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Spot, regarding your links--

Not the same as the "honor killings" I meant. The case dealing with the expatriate woman -- she is most probably of the wealth class. The other involved foreigners & the perps were committing crimes against property. Actually, the women are property, too. Homosexual acts were also involved. Wonder which they found to be most heinous.

Here is something I found yesterday in your location:

British court orders baby adopted to prevent 'honor killing'



Read more: Blog: British court orders baby adopted to prevent 'honor killing'



Amnesty International has a full list of crimes against women. This has relevance to the thread as the textbooks helps perpetuate the right of the men to behave this way.

I'm trying to discover how you'd like to see the problem solved. Eliminate national jurisdictions and have a single world legal code, relegating sovereign countries to the current status of counties? Eliminate travel restrictions and allow any adult to work in any part of the world? Those would both be laudable achievements but pardon me if I doubt they're your intent. I suspect what you actually want is to impose these recent transient trends in law onto all countries whether they fit or not. You want your cake - exceptional exclusivity in an enclave with massive wealth disparities - while pressing unwanted legal codes wherever your newspaper directs your attention.

There's a far more reasonable international mechanism, it's called Treaty. A group of countries treat each other as equals and agree on a code of practise to be shared between them. I commend that approach. By all means press Saudi Arabia to sign up to a few in exchange for... whatever it is you're offering in return, as an inducement. What's an international inducement from an American, I wonder. Not to impose economic sanctions perhaps?

Chipping away it this outrage and that outrage is quite unnecessary in establishing women's rights, all it takes is a single change in any country: that "discrimination on the ground of gender is unconstitutional". Every law has to be gender-blind, every enforcement officer has to apply the law equally, every court has to ignore gender as a consideration in coming to a verdict or in setting a sentence.

Let's assume for a moment that Saudi Arabia waves a magic wand and establishes exactly that constitutional decree and applies it perfectly. We then come to the matter of women jailed after what you describe as rape and this is where the difference in laws comes in. Firstly, in Saudi Arabian law, the burden of proof of rape is different to that common in the West. Secondly, adultery is illegal and punishable under the law.

I've said elsewhere that people using the same word to refer to different things is a major source of misunderstanding in discussions here and I think this is a case in point. In Western legislation over the last fifty years, penetrative intercourse has been defined as rape if one party refuses consent or, having initially consented, withdraws consent at any subsequent stage. A jury may even find rape proven if the complainant says that fear of violence prevented any external indication of a lack of consent but that mentally no consent was made. My own opinion is that this boundary has been pushed so far into the territory of who to believe that the overriding concern of the criminal law, "guilty beyond reasonable doubt", has been cast aside. One word against another, much less "I didn't want it to happen but I was too scared to say so" leaving even some defendants potentially unaware that rape had occurred until the jury declares that it did, is a redefinition of criminality which I deplore.

The Saudi position, if we can simplify for the moment to the urban setting, is that penetrative intercourse is rape if the injured party calls for help, and providing help is a legal obligation on all within earshot. Within many cultures, including England's at an earlier stage, this exact notion of the hue and cry was well established. It provides witnesses and it clarifies the crime itself. I have no problem with that as a gender-blind non-discriminatory law.

In the absence of such a call for help, the current position is that any woman complaining of rape is declaring to the authorities that penetrative intercourse took place. Adultery is also a crime in Saudi Arabia. If rape isn't proven then the court will punish for adultery. The problem is an offence against women's rights because it's not a gender-blind law - men aren't subject to the same accusation, they aren't prosecuted or sentenced for adultery and even if they were, proving the offence needs witnesses and is consequently difficult in the absence of a confession. Women complaining of rape give such a confession by the nature of their evidence.

I suggest then, returning to where I set out from, that what's needed is gender-blind legislation. Oblige the Saudi legislature to choose whether to prosecute men on an equal basis for adultery, such that if a woman's confession of adultery is accepted by a court against herself then it applies automatically against the man at the same time, or to legalize the behavior.

What I have no desire to see is an imposition of Western law blanket-fashion over other legislative systems. It's not just colonial, it's as wasteful as losing languages when everyone starts being taught English, French or Chinese. Systems of law have developed over millennia, they should be protected from imperialist destruction as much as any other aspect of cultural expression.

