Two more women sentenced to stoning in Nigeria

The BBQ Pit
41

kfl: *If Islam is the religion of peace, then let their leaders practice it peacefully and use it to create peace in the world. If the Koran says that women and men are equal, and Muslims follow the Koran, then let women and men have equality. *

Hear, hear. And in fact, many millions of Muslims do abide by such principles. For example, the two largest Muslim populations in the world, in India and Indonesia, don’t employ these barbaric punishments for adultery. But somehow, nobody seems to notice that when it comes to complaining about the barbarities of a numerically much smaller group of fanatical extremists and Islamist theocrats.

I’m just getting a little tired of hearing the same lip service and not seeing any goods delivered. It takes too many mental gymnastics to reconcile what Muslims in the news say about Islam, and how they practice it in real life, which shows up on CBC news with a body count.

This is why, in threads like these, I often try to balance out the media’s focus on barbaric and violent Muslims by pointing out what usually gets overlooked: first, that most of the world’s Muslims aren’t supporting such barbarities, and second, that misogyny and brutality towards women are by no means unique to Muslim cultures, or even to Muslim legal systems. I agree that you might never realize either of these facts just going by the portrayal of Muslims in mainstream Western media, but I think a commitment to fighting ignorance requires us to look beyond the media’s obsession with violence and body counts.

Once again, since some other people have a hard time distinguishing ignorance-fighting from naive apologism for barbarities: I do not condone the criminalization of adultery, much less gender-unequal punishments for adultery, much less the Biblical barbarity of stoning adulterous women. And I recognize that a number of third world Islamic societies invoke Sharia law to support all those things, and I think it’s oppressive and they ought to stop it.

That doesn’t mean that I think we ought to fall victim to the popular prejudice that this oppression is all the fault of Islam, or that its presence in some Islamic societies somehow demonstrates that Islam is worse than other religions. That’s just laziness and ignorance, as I said before.

42

Your cite lists one ten-year-old case and one seventeen-year-old case. It also points out that similarly “light” sentences are handed out to women who kill their husbands based on claims of a history of physical abuse.

Again, how are you concluding on the basis of this cite that society “largely accepts” killing a woman who cheats on a boyfriend or spouse? Is there something beyond a random anecdote that convinces you? This is sort of like citing an outrageous-appearing jury verdict as proof positive that frivolous lawsuits are out of control.

It must be terrific to be able to read those virtual smilies from the posts herein. :rolleyes:

43

Jackmannii: Again, how are you concluding on the basis of this cite that society “largely accepts” killing a woman who cheats on a boyfriend or spouse? Is there something beyond a random anecdote that convinces you?

Yes. For example, the rest of my quote mentions the opinion of the criminal law professor who says that the light sentencing for such crimes is “mostly cases where men have killed women, and juries tend to think it is reasonable for men to lose it when they hear about adultery”; and that despite criticism of this attitude as “macho” and sexist, “the jury verdicts aren’t changing”.

Moreover, as a UN Human Rights Commission report on violence against women noted,

A review of studies of legal establishment of “crimes of honor” worldwide includes the following:

Mind you, I’m not saying that most people in our society think such verdicts are okay, any more than most Muslims think it’s okay to stone an adulterous woman to death. However, it’s clear that the belief that adultery constitutes a “legitimate provocation” in wife murder is still widespread in the US and other Christian societies.

44

Jackmannii: It also points out that similarly “light” sentences are handed out to women who kill their husbands based on claims of a history of physical abuse.

Missed this point before. Are you suggesting that a spouse’s adultery extenuates murder as much as a history of spousal physical abuse does? And therefore, if a woman gets a light sentence for killing a husband who beats her, it’s fair for a man to get a similar sentence for killing a wife who cheated on him?!?

That’s saying that adultery on a wife’s part is comparable to systematic physical abuse on a husband’s part as a provocation for murder. Is that really what you’re arguing?

