“Saudi culture treats women as just one step above pond scum; they are arrested for driving and writing blogs. The country buys sex slaves trafficked from all over the world, including the West, for the harems of millionaire petro-sheikhs. Recently a girl was sentenced t0 200 lashes and six months in jail for the ‘crime’ of being raped—a Sharia court deemed the 19-year-old had sex with a man who was not her husband. The country is one of the few which don’t accept the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” – Ravi Shankar
Evil has myriad faces. In mythology, it is Ravana who kidnapped Sita, or Hades who abducted and raped Persephone. In history, it is Adolf Hitler, Stalin and Mao who massacred millions. Idi Amin kept severed heads of his enemies in the refrigerator. Duvalier and Pinochet had the blood of thousands of innocents on their hands. But there are lesser known, faceless envoys of moral dementia who commit crimes that will never be brought to justice. Majid [Ashoor], the Saudi diplomat, and his friends who gang-raped and beat his Nepali maids every night are among these faces of arrogance. Majid is emblematic of his unapologetically repressive culture and its power.
Saudi Arabia represents evil on an unimaginable scale. It is governed by dictators who brook no dissent and have prisons that make Lubyanka look like a picnic spot. Saudi culture treats women as just one step above pond scum; they are arrested for driving and writing blogs. The country buys sex slaves trafficked from all over the world, including the West, for the harems of millionaire petro-sheikhs. Recently a girl was sentenced t0 200 lashes and six months in jail for the ‘crime’ of being raped—a Sharia court deemed the 19-year-old had sex with a man who was not her husband. The country is one of the few which don’t accept the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Public executions are common, hands are chopped off, and women, even princesses, are beheaded in public for having an affair. Saudi Arabia and its sadistic clerics represent the worst face of Islam—Wahhabism. Many of its ruling elite use oil dollars to fund Islamic terror worldwide. Their aim is to destroy the liberal, culturally inclusive and mystic Sufi tradition of the subcontinent and impose global Islamic Sharia everywhere.
The Gulf dictatorship’s covert agenda in India is to destabilise communal harmony. The Congress looked the other way when the Saudis spent Rs 1,700 crore during UPA II’s rule to encourage illiterate radical mullahs preaching Wahhabi apocalypse against ‘infidels’. According to the Intelligence Bureau, Saudi Arabia has given Rs 800 crore to establish four Wahhabi universities, Rs 400 crore to build 40 new mosques, and Rs 300 crore to set up new madrasas.
The irony is that the US—which had no compunctions in strip-searching Devyani Khobragade and jailing her for allegedly making her maid work extra hours—supports the Saudis for oil and strategic interests. After 9/11, only the Saudi envoy to Washington was allowed to leave, when all US airspace was shut down.
Hence the Saudis are used to breaking the law, confident in the belief that they are untouchable. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is travelling around the world, greeted with rock star receptions and boosting the image of India as the next big power. When India was an ancient civilisation, boasting of Aryabhatt and the Vedas, the Saudis were wandering in the desert, barbecuing camels. Yet, it is these Bedouin barbarians who dominate the global agenda while Indian Sikhs are attacked in the US and jeered at as towel heads. It is time for the government to make Majid [Ashoor] an example to put the Saudis and Wahhabis in their place. Or else, when the Sharia comes knocking at your door, only ‘secular’ India—which chooses to stay blind to the spread of Wahhabism and the destruction of India’s post-Mughal syncreticism—will be to blame. – The New Indian Express, 13 September 2015
» Ravi Shankar Etteth is an author, cartoonist and columnist for The New Indian Express. Email him at ravi@newindianexpress.com
See also
- Boycott Saudi Arabia as an apartheid state – Tufail Ahmad
- Saudi Arabia’s pact with the Devil – Zarrar Khuhro
- Sweden’s foreign minister has dared to tell the truth about Saudi Arabia – Nick Cohen
Filed under: india | Tagged: diplomacy, human rights, india-saudi relations, indian government, majid ashoor, rape, saudi arabia, saudi diplomat, shariah, women's rights | 4 Comments »
