Whoa. I found this forum thread where the Qatif girl rape case is being discussed. http://www.gawaher.com/index.php?showtopic=120652.html&
Sometimes it’s interesting to see the other point of view. If you’re interested in that, here are people defending the Saudi judges, the Saudi judicial system, and Shariah law.
The truth is that the media has slandered the good character of the Islamic judges in Saudi Arabia. The entire case has been hyped up and taken dramatically out of context by the West and the lovers of the West (i.e. the secularists within our own ranks). In this article, we shall–with the Help of Allah Almighty–reveal the hidden facts about the case and thereby exonerate Islam from the charges levied against it by the forces of Taghoot.
That last word there means a few different things, but basically, in this context, Satan.
No other religion besides Islam has ever placed such a large emphasis on the protection of women. It is known that the early Muslims even raised an army to bring to justice those who raped a woman; such was the attitude of the Muslims towards the heinous crime of rape. In one of the Prophetic traditions, we read:
A woman, in the life of the Messenger of Allah, [left her home] intending to go for Prayer [in the mosque] when a man seized her and had sexual intercourse with her, while she let out a scream [for help]. The man fled, and she told a man what had occurred. A group from amongst the Muhaajireen (i.e. the first group of Muslims) were told of this and they chased the man down eventually capturing who they thought it was, and took the man to her. She said that it was the man who did it to her. They took the man to the Messenger of Allah, and asked “who is the man who did this to her”? The man confessed saying, “I am the one who did this to her, O Messenger of Allah!” The Prophet Muhammad said to the woman, “You can leave, for Allah has forgiven you (i.e. absolved you of all sin)!” The Prophet said to the man, “Your words are sound.” So he said regarding the man who had raped her, “Stone him.”
I don’t doubt that a rapist who confessed in person to the prophet was punished for rape. However, it takes eyewitness testimony from four men to convict a man of rape in many countries under Shariah law.
So the one who says that Islam lets rapists go free is a liar, because the Prophet himself sentenced the rapist to stoning. Likewise, the one who claims that rape victims get punished in Islam is also a liar, because the Prophet exonerated victims of all blame, and this 1,400 years ago when it used to be common to blame the woman for such things!
In the Qatif girl case, she didn’t get punished for being raped. She got gangraped and then harshly punished for having been in a car with a man not her husband and not a close relative. (And not her driver).
The liars at BBC have endeavored to make it seem as if the woman was simply punished for being in a car of a man; what a boldfaced lie! By this lie, the Western media has made it appear as if the Muslims would punish someone for such a seemingly menial crime. And yet, they have hidden the greatest fact of all, which is that the woman was having an illicit affair on her husband, and at the time of the alleged rape, she was in the car of the man with whom she was having an affair with! The Qatif adulteress confessed to having an affair on her husband, and this is all in her sworn testimony.
Maybe so. But I doubt it. The woman and her lawyer deny that she ever confessed to having an affair. Her husband believes her.
Then there are a few paragraphs about the fine distinction between different shades of adultery, including flirtation. I can’t copy and paste them selectively. If you’re interested, I recommend reading them.
Here’s a nice defensive slam at westerners:
We Muslims are not like the Westerners who are–with a few exceptions–immoral fornicators and adulterers. Even though their own religious book condemns such things, they themselves are a society which revels in these things. Famous Western researchers, such as Alfred Kinsey and Glass & Wright, found that adultery occurs in 50-80% of all American marriages! And this propensity of Westerners to betray their spouses is one of the causes for their skyrocketing divorce rates and their broken home syndrome. Al-Hamdu Lillah, our Muslim children are obedient to their parents, and they are not rebellious like the Western children; and who can blame their children for acting that way when their parents are immoral fornicators and adulterers? We can open up their own Bible to point to verses in which God Almighty threatens damnation upon such nations as the people of Sodom; and this will be the end of the Western nations because they have slipped into a state of moral decadence and depravity.
Well, I can’t deny everything he’s saying here. However, I bet he’d be amazed to find out how much adultery is going on in Saudi marriages.
The next poster quotes some verses from the bible that, frankly, don’t make Christianity look like the religion of forgiveness. Then he slanders the Qatif rape victim with elaborate accusations of adultery. But then comes the really bad part. This person claims that the rape victim was not ever raped; rather, she was found by a group of good Muslim men and offered to service the lot of them so that they wouldn’t tell on her. But they refused her offer.
The group of men deny raping her. According to them, they caught the Qatif woman in the car with her clothes off. They caught the two lovers in the act, and she was–by her own admission–fearful that the men would inform her husband of her betrayal. This is where the story differs between the woman and the group of men. The woman claims that the men proceeded to gang-rape her. On the other hand, the men claim that she offered herself to them, in exchange for their promise to keep quiet on her affair. And the men claim that they refused her offer.
Huh? Wait a minute. What is this here?
The group of men accused of rape deny raping the Qatif woman. They claim that she offered herself to them in exchange for promises of silence; however, none of the men admitted to accepting her offer. A few of the men admitted to witnessing the rape, but none of them admitted to the actual rape. It became a circular accusation, whereby each man claimed innocence and put the blame on the other men. As such, it became impossible to tell which of the men were guilty and which were innocent.
They all deny raping her, but some admit to witnessing it. How can they have witnessed a rape that didn’t happen?!
Actually, the rest of the post is actually a very thoughtful analysis of rape and the difficulty in proving it. The more I read, the more reasonable it seems.
They’re saying that the Qatif girl didn’t report the rape until three months after it supposedly occurred. So of course there’s no evidence. The accused rapists recanted their confessions of having witnessed the rape. The Qatif girl denies ever having admitted to pseudo-adultery.
Hmmm. Makes you think.
On second look, there are three posts in the thread and they’re all by the same guy.