Brunei and the stoning penalty.

[FloralBunting]

Abhorrent, of course.

But as I watched the coverage today, I noticed my hackles rise as this was presented solely as an 'LGBT' issue. Stoning is also the penalty for 'adultery' and women who get pregnant while unmarried also face strict penalties, though I can't find the detail on it because the headlines and focus in the stories here are all about the death penalty for gay people.

There is so much more I want to know about this topic - the definition of 'adultery' would be a good start - and I'm finding it frustrating that the effect this kind of draconian imposition of law will have on women in a culture where they already struggle.

And a reiteration, for those who need this reiterated, the stoning of homosexual people is truly despicable and there should be consequences. But that's not the only thing that is being punished here, and I am aware of so much that our news media doesn't even think is worthy of comment and it's annoying.

And re the Posh hotel boycott, some of those places are pretty well known for their accomodation of all manner of 'adultery', especially the Dorchester so handy for the girls in Shepherd's Market.

Isn't the Sultan's brother Jafri a noted playboy with a yacht called 'Tits'? Somewhat goes against the ethos.

Total with you floralbunting.

But dw I believe they let women in these situations give birth and finish breastfeeding before they stone them.

I’m also pretty sure they count rape as adultery (that’s the victims not the perpetrator).

My third paragraph is unclear - that's what you get for posting while trying to help with maths homework. I meant to finish my thought that it was frustrating only being given such scant information.

See I didn’t realise that about adultery and unmarried mothers.

Although they’re no stoning, in Samoa homosexual sex between men is also illegal.

I thought the coverage in the NY Times was good

Beginning on Wednesday, extramarital sex, anal sex, and abortion are to be punished by death by stoning.

The law requires amputation of a hand or foot for some crimes, and whipping for others. The punishment for lesbian sex, previously imprisonment and a fine, is now to be 40 lashes.

It's clearly not just a LGBT issue, although some celebrities and media would suggest otherwise.

I really don’t understand why we just can’t be nice to each other, some people really are sadistic.

It just makes me so sad that there are people in the world like this. Even more so that because they have power they can implement sadistic laws.

I thought the coverage in the NY Times was good

It was and unsurprisingly The Mail managed to cover non LGBT issues which sailed over the head of The Guardian.

I have only seen the headlines in passing and not actually read anything and certainly got the impression it was solely homosexual men.

It’s awful but hopefully will not be enacted. They’ve always had the death penalty but have not executed anyone for decades.

Although the poster above mentions about finishing breastfeeding before being killed so maybe I’m wrong?

I believe they let women in these situations give birth and finish breastfeeding before they stone them.

That makes it all OK then

Who are these “they”?

Do we have any Muslim posters who know how Sharia works?

My recollection of reading the Koran (which of course is not the whole of Sharia law - there's loads of case law, fatwas and interpretations) is that the issue round rape is that a woman's evidence is only admissible in court if there are no male witnesses, and then two women's evidence may be given the same weight as one man's.

So with rape, it's not that rape isn't seen as a very bad crime with Sharia, it's just that the evidentiary standard is almost impossible to meet (because it takes place in private). Thus if a woman is raped and gets pregnant, and doesn't have the male witnesses to prove it was rape rather than consensual, she runs the risk of being punished for fornication.

I'd be very interested to see someone who knows their stuff on Sharia comment on this though.

And incidentally, I don't think it's actually that much different to how many western legal systems work in practice. A single woman's evidence isn't enough to "remove reasonable doubt" in the minds of the jury, and even if there are independent male witnesses (that dreadful case on an American campus where two men pulled the attacker off the woman), the man may well be let off with a non-custodial sentence because he's such a promising college athlete or similar. The only difference is you won't automatically be convicted of fornication if your attacker is found not guilty (though women have been pursued with spurious accusations of trying to pervert the course of justice following acquittals for rape).

Isn't it the case that for this new law, each "crime" must have 4 witnesses to the act?
Making the likelihood of any prosecutions extremely unlikely?
And that those witnesses cannot be the complainant/s?

The Sharia code is here:

www.agc.gov.bn/AGC%20Images/LAWS/Gazette_PDF/2013/EN/s069.pdf

Zina (extramarital sex by a Muslim, or with a Muslim) is prohibited since then.

It is not necessary to have 4 syahid (witnesses), ikrar (confession) is also sufficient.

They distinguish between muhshan (married) - stone to death - and ghairu muhshan (unmarried) - 100 strokes of the cane and 1 year in prison.

If the syahid/ikrar are lacking, the penalty is 30 strokes + up to 7 years for muhshan, and 15 strokes + up to 3 years for ghairu muhshan.

Anal sex (both straight and gay) is called liwat, and carries the same penalty as zinah (and the same provisions about confessions etc). Lesbian sex is called musahaqah and is punished with whipping, prison and fines.

If a woman is accused of zina by her husband, she must be imprisoned until she either swears an oath she did not do it, or accepts the accusation (in which case this is of course ikrar for zina and she must be stoned to death forthwith).

This does not apply the other way round, of course.

There is not an offence of 'rape' per se, but rather 'zina bil-jabar', which is to say 'zina by force' (or by deception).

It should be noted that the Shariah code does NOT, not at ALL treat the lack of consent as the issue.

