tortured or even killed after they are branded witches by a new crop of self-styled religious leaders.

Around a dozen phony pastors have been arrested -- one on murder charges after he confessed in a documentary film to having killed 110 child witches. He now says he killed only the witches inside the children, not the children themselves.

At a centre in Eket, Akwa Ibom's oil town, Jeremiah and over 170 other children -- aged between 18 months and 16 years -- have sought or been brought to emergency shelter. Many bear scars of physical torture -- machete cuts, burns or a nail drilled into the head.

It has been more than a year since Jeremiah fled from his home, but he suffered months of abuse at the hands of his parents after he was accused of sorcery.

"We were having a revival at church one night when from nowhere, the pastor's wife stood up to say I was a witch," recounts Jeremiah.

He was immediately locked up at the pastor's house, starved and assaulted with clubs as part of the exorcism exercise.

When he moved back home his father tied a noose around his neck and led him to a nearby school grounds, but apparently developed cold feet.

In minute detail he recounts how over several weeks, his parents locked him up in a room and starved and flogged him. That was before the father torched him, accusing him of being behind his losing a job with an oil firm."

While the crimes of the father cannot be exonerated in this case, the churches which propagate such accusations are largely to blame: By playing on the insecurities of the masses, the churches have become mass abusers and murderers of children who are innocent victims of unnecessary, superstitious fear.

It is very difficult for rational-minded folks to understand the absurdity of such accusations, let alone understand the atrocity of dousing a child with petrol and lighting him up for a grisly barbecue session. This, however, is what will happen in a nation where people are steeped in the beliefs of the supernatural: They can be easily manipulated by hucksters who will not hesitate to cause the death of innocent children simply to make a quick buck or two.

Is Christianity the Scourge of Africa?

It has been argued that Christian missions have done Africa a whole lot of good by feeding the masses, setting up schools to educate children, and so on and so forth.

I don't wish to belittle the charitable work of Christians: Clearly they have done good works, and yes, most of them are carried out with good intentions.

Unfortunately, Christianity has also managed to cook up quite a slew of problems for Africa too. Accusations of witch craft aside, Christianity's vehemence against the usage of condoms and its own brand of sex education has also inhibited secular institutions who are facing an uphill task in their quest to stem the spread of STDs, particularly the HIV virus.

It is quite clear, at least to me, that Africa does not need Christianity to be involved in already a complex potpourri of religions. What Africa needs is clean water, food, sanitation, education and jobs, not more superstition and unnecessary fear.

Witch Hunts: A Barbaric, Misogynistic Act

"During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry."

-Mark Twain

Honor Killings: Murder in the Name of God

In the warped, convoluted world of Islam, women are, strictly speaking, creatures who rank low amongst the hierarchy of male patriarchs: Allah is deemed the solitary and supreme deity, below which, Prophet Muhammad is reserved a special place beside the deity as a sort of right hand man and proselytizer, followed by the average Arab male, and then his assortment of property, including women.

Like Christianity, Islam is the offshoot of Judaism, and like its predecessor, Islam shares a set of sectarian, desert-fakir beliefs, chief amongst which is the lowly status of women.

In the OT of the bible, the standard, virtuous woman is a submissive woman: She is to be humble and complying to her husband at all times, and is treated as no better than a mule and an average oxen, stuff which in times of war, are classified as "war spoils":

"They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil."

-Judges 5:30

The Koran has this pearls of wisdom as well:

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah made men to be better than women. Refuse to have sex with women from whom you fear rebellion, and scourge them. " -4:34

In a way, Islam is a continuation of old Jewish traditions: Women are little more than properties, subjugated and manipulated by male patriarchs who are free to treat them as they so choose to.

Islam & Women

The Oppressed Women of Islam

In predominantly Islamic countries administrated under the auspices of Syariah law, women have little say in their own private lives: They are obligated to wear stifling, ugly-looking outfits known as burkas when they have to appear in public venues, are denied even the most basic of education, married off when they are in their pre-teens (that is, if they are lucky) or in their childhood (Prophet Muhammad famously married a 9 yr old girl) so as to ensure that the bridegroom is guaranteed to a spot of virginity on the day of the wedding.

