Teddy Bear, Qatif Girl and Islamic Justice

Try to understand what is "compassionate and merciful" in some recent decisions handed down by Islamic courts. Some courageous Muslims are speaking out against the injustice carried out in the name of their great faith, and hopefully more will do so.

First, there's the absurd teddy bear case in Khartoum. British teacher Gillian Gibons was sentenced to 15 days on charges of insulting Islam for permitting her elementary class to name a teddy bear after the prophet Mohammed. Good grief, this is a 54-year-old divorced school teacher from Liverpool who took the job at one of Sudan's top international schools for a bit of adventure and to give a little back to the world. She had no idea that the innocent game of naming the teddy bear could cause such a ruckus. What kind of heartless parent would have made such a complaint about the teacher to the point she would be charged with blasphemy? Were they people of genuine faith who marched after Friday prayers in Khartoum today, chanting, "Kill her, kill her by firing squad!"?

And then there's the case of Qatif Girl, mentioned on this blog last week. The 19-year-old Saudi woman from the eastern province town of Qatif was given a sentence of 90 lashes after she was gang raped by seven men. She was convicted of being in the company of men who were not her close relatives, forbidden under Saudi justice. Then, after she raised the issue in the media, she received a harsher sentence on appeal of six months in prison and 200 lashes. This week, the Justice Ministry claimed that the increased sentence was not due to her media pressure but the fact that she was caught having an adulterous affair. In response, the victim's lawyer, Saudi human rights advocate Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, plans to lodge a defamation case against the Justice Ministry. Far from having confessed to an "illegal affair," al-Lahem says, the ministry's claim was based, incredibly, on the say-so of her convicted assailants, the rapists.

If that wasn't enough, a court in Saudi Arabia also threw out a murder case this week against two members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. In what has been a landmark case against the previously untouchable religious police, the pair had been charged in the death of a Riyadh man suspected of possessing alcohol during a massive raid on his home last May. But in what appears to be a travesty of justice, a court dismissed the case on grounds that the accused retracted their confessions and that testimony of other religious policemen can not be used as evidence against them.

-By Scott MacLeod/Cairo