45

It’s clear that you’re continuing to use the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence to justify a claim that such attitudes are “common” (to use your own word) in the U.S.

Of course not. I was indicating how your own cite pointing out the light sentences given to spouse killers who can demonstrate a history of physical abuse, helps demolish the suggestion that there is some dramatic tilting of the legal playing field against women in the United States.

It is still quite difficult to understand how you can take another country’s legal system that condones stoning of women as governmental retribution for adultery, and then turn around and suggest that a couple of anecdotes about men killing adulterous spouses in the U.S. makes for a comparably damning indictment of the Ameriican legal system.

46

Jackmannii: It’s clear that you’re continuing to use the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence to justify a claim that such attitudes are “common” (to use your own word) in the U.S.

Well, if you don’t consider the opinions of legal scholars (Schulhofer and Spatz) familiar with the field to be anything more than “the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence”, I doubt that there’s anything I could say that would convince you. (The documented murder cases I cited are of course not “anecdotal”.)

I was indicating how your own cite pointing out the light sentences given to spouse killers who can demonstrate a history of physical abuse, helps demolish the suggestion that there is some dramatic tilting of the legal playing field against women in the United States.

This doesn’t make sense. If light sentences are given to women who murder abusive spouses and to men who murder adulterous ones, how is that not a tilting of the playing field against women, unless you’re claiming that abuse and adultery are comparable provocations to murder?

It is still quite difficult to understand how you can take another country’s legal system that condones stoning of women as governmental retribution for adultery, and then turn around and suggest that a couple of anecdotes about men killing adulterous spouses in the U.S. makes for a comparably damning indictment of the Ameriican legal system.

In the first place, I still don’t understand why you’re calling documented murder cases “anecdotes”. In the second place, if you’d read my posts carefully it should have been clear to you that I don’t think that the indictment of the US system is “comparably damning” to that of Islamist theocratic ones. I said very clearly that I consider the former “nowhere near as bad” as the latter.

But attitudes toward “crimes of honor” in the US, and especially in other Christian cultures, show quite clearly that misogynist brutality towards sexually transgressive women is not a uniquely Islamic problem, and therefore it’s ignorant and prejudiced just to blame such barbarities on Islam per se. Which is the point I’ve been making, as I think anyone who’s read my posts attentively should be able to tell. I’m not trying to argue that US culture is “just as bad” as Islamist theocracy in that respect.

47

As you no doubt must realize by now, it is unjustifiable to suggest on the basis of a couple of cases that a particular attitude is “widespread” or “common”. Neither you nor the “legal scholars” in your cite have documented any such thing. Feel free to do so via comprehensive studies of sentencing, public opinion polls or the like, unless you prefer continually expressing an unsupported opinion as fact.

Nor have posters here made such a claim - this represents a strawman argument on your part. What has evoked shock and disgust is that a modern-day government would impose such a barbaric sentence as stoning someone to death for adultery and justify it on religious grounds. Suggesting that individual Americans have no moral right to express repugnance is beyond belief.

48

Jackmannii: Feel free to do so via comprehensive studies of sentencing, public opinion polls or the like, unless you prefer continually expressing an unsupported opinion as fact.

Very well, I withdraw the term “widespread” or “common” and substitute “by no means obsolete”. Given that at least four US states had “heat of passion” laws on the books into the 1970’s, where killing a wife or daughter and/or her lover was explicitly reduced from murder to manslaughter, and given that “heat of passion” defences are still invoked by some wife murderers, and given that at least two legal scholars whom I cited have said in print that judges and juries tend to be lenient towards killers of adulterous wives, I still think it’s a reasonable inference that such attitudes are still fairly widespread in the US. But since I can’t prove it to your satisfaction, I’ll refrain from asserting it as fact.

“misogynist brutality towards sexually transgressive women is not a uniquely Islamic problem…” Nor have posters here made such a claim - this represents a strawman argument on your part.