So stifling is religion and culture in such religiously-dominated environments that the repercussions of disobedience can be deadly, as these 5 Pakistani women found out, to their own detriment.

Life Burial of Women: Activists Demand Action
By Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Sep 15 (IPS) - Prominent civil rights activists are demanding that the government act against those responsible for the burial alive of five women in Balochistan, in July, that politicians from the province have defended as an age-old custom.

On Jul. 14, in the remote village of Babakot, 80 km from Usta Mohammad town in Jafferabad district, three teenage girls and two older women were buried alive, allegedly on the orders of Abdul Sattar Umrani, brother of Sadiq Umrani, a provincial minister belonging to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
According to the version released by the Hong-Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), the victims were taken to Nau Abadi, in the vicinity of Babakot, where Umrani and his six companions dragged the three younger women out of his jeep and beat them up before shooting and seriously injuring them. The girls were reported still alive when Umrani and his accomplices hurled them into a wide ditch and covered them with earth and stones.
AHRC said the two older women were an aunt and the mother of one of the girls. When they protested at the treatment meted out to the girls, they were also pushed into the ditch and buried alive.

Apparently the teenagers were being punished for asking to be allowed to marry men of their choice.

When the matter was raised in on Aug. 30 in parliament by opposition senator Yasmin Shah - who accused the government of turning a blind eye to the killings - a senator from Balochistan, Israrullah Zehri, retorted: "It is part of our custom". Zehri was supported by Senator Jan Mohammad Jamali who said the incident was being ‘’unnecessarily politicised.’’

Honor Killings

In Pakistan and other Islamic states run under the statute of the Shariah law, violence is usually meted out in outmoded, barbaric and crude manners, usually with the sort of brutality one usually associates with the Dark Ages: Stoning, decapitating, and other archaic practices are meted out accordingly in accordance to the infringement of religious laws.

This adherence to Islam also has a significant influence amongst tribal clans in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which, chief amongst other appalling acts of barbarity, includes the act of "honor killing": Women who do not abide by the rules of their male patriarchs are deemed to have sullied the honor of the family, and hence become liable for murder by their own family members.

In normal, secular circumstances, the abhorrent idea of murder is so repulsive, that it is often very difficult for anyone or the general public to vindicate such acts of violence, let alone the idea of death by live burial!

Imagine the sheer terror of being buried alive, literally, as your murderers and their accomplices shove earth and stones onto your face, slowly asphyxiating and choking the life out of you. Fuck, most people would find it difficult to mete out such treatments to animals, let alone human beings.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2007 alone, as many as 636 deaths were attributable to honor killings, possibly more as many cases do go unreported every year.

Why Religion is Dangerous

If anything else, religious laws are terrible abusers of human rights: Enforcers who enforce theocratic laws do not concern themselves with trivialities, such as the individual right of a person to fair trial, nor do they concern themselves with the sufferings of others.

And when it comes to women, the maltreatment goes way beyond the pale: Deemed as little more than human reproductive vessels with little inherent value, they are oppressed, ill-treated, and face real dangers of being abused by their very own family members.

This kind of misogynistic abuse against women should never be tolerated; unfortunately, religion condones and even mandates such atrocities. This is religion at its worst.

Abusing Women in the Name of God



-"When I began to study the Koran, the holy book of Islam, I found many unreasonable ideas. The women in the Koran were treated as slaves. They are nothing but sexual objects. Naturally I set aside the Koran and looked around me. I found religion equally oppressive in real life. And I realized that religious oppression and injustices are only increasing, especially in Muslim countries. The religious terrorists are everywhere. But if I criticized Muslim fundamentalists and mullahs in particular, it is because I saw them from close quarters. They took advantage of people's ignorance and oppressed them. They considered women as chattel slaves and treated them no better than the slaves of the ancient world."

