No end to the depravity,
Saudi girl, 13, sentenced to 90 lashes after she took a mobile phone to school
A 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to 90 lashes and two months’ prison in Saudi Arabia after she took a mobile phone to school.
A court ordered the girl to be flogged in front of her classmates following an assault on the school principal, according to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan.
Take a look at what a flogging looks like:
Sentencing a 13-yr old child to endure 90 lashes and two months’ prison is the equivalent of a death sentence.
But we’re talking about a pathological mindset that believes that girls should be mutilated in order to save them from themselves and subjugate them to men. I was in a waiting room the other day when I came across this article, Waris Dirie Fights Female Genital Mutilation
Though female circumcision is often thought of as a foreign issue, according to experts at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an estimated 228,000 women in the U.S. have undergone the procedure or are at risk. “Violence against woman does not know borders,” notes Dirie, “whether it is FGM, forced marriage, honor killings, or domestic violence.” She is pushing hard for a U.S. release of Desert Flower and notes, “There are an estimated 40,000 FGM victims in New York City alone.”
It’s a practice Dirie can speak about firsthand. Her mother held her down when she was cut without anesthesia by a gypsy woman when she was a tiny girl. Dirie’s vaginal opening was stitched closed with thorns. The pain was horrific. “Can you imagine anything worse than hearing the screams of pain of your own child?” she asks.
“I consider FGM the worst type of torture that can be done to a woman. It’s impossible to describe the pain,” she continues. One of Dirie’s older sisters bled to death after the procedure, while a six-year-old cousin perished from a resulting infection. In her book, Dirie makes it clear that FGM is blatant butchering, writing, “It’s like someone is slicing through the meat of your thigh or cutting off your arm, except this is the most sensitive part of your body.” In many African communities, she goes on to explain, “the prevailing wisdom is that there are bad things between a girl’s legs.”
Dirie has come a long way to find herself in this well-appointed Paris room. At around 13, her father sold her to a much older man to be his next wife. The plan was that he would cut open her stitched vagina with a knife or break it open by penetrating her. So she ran away.
Like Aayan Hirsi Ali, she ran away. The article on Waris Dire does not mention a religious affiliation, but Islam definitely was the factor behind Hirsi Ali’s mutilation. Both Dire and Hirsi Ali have survived; as you may recall, Katoucha died under suspicious circumstances.
In another case involving a child, Phyllis Chesler asks Can Counseling Prevent a Potential Honor Killing?
Don’t bet your life on it.
