Another black eye for Shari'a in Saudi Arabia

Reuters/NY Times:

A Saudi appeals court is due this week to review the case of a biochemist and his female student sentenced to jail and flogging after a lower court ruled their research contact was a front for a telephone affair.

The man was sentenced to 8 months in prison and 600 lashes and his student to 4 months in prison and 350 lashes last November for establishing a phone relationship that led her to divorce her husband.

London-based Amnesty International says it will consider the two as prisoners of conscience if the verdicts are carried out.

"The charges ... do not correspond to recognizable criminal offences," the group said in a statement in April.

A spokesman for the government's Human Rights Commission said he was not immediately able to comment.

Rights groups and some Saudi reformers have criticized what they say is an arbitrary justice system unsuited to the needs of a country of 25 million people.

Judges who are religious scholars apply the rulings of an austere version of sharia, Islamic law, often termed Wahhabism.

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The man and the woman were denied access to lawyers. The woman was represented by her father because the Saudis say a male guardian is required to speak for the woman. This case joins a lengthy list of examples of why Shari'a law should be abolished. It is an inhumane barbaric code from the Middle Ages that has no place in a modern civilization.

It is beyond belief that the head of the Church of England and the Chief Justice of the UK would consider incorporating it into British law. Certainly this case does not show any sense of humanity or fairness. The Chief Justice suggest Shari'a can be used in alternate dispute resolutions. As someone who has been involved in alternate dispute resolution for 30 years I find that suggestion ridiculous. Ignoring the real law for an ambiguous barbaric religious code would be a disaster.