Compare:

Zina (having sex outside with marriage), when proven with ikrar/4 syahid

• married person - stoned to death
• unmarried person - 100 strokes + 1 year prison

Zina without that kind of evidence

• married person - up to 30 strokes and up to 7 years prison
• unmarried person - up to 15 strokes and up to 3 years prison

Then zina bil-jabar (rape); with the witnesses/confession:

• married rapist - stoning to death
• unmarried rapist - 100 strokes + 1 year

Without the witnesses/confession

• married rapist - UP TO 30 years and UP TO 40 strokes
• unmarried rapist - UP TO 15 years and UP TO 20 strokes

So if you rape someone and you aren't married, then you confess and get a year in prison (and 100 lashes, which is no picnic, to be sure).

But consensual sex with/by a married person earns the death penalty if you confess.

A further provision provides that a woman who gives birth either outside wedlock, or within 6 months of marriage, will be imprisoned and/or fined, unless she can prove she was raped.

Note that it was passed in 2013, but it was commenced in two stages:

1st May 2014 - www.agc.gov.bn/AGC%20Images/LAWS/Gazette_PDF/2014/EN/S017.pdf

• pregnancy out of wedlock
• various offences relating to females leaving their parents' custody
• apostasy / blasphemy etc
• zakat (i.e. tithing)

3 April 2019
www.agc.gov.bn/AGC%20Images/LAWS/Gazette_PDF/2018/S068.pdf

basically everything else including zina, liwat, and musahaqah.

The BBC and similar fucked up fucking stupid fuckwits from fuckhead land have described it as an anti-LGBT law.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47769964

Which it is but only if you ignore the fact you can be stoned to fucking death for having consensual sex of any kind, and you will be sent to prison if your husband accuses of adultery and you don't either admit it (= stoning to death) or deny it.

The BBC are calling it adultery because they are fucking stupid.

It is NOT adultery. It is 'zina', which is a Sharia term, and is NOT the same as 'adultery' as anyone reading the BBC news would understand 'adultery' to mean, since it includes any kind of extra-marital sex.

Note btw that men can marry as many women as they like, so adultery is not so much of an issue. Women not only cannot marry more than one man, but are not allowed to marry (and hence have sex) after the death of their husband, or divorce for a suitable period (iddah). I believe this would still be muhshan and hence stoning to death as well.

Also from what I can see the code sometimes distinguishes between male and female syahid, e.g., saying 1 male or 2 female syahid (in the context of other matters), but for this penal code I think women count as witnesses.

Note btw that it's not as hard as you'd think to get 4 witnesses, in places where these laws exist you tend to get mobs of young men forming Sharia patrols to catch people out.

I wonder if the same people calling for boycotts on Brunei owned hotels, will be doing the same to ALL Saudi/UAE/Qatar owned hotels/football clubs/airlines etc, and if our government will stop selling arms to them?
I fear not, because money trumps human rights abuses every time

The reason why I named those 3 countries, is that stoning is commonplace and mostly used on women.

ThanksPalatine that's exactly what I was looking for in terms of more detailed discussion. And good point about an entirely different conception of what rape is: it's not a violation of consent with the woman as victim; it's a property crime/violation of rules about sexual purity, with the male owners and guardians of community standards of moral decency as the victims.

My understanding also is that historically, if you could get out of the ground where you were buried to be stoned to death you could get away. And men were buried up to their waists, women to their necks - making escape impossible. But this may have changed.

This from wikipedia about Iran:

Methods
In the 2008 version of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran detailed how stoning punishments are to be carried out for adultery, and even hints in some contexts that the punishment may allow for its victims to avoid death:[67]

Article 102 – An adulterous man shall be buried in a ditch up to near his waist and an adulterous woman up to near her chest and then stoned to death.

Article 103 – In case the person sentenced to stoning escapes the ditch in which they are buried, then if the adultery is proven by testimony then they will be returned for the punishment but if it is proven by their own confession then they will not be returned.[67]

Article 104 – The size of the stone used in stoning shall not be too large to kill the convict by one or two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone.

Also from same wikipedia entry:

Women's rights
Stoning has been condemned as a violation of women's rights and a form of discrimination against women. Although stoning is also applied to men, the vast majority of the victims are reported to be women.[119][120][121] According to the international group Women Living Under Muslim Laws stoning "is one of the most brutal forms of violence perpetrated against women in order to control and punish their sexuality and basic freedoms".[122]

Amnesty International has argued that the reasons for which women suffer disproportionately from stoning include the fact that women are not treated equally and fairly by the courts; the fact that, being more likely to be illiterate than men, women are more likely to sign confessions to crimes which they did not commit; and the fact that general discrimination against women in other life aspects leaves them at higher risk of convictions for adultery.[123]

LGBT rights
Stoning also targets homosexuals and others who have same-sex relations in certain jurisdictions. In Mauritania,[1] northern Nigeria,[124] Somalia,[1] Brunei,[58] and Yemen,[1] the legal punishment for sodomy is death by stoning.

It's worth looking to Aceh, which has the same language/people. But they are part of Indonesia so can't go full barbaric, i.e. execution/amputation.

Here's a recent story

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6768553/Indonesias-Aceh-whips-unmarried-couples-hotel-raid.html

Note the key points:

• raids on a hotel to catch people out
• some caned for khalwat (also criminalised in Brunei, but only prison/fine there) - i.e. being with the opposite sex unmarried
• longer sentences for zina

Obviously those with money can just fly somewhere sharia doesn't apply and do all the sinning they like.