Solidarity
Pious Saudi Arabia, famed the world over for its vast compassion.
Indonesia is stopping all maids from going to work in Saudi Arabia after the
beheading of a maid last week for murdering her allegedly abusive employer.The execution of 54-year-old Ruhati Binti Sapahi caused public outrage in
Indonesia, prompting the government to call for the ban.
Saudi Arabia’s compassionate concern for foreign domestic workers is an old story.
Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, 23, remains hospitalized after suffering injuries by her employer who allegedly beat, mutilated and scalded her…The news of Sumiati’s horrendous abuse came just as another domestic worker’s body was found in a trash bin. The victim, Kikim Moalasari, another Indonesian maid, was allegedly tortured by her employer. The culprits in both cases have since been arrested.
So much for the ummah.
Bloody hell.
This is probably the dumbest question, but here goes. How much of this is cultural? I guess religion is culture, but it appears that parts of Arabia are culturally backward and the form of Islam it exports (which is probably a monotheistic version of Arabian cultural norms) seems worse than some other forms.
Apparently in Indonesia, there was a variant of Islam not so nasty, same in the former Yugoslavia. Might still be, but our hard-earned which became petro-dollars allows Saudi Islam to be exported to these locals and take over. Is it just culture or religion?
I would say that they are crimes. Period. Felonies. Just like murders in the West. Criminals commit crimes. I’m not sure how culture or religion would offer explanatory accounts.
I’m not really sure why you’re dragging Islam into this. Islam causes its share of suffering and horror, sure, but rich assholes abusing their domestic help?
Claire, of course they’re crimes. I didn’t mean to imply they weren’t.
Claire #2: Yours is a thought-provoking response. Crimes, wherever they occur, surely have something to do with the context in which they occur? In the US particular types of crimes may be more common because of American laws and attitudes, no? (For example gun crimes may be more common.) I don’t know all the facts of this particular case or other cases, but my common sense tells me that culture and contemporaneity (?) have a bearing on the kinds of violence committed.
Da #3: I see what you mean. What does religion have to do with rich abusive “lords”? Then again, what if anything in the culture validates or perhaps, better said, sanctions their violence toward these foreign workers? Is there any connection? I don’t know, but it’s worth looking into and no doubt somebody’s studied/written about it.
Islam definitely plays a role. The Saudi brand is notorious for its oppression of women. With a religion that considers a woman to have half the value of a man, who will argue that this isn’t a contributing factor?
Claire @2: The problem with calling them crimes is that what is criminal is defined by local laws. Having said that, I agree with your point that these actions are an affront to human decency.
DA@3: I don’t think Ophelia was saying that Islam caused the employer to abuse the employee, but the execution took place under Saudi Arabia’s version of sharia law, which is (according to the Saudis) a divinely inspired legal system with virtually no room to be modified or amended by mere humans. Saudi Arabia has no national elections or political parties. It has no legislature. It didn’t even have a constitution until 1992, when the King introduced by fiat the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia which declared that the Quran was the national constitution. That’s the link to Islam right there.
Rossana or Claire, can either of you tell me how calling this a crime explains it? I’ve waited a little while, and agree wholeheartedly that in, at least, Western juristictions, this is criminal behaviour. But given that Claire says I’m not sure how culture or religion would offer explanatory accounts. I think she, at least, needs to put forward how calling it a crime offers and explanatory account.
I’m not a smart person and so not a great thinker, but to me, calling something a crime implies a proscription, but an explanation implies a description. It’s a crime in some countries to have sex outside of marriage, but how does that proscription explain it? To explain it you need to point out cultural, religious, political exigences, no?
I’ll happily stipulate the Saudi Arabia is one of the worst countries on earth, and that the nightmare alliance of religious fanaticism, tribal cheiftainship, and oil money is a cause for critical concern. However, I don’t see Ophelia (or anyone) establishing any serious causative connection whereby the Islamic community as such (she’s the one who said Ummah here, not me) are responsable for entitled, amoral scumbags who feel entitled to abuse lesser people. If anything, one of the few admirable points of the canon of hadith is its very clear protection of labor rights; Muhammad said never to strike a servant, and that when a laborer does you a service, you should pay him before his sweat dries.
