SAUDI JUSTICE: EYE FOR AN EYE & EVERYONE IS BLIND!
I am not one of those who are afraid of the global policeman. Nor do I respect American imperialism in developing countries. Much less do I like American exploitation of the oil rich Muslim countries.
However, when countries like Saudi Arabia behave the way they do, without caring in any way for the intellectual and social progress of their citizens, and insist on running their countries with the jungle law of an eye an eye, I feel that outsiders have a right to tell them to behave.
My reference is to the treatment being meted out to an Indian in Saudi Arabia. As the reports would have, a person by name Naushad, hailing from Kollam district in Kerala, now in Saudi jail, has been directed by the Saudi court to give one eye to the person whose eye was lost during a scuffle with him. There cannot be a more bizarre and barbaric justice system anywhere in the world.
If the person really lost his eye as reported, the best thing any country could do is to punish him, not in this cruel corporal sense, but in a humanitarian way as it is usually done in civilized democratic countries; and if necessary make him compensate for the victim’s loss.
How true is Mahatma Gandhi’s maxim that an eye for an eye would make everyone blind?
Saudi Arabia does not seem to realize that by its barbaric penal system, it is giving a handle to countries like America enter it on a “civilizing mission”, though the sinister motive could be to take away its oil.