Friday, March 18, 2005

What Is a Life Worth?

 
photo credit: http://www.middle-east-online.comSo her story is not unusual after all: two million Asian maids are subjected to physical abuse, beating, sexual harassment, rape in Gulf states. Some of them die as a result.

The record of abuse, Sharia court "justice" and the practice of dhimmitude is flourishing in the Middle East. Even in cases of compensation for accidental death or murder, there is the heavy, cruel hand of Mohammed. In Saudi Arabia for example, what the heirs receive is determined according to religion first, and then to gender.
  • The families of Muslim men receive the "full compensation amount, which is 100,000 riyals (almost $27,000.00).
  • Christian and Jewish males are worth about half that.
  • Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, etc., -- so-called "polytheistic" religions -- are only one-sixteenth as valuable as Muslims
  • And of course, the women in each category above are worth half the amount in the twisted calculus of Islam.
These are the people who gave us the zero and algebra. It's time to thank them and move along. Especially if you're a Buddhist woman in Saudi Arabia: you're "worth" US$843.75.

More or less.

2 comments:

Judith said...

"These are the people who gave us the zero and algebra."

Actually, ancient Hindus came up with zero. I think algebra too. The Arabs just carried those concepts back to the West via traderoutes.

Dymphna said...

The Hindus did have a zero but it was the Arabs who were the conduit to the West.

The Hindus didn't establish as elaborate a mathematics as the Arabs did, building on what they got from the Hindus.

Sure, we'd have gotten it eventually but the Arabs quickened the process so thanks are due.

And thanks for the clarification --I should've been more specific.

~D