Lama

Besides the lack of a codified, secular justice system in Saudi Arabia, the tyranny of the all-influential clerics has helped a culture prevail where being cruel to women and girls is normal, as is impunity for the men who systematically perpetrate unspeakable violence, most often to women and girls within their own families - Lawryn Oates

Lama was a five year old girl. That’s as much time as she managed to squeeze out of her life before it was crushed out of her. Tortured, raped and murdered by her preacher father, her time was short. She arrived in hospital on Xmas day 2011.

She had a crushed skull. Her left arm and some of her ribs were broken and one of her fingernails torn off. The child’s mother, who is divorced from the father and did not have custody, says that hospital staff told her the girl’s rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed. It took 10 long, agonizing months before, finally, the little girl died.

Last week the brute that fathered Lama was sentenced to eight years in jail. Initially the clerical thug’s prison time appeared to be even shorter than that.  Saudi rights activists claimed that a judge had ruled, ‘blood money and the time the defendant had served in prison since Lama's death suffices as punishment.'

According to The Independent ‘the money is considered compensation under Islamic law, although it is only half the amount that would have been paid had Lama been a boy.’

Of course he had some things going for him in the Kingdom of clerical bonkerdom.  He was a TV celebrity preacher - who 'made a career of doling out advice about how to live a moral life’ - what we might know as a televangelist. He also lived in a country where men can’t be executed for killing their wives or children. Yet the notion that he might face only a few months on remand, out on the streets rather than serving life and a day because the law in Saudi Arabia is more tolerant of that type of thing than most other societies, a public outrage kicked in. It scuppered the paedophile preacher’s freedom bid and he stayed in prison. As The Daily Beast commented:

the fact that this story of one little girl’s death and one father’s monstrosity went public is also a sign of just how hard women in Saudi Arabia are working to fight the cruel misogyny embedded in the kingdom’s version of Islamic law. And among those women is a daughter of the king.

It was women bloggers who eventually got the story out. One of them, Manal al Sharif, had come to public attention two years earlier when she was arrested for defying a ban on women driving. She was not going to bow down to the clerics.

According to the activist group Women to Drive, Fayhan al-Ghamdi claimed in his defence that he committed his acts upon doubting the virginity of his child. Apparently his virginity examination of his daughter caused the infant to sustain ‘multiple injuries including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns.’ A social worker member of staff at the medical centre who treated the child for ten months before her tortured body gave up the ghost alleged she had been raped “everywhere." According to an advocate of rights against Islamic clerics:

I know heinous child abuse, rape and torture occurs everywhere. I’ve heard some of the worst cases right here in Britain. But it is only under Sharia (and religious laws) that there is always some Islamic justification for leniency or for blaming the mother or child. This case reminds me of an Iranian asylum case I worked on years ago where the Sharia judge told the woman that she was responsible for her child’s sexual abuse as she was not satisfying her husband…

Shall we hold our breath waiting for the US to bomb the country to ensure the extension of rights? No threats from John Kerry or anyone else in the US power grid.

As Canadian writer Lauren Oates wrote:

Preventing more girls from suffering the same fate as Lama will demand much more than the occasional intervention from the Saudi royal family in high profile abuse cases. It demands stripping the clerics of their power, modernizing the justice system, and making women fully equal citizens by law. Nothing less will do justice for Lama.
And to think this is a country where a woman can be beheaded for adultery. .

4 comments:

  1. Horrific post and a further warning of the danger religious dominated societies,we have seen the abuse of so many here by those who regarded themselves answerable to no mere man,scumbags like that poor child,s abuser will always seek positions where they are are held in esteem and therefore think that they are untouchable,the recent exposure of priests and celebrities is an example of the danger these bastards pose when their egos get out of control.

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  2. Another country another religion that hates/hits women-the female of the human race is just not seen as a equal part of the human race by a certain amount of men-and by a few woman also-

    When Priests clerics pastors tell us to love thy neighbour I actually think they mean to love your male neighbour-

    You cant have loved anyone if you are going to harm them each time you are alone with them-the best of it is when those bullys end up in hell its the victim that will feel some pity for them-

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  3. And to think this is a country where a woman can be beheaded for adultery.

    It wasn't that long ago Henry VIII was doing the same and for the same reason. The biggest problem with Islamic religions is simply they are 500 yrs behind times.

    This case reminds me of an Iranian asylum case I worked on years ago where the Sharia judge told the woman that she was responsible for her child’s sexual abuse as she was not satisfying her husband…

    Unfortunately thats how brain washed religion can make people marty.....

    When Priests clerics pastors tell us to love thy neighbour I actually think they mean to love your male neighbour-

    Was that a freudian slip Michael? You simply could have said ' 'Thy love thy who ever bit to take it literally'..Why mention only males...????

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  4. If we believed what those religious nutters tell us as the truth,ie,.all humans are descended from Adam and Eve,so their offspring would have had to reproduce through incest,and all the descendants thereafter would have been retarded,well that would account for some of those religious nutters down the ages ..

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