Very well thought out & well written response, Spot. I don't believe there are any inducements the Saudis would take seriously, & other muslim countries as well. But, when people of those nations do live here, meaning the West, permission ought not to be given for them to bring their laws with them. I have a limited understanding that Britain might be allowing Sharia laws to influence legal decisions?

I'm not aware that in Britain we make concessions to sharia law. I do know that the jewish community tried to get some legal concession, but that was denied. Don't see why the muslims would get preferential treatment. Maybe I'm wrong?

The vast majority of Muslims in Britain are ordinary decent people getting on with their lives and worrying about their kids. There ARE some fanatics, but I've never met them. I would say the proportion to nutters to ordinary people is probably less than the proportion of religious/nationalist/loyalists nutters to decent folk in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

chuckle. We've had Muslims at our family Christmas in the past. Didn't seem a problem, and I have fond memories as a child of playing endless ping-pong with them! I still use the vicious backhand topspin drive I learned.:wah:

There are aspects of Islam that are scary, and the version of Islam espoused by the Saudis (called Wahhabi) is apparently very puritanical. Puritanism and fanaticism go hand in hand, and that's scary. But no more scary to me that the American Religious Right. (sorry :-1)

Don't be sorry of being scared of the American Religious Right. I know I am. My neighborhood has many Arabs & other muslims living here now. There was a big controversy over building a mosque here, but plans are going ahead. Much of the complaints centered on street parking, which is nearly impossible around here, but this real situation was used by the anti-muslim crowd. This area of Brooklyn was originally Italian, then Jewish, then Russian (mostly Jewish)--now it has changed to be Asian (mostly Chinese) and now Arab. In my experience, by the second generation it becomes very assimilated. So, I've been scared by religious radicals of all ilks. Most people, thank goodness, just want to live in peace. We're more alike than we are different. I had an experience walking by the waterfront: 2 women dressed head to toe in full black burkah, one young, one much older. Suddenly, the young woman takes off in a RUN------the path is used by bikers/walkers/runners------& the older woman was frantic & started screaming her name. I got it in my imagination that the younger one would keep on running & not stop till she was far enough away to rid herself of that ghastly costume. It was a beautiful sight to see her take off like that---I was rooting for her!

All religious zealots are scary to me. No act seems beyond them.

re: Sharia law in Britain--read this article in The Telegraph

Sharia: a law unto itself? - Telegraph

& this:

Muslims march for Sharia law zones in the UK | Demotix.com

Here, a lot of propaganda against Muslims focuses on Sharia law being eventually used in U.S. courts, typical scare tactics. Our own crazy Rev., Pat Robertson uses Britain as a warning to the US.

Muslim Extremists Seek Sharia Law in UK Towns - World - CBN News - Christian News 24-7 - CBN.com

Of course Pat thought 9/11 was caused because we "tolerate" our gay Americans more & more. Praise the Lord!:yh_clap

AnneBoleyn;1379587 wrote: I have a limited understanding that Britain might be allowing Sharia laws to influence legal decisions?We model our Muslim courts exactly on our Jewish courts, very deliberately. What's sauce for the goose is fit for the gander and if the public mood sets against the Muslim courts I'd imagine we'll ditch the other too on the exact same grounds, whatever they might be.

They are civil courts which have experimentally allowed local communities to intervene in low-grade hooligan activity which might otherwise be dealt with by magistrates, to see whether low-grade hooligans listen to their uncles and aunts more than to whitey. Your aboriginal councils have similar functions, I'm told, except they can handle far more serious offences. With banishment, if I red that right.

You mean Native Americans who live on Reservations. They deserve more rights, since we stole their land & killed them. THEIR land, which is a big difference than moving to a different country. No, I don't think the US should consider their type of justice, although I do believe I've heard of it, a civil judge using Jewish or Sharia in the rarest of instances. Your country, being a former empire, didn't you give the British passports to those who were native to a British colony? A Jamaican woman I was friends with in Nottinghill Gate (now this is a strange story---when I returned to NY, she was chef at the place I worked---talk about small world!), anyway, she told me that she left Jamaica on a British passport.