No, I was specifically responding to the remark by kung fu lola that “Until they [the world’s Muslims] choose to do so [unanimously condemn things like stoning penalties for adultery], they will have to accept that those of us who believe in and live out the principles of equality, will tar them with the brush of their most dastardly members.”

I said then, and say now, that this sort of “tarring” of all the world’s Muslims with the brush of the fundamentalists is prejudiced and ignorant, precisely because this sort of behavior is not a uniquely Islamic problem.

Suggesting that individual Americans have no moral right to express repugnance is beyond belief.

Good thing I never suggested such a thing, then. In fact, if you read my posts carefully you will easily spot the places where I, an individual American, clearly expressed my own moral repugnance to such practices by repeatedly calling them “barbarism” and “legalized brutality”. You’re the one using a strawman here.

49

And consider Evil Captor’s comment: “Hey, Islam walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. It’s a duck.” What is this supposed to be saying, if not “blame it all on Islam”?

50

Thank you for fighting my ignorance. But please notice that despite the size of Muslim population in Indonesia and India, these countries do not have a Muslim theocracy leading them, which I have already said is what I see as the central problem.

If someone can give me a logical reason for why Sharia rule results in such brutality, that is not “People of the desert hate women”, I would kiss their feet to hear it.

51

Excuse me? Care to elaborate on the meaning you want the reader to give at the word “even” you used to begin this sentence with my membername in it?

Can you refrase this in understandable English for me?

Thank you.

Salaam. A

52

Start kissing mine then, even before you open a thread on the GD forum.
I do not spend time and energy on a thread like this one and more specific: on a forum like this one.

By the way: You do realize that you that you have only your own brain to support your denigrating comment about “people of the dessert”, do you? Maybe first of all you should explain how your brain functions.

Salaam. A

53

Oh really?
To give a good example you may explain first of all to me:
Can you tell me why still so many people in the US support an (openly Christian) president who ordered the mass murder of thousands and thousands of people? An not only that… He declared that he was ready to give the order for the assassination of the leader of the sovereign nation Iraq, including the members of the leader’s family and of the government. Just to name something…
And let’s see what the US population chooses to do at election day, shall we?

I’m so sick of reading crap like this on this message board that there are no words to describe my disgust.

Following your logic, I’m sure you agree if I would say that all those who support Bush and in November shall vote for Bush are willingly and knowingly complicite in the mass murdering on Iraqis and all the other crimes committed in Iraq and all what is still happening this very day to the Iraqi citizens?

Salaam. A

54

You yourself said in another thread, about Bush’s religious mania,

So it’s alright for you to make wild generalizations about all Americans?

55

Excuse me?

  1. Why do you bring the discussion in an other thread that is not even remotely related to this one and running on an other forum over here? (And without even a link to it).
  2. Why do you see my answer posted in that thread as “wild generalisation” while I only post a comment on the comments made in that thread = on the comments of specific posters who in their reactions on the OP say of themselves that they did not see the lunaticism of their leadership earlier then at that very moment.

Salaam. A

56

Just FYI–there’s no such word as “lunaticism.” The word is “lunacy”–and in re Bush’s foreign policy it is entirely apt.

57

OK, here’s a link.

My point? You get all defensive and bent out of shape when people make broad, inaccurate generalizations about Muslims, but you go right ahead and make broad, inaccurate generalizations about Americans.

58

Evil Captor was assuming that even you, as knee-jerk an Arab apologist as ever was, would not attempt to defend stoning to death as an appropriate punishment for fornication or adultery. Sort of a back-handed compliment, if true. Is it true?

59

No, I did not. I said above what I did. Why don’t you read what I write instead of making up your own story about what is not written?

Salaam. A

60

Well, thank you for the attempt to speak for an other member, but I think that member can speak for himself.
As for your description of me… Sorry if this disappoints you but I couldn’t care less about it.

If on the other hand you want information on the issue that was brought up in this thread: You must have overlooked the first post I made here ( and when reading it, remember that that nothing prevents you from opening a thread in GD yourself).
Salaam. A.