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   Armies of Liberation » The Imam, the father and the public Pinged With:
   December:16:2004 - 14:49 
   

   [...] lse;’,100);

   12/16/2004

   The Imam, the father and the public

   Crossroads Arabia notes very different tactics for interrogation in Saudi Ar [...]

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   mary at exit zero Said:
   December:16:2004 - 00:47 
   

   They’re kind to terrorists because terrorism in the name of Jihad isn’t a crime according to Saudi Islamic law.

   People who are not terrorists aren’t treated as kindly, according to this Arab News article.

   http://www.arabnews.com/?page=0&section=1&article=27038&d=5&m=6&y=2003

   JEDDAH, 5 June 2003 — Saudi Arabia’s leading executioner Muhammad Saad Al-Beshi will behead up to seven people in a day.

   “It doesn’t matter to me: Two, four, 10 — As long as I’m doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute,” he told Okaz newspaper in an interview.

   He started at a prison in Taif, where his job was to handcuff and blindfold the prisoners before their
   execution. “Because of this background, I developed a desire to be an executioner,” he says.

   He applied for the job and was accepted.
   His first job came in 1998 in Jeddah. “The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled meters away.” Of course he was nervous, then, he says, as many people were watching, but now stage fright is a thing of the past.

   He says he is calm at work because he is doing God’s work. “But there are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don’t know why they come and watch if they don’t have the stomach for it.
   …

   Saad al Beshi said An executioner’s life, of course, is not all killing. Sometimes it can be amputation”

   Beheading up to seven people a day, and chopping off hands and feet. Saudi law at its finest. Or, as they call it, “God’s Law”

   Not as tough as ‘heaping scorn’ on terrorists, is it?

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   John Said:
   December:16:2004 - 01:38 
   

   Mary, this is getting tedious. You’ve made it clear that there’s nothing in the world that will permit you to give any Saudi the benefit of the doubt. You consistently change subjects to try to score cheap points.

   I don’t know your stance on capital punishment, but it’s the law of the land in Saudi Arabia, as it is in the majority of the 50 states.

   You seem to share the same intellectual dishonesty that your paragons of “Saudi expertise” do. Here’s part of what you neatly left out of your comment through an ellipsis:

   Does he think people are afraid of him? “In this country we have a society that understands God’s law,” he says. “No one is afraid of me. I have a lot of relatives, and many friends at the mosque, and I live a normal life like everyone else. There are no drawbacks for my social life.”

   Before an execution, nonetheless, he will go to the victim’s family to obtain forgiveness for the criminal. “I always have that hope, until the very last minute, and I pray to God to give the criminal a new lease of life. I always keep that hope alive.”

   By leaving out any possible glimpse of humanity in any Saudi, you seek demonization of the entire population. Telling the truth means telling the whole truth, not just the parts that confirm your prejudice.

   I try to offer space for dialogue on this site. You offer diatribe. Consider this my one and only request to either take part in a conversation or take your hatred elsewhere.

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   Armies of Liberation Trackbacked With:
   December:16:2004 - 10:51 
   

   The Imam, the father and the public
   Crossroads Arabia notes very different tactics for interrogation of terror suspects in Saudi Arabia.

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   praktike Said:
   December:16:2004 - 12:23 
   

   It’s worth noting that Texas under Governor George Bush executed more people per capita per year than Saudi Arabia. Just sayin’.

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   Osama_Been_Forgotten Said:
   December:16:2004 - 13:11 
   

   “hating” the Saudi Leadership (in a Monarchy) and it’s policies is quite different than hating the Saudi people.

   Americans, on the other hand, have a say in their government. By no means, is Capital Punishment accepted by an overwhelming majority of Americans. It’s a slim majority, at best. Opponents recognise the flawed nature of our criminal justice system, even though we bend over backwards to try to ensure fairness, a significant number of cases where people were wrongly accused, then executed, were recently exposed (3 years ago)? The State of Illinois imposed a moratorium on executions due to the high rate of irregularities.

