The Unreported Legal Abuse of Non-Muslims in Islam

Indian in Saudi Arabia to Have an Eye Gouged Out

The big story here is not the brutality of the Saudi justice system. What is never reported is that because non-Muslim testimony has half the weight of a Muslim's in a sharia court, non-Muslims are almost always the losers of disputes. (The same holds true for women.) In this case, for example, an Indian gas station worker pointlessly testified that the injury he inflicted was in self-defense.

This presents enormous potential for abuse, even disregarding corruption and the routine hostility toward the "other" in the Muslim world. This is how the most unbelievable items are routinely stolen from Christians, for example, such as land and houses in the West Bank and Gaza. It is one reason why Christians are fleeing nearly every country with Muslim rule.

This system offers unscrupulous Muslims carte blanche to abuse others in private, which is behind the routine oppression (including rape) and de facto enslavement of foreign domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.

A former PLO terrorist, Walid Shoebat, explained how his land and property in Judea were stolen from him by his family after he converted to Christianity. His case was not typical, given the death sentence meted under sharia for converts from Islam. After he converted, he learned that his American mother had been held prisoner for 35 years after a honeymoon in the Holy Land. His father's responses to her attempts to flee made her keep her Christianity a secret from her own children.

Update (Dec. 29): Here is a shocking illustration:

79 Lashes for Gangrenous Maid Who Spoke Against Saudi Torturer (from The Arab News-Saudi Arabia, via the excellent Lost Budgie Blog).

A Riyadh judge sentenced an Indonesian maid, who accused her sponsor and his wife of torturing her, to 79 lashes yesterday....In March, Miyati was brought to a hospital in Riyadh by her sponsor in a critical condition suffering from gangrene to her fingers, toes and a part of her right foot. Doctors had to remove some of her fingers and toes....A judge later sentenced the sponsor?s wife, who admitted to beating Miyati, to 35 lashes. The husband was found innocent due to lack of evidence against him.

There was a "lack of evidence" against the husband despite the pictures, the medical evidence and the wife's confession. The (apparently Muslim) maid's testimony was essentially discarded because it is accorded half of the weight of that of a Muslim man.

Despite the distinction unanimously claimed by the mainstream media between "radicals" and the "moderate majority," there is no significant Muslim opinion that disagrees with either the desirability of implementing Muslim law or the half-valuation of testimony under it. There is almost no source other than IRIS explaining the systemic incentive to exploit the "other" under Islam.

See also:

Saudi Police Arrest Thousands of... Runaway Maids

Saudis to Gouge Out More Eyes

April 24, 2006: Pakistani Teen Raped, Jailed in Saudi Arabia
"Isma Mahmood, 16, was deported to Pakistan last month after having served six months in shackles and handcuffs in a prison in Saudi Arabia. Her crime?being raped by a Saudi man"