RESPONSE TO HAMID MAHMOOD (AGAIN)

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Nov 29, 2007 at 19:46

Dear Hamid,

so you want a reference to an actual case of a female rape victim being sentenced to flogging? Check last week's news from Saudi Arabia. It has been widely reported recently that a young woman in Saudi Arabia was gang-raped when she went to retrieve photographs from a male friend who was not a relative. She was first sentenced to 90 lashes for the crime of having been seen in public with a male who was not a blood relative. When her attorney protested the light sentences of her assailants---prison terms of from six months to two years---her own sentence was increased to 200 lashes for "attempting to interfere with the courts."

The sentence has not yet been carried out and she remains imprisoned. Now here are a couple of concepts that are undoubtedly alien to you and are certainly incomprehensible to any devout Muslim. The first concept is this: You and your religious authorities have no right to tell anyone who they can have sex with. In a free and civilized society people are not flogged for having sexual intercourse.

As citizens of a free society they have the right to choose when and where and with whom they will have sexual relationships. The second incomprehensible concept for you to contemplate is that: Stoning people to death FOR ANY REASON is barbaric and primitive and only a barbaric and primitive society would sanction such grosteque punishments in its courts. It appears that those who have been brainwashed by Islam are ready to accept any level of barbarism in the name of Allah. Please free yourself from Islam's grip and become a free and compassionate soul who can think for himself.

- Daniel Redmond

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