   Recognising that humans are flawed, and not capable of making 100% accurate judgements, should be a core religious belief. Having the arrogance to believe that human judgement can administer true justice seems at odds with submission to God’s will.

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   John Said:
   December:16:2004 - 13:32 
   

   But blaming the Saudi government for people who hold (or held) Saudi citizenship is equally misdirected.

   I’m not a supporter of capital punishment, but I recognize that many countries have laws that support it.

   You err, though, in supposing that the majority of Americans (or British for that matter) do not support capital punishment. Well over half of Americans, and something over 60% of Brits (according to a poll in 1997) support it. Various governments in the two countries do not support it, however.

   Is that “thwarting the will of the people”, or “exercising higher moral values”? Both? Neither?

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   mary at exit zero Said:
   December:16:2004 - 14:06 
   

   John – If my intent were ‘intellectual dishonesty’, I wouldn’t have linked to the entire Arab News article. Like you, I quote selectively.

   When you say:

   “Just because a particular investigative technique works in Chicago or Denver does not mean that it’s the best technique to use in other cultures.”

   ..what exact investigative technique are you talking about?

   Do you believe that describing the facts about amputations, flogging and executions while comparing them to tolerance shown to terrorists is an expression of ‘hatred’ and the demonization of the Saudi people?

   In Britain, there is a law proposed that states that criticism of a religion and their laws can be an expression of hate. Muslims believe that it’s an anti-blasphemy law, and they support it.

   An interesting fact from Amnesty International – approx. one third of the people executed in Saudi Arabia in 2002 were foreign nationals.

   Most political prisoners were members of the Christian and Shi’a community.

   http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2002.nsf/mde/saudi+arabia!Open

   Are these facts an expression of hatred and demonization?

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   John Said:
   December:16:2004 - 14:56 
   

   Mary, I’ve no particular technique in mind, other than that US police do not generally bring in outsiders–an particularly religious figures–to do the interrogation.

   You use of selective quotation is what I called dishonest. Linking to the entire piece doesn’t absolve you because you deceptively mischaracterized the point of the article–that capital punishment, while necessary, was not conducted cruely–to make a point that cruelty was indeed the issue. It’s no better and no worse than those who pick out quotes from the Quran to justify hatred of the Jews and deny any context, or the fuller story.

   I’m not commenting on the UK’s wandering into the land of hate crimes, particularly speech crimes. I do not hold religion above criticism, nor do I hold a state or individuals above criticism. I try to criticize the entire problem, though, not just parts of it that may be particularly glaring.

   Your diversion of citing Amnesty Int’l is interesting, but again not particularly germane. Do you–or Amnesty–have any figures about who commits crimes in Saudi Arabia? Do you note that Saudi Arabia is a country noted for an exceptionally low crime rate in general? Do you have any understanding of how an honor/shame-based culture works to create pressures to simply not commit crimes? Are you aware that before the influx of foreign nationals, a Saudi could leave his place of business at prayer time and not have to lock it up, leaving whatever merchandise and monies unprotected except by society pressure? Do you have an inkling of what crimes those executed were accused of having committed?

   Lacking any mention of these factors suggests that what you are about is not seeking an honest picture, but are, indeed, seeking to demonize.

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    Osama_Been_Forgotten Said:
    December:16:2004 - 15:17 
    

    You err, though, in supposing that the majority of Americans (or British for that matter) do not support capital punishment.

    I did not say that. I said it was not an *overwhelming* majority (like >70% or so). It’s a narrow majority. I doubt it’s even 60% in the US as a whole.

    Capital Punishment (especially the Saudi brand) is State Sponsored Terrorism, inflicted on it’s own people.
    
    I, personally, *do* support Capital Punishment, as a deterrance to murder. But *ONLY* when there was a fair trial involved, and when guilt is established by direct evidence (not circumstantial, as in the Scott Peterson case). I would be counted in a support/non-support statistic, as “supporting capital punishment” – when, in fact, I do not support it in it’s current form, in the US, and I’m definately opposed to how it’s practiced in some other countries, notably Saudi Arabia.