Wait! Didn't Obama Sr. have a British passport coming from Kenya to Hawaii? I think I read this, of course it was probably said by one of those nudnik birther people.

No, I'm an assimilator type. You move to a country & ask to be a citizen because of choice, including our laws. I hope this does not change.

There's two forms of British passport, those with right of residence in the UK and those without. It was an important distinction in the second half of the 20th century. It mattered most recently to the four million UK passport holders in Hong Kong in 1997.

The Jewish courts here have been recognized in law since around 1880. They, and the more recent Sharia courts, govern civil contracts between consenting parties. I mentioned the experimental extension into petty criminal law - what you might call misdemeanor - but that's all it's been, just a toe in the water.

Returning again to indoctrination in schools, here's a local example. The difference is that it's not state sponsored as in the OP relating to Saudi Arabia, it's private schooling. Is there a place for government oversight of what schools teach? The Saudis, after all, have exactly that.Parents have been warned that a private faith school set to open in Hull this year could "indoctrinate" children with "fundamentalist" Christian teaching. The £2,000-a-year New Life Academy is due to open in Bridlington Avenue in the west of the city this September.

Senior minister Reverend Jarrod Cooper said it would offer "individualised" Christian learning to allow pupils to develop at their own pace. Opponents say children will be isolated and taught the Bible is literally true. The school will follow the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum formulated by an educational products company in the US.

BBC News - Hull parents warned over 'fundamentalist' faith school



Japan's curricular textbooks, as I understand the matter, are reluctant to ascribe imperial foreign ambitions to their pre-war government, discuss the Manchurian occupation in partisan terms and sweep a lot of bad behaviour in Korea under the table. But that's just historical revisionism, not bigotry. Are we bothered at local slants on what used to be news?

As for the position in Israel, here's an appropriate news article:"You cannot teach history without knowing the borders Israel used to have," Ms Tamir told army radio. "We can't teach children what happened in 1967 if they are not aware where the border runs." Right-wing MP Yitzhak Levy accused Ms Tamir of "politicising the education system". Ms Tamir - who is a founder of the anti-settlement group Peace Now - countered criticism by saying that ignoring the facts of Israel's pre-1967 shape also reflected a political viewpoint.

Controversy over school textbooks is not a new phenomenon in the Middle East conflict. Since the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s, successive Israeli governments have criticised the Palestinian Authority for textbooks which they said negated Israel's right to exist and incited anti-Israeli hatred among Palestinian children.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 210144.stm

Correspondents say most Hebrew-language history books, especially when written for schoolchildren, focus on the heroism of Israeli forces in 1948 and gloss over the mass exile of Palestinians. If it is mentioned at all it is attributed to a voluntary flight, rather than the deliberate expulsion which later revisionist historians have uncovered from archive sources.

The term Nakba is usually applied to the loss suffered by millions of Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 war and subsequent conflicts; their fate remains a key factor in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Jafar Farrah, director of Israeli-Arab advocacy group Moussawa, told the BBC that removing the word Nakba from textbooks would not stop Arabs from using it, but it would complicate relations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 163959.stm

FROM OTHER NEWS SITES

The Hindu: Changing the historical narrative - 23 hrs ago

Cape Times: Israel to remove Palestinian catastrophe reference from Arab pupils' textbooks - 39 hrs ago

Mail Online UK: Israel bans Arabic 'propaganda' term from school textbooks - 49 hrs ago

Haaretz: Israel bans use of Palestinian term 'nakba' in textbooks - 50 hrs ago

ABC News: Israel Bans "Catastrophe" Term From Arab Schools - 53 hrs ago

Ms Boleyn: The ones you produce look like healthy debate to me. I think that's the jewish one I referred to and the sharia one has got nowhere.

I don't think the sharia one you posted has legal force in the UK. It has force only in the mind of her community - which is a very powerful thing. But there is an effort to let women in Britain know their rights - leaflets in many languages are distributed by local Councils and some of our more unpleasant citizens complain about it.

In short, I don't think it's hopeless. Which some would have you believe.

Lon;1379513 wrote: Following that line of thinking then Spot, I guess we never should have interfered with the Nazi Agenda.


I saw this and it sort of clicked with your question...