Why Shari'a law should be banned

AP:

When the teenager went to the police a few months ago to report she was gang-raped by seven men, she never imagined the judge would punish her — and that she would be sentenced to more lashes than one of her alleged rapists received.

The story of the Girl of Qatif, as the alleged rape victim has been called by the media here, has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers are present.

The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges. These include one in which a group of men got heavier sentences for harassing women than the men in the Girl of Qatif rape case or three men who were convicted of raping a boy. In another, a woman was ordered to divorce her husband against her will based on a demand by her relatives.

In the case of the Girl of Qatif, she was sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married — a crime in this strictly segregated country — at the time that she was allegedly attacked and raped by a group of other men.

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In a trial that ended in November — in which the prosecutor asked for the death penalty for the seven men — four of the men received between one and five years in prison plus 80 to 1,000 lashes, said the woman. Three others are awaiting sentencing. Neither the defendants nor the plaintiffs retained lawyers, as is common here.

"The big shock came when the judge sentenced me and the man to 90 lashes each," said the woman. The sentence was handed down as part of the rape trial. Lashes are usually spread over several days, dealt around 50 at a time.

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Saudis are urging the Justice Ministry to clarify the logic behind some rulings. In one recent case, three men convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy received sentences of between one and two years in prison and 300 lashes each. In contrast, another judge sentenced at least four men to between six and 12 years imprisonment for fondling women in a tunnel in Riyadh.

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The broad discretion judges enjoy have been a disaster for Fatima, another Saudi woman. She suddenly found herself divorced from her husband, Mansour al-Timani, after her half-brothers went to a judge and told him their sister had married beneath her.

Fatima, whose full name has not been given in media reports, had been married for over three years and was pregnant with her second child when the judge declared the marriage void in July 2005.

Today, Fatima sits in jail with her 11-month-old son — her 4-year-old daughter was recently freed — rather than return to the custody of her family as the judge decreed.

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At best these are very unwise men rendering these verdict, but at the heart of it is the Shari'a system that permits such injustices. Someday the the real rule of law should be applied in Saudi Arabia.