Western Resistance

« Islam And The War Against Freedom Of Expression | | Spain: Three Suspected Islamists Held »

February 14, 2008

Saudi Arabia: Muslim Courts Sentence "Witch" To Death

News from Human Rights Watch, BBC, The Register, All Headline News, Belfast Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Scotsman, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press.

Saudi Arabia is busy exporting its narrow and backward version of Islam - Wahhabism - to mosques and Islamic seminaries around the world. Yet Saudi Arabia is a country where women are second class citizens, and people can be executed for witchcraft. On Friday November 2, 2007, an Egyptian pharmacist was decapitated with a sword in Riyadh after being found "guilty" of sorcery. Mustapha Ibrahim worked in Arar, a city in the north of Saudi Arabia, and was said to have tried to separate a married couple.

Ibrahim had been accused by another foreign resident of using magic to separate him from his wife. The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) then reported that "evidence" had been retrieved from Mustapha Ibrahim's home. This included black magic books, a candle emblazoned with the words "to summon devils" and "foul-smelling herbs". SPA stated that Ibrahim "confessed to adultery with a woman and desecrating the Koran by placing it in the bathroom."

Mustapha Ibrahim's case had been reported in April 2007, when mosque-worshippers accused him of placing copies of the Koran in washrooms, but sorcery had not then been mentioned by the Saudi media.

Though it is too late to save Mustapha Ibrahim, a illiterate woman of (apparent) Jordanian origins who is currently incarcerated in Quraiyat Prison is facing death for being a "witch". Fawza Falih was arrested in Quraiyat on May 4, 2005 by the notorious muttawa or mutaween, the religious police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV). These beat her so badly during her interrogation that at one stage she had to be hospitalized. She was held by the religious police at a detention center for 35 days. This, according to Human Rights Watch, violated an 1981 royal decree which forbade the CPVPV from interrogating and detaining suspects in their centers. There are 486 CPVPV centers across the kingdom, with 10,000 religious police.

Fawza Falih was convicted in April 2006 in Quraiyat in the north of Saudi Arabia of witchcraft, even though no such official crime is said to exist in Saudi law. She had been convicted by Islamic clerics acting as judges, and "testimony" had been provided by "witnesses". One man claimed that he had been rendered impotent by Fawzah, who had cast a spell upon him. A divorced woman said that Fawzah had cast a spell and predicted that her ex-husband would come back. This witness said the man returned to her in the month that had been predicted by the woman. She was officially convicted of "witchcraft, recourse to jinn (supernatural beings), and slaughter" of animals.

A court verdict from October 10, 2006 quoted from her "confession". It read: "I take 1,500 Riyal for each act of which I send half to the magician Abu Tal'a according to the agreement, for Abu Tal'a said to me, 'If you do not bring the money, by God, you will become possessed by jinn like dogs.' " Abu Tal'a was the man who was said to have tutored her in the skills of witchcraft.

Later, Fawzah retracted her "confession" in court, claiming that it had been extracted by force. She also claimed that as she was illiterate, she had been unaware of the contents of the confession document, which she had been made to sign with her fingerprint. The contents of the confession were never, she claims, read out to her.

An appeals court ruled that as she had retracted her confession, she could not be sentenced to death "for 'witchcraft' as a crime against God". Despite this, judges in a lower court then reversed that decision, sentencing her to death on a "discretionary" basis. This was done to better the "public interest" and to "protect the creed, souls and property of this country."

She has now exhausted all legal rights of appeal.

Human Rights Watch has issued a letter to King Abdullah bin Abd al-'Aziz Al Saud, as only he now has the power to reverse the death sentence upon the woman.

The letter states that Fawzah Falih was prevented from having her son attend her court case, even though he was named as her official legal representative. After her arrest, her family had also hired a lawyer called Abdullah al-Suhaimi. The head of the CPVPV's interrogation committee refused to let this lawyer have access to her.

This is the "justice" of Saudi Arabia, and as it was enacted by Wahhabi clerics, it also displays the barbarism and lack of human rights within Wahhabi Islam. In March 2007, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith, president of the CPVPV said: "he commission plays a large role in capturing people who practice sorcery or delusions since these are vices which affect the faith of Muslims and cause harm to both nationals and expatriates. The commission has assigned centers in every city and town to be on the lookout for these men. As for their fate, they are arrested and then transferred to concerned authorities. The commission also has a role in breaking magic spells, which are found in the sea. We cooperate with divers in this aspect. After the spells are found, they are then broken using recitations of the Holy Qur'an. We do not use magic to break magic spells, as this is against the teachings of Islam as mentioned by the Supreme Ulema. But we use the Qur'an as did the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)."

Unaware of any irony, in October 2007 Saudi Arabia's "Human Rights Commission" announced that it would be lecturing Europe on its ill-treatment of Muslims and its "Islamophobia".

It seems never to have crossed the minds of these people that incidents such as this case against Fawzah Falih are issues that genuinely create Islamophobia.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 14, 2008 4:17 PM

Comments

Post a comment