On Tuesday in this space I wrote about a young woman in Saudi Arabia who has just been sentenced to over 180 lashes for meeting a man on a beach in the dark of night and daring to have sex with him.
The situation is more aggravated than that, however. Let me begin today’s entry by re-printing here what I wrote on Tuesday. If you already read that entry, skip past it here…
By now you have all heard about it. A 19-year-old woman in Saudi Arabia was gang-raped by a group of seven men who attacked both her and the man she was with — and the woman was sentenced to 90 lashes for meeting with the man! When the woman appealed her sentence, a Saudi court more than doubled it.
No one inside or outside the Saudi Arabian legal justice system disputes the fact that the woman had been brutally attacked. But after international outrage, the Saudi government over the weekend sought to explain why the woman was sentenced to over 180 lashes.
(It should be noted here that, after the appeal, the men who attacked her also had their sentences increased, from the initial sentence of 10 months to five years, to two to nine years in prison, by the Qatif General Court.)
The explanation for the severe lashing sentence given to the woman? The Saudi Arabian government said Saturday that the woman had an “illegitimate relationship” with a man who was not her husband, and that both “exposed themselves to this heinous crime.”
In Saudi Arabia, it should be explained, people are subject to pure Sharia rulings — strict Islamic law. The Sharia is the official legal interpretation and application of the Qur’an. In other words, it is the legal pronouncement of What God Wants.
What God Wants in this case is for a 19-year-old woman to receive more than 180 lashes because she fell in love with a man, allegedly went with him to a beach after dark, where, according to the Saudi government statement, the group of attackers “saw her in a compromising situation, her clothes on the ground. The men at this point assaulted her and the man with her.”
The Saudi statement went on to say that the woman knew that being alone with a man who wasn’t her husband was illegal, “and therefore she violated the covenant of marriage.” The statement did not say, however, that the multiple brutal rape took place in March 2006, when the young lady was 18 and that at the time the woman was engaged — not married. Apparently this circumstance makes no difference to God, or to the Saudi court.
I am so sickened when I hear of any situation or event that involves violence, one human being upon another…but I find it especially repugnant when that violence is perpetrated upon a person based on the idea of someone in authority about What God Wants.
Does God — as interpreted by Sharia law — really want this 19-year-old woman to suffer over 180 lashes because she was brutally attacked and gang raped, allegedly while making love to a man on the beach? What kind of God wants that???? Does God say ‘No!’ to an 18-year-old girl who simply fell in love — or lust?
To make matters worse here, the young woman claims that she was forced to meet privately with the man. There are allegations that she simply wanted to retrieve some photographs from him since she was now engaged — and that he forced her to meet with him in order to get them back, leading to the incident on the beach.
However the two happened to be there, whatever bad judgment may have been used (if it was ‘bad judgment’ at all), is it really our thought that the decisions made here are not What God Wants? What kind of a God spews anger and retribution in the form of 180 lashes upon an 18-year-old girl who is accused of doing nothing more than take off her clothes and make love with someone?
(And while we are on the subject, what does the Sharia say about What God Wants with regard to an 18-year-old MAN who does the same thing???)
And while we are on the subject of God’s desires…what kind of God wants the State of Texas to kill more people intentionally through the death penalty than the rest of the United States combined?
What is going on here? What kind of a God do we think we have? Even presuming that an unmarried 18-year-old woman deserves punishment for making love to a man on the beach in the middle of the night — would not suffering a brutal multiple rape be considered punishment enough? Could not the Saudi court see past its strict interpretation of Shari law and arrive at a place of mercy or compassion in this case?
It is small wonder that people in many Western nations are leery, to say the least, about Islam and Islamic law and some Islamic countries and radical Islamic terrorists who want the whole world to live under Islamic law. This is the law they want the world to be ruled by?
And what about fundamentalist Christians who support the death penalty based on their understanding that this is What God Wants? Does God really want us to purposefully kill people as a means of stopping people from purposefully killing people? Is this how we deter people from a certain behavior? By exhibiting the behavior ourselves?
What gives here? What is wrong?
I wrote that on Tuesday, and then I promised some ideas about this today. So here are my thoughts on the matter. I think that many people have no understanding at all of Who God Is and of What God Wants. I think that many people have…

…given up their right to think about these things by bowing to what others think about these things — and that those others to whom they bow are thinking about things based on what still others think about things…or thought about things over a thousand years ago.
Today’s religions are nothing more than compilations of what some group of people (always men, incidentally) said hundreds of years ago about What God Wants. What religion desperately needs is an Update. We need Religion 2.0. And we need it now.
As long as we believe in, and insist on preaching about, a God of anger and retribution, we will continue to make room for people such as the Rev. Fred Phelps, who as pastor of the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an independent Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, has been known for preaching with slogans and banners containing phrases such as “Thank God for 9/11”, “God hates fags,” “AIDS cures fags,” and “Fags die, God laughs (or mocks),” and who claims that God will punish homosexuals. He outraged thousands in America by showing up at the funerals of gay soldiers killed in the line of duty and picketing the services at burial sites with such signs and rhetoric.
Phelps spread these ugly ideas purporting to be a Christian minister.
Does God really hate gays? Does God hate anyone? Is God even capable of hate? Who and what IS “God,” anyway?
These are questions that no one wants to ask or answer. At least, no one in places of religious authority. Yet slowly but surely the people of the earth themselves are answering them. I invite your answers, below…