The Girl From Qatif

photo: Agence France Presse (AFP)

His magnanimous highness, the King of Saudi Arabia, has pardoned the girl from Qatif who was a rape victim. Unmentioned, as far as I can hear, is the fact that the girl from Qatif is a Shi'a Muslim. This noted together with the fact that not only are the Saudis Sunnis, they are Wahhabi Sunnis, I believe I suddenly see why the rapists thought they might have gotten away with the crime in the first place. Recently, a Saudi judge in the eastern province refused to allow the eyewitness accounts of a traffic accident from two eyewitnesses on the grounds that they were Shi'a Muslims. The treatment of Shi's as second or third class citizens in Saudi Arabia is common. The atmosphere of religious oppression is an old story in the Kingdom. Hurray for George Bush's friends.