Saudi Lawyer Takes On Religious Court System
Rights Cases Used To Press for Change
Faiza Saleh AmbahRIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi human rights lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem said he had been waiting years for a case like this: A woman and her daughter, both accused of promiscuity, were followed by the morals police as they left a private residence on the outskirts of the capital.
The police, who enforce adherence to Saudi Arabia’s strict religious laws, beat up the women’s driver and drove off with them locked in the back of the car. When the car broke down half an hour later, the officers abandoned them in the stranded vehicle.
An excellent article on the front page of The Washington Post about the efforts of Saudi attorney Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem to change the Saudi legal system. The piece notes several of the high-profile cases Al-Lahem is taking on, using his experience as a religious fundamentalist to argue for greater separation of church and state in the administration and interpretation of law.
Read the whole article; it’s worth the few minutes it’ll take.
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December:25:2006 - 17:26
Saudi Lawyer Takes On Religious Court System (H/T: Crossroads Arabia):
Congratulations, Saudi Arabia. You are now where the West was 250 years ago, just before John Wilkes successfully challenged the British system of general warrants. After that freedom of the press was secure and orders to government officials had to be specific and they were henceforth legally responsible to the courts for their actions; the law now applied to everybody. Abuse of governmental authority was thus drastically reduced, and freedom of the press assured. American Revolutionists who supported Wilkes enshrined his victory in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids invasive search and seizure without a judicial warrant.
Unfortunately this important episode in the history of civil rights is not commonly taught in schools, probably because the specifics of Wilkes’ case were not just political but also pornographic. Sometimes history is just too titillating to be taught!