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Saudi father shoots daughter after catching her on Facebook

Mon, 03/31/2008 - 3:02pm

Facebook has become Shaitan incarnate for many preachers in Saudi Arabia, not least of all because six in 10 users of the social networking site in the country are women. This apparently makes Saudi men nervous. Influential cleric Sheikh Ali al-Maliki, for instance, has derided Facebook as a "a door to lust" and warned against "the accession of women to it."

Now, it appears, some Saudi men are taking matters into their own hands. London's Daily Telegraph reports:

A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged. The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man...."

Shocking, but then again we're talking about a country that arrests American women for sitting with their male colleagues at the local Starbucks.

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Yes, it's a bit shocking

by k on Mon, 03/31/2008 - 10:17pm

Yes, it's a bit shocking because her killer was her father, and the Facebook angle sexes your post up a bit, but you and I live in a country where
4 women a day are killed by their spouse or boyfriends for more or the less the same reason. Misogyny may be more pronounced in Saudi Arabia, but I'm not sure that makes it any more heinous -- or shocking-- than the American version. Or any version.

Get over yourself.

by xenop on Mon, 03/31/2008 - 10:50pm

Why do you feel the need to hijack a story about injustice in Saudi Arabia for your own selfish purposes? The United States has a population of 300 million. 4 Women a day sounds pretty good considering we don't have the statistics to compare to Saudi Arabia, but I'm sure in a country where women can't travel alone and are shot for using facebook, that proportionally they have it worse. The US is a leader on women's rights on this planet, and its immoral and idiotic to imply that the US is equal to SA on this issue.

No mention of the importance of Saudi-American relations?

by thabet on Tue, 04/01/2008 - 6:50am

Shocking, but then again we're talking about a country that arrests American women for sitting with their male colleagues at the local Starbucks.

Go on Mike, finish off that paragraph.

After all, this is a blog related to a foreign policy magazine, right?

Yes, get over it

by nu gij on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 12:06pm

Not only is the US the leader on women's rights on this planet, it is the biggest defender of Human Rights worldwide! That’s why it has laws like the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961/Section 502B to guarantee that the instruments ‘par exellence’ to promote these rights - stuff like smart bombs – can only go to those countries who share its values and view on human dignity. But with these rights come responsibilities too – for men and indeed women. With everything the US invests in the promotion and safeguarding of their rights they should not make a nuisance of themselves. Like the 51 women on death row, God only knows how many female enemy combatants now safely put away in Guantanamo and all those women who ‘just asked for it’ when they distracted US soldiers from promoting Human Rights overseas. Why should the US spend its valuable time ratifying a pesky convention that aims to eliminate all forms of discriminations against women? They’ve signed it! That should be close enough! People just don’t get it. A nation like the US can be right, without being righteous. If you don’t like it, move! The same goes for facebook. Don't like it? There's always myspace and orkut! Enough said.