Anglican Mainstream

A western businesswoman has been arrested for sitting with a man in a Starbucks.  This follows a raft of other cases all in this 21st century; teenagers beheaded,  girls burnt to death because the religious police wouldn’t let them out of the building wrongly dressed where unrelated men could see them…persecution of homosexuals, terrifying hounding of women, beating up of British Shia pilgrims and arrests of Christians… 

From Libby Purves, ‘Sharia in Britain:  We think not’; http://timesonline.typepad.com/faith/2008/02/sharia-in-brita.html

The specifics make for grim, eye-opening reading. Life under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia is not quite what one imagines.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3321637.ece describes how a married mother of three was stripped, searched and humiliated after being found sitting in a Starbuck’s with a business colleague.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3321637.ece describes the beheading of a teen lad and how 143 individuals have experienced a similar fate between September 2006 and August 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm describes how 15 girls were burnt alive in a school in Mecca because they were not allowed to flee (they were not properly covered in head scarves and black robes and unrelated males were proximate).

(Though the following two occured in Sharia-dominated Nigeria and Iran, they are equally appalling)http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6940061.stm describes how 18 homosexual men in Sharia-govemed Nigeria have been arrested and face death by stoning; http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/2005july/2101.htm describes how two gay lads were given over 200 lashes and then publicly hung. 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/411hiynm.asp  see also http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15836746/ describes how a teen rape victim was given 6 months and 200 lashes (up from the original 90) because she had been sitting in a car in Qatif with an unrelated man (and in fact one of her alleged rapists only received 80 lashes) 

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2854580.ece describes how several Shia pilgrims – who happened to be British and American citizens – were illegally arrested and savagely beaten.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38951 describes how a Roman Catholic Saudi Airlines employee, an Indian national, was illegally arrested, mocked and tortured for his faith; http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44545 describes the fate of several house church pentecostals, also Indian nationals, illegally arrested and imprisoned (and still imprisoned, from what I can gather).

A. Do we know?  B.  Do we care?  C. Can we pray?  D. Can we protest?      

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