Maid abuse takes place in many different sorts of societies. Here in Singapore it happens too often but is very strictly prosecuted. In Malayia as well and in Indonesia itself – both countries share a very similar culture, language and are predominantly muslim but do not have in place the criminal code of sharia but secular laws.
But maybe a qualitative dofference is that in our part of the world the criminal code does deal effectively with the abusers and justice is often seen to be done.
However, for the abuse that takes place in Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, the official reaction is often one of indifference and even callousness, often protecting its own citizens accused of crimes and dealing peremptorily with foreigners. Sharia law is not codified for example in SA. There is an element of unpredictability of how cases are going to be treated as the judges’ idiosyncracies come into play. The Islamic concept of ‘blood money’ means that poor foreigners are often paid off and a sense of injustice thus lingers. For accusations of rape or molest, the islamic concept of zina often means the victim has to produce evidence – 4 male eyewitnesses to testify on her behalf!- that are crazy by any other standards. Such victim all too often are punished for ‘immorality’ themselves.
@Da, all well and good quoting Mo and the hadiths. Perhaps a society that only outlawed slavery- still legal in islamic law- in 1962 is not ready for equitable labour laws.
I’m not claiming that they’re some kind of enlightened paradise or that Islam is anything but barbaric and scary. The question is, what does Islam have to do with this particular piece of lunacy? So far, I don’t see anything.
DA ‘; Muhammad said never to strike a servant, and that when a laborer does you a service, you should pay him before his sweat dries.’
But he was quite happy to make all the women of the Banu Quawhatiz his chattels after the battle of the trench (with the right hand) while beheading their husbands and sons who’d reached puberty. Is claiming someone as a slave to do with your right-hand as you will doesn’t cover them as being some part of scary or lunacy then well……..That was never my issue. My issue is how it comes to this. I’d like to belive that I follow empirical answers, and only evidence will be the answer (given a decent theory) that I’ll believe.
DA. What has Islam to do with this? Simple. Islam still legitimates slavery, and migrant workers are clearly treated as slaves, as possessions, and can be abused at will. This is Islam at its very best! It is ridiculous to use the kinder sayings of the Qu’ran to exculpate Islam. There is simply too much evidence of the continuing practice of slavery in Islam, and contemporary defences of it, the example of the female activist in the Yemen who thinks that captives in Chechniya should be sold to traders in Yemen, so that men might buy slave girls, the only conceivable way to avoid sinful relationships by Muslim men. Islam is central to the lunacy of the rightless domestic workers of Saudi Arabia. Slavery is not a word used to justify it, but Islam condones slavery, and the practice of providing no protection for migrant workers is simply the Islamic practice of slavery by another name.
Well perhaps it is cultural:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3204297.stm
Certainly this kind of story doesn’t seem to circulate as much about other countries. And don’t forget the saudi prince who murdered his own manservant in London last year. Just a saudi thing? I think it’s more a combinatoin of a sense of monstrous entitlement added to a feeling of impunity because the saudi system doesn’t handle such cases well (or at all) as here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7415290.stm
I’m dragging Islam into this for the usual reason: because to its defenders it stands for justice, sometimes called social justice; because Allah is called “compassionate, merciful”; because the dogma of Karen Armstrong and other “liberal” believers is that religion—->compassion. Saudi Arabia is particularly, strenuously devout; it should, therefore, be particularly, conspicuously compassionate and socially just. In fact, however, it is particularly, conspicuously vicious; it is notorious that foreign domestic workers are treated like shit there, and not just by rich people.
There’s a disconnect. Religion is supposed to inspire people to be good. Behold what a hyper-religious society is actually like.
It’s the same disconnect as the one in Ireland. Ireland was hyper-Catholic, and behold what it was like until about a decade ago. Behold the industrial schools, behold the Magdalen laundries, behold the child-raping priests.
And the beheading of the first-mentioned domestic worker was of course not a crime at all, it was a state execution.