-Bangladeshi Writer, Taslima Nasrin

Misogyny & The Bible

Women: The very image of motherly love and yes, the very object of lust which generations upon generations of pious, stupid old priests had ceaselessly reminded us. The images of bikini-clad babes sashaying down the beaches in insipid Baywatch episodes, nude, lewd naked women in porn magazines..... in whatever shape or form, the archaic Judaic-inspired monotheisms love to treat women as some kind of a wicked taboo.

In The Beginning..........

Paradise Gone Wrong: Eve Persuades Adam to Eat the Darn Fruit

& no wonder: Right off the bat, in the first few Chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve, the first human creatures ever to be created by Adam's alter-ego, God, the role of the temptress became the indelible curse of women: Tempted by the talking serpent, who was actually the Devil in disguise, Eve persuaded Adam to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. While both were to bear the curse of their disobedience, Eve faired worst:

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." -Genesis 3:16

In essence, God had, in his infinite grace, instigated what seems to be a mass-orgy of sorts: Instead of restricting the error of Adam and Eve well within one single episode of disobedience, he chooses Eve to harbor the first pregnancy on the planet, and thus ensuring that generations of generations of so-called sinners were spawned to carry on the debt of sin. Meanwhile, Eve becomes the archetypal figure of womanhood: The evil temptress who ruined her husband's good fortune in Paradise.

It is on account of such archaic nonsense that Catholics and other religious bigots are so adamant in their opposition against birth control and contraception: Sex, if anything else, is solely meant for reproductive purposes, so that women have no choice but to be punished for the sins of the first Mother, Eve.

The Unclean Woman?

If one is to study the insipidity of the bible, it is hard to miss out the fact that women bear the worst blunt of irrational prejudice: Women, if anything else, are anything but "clean":

¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² "Say to the Israelites: 'A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. ' ³ On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. ⁴ Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. ⁵ If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.

⁶ " 'When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. ^[

⁷ He shall offer them before the LORD to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood. These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl.

⁸ If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean."

-Leviticus Chapter 12: 1-8

It is quite difficult for us, in this time and age, to fathom how such erroneous, pious stupidity can have any place in our secular setting. Yet, if anything else, such biblical nonsense remind us that we have progressed a hell lot, even from a moralistic point of view, than the authors of such breath-taking stupidity.

As we can glean from Leviticus, the sight of bleeding virginals, be it from menstruation or child birth, is considered a disgusting act, not fit for Gawd's divine, ceremonial functions.

The idea that a woman has to wait for 66 god-damned days after giving birth to a girl, compared to 33 days, gives us an indicator of the lowly, filthy status of women in the minds of religious morons. The idea that women must be "clean" after menstruating or giving birth in order to be considered fit to enter Gawd's opulent churches is nothing short of bigotry; the extraordinary sacrifices of lambs, pigeons and what-nots merely amplifies the sheer ludicrousness of biblical-inspired misogyny.

Death Via Stoning

The hymen: a innocuous membrane in a woman's virginal, which really serves no other function than being a social indicator; a woman with an intact virginal is, categorically speaking, a virgin.

Since the dawn of human civilization, Man seems to harbor a deep fixation with virginity: Screwing a virgin on the wedding night is akin to animals spraying (with urine) on virgin territory. There is a sense of territorial ownership, no matter how bizarre and absurd that sounds, and religious dogmas (clearly, such chauvinistic nonsense can only be the work of sick, depraved men) merely reinforce what is already a male-ego issue: Women must invariably be the equivalent of vestal virgins on their nuptial nights. Failure to be one, it seems, may incur the wrath of religious authorities, as mandated by the good book:

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house. You must purge the evil from among you.
-Deuteronomy 22:20-21:

Quite unfortunately for women, the hymen is not a indicator of sexual experience. The hymen is a notoriously weak membrane: Women who engage in sports, or have suffered from some physical trauma, are likely to suffer hymen tears that have little or nothing to do with engaging in actual sex.

The Submissive Woman

Now, you would think that the holy babble has something good to say about women.......well, you guessed it wrong.

