In Sudan a woman suspected of prostitution is treated much differently than she would be in a civilized society not run by brutes. The punishment the woman in this video is subjected to is horrible enough, but to laugh at her agony, as one of her tormenters does, is simple savagery. Which is worse, we might ask, to commit prostitution or to sadistically whip a woman fifty three times for the offense? Which is more evil, prostitution or a law that demands such barbaric sentences?
Be advised that this is not easy to watch:
CNN has the details.
It tells us something about the ideological quirkiness of the left, I suppose, that here and abroad leftists were horrified and outraged by revelations that the United States had waterboarded three murderous terrorists in hopes of saving thousands of innocent lives, among whom, no doubt, were many women. Meanwhile, cruel atrocities such as we see on this video are perpetrated daily in cities and villages throughout North Africa and the Middle East, wherever Sharia law is strictly enforced, and the world's leftists just turn their heads and yawn.
When the U.S., in order to prevent mass murder, uses an interrogation technique which causes no real pain nor permanent harm, it is roundly condemned. It's told that it is just creating more terrorists, and that it is committing crimes against humanity. But when genuine torture is used in an Islamic, African country, not to save lives, but as punishment for a non-violent offense, one hears scarcely more than a quiet tsk, tsk from the left.
Why is that? Is it that, with the exception of a few intrepid voices like those of Christopher Hitchens and Paul Berman, the left is afraid to criticize the behavior of Muslims? Or is it black Africans whose behavior they can't bring themselves to condemn? Or is it both?
Anyway, don't hold your breath waiting for this video to get the sort of play on the world's evening news programs that Abu Ghraib received.