Islam Means Mysogyny: Tsunami Aid

The way that Islam treats women should disgust everyone. And according to Islamic (sharia) law, men known as the Mutawwa, or the religious police, are supposed to go around to enforce Sharia by beating women who appear in public without the veil.

Remember the tsunami that hit Indonesia the day after Christmas in 2004, killing hundreds of thousands? The world sent relief money to help them rebuild. But Indonesian muslims had a different plan for that money. They used it to institute the Mutawwa. Now those men go around beating women, even tourists, visitors and relief workers for not wearing the veil. And they show it on TV.

From the Times Online with a hat tip to LGF:

Tsunami survivors given the lash

Disaster donations help Islamic vigilante force impose punishments on women

When people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

The flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves.

The scene is always the same. If it is a woman guilty of wearing improper clothing or being caught in proximity to a man, there is a particular ritual to the punishment.

She is dressed in white robes and veiled. Policemen escort her up on to a stage erected before a jeering crowd, which, witnesses say, is usually almost exclusively male.

Forced to kneel, the woman waits while a masked man ascends the platform. He is carrying a cane with a curved handle designed to give the inflictor of God s punishment a better grip. From the loudspeakers, a man s voice sonorously recites the appropriate religious chastisement. Then he begins to count. With each number, the cane descends with a vicious lash.

According to witnesses, male onlookers often roar in delight and hurl pious imprecations at the victims, working themselves up to a pitch of excitement.

In one collective punishment last summer, four women denounced for gambling were given between six and 10 lashes. One passed out as she was dragged off the stage.

The men get it too. For drinking a beer.

Audiences throughout the Indonesian archipelago watched the televised flogging of a man convicted of drinking beer. He collapsed after seven of the 40 prescribed strokes and officials said he would receive the remaining 33 when he recovered.