Mandatory stoning of non-virgins and other stigmas aside, the role of women is unceremoniously spelled out in the bible: They must be submissive to their husbands, or any other male alter-ego in the family:

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.
-1 Corinthians 14:34

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.
-1 Timothy 2:11

Biblical Misogyny and the Everyday Christian

Judging by what is written in the bible, it is quite easy to understand why most Christian households are such oppressive environments for women: Women have no status in a heinously religious environment: Short of become an auto-bot version of a child bearing and child raising android, the average religious housewife has to submit to the every will and whim of a patriarchal husband.

Surely, in this time and age, we cannot depend on the holy babble to teach us what to do with regards to our attitude towards women. After all, stoning non-virgins to death isn't a very pretty sight (or anyone else for the matter, except maybe Falwell?).


"To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom."
-Susan B.Anthony

Perverse Religious Ruling: Rape Victim In Saudi Arabia Sentenced With Whipping

As an atheist and a secular humanist, it seems to me that whenever religion is thrown into the cauldron of a judiciary system in a bid to form a religious court, more often than not, the askew judgments and gross abuse of human rights become centerfold: From gross misogyny to outright ridiculous punishments of victims & criminals alike, religious laws belong to a somewhat archaic age, when it was customary for thieves to have their hands chopped off, or mandatory stoning for convicted adulterers.

For various obvious reasons, most democratic, modern nations do not ascribe such ridiculous concepts of law into their statutes, and while some countries still practice the ancient, non-reversible death penalty in their books, it is safe to say that as civilized countries go, most countries have removed a significant number of barbaric punishments from the law books.

There are, however, some religiously-charged countries, particularly in the Islamic mold, that still dish out unacceptable punishments for certain crimes, and it really galls me to say that most of these supposed "crimes" are merely deliberate acts of lynching meant to subjugate one particular class of human beings: Women.

Saudi Gang-Rape Victim is Jailed
By Frances Harrison
BBC News

An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped.

The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack.

When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.

The attackers' sentences - originally of up to five years - were doubled.

Extra penalties

According to the Arab News newspaper, the 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago. Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years. But the victim was also punished for violating Saudi Arabia's laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man. On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence.

Subjugating Women and Stoking the Male Ego

Burkas: A Symbol of Misogyny

For all intents and purposes, the Syariah (Muslim Law) has, within its tenets, rules that subjugates women: In Saudi Arabia, women can't drive cars, step out of their homes without the mandatory burkas (The ugly veils that make them resemble out-of-place Martians), & yes, generally speaking, women are conspicuously absent in a large proportion of a male-dominated social setting.

In short, Muslim women living under the shadow of the law live a shady, oppressed kind of existence, their survival deemed as nothing more than tools for raising children, looking after the household and yes, perpetual sex slaves for males destined for 72 virgins in Paradise.

Sickening Ruling

The idea that a rape victim should be able to seek legal recourse without undue fear of reprisal is strangely absent in Islamic courts: As for the case in question, the farce just keeps snow-balling into gross miscarriage of justice: For the mere act of getting in a car with a male driver, she gets 200 lashes, up from the earlier sentence of 90 lashes.

A Muslim apologist can argue that the male rapists didn't go scot free: But how does one justify one deserving punishment for a misguided (& misogynistic one at that) one?

This is another classic example why religion should never be allowed to meddle in court matters, or any other issue for the matter. Wherever religion trots on secular ground, the end result is often a disaster in the making.







"When I began to study the Koran, the holy book of Islam, I found many unreasonable ideas. The women in the Koran were treated as slaves. They are nothing but sexual objects. Naturally I set aside the Koran and looked around me. I found religion equally oppressive in real life. And I realized that religious oppression and injustices are only increasing, especially in Muslim countries. The religious terrorists are everywhere. But if I criticized Muslim fundamentalists and mullahs in particular, it is because I saw them from close quarters. They took advantage of people's ignorance and oppressed them. They considered women as chattel slaves and treated them no better than the slaves of the ancient world."

-Banglasdeshi Writer, Taslima Nasrin