Many people have responded with anger and disgust to the video about corporal punishment in Sudan published by Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
By Ibrahim Abdelkarim - The YouTube film clip shows a young woman being whipped in public by two police officers in Khartoum. Dozens of visitors to RNW’s English, Arabic and Africa websites have posted heated responses or joined in debate with other viewers.
Not all visitors were disgusted. Some accepted that corporal punishment helps uphold feminine purity and virtue. Women’s groups say whippings are handed down as punishment to about 40,000 women a year by the Sudanese authorities. Most of those receiving lashes are accused of indecent behaviour, a term which can cover anything from infidelity to wearing trousers.
Women against whippings
People from all over the Arab and English-speaking world have been spurred into responding to the disturbing images.
All the women who have expressed an opinion on the site are against the punishment. “What we see shows that women are oppressed and degraded by sharia law. Unacceptable,” writes one woman from Saudi Arabia, where sharia is strictly enforced.
Someone calling herself "IT IS ME" expresses her feelings in the following lines:
burn all the whips you can get your hands on.
ban the whip in law and list it as a weapon of aggression.
if all the ladies in Sudan wore trousers there would not be enough places in jail to accommodate them all.
have a social revolution ... say YOU CANNOT HIT ME"
Bashir blah blah
On the English website, Janet expresses her exasperation at the repeated idea that corporal punishment doesn’t have anything to do with Islam, but is simply a facet of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s regime.
Others think there’s nothing wrong with sharia law and corporal punishment as long as the procedures are carried out properly and police officers are well trained. They believe women should be punished behind closed doors and not in public. The women should also be medically checked, the whip lashes should not be too hard and only given on the back and not on other parts of the woman’s body.
Contrary to God’s will
There are also people who fully back corporal punishment in the name of Islamic law.
We’re left with comments made by Rizig:
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In some cultures that's what you get for burning the toast.
those "holier than thou" religious extremists are examples of those who shout about sex and sin, so to speak, and are the very ones who are out there doing it
themselves. What is religion about through the centuries: Rules concocted by men with the sole purpose of keeping women down, suffering, and uneducated.
Such religious "authorities" should ask themselves a simple question: can
rulers run a bicycle on one wheel, or a car on only two wheels? That's why no societies like those cruel torturers will never
amount to anything but failure. Same thing with the
Catholic Church in which I grew up--but luckily I was enrolled in a secular school system.
Someday we'll look back and shake our heads at these types of inhumane teachings and then truly
carry the love of God (whatever your God is) in us and respect each other. Most big religions have ways
of dealing with women if they 'do not behave'. The bible is also full of cruelty. A lot of men (excuse me for saying this as I know enough men who are honorable towards all humans) know themselves to be hypocrites,
especially the ones who throw the first stone. Developing in a natural way as a human being includes
developing your sexuality in a healthy way, and that cannot happen when you have to deny this fact of life.
Why would a man want to 'own' a woman? What type of man is that? And why would a woman want to be
owned by a man? What type of woman is that? Or the other way around, what's that? We've still got a long road to go before we'll treat each other kindly human beings.
Looking for ways to keep your population healthy cannot include force, that is a contradiction in terms.
All chapters in the Koran start with: Oh Merciful Allah!, so whatever you read after that has to be applied with
compassion/mercy. And no cruelty has ever been compassionate/merciful! Thanks for sharing your thoughts as everything we've ever achieved in history started with a single thought/idea. May we someday achieve world peace for all, and may we not forget that this planet, also, does not belong to us.
World peace can never be achieved as each and everyone one of us as a living being is born differently with different set of values, belief etc. People like Stalin, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden and Hitler are born every second and these type of psychopaths are usually smart, charismatic, and ruthlessly ambitious. We have no control over this and therefore there will always be some malevolent megalomaniacs causing destruction to civil societies.
World peace can never be achieved as each and everyone one of us as a living being is born differently with different set of values, belief etc. People like Stalin, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden and Hitler are born every second and these type of psychopaths are usually smart, charismatic, and ruthlessly ambitious. We have no control over this and therefore there will always be some malevolent megalomaniacs causing destruction to civil societies.
Parhae, if you are referring to the Western culture, you might also include all cultures. As to the beating of the Muslim woman, your reasons didn't justify her beating. She got beat whipped because she failed to be the perfect Muslim woman and she got beat because women in the Islamic world are not treated as equals to men. If Islam is loving and peaceful religion ( as you saw on the video), you can see it is not for people who are considered property and that is what women are in the Islamic world.
This is perfectly legal in this country and who are we to condemn their cultural norm? We must respect their culture and their ways of life. We can not impose our moral imperialism on them.
What a splendid defense of woman-beating you've given, anonymous! You're quite the Moral Genius! Tell me, did American commit moral imperialism when we stopped the Nazis from annihilating Jews in their death camps? After all, it was their cultural norm. Who were we to interfere, eh? Please get back to me with the answer because I'm so confused about it all.
Who stopped the Americans from committing genocide against the First Nations? It was "legal" to take scalps and money was paid by the Government to do so.
The Nazi genocide is not the German cultural norm, it was only a short abberation led by a psychopath over the vulnerable German people. On the other hand, the Sharia law has been an integral part of Islamic culture for past one thousand and three hundred years, and this longevity is the reason why it is their culture. Similarly, democracy and freedom are the cultural norms for the Western society because they have stood the test of time. Now you understand?
You should not inflict your stupid and vacuous comments on others.
Yes sir, Mr. Thought Police.
The police beating people with whips. Yeah, real civilized. I wouldn't spend 3 pennies for a 5 star luxury tour of the Sudan. These ignorant barbarians are living 300 years in the past. Islam is a fascist and brutal religion with their whippings & stonings & honor killings. They are so sub-human its a pathetic joke
A society that allows young people to use drugs and unlimited sexual partners causing psychological damage later in life, broken home, and rampant sexually transmitted infections is a barbaric society.
You better quite taking that Aspirin when you have a headache then!
I guess that's why you super-advanced Muslims beat us to the moon. Who am I to argue against the Islamic propaganda you Muslim bigots lap up like water, that your society is superior when in fact it is backward and barbaric, the butt of ridicule of the civilized world. I imagine hyenas think they are the apex of civilization, too.
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