r/SipsTea • u/Apollo114892 • 17h ago
Feels good man Saudi Arabia overturns death sentence given to a Sri Lankan man
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u/Accomplished_Ebb9859 13h ago
This story made no sense.
Why wouldn't they just deport him?
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u/Loki_8888 13h ago
Because sharia says so. But the death penalty only applies to muslims and not the "people of the book" and other infidels. So he will be probably wipped or something.
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u/Acceptable_Growth531 8h ago
Sharia law actually confirms that they're heavily included, Saudi uses Sharia as a political & social influence, not as a law.
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u/Sleepy-Giraffe947 12h ago
I saw a video yesterday of his mother protesting over his death sentence, she was shaking and crying, I felt so heartbroken for her. I hope they can reunite soon.
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u/BeginningTypical3395 13h ago
MBS couldn’t let this stain his modernising push (women and minorities get slightly (🤏) more rights)
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u/Apollo114892 12h ago
Finally someone got it right. In fact this was almost deliberately done to show how Saudi is deradicalizing and turning over a new chapter of modern and tourist friendly Arab world.
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u/loikyloo 6h ago
Its not done a great job of that.
He's still being arrested and massively punished for what's basically a harmless facebook shitpost.
If MBS wanted to show Saudi Arabia as friendly to tourists he wouldn't even have let it get to an arrest.
All this has shown is that if you go to Saudi Arabia now and you've got an iffy facebook history you could get arrested.
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u/Apollo114892 5h ago
It will happen slowly. By 2032, massive reforms would've taken place. They don't want things to happen so suddenly that it leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of the locals. It's done in a way to not arouse any suspicion as to how such a radical society suddenly became so liberal.
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u/loikyloo 4h ago
I mean the issue is it was more liberal in the 1900's than it is now.
Don't think things are always going in one way. It can as easily switch and become even more barbaric.
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u/knightsofgel 11m ago
Governments don’t just magically become less authoritarian over time and history isn’t a a straight line of continuous progress
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u/JamesHenry627 4h ago
r/monarchism loves saudi arabia. They'll use this as a propaganda victory.
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u/BeginningTypical3395 4h ago
I hate for ruining my ignorance. Wtf is that sub lord above
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u/knightsofgel 10m ago
99% of the people who claim to be Japanese on that sub are white dudes living in western countries
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u/One_more_username 1h ago
MBS couldn’t let this stain his modernising push
5th century BC to 5th century AD.
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u/Ok-Imagination-494 6h ago
This is due to the story going viral.
MBS cannot seriously explain to the world why Saudi should have the Football world cup and other prestigious events, if people get executed in his country for Facebook posts.
He was embarrassed into letting this guy go. Every one who has clicked or shared this story has had a small part in saving his life.
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u/dsasdasa 2h ago
MBS has been tightening his grip on religious judges and scholars for some time now, and there have been plenty of power struggles between the two sides. I can see how the court wants to make an example of him to undermine MBS’ modernization effort
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u/AyatollahCovfefe 16h ago
Publicly pardoned. Hopefully he doesn't have any "accidents" and manages to get home safely.
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u/Blueberry784 7h ago edited 7h ago
Unfortunately, this is a sad day for lots of Muslims. They were really hoping to see the guy dead.
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u/ApplicationCalm649 16h ago
I'm glad cooler heads prevailed on this one. Good on Saudi Arabia.
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u/Absolute_Bob 16h ago
Nah, fuck those guys. Having a death penalty based on religious beliefs in the first place is insane.
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u/cravex12 16h ago
Why are people downvoting you. I totally agree. That is some dark ages bullshit right here
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u/Davetek463 16h ago
Big sweeping changes to the legal system (in any country) take time and don’t happen over night. It’s still worth acknowledging when something right happens.
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u/loikyloo 5h ago
I mean, if anything, religious restrictions in the region have actually gone backwards in some respects.
Remember, the Saudis only invaded and conquered Mecca and the surrounding Hejaz region in the 1920s. Before that, it had been under different tribal leadership which was under Ottoman rule.
And here's the ridiculous part: even the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic monarchy ruling Mecca over a hundred years ago, had already renounced executions for apostasy in 1844 and introduced major criminal law reforms in 1858.
Now, blasphemy and apostasy aren't exactly the same thing, and you could certainly still be punished for insulting religion under Ottoman rule. But Ottoman legal reforms had moved away from some of the harshest traditional religious punishments long before the Saudis took control.
Then you have modern Saudi Arabia, which still retains the possibility of executing people for blasphemy under its interpretation of Islamic law.
Think about that. Even the Ottoman authorities governing Mecca in the early 1900s had already taken steps towards a less punitive legal system in certain respects than the one Saudi Arabia maintains today.
That's quite an indictment of Saudi religious law when you can look back over a century to an Islamic empire and find examples of greater legal moderation.
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u/Upstairs_Steak_7286 12h ago
They’ve had plenty of time to change, your clapping how they changed because he’s going to get flogged instead of being sentenced to death for a Facebook comment. How progressive of them…
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u/Davetek463 11h ago
I didn’t realize that finding flogging to be preferable to death is a hot take. Yes, the level of punishment is ridiculous at all for a Facebook comment.
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u/Upstairs_Steak_7286 12h ago
Nah not good on them, for not allowing freedom of speech. A Facebook comment shouldn’t be a crime.
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u/crooked_nose_ 13h ago
Yeah good on Saudi Arabia for not carrying out their stone age laws this one time that other societies abolished millennia ago.
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u/loikyloo 5h ago
Fuck, honestly calling it Stone Age is an insult to the Stone Age.
The Saudis conquered Mecca and the surrounding region in the 1920s, and in some respects their interpretation of Islamic law is harsher than that of the previous Islamic Empires of history.
That's what makes it so ridiculous. Even the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic monarchy ruling the region over a century ago, had already undertaken reforms limiting some of the harshest religious punishments.
You can find examples of more tolerant approaches to religious dissent throughout Islamic history, including under earlier Islamic empires.
This isn't some unbroken thousand-year tradition where every Islamic ruler enforced religious law in exactly the same way. This is the Saudi's using a barbaric interpretation of Islam.
And yet modern Saudi Arabia still retains the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy.
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u/seidenkaufman 5h ago
I read somewhere that the Ottomans were socially liberal enough that it was possible for many folks to live as LGBT in that era--the prohibitions were still on the books, but no one cared enough to enforce them.
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u/loikyloo 4h ago
There's a bit of truth to that, although I think it's important to add some historical context because it may not be what you imagine and not exactly good.
The uncomfortable caveat to that is much of this tolerance wasn't really towards homosexuality as we'd understand it today, with consenting adult men having relationships. It was often specifically towards adult men having relationships with adolescent boys.
This was a fairly well-established aspect of historical sexual culture in parts of the Islamic world, with homoerotic poetry frequently celebrating the beauty of young boys. Adult men engaging in relationships with other adult men did face considerably more social stigma and oppression.
You can see some echoes of these historical practices in things like the bacha bazi or "chai boys" phenomenon where young boys have been sexually exploited by older men.
So yes, there's historical truth to the idea that the Ottomans were more tolerant of certain same-sex behaviours. But I think it's a mistake to interpret that as the equivalent of modern gay acceptance. The actual picture is rather more disturbing.
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u/seidenkaufman 4h ago edited 4h ago
Fair. I suspect this is a topic someone at r/askhistorians could provide a lot of interesting context about.
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u/loikyloo 4h ago
Yea I don't mean to shit on the Ottomans or anything, it's just hell their man-boy love stuff isn't even that unique to them. Ancient Greeks were pretty much on the same table of what we'd in the modern world call pedo stuff.
Unfortunately a lot of history has stuff like that in it.
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u/ZookeepergameFit967 3h ago
Yeah no they're just trying to make Westerners look away because they're currently commiting worse stuff than executing a Sri Lankan. Like Saudi Arabia is restricting religious freedom on Shia Muslim because Iran is Shia Muslim and have restarted bombing Yemen and tried to retake it but now are facing consequences
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u/One_more_username 1h ago
Good on Saudi Arabia.
Oh wow, they decided not to be the absolute worst cunts on the planet once and are only the second worst. AMAZING!
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u/PalmovyyKozak 15h ago
So now Saudi Arabia is more sane than US, that makes executions for public joy
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u/OakRiverDruid 1h ago
At least the US only executes people convicted of murder, not for saying mean things about a fictional character
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16h ago
[deleted]
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u/gigantic_balls_ 16h ago
Why?
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u/Fatsausage91 16h ago
To show us all how peaceful they are obviously.
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u/gigantic_balls_ 16h ago
But how would killing the guy show peacefulness? It shows some peacefulness that they spared him at least
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u/Fatsausage91 16h ago
The fact it even got to a point where killing a man over words is crazy. That is not a peaceful regime.
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u/gigantic_balls_ 16h ago
I don’t agree with it but basically it’s like you might as well have insulted God and his prophet, which to a kingdom that holds the religion as a fundamental part of its everything is a major crime. Like in the medieval ages when a peasant insults the king and goes straight to the guillotine, but like worse.
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u/Fatsausage91 16h ago
I get that but words dont hurt people. Ending someone's life for them words will hurt people. If they are taking advice from the medieval ages I think that its time to deal with that particularly violent religion.
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u/gigantic_balls_ 16h ago
That’s just the kingdom tho not the religion, like in the past they used to kill people for insulting the church, and Christianity itself wasn’t the problem.
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u/Fatsausage91 16h ago
So you wouldnt face the same punishment in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan ect....? They are literally creating blasphemy laws in my country for one religion. I think the religion itself is the problem not the kingdoms and states.
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u/gigantic_balls_ 15h ago
Again, back then you used to get killed for insulting or even disagreeing with the church, but the solution wasn’t banning Christianity now was it?
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