    Do you note that Saudi Arabia is a country noted for an exceptionally low crime rate in general? Do you have any understanding of how an honor/shame-based culture works to create pressures to simply not commit crimes?

    Or, perhaps it could have something to do with the massive oil-wealth, making it unnecessary for the otherwise desperately poor or disadvantaged to resort to crime for survival.
    
    You could posit that the higher murder rates in the Southern United States are driven by a more honor/shame-based culture in the south. A higher proportion of murders in the South are honor-killings (result of marital infidelity, etc.) as opposed to Northern/Urban muder, being drug or theft related. Drug crime is caused by Prohibition (as our failed experiment in the 1930s decisively proved) and theft is promoted by economic inequality.
    
    That’s not to say that I believe that if we just give everyone money, they won’t steal. When it comes down to it, every thief made a choice to steal, so I do believe in punishing people for making bad choices. But there are factors besides a person just being “bad” at work here, and punishment should not be the sole tool for approaching the problem of crime.

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    John Said:
    December:16:2004 - 15:28 
    

    Your problem with Saudi capital punishment is actually with the Saudi legal system in its entirety. I can understand that. I don’t think much of it either. I prefer transparency and accountability in my legal system. That said, their system has worked, essentially unchanged, for 1,400 years.

    I have to disagree with you, though, on your depiction of that legal system as nothing but state terror. Most crimes do not make it into a state court (which generally hear only appeals), but are decided at far lower levels, as in the villages. The country is in a confused condition now, with an unhappy blend of state courts for things like commercial activity, but religious courts for social activity. I’m not supporting it, merely noting that the legal system is in transition.

    I disagree that oil wealth was the determining factor in keeping crime low. Even before oil, crime was low. There was banditry, but culturally that was not a crime, it was something else. And it was generally accepted as the way things worked.

    I recall being in the souq in Sana’a, Yemen one day when prayertime rolled around. I was amazed to see sidewalk money changers get up and leave, just putting a stone on thousands of dollars worth of currency as they went to the mosque. Yemen is certainly not a wealthy country, but it shares most of the same culture with the Saudis.

    I think you have to take into consideration numerous factors that differentiate American Southern concepts of honor/shame than affect traditional ones in the Middle East. They’re coming from entirely different concepts of honor, for one thing, though there is an overlap in some regards. Land ownership, for instance, or individual rights are the powerful motivators in the American South. Neither of those was of any importance to nomadic tribes.

12. 12
    Osama_Been_Forgotten Said:
    December:16:2004 - 16:04 
    

    I have to disagree with you, though, on your depiction of that legal system as nothing but state terror.

    Let me clarify. The Execution, itself, particularly Public Execution – is a form of Terrorism.

    http://www.thefreedictionary.com defines “Terrorism” thusly:
    The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
    
    With the exception of the use of the term “unlawful” – Public Execution fits. It’s intent: To terrorize the public. The message: Don’t mess with the State. We can arrest you, falsely charge you with any crime we like, find you guilty, and execute you, you have no recourse. Obey or die.

    There was banditry, but culturally that was not a crime, it was something else.
    

    There’s the rub.
    Coming from a Western culture, in my judgement, Banditry *IS* a crime. How we define crime, then, is based on our culture. Yes? Is there a standard that is above all cultures? Some say that’s God’s Law. The 10 Commandments are pretty clear about theft (banditry), in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scripture. There’s a way to interpret that so that banditry is not crime? This Westerner has a hard time grasping that, but okay.

    The point is, defining a culture as “high in crime” or “low in crime” is relative. Was Iraq, in the days following the US Invasion “high crime”? Considering they had no active government, and the entire legal system was in suspense, you could say that tenchically, the rampant looting and killing and rioting were not crimes. Therefore, a country in a state of anarchy has perhaps the LOWEST level of crime of any society, no matter what any individual does.

