{"id":52821,"date":"2015-01-26T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=52821"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:11","slug":"how-saudi-arabias-harsh-legal-punishments-compare-to-the-islamic-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/01\/how-saudi-arabias-harsh-legal-punishments-compare-to-the-islamic-states\/","title":{"rendered":"How Saudi Arabia\u2019s Harsh Legal Punishments Compare to the Islamic State\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Documents Show Saudi Arabia and ISIS Administer Nearly Identical Punishments for Crimes<\/em><\/p>\n

21 Jan 2015 – <\/em>Following the lashing of blogger Raif Badawi<\/a> and leaked footage that showed the public execution<\/a> of a woman accused of beating her daughter, Saudi Arabia’s harsh interpretation of sharia law and its\u00a0use of capital punishment have come under international scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\"Blogger<\/a>

Blogger activist Raif Badawi. (photo: Amnesty International)<\/p><\/div>\n

For many, the Saudi justice system sounds not unlike that of the Islamic State, the extremist Islamist group which has struck fear in much of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

This week, Middle East Eye, a Web site that focuses on news from the region and is frequently critical of Saudi Arabia, contrasted a set of legal punishments\u00a0recently announced<\/a> by the Islamic State with the corresponding punishments<\/a> in Saudi Arabia.\"saudi<\/a>While Saudi Arabia isn’t particularly forthcoming about its use of capital punishment (and Middle East Eye doesn’t cite its source) and accurate information from within the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate is hard to ascertain, information from news sources and human rights organizations suggest the chart is at least broadly accurate.<\/p>\n

One key difference between the Islamic State and Saudi Arabia, of course, is that the latter is a key U.S. ally in the region\u00a0\u2013 and a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State. Some experts argue that the fundamentalist\u00a0brand of Islam practiced by both has theological links, however, and Riyadh’s\u00a0recent crackdown<\/a> has been interpreted as an act of appeasement for Saudi hard-liners.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia’s own concern about the Islamic State is likely genuine (plans to build an enormous wall<\/a> along its border with Iraq are a good sign of that),\u00a0but for many Americans, the extremist group’s rise is also bringing with it a renewed skepticism about American allies in the region.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for <\/em>The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Documents Show Saudi Arabia and ISIS Administer Nearly Identical Punishments for Crimes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}