And the beheading of the first-mentioned domestic worker was of course not a crime at all, it was a state execution.
Exactly. And I have no right to speak now, because born in that shit-hole, I’d most likely be using my phallic-enabled (however small) ness to fuck up the lives of women, most likely my betters (I have 5 sisters and they are better, trust me). But the non-explanation of calling it crime just doesn’t provide me with a way to fuck these fuckers up, or at least fight the good fight.
I should give up. I’m all wind and no sail. It’s true. I bluster, but…it’s scary how this world presents itself.
I’m an ex-Muslim. I don’t need to be told that Islam legitemizes some pretty awful stuff. Trust me, I know. If I ever go to Saudi Arabia I face the death penalty just for existing as an apostate.
Yes, religion does fuck up peoples’ moral priorities. And yes, there are a lot of cases where it enables our worst tendencies. But. I’m not aware of any religious authority okaying or offering excuses for the murder of maids here or okaying the same. Is it part of the general climate that religion also encourages? Sure. Is there some direct conenction between Islam as such and murdering Indonesian hired help? That’s a mighty bold claim and it sounds dispiritingly like when people blame people like us for Mao and Stalin.
@DA
Islam is a legitimate target in this case as it is bloody fucking awful islamic law that gives so little protection to women, religious minorities and foreigners when cases of abuse occur. It is no surprise that abuse occurs in SA as it does in many other other countries. The people there are not uniquely monstrous or cruel but their society as a whole is more callous as their religious laws enable them to get away with quite a bit more than other places. If you dont get that, it is a pity.
Is there some direct conenction between Islam as such and murdering Indonesian hired help?
No one here made that claim, as you well know.
DA, I didn’t say you did need to be told, nor did I imply it. I was replying to some questions and criticisms, including yours. I’m allowed to do that.
Now: could you please re-read the comment in which I did so, and this time pay attention? Then, if you feel like it, you can apologize for your irrelevant rebuke.
Islam is certainly relevant in this context since, by fiat of the saudi king, the law in Saudi Arabia is koranic law and the constitution is the koran. The creation of a culture in which such crimes flourish is due to a lack of diligence by legal and clerical authorities in preventing or punishing such crimes – so creating a feeling of impunity on the part of some saudis. It should be noted that SA only declared slavery illegal in 1962. It appears that some citizens have not yet got the message.
And another thing. The truculence of
is ludicrous. I don’t know you. Your handle is DA – which is not all that distinctive. I’m not aware of having seen you much. I know nothing whatever about you. Yet you get chippy because you’re an ex-Muslim and for some reason I’m supposed to know that. How would I know that when I don’t know a damn thing about you?
You’re like that guy with the rocking chair on his front porch. You start from the assumption that I know you as well as you know me, but I don’t; I don’t know you at all.
By the way, I interpreted your (Ophelia’s) reference to the “ummah” at the end of the post as a way of saying, “Hey, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population. Saudi Arabia is Muslim. They’re part of the ummah. How come this sort of violence happens b/w two Muslim societies that are presumably bound together?” A legitimate swipe. Or am I off track on that?
Rossana, no, not off track; that’s what I meant.
Okay, I hereby absent myself from any and all future discussions at this blog. I only ask that you not project your own interactions with your neighbors on me. Not everything is about you.
Sorry to bother you. Bye.
Other way around, DA. You’re the one who made it about you, by huffily saying what you don’t need to be told, as if I’m supposed to know what an X called “DA” does or doesn’t need to be told.
And as you’re absenting yourself, what’s the point of asking me not to project things on you? What, you think I’ll be projecting things on you in your absence? But that would be so hard to do, when all I have to go on is the letter D and the letter A. What is there to project? Nothing. Why would I project it when you’re not around? No reason.
But you inform me that not everything is about me. Whoooo that’s funny.
Shucks. I found a few preceding DA comments and they’re good, and funny. A pity.
Oh dear. Don’t leave in a huff, DA. Please. This is a great blog and as #28 already reveals, Ophelia’s bark is worse than her bite.
My bark is perfectly lovely!