    I recall being in the souq in Sana’a, Yemen one day when prayertime rolled around. I was amazed to see sidewalk money changers get up and leave, just putting a stone on thousands of dollars worth of currency as they went to the mosque.

    Well that’s simply amazing. I live in a relatively crime-free region of the US. Most people ’round these parts don’t lock the doors of their houses, and leave their cars unlocked in their driveways. I like to attribute that to homogenity. More economic than racial, we have a good mix of white and hispanics here. Everyone in my town respects everyone else, and their property, and there’s not much pent up resentment from one person to another. Yes, conflicts do happen, folks do step on others toes. But there’s a marked difference compared to areas with much higher population concentraion, and ethnic mixtures, and economic differences.

    You attribute Yemeni and Saudi “low crime” to a cultural focus on personal honor/shame. I say that every person is capable of feeling that honor or shame for his or her reputation. Perhaps less so in cities where people are generally more anonymous among their peers due to the sheer number of peers. But any person who has the ability to feel honor or shame, also has the ability to set those aside when they have resentment or anger against someone else. They may even convince themselves that it’s not stealing, to take something from someone else, if they feel that that person didn’t acquire that thing fairly. Do you suppose this mechanism isn’t at work in Yemeni or Saudi society?

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    mary at exit zero Said:
    December:16:2004 - 17:12 
    

    Do you–or Amnesty–have any figures about who commits crimes in Saudi Arabia?

    Amnesty provided information about the flogging of children, the mistreatment of women and the 5,000 Iraqi refugees in the Rafha refugee who are treated as virtual prisoners – but they didn’t mention (as you did) that “before the influx of foreign nationals, a Saudi could leave his place of business at prayer time and not have to lock it up, leaving whatever merchandise and monies unprotected except by society pressure”

    Do you believe that Amnesty is not “seeking an honest picture” but are, indeed, “seeking to demonize”

    I am, as always, impressed by your very formal use of the English language. It’s a skill that most Americans lack.

    The point about the influence of “foreign nationals” is interesting.

    What was Saudi Arabia like before the ‘influx of foreign nationals? Was it a nicer place in general?

    I used to live in a northeast shore town that was crime-free. It definitely wasn’t an honor/shame society and it was ethnically diverse, but everyone knew each other. Small towns tend to be safer.

14. 14
    John Said:
    December:17:2004 - 12:11 
    

    Osama_bin_forgotten:

    The matter of public execution is an interesting one, I think. Western cultures used it for a considerable period of time: Tyburn Tree, the auto da fé, heads on pikestaffs, etc. But it was given up as “barbaric”. In Saudi Arabia, it’s viewed as a of “justice must be seen to be done, not just done.” Rather than demonstrating the power of the state, it’s demonstrating that the state is acting–as it should–to uphold the law. It demonstrates the legitimacy rather than the power of the state.

    Syria, a strongly secular though Arabic Islamic country, has a strange quirk. When they do executions, they do them at the site of the original crime. That shows those most immediately involved that justice is being done. In Saudi Arabia, executions are done in the parking lots around mosques, showing that the law of God is being followed.

    In the US, we trust our government to “do the right thing” by carrying out the law and don’t need to see it. But there are still family members of the condemned and the victims present, their legal representations, representatives of the state (and often the media), as well as simple “witnesses” who can swear that the state did its obligatory function. The difference, to me, is that we limit the audience. That does not equal “terror” in my book.

    Raiding (or ghazza or razzia) is a long-held facet of bedouin culture. Pick up a book on bedouins to see how important a part it really was. It was not a “crime” (in our sense) in that it was simply ingrained as one of the major ways to redistribute wealth. One of the major changes instituted by Mohammed was to tame them away from the bloodbaths they had been, instituting rules of conduct, if you will.

    In that sense, looting in Baghdad was not exactly “criminal” in our sense, because it was an immediate way to redistribute the lucre that Saddam Hussein had taken from his own people. It’s not that the people “needed” that office desk or lab equipment or museum display, but that it was their chance to take back from Hussein what had been taken from them. In our world, it would have gone through courts, reparation committees, and tens of years of litigation. People wanted “justice”, as they defined it, immediately. Since there was no recent history of responsible legal process in Iraq, people simply didn’t want to wait while the “wheels of justice ground slowly.”

    From our perspective, it was certainly criminal behavior, though, because we do know that however slowly those wheels grind, they eventually work.

    Don’t forget that you also had people committing sabotage at the same time. They weren’t in for the redistribution, but more from the “dog in the manger” relationship, intending to deprive the victors of any gain. That’s still going on, obviously. But that’s a different dynamic among different people.

    While saying that “chaos is a low crime environment” is true in one sense, it’s a rather odd way of looking at it. But what looked chaotic in Iraq wasn’t actually chaotic; it was playing by a very different set of rules that happened to look chaotic to the outside, but made perfect sense from the inside. Yes, this can also be construed as folie á deux raised to the Nth power, but that’s pretty much the rule when it comes to cultural interpretations.

    Is there an absolute law of good and bad? That’s a question that’s been plagueing mankind for at least four thousand years. Various religions, philosophies, and cultures have come down with varying answers, but a few seem standard. Incest, needless killing, theft, are near-universals, those plenty of cultures differ in their definitions of those terms. The Yanomamo of the Amazon practiced headhunting as a cultural good until very recently. Pharonic Egyptians saw no moral problem with marrying brother and sister. Human sacrifice was practiced by many early cultures, including the ones we come from.

    But condemning a cultural trait isn’t the same as changing it. The Spanish were able to stop Aztec human sacrifice by killing off the Aztecs. The British got rid of the thugee cult, mostly, after a concentrated and long police actions. When it comes to changing the behavior of a sixth of the world’s population, those remedies don’t seem feasible.

    There is certainly a movement toward reform within the Arab and Muslim worlds. They know they have problems when it comes to living in a global village, and are realizing that they are a major part of the problem themselves. But they are also fearful that in making accommodations to the outside world, they are giving up things that should be retained, things that are not only “good” and “right”, but things that define their own identities. That’s not an easy struggle.

    The UBLs of the world have decided that accommodation at the cost of religious values cannot be made, morally. They are on a moral crusade to make the world good and right. If their tactics were non-violent they wouldn’t be outlaws automatically, though their vision of human rights would certainly keep them out of the mainstream.

    The cultures of shame/honor as lived in the US or in Saudi Arabia are similar in some regars, but also vastly different. If an American commits a crime, is captured and punished, the shame falls on the wrong-doer. In Saudi Arabia, and traditional shame/honor societies, the shame extends to the family, the tribe, the clan, and sometimes to the nation (e.g., 9/11). In the west, people do not ostracize the families of a criminal. Instead, they generally receive at least a modicum of pity. In traditional cultures, the crime is indeed visited upon the fathers and sons of the criminal.

    When King Faisal was assassinated by a nephew in 1975, for instance, his family–an important branch of the Al-Saud–was completely ostracized. The construction of a palace they were building in Riyadh was halted and the family told to get out of town. They did. They also lost their standing within the ruling family. That half-built structure stood empty until last year when it was finally demolished to make room for a commercial establishemt.

    This, I think, is an example of how very different cultures can be. For us, honor and shame inhere in the individual; for the majority of traditional cultures, it inheres in the entire group. This is one of the real sticking points when it comes to integrating traditional societies into what’s developing as a “global society”. We in the West value the individual over the group. They value the group over the individual. Again, I note that this is not exclusively Arab or Muslim. You find similar manifestations in Japan, India, Latin America. You find lesser aspects of it in the American South–where a family would not “be received” in polite society because of a sin by a family member–whereas in the North (except in “high society”) restrictions were put on the individual, rather than the entire family.

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