Yet more on the twenty year old Saudi student facing 90 lashes, in comments from their Ministry of Justice, reported on Wednesday:

The Jubail female student, who was sentenced to 90 lashes and two months in prison, was punished for physically assaulting her headmistress and threatening to kill her, a statement of the Ministry of Justice said Tuesday. This was the first response of the ministry to the verdict that has attracted the attention of local and international media…

The headmistress had apparently reprimanded the student for bringing her cell phone, with a camera, to school. Phones with cameras are not allowed. The case was referred to court as a “last resort” after all disciplinary measures at the school had failed to correct the unruly behavior of the student, it added.

The ministry said there were inaccurate news reports published about the story in the international media. These reports were meant to distort the reputation of the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, the statement said… “She is not a teenage girl. She is 20-years-old and registered in the home schooling program supervised by the Ministry of Education,” the statement added.

The court dealt with the case of a grown-up woman, not a child, the ministry said. “Flogging will take place inside the women’s prison, not on the school’s premises in front of her classmates and teachers,” it added, in reference to reports that she will be flogged at school.

The ministry denied news reports that the father of the student had not known about the verdict, and had only learned about it through the media. “He was present when the court handed down its ruling,” it said.“The verdict was announced to the student and she accepted it after consulting with her father,” the statement added…

The supervisor of the educational media department at the Ministry of Education said that his ministry believes in the independence of the Saudi court system. “The Ministry of Education will not intervene in the verdict,” said Fahd Al-Tayash, in a statement. Al-Tayash stated that the student was 20-years-old and registered at a Jubail intermediate school for older students. The Ministry of Education had been dealing for a while with the allegedly unruly behavior of the student during classes on the school’s premises. The school had transferred her to the home schooling system over fears she was a bad influence on her classmates, he said.

He said this was an individual matter and it did not reflect the general behavior of female students at that particular school or other schools across the Kingdom, he added.

A story from yesterday’s Saudi Gazette clarifies the position regarding the 90 lashes handed out “to a schoolgirl”, as reported last week:

Things are getting a little out of hand in Jubail. Apparently a public school Al-Kabirat education program for young women to obtain a high school diploma is at the center of an international uproar over the lashing and prison sentence of a young woman found guilty of assaulting the school’s headmistress.

Originally it was reported in the media that the young woman was a 13-year-old girl sentenced to 90 lashes for bringing a mobile phone to school. But, no, that wasn’t true. Then it was reported the girl assaulted the headmistress for taking away the phone. Well, that’s sort of true. Now it turns out the girl is not a girl, but a 20-year-old woman and she cracked a drinking glass over the headmistress’ head while the student’s mother stood by and watched.

Frankly, I’d like to turn this student over my knee and give her a good spanking for acting like the misbehaving toddler she is. This student understood the rules of her school, knew the consequences, and decided to ignore them anyway. She deserves to be punished, but the reactions are way over the top…

The Arabic-language press not only got the woman’s age wrong but also muddled the facts over whether the lashing sentence was for having a mobile phone on campus or for assaulting the headmistress. Amnesty International made matters worse by announcing the girl was 13-years-old.

Inevitably, Saudis start complaining about sloppy reporting by the Arabic-language press. The complaints are justified, but a lion’s share of the blame also goes to the school for not providing the necessary information to paint a complete picture. Lack of transparency usually leads to erroneous reporting. The international community will only remember that a young girl was flogged for bringing a mobile phone to school. Nobody cares that it was an adult who attacked another woman with a deadly weapon.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this incident is that the attack appears not to have occurred in the heat of the moment, but rather after some time had passed and cooler heads should have prevailed. After the headmistress confiscated the phone, the student went home and returned to school with her mother. It was during the meeting between the three women that young woman picked up a drinking glass and struck the headmistress with it.

No doubt the mother was shocked at her daughter’s behavior, but one has to wonder where the daughter learned that violence solves such small problems as the confiscation of a mobile phone. It’s a dangerous thing to break a glass over someone’s head. This student possesses an undeserved sense of entitlement that the rules don’t apply to her and she is not subject to the same consequences as her colleagues if she breaks those rules.

The headmistress, though, could have stopped this runaway locomotive of a public relations disaster. She could have nipped the controversy in the bud by forgiving the student to spare her the lashing. But the headmistress had her own temper tantrum by refusing to take the high road only exacerbates the controversy.

There’s plenty of blame to go around here. It certainly doesn’t end a spoiled brat’s confrontation with school authority.

(from this free paddling gallery)

From ABC News in November 2008:

Islamist insurgents in southern Somalia have whipped 32 people for taking part in a traditional dance. An Islamist spokesman in the town of Balad says the 25 women and seven men had ignored repeated warnings that dancing together was forbidden by Islam.

He said they were whipped and then released in accordance with Sharia law. Islamist insurgents fighting Somalia’s weak transitional government and its Ethiopian allies now control most of the centre and south of the country. As they have advanced they have enforced their strict interpretation of Islamic law on local populations.

More details appeared on the Freemuse music site:

On Friday night 14 November 2008, militiamen from the Union of Islamic Courts raided a traditional folklore dancing event on the suburbs of Bal’ad town in the Middle Shabelle region, 30 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu. They took 32 folklore dancers — 25 women and seven men — into custody. On the next morning the folklore dancers, accused of taking part in an ‘un-Islamic event’, were lashed in public against their will in front of hundreds of spectators.

“I was whipped against my will because I don’t believe in the draconian version of Islam that these self-styled clerics are forcefully imposing on us. My only crime was singing and dancing in a traditional folklore event, a cultural tradition that I inherited from my ancestors,” said one of the flogged women, who spoke to Freemuse on condition of anonymity because of her personal safety…  All the lashed, including the spectators, have gone underground, and are not willing to speak about this ordeal, as if nothing had happened to them or they had never witnessed it, for fear of their safety.

But Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow, the spokesman and the commander of the Islamist group, who led the militiamen that raided the event, told reporters in Mogadishu that “they had warned those arrested and lashed several times against singing and dancing.”  “We warned them many times, but they wouldn’t listen. The dancing of men and women together is illegal and totally against Islam. We neither killed them nor injured them, but only whipped them according to the Islamic law,“ Adow argued.

(From